[Mesuge]

Peak is just everywhere around us, I couldn't resist too!

I've found it on the Loremo.com/forum but these carpooling websites/databases surely exists all over the globe.

And if not you can start something similar in your area too..
Can someone plot basic estimates how this could realistically
offset the depletion rates horrors which are around the corner..?

Thanks

http://ich-fahre-mit.de/search.php?cat=cat_m

[The_Toecutter]

If anyone has car pooling numbers from the 70s, perhaps a way to figure out what percentage of people carpooled, I could do some rough but reasonable calculations in regards to the United States.

[oilfreeandhappy]

Carpooling? Who carpools? Americans want it all. They're not going to put up with waiting 5 minutes for somebody at the office. I used to carpool in the early 80s. I was a young Engineer in a downtown St. Louis firm. Two elderly gentlemen from the same neighborhood approached me with the idea, and we carpooled for two years together. We developed some interesting relationships.

Similar to Mass Transit, carpooling leads to interesting conversation, and a more social community. On the whole though, Americans have consistently favored the isolation and secretness of their personal automobile, where they can curse out fellow drivers, pick their nose, fart, and listen to Rush Limbaugh without anybody bugging them.
Jim Gagnepain
http://home.comcast.net/~oil_free_and_happy/

[grabby]

We are so spread out in AMerica it is unfeasable.
The places where it would work is like apartment complexes or housing developmentswhere many people live and all drive in to work at Like Microsoft or Hewlitt packard.

But those guyshave lexus' and porsches, they are the last too carpool.

My brother works at Hewlitt in Boise and when you are in such an environment you will be the last to even acknowledge there is any problem at all. I went to his cubicle under two layers of security, I had to have a pass, they have it cush there, everything is one phone call from them. preplanned parties games child cares events, networked its compleat dilbert town.

amazing,

if one person carpooled there they would loose status.

Carpooling is not going to be happening.

In the 70's, when there was a REAL problem, they ENCORAGED carpooling and made carpool lanes, it still didn't happen, the govment had to go to the Saudis and beg for oil.

that solved that crisis.

[gg3]

Begging the Saudis only launched the crisis into the future, where it came back to us on 9/11/2001.

As for "losing status," the way to deal with that one is to say: "Status?! You're an engineer!, who's supposed to be rational!, not a friggin' chimpanzee that runs on ape-instinct! Let the chimps worry about status, smart humans have better things to think about!"

Or, "No, dude, that's not it. If you really want status, what you need to do is stuff a bunch of wadded newspaper in your pants, so it looks like you have huge testicles. Or get the boss' daughter pregnant. That's what status is all about...."

In other words: the way to deal with "status" issues is by pure and relentless ridicule.

But as for people in solo-occupant vehicles cussing at other drivers (and enjoying it), picking their noses (and enjoying it), and farting out loud (and enjoying that too), yeah that kinda' proves my point about chimpanzee behavior. So does listening to Rush Limbaugh. "Dittoheads." God!, where I come from that would be an insult: as if to say a person doesn't have an original thought.

Re. carpooling, yeah it's good and it'll help a lot. But by itself it's an ad-hoc solution, like duct-taping a broken machine together to make it run a little longer. What's really needed is big-picture systems thinking, and systemwide solutions: better public transport, electric and PHEV automobiles powered by a nuclear/wind/solar grid, and above & beyond all else, no more sprawl. Carpooling is common sense but it shouldn't take the emphasis off of doing the whole-system solutions.

[crapattack]

Carpooling is what the masses will try when gas gets "pricey". In order to keep their jobs it will be the first solution they turn to. The average schmoe has no clue or care what is coming and at first everything will just be provisional and make do until the realization starts to hit that prices aren't coming down. By then they'll realize their house in the suburbs has lost it's value as no one wants to buy anything with a long communite. Suddenly his equity is gone, the commute is too expensive to sustain and everything is getting more and more pricey. This is going to be a very tough moment for many people and IMO much of the way that Amercians currently live just won't be able to continue.