Commute cool with car pool

Commute cool with car pool
Bangalorean Starts Online Facility; 1,285 Users Register
The Times of India

Bangalore: Do snarling traffic jams, loud honking and pollution greet you every morning? With the city’s public transport leaving a lot to be desired, IT professional Vipul Kasera has an answer for you — car pools.
Kasera, who himself uses a pool every morning from Basaveshwaranagar to his office on Airport Road, has started an online city car pool forum on www.commuteasy.com. Specify the location of your residence and your office and timings and a car pool will reach you.
“Research has shown that in most Indian metropolitan cities, the occupancy rate of a car is 1.3 persons. Which means that usually, only the person who’s driving uses the car, while there’s room for at least four more persons,” says Kasera. “This is a criminal waste of resources and adds to traffic every morning. Imagine if there were only one-fourth the cars on the roads.”
This initiative, that was started last month, has 1,285 registered users, with at least 120 registered pools. “At least 85% of the users are IT professionals, while the remaining are students from colleges like R V College of Engineering and B M S College of Engineering,” says Kasera. Little wonder then that most car pools are headed to the IT hubs, Electronics City, Marathahalli, Whitefield and Airport Road.
Women too seem to have taken to the pool as the site has around 300 women registered. “Most women prefer a pool where there’s at least one more woman or an all-woman pool,” observes Kasera.
The flexibility of the car pool is its USP. All users can either take turns with their cars or hitch a ride with one person and split the fuel cost on a weekly basis. “Some even hire a city cab and divide the cost incurred among themselves. Some companies offer to foot half the bill as an encouraging measure,” he says.
Kasera has no control over the pools that result from his effort, which is a free service. It helped that Kasera’s employer company ThoughtWorks was greatly supportive of his effort. So far, e-mail chains and Orkut have been the only method of promoting the car pool. “I even wrote to Google asking them if it’s alright to speak about my site. They replied saying they don’t mind since it was for a social cause,” he says.
POOL IT
Users can take turns with their cars Or hitch a ride and split the fuel cost on weekly basis Some hire a cab and divide the cost Women prefer a pool where there is at least one more woman Corporates offer incentives to employees who pool