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High-Tech Hitchhiking
Posted by Phil Hart on August 15, 2008 - 9:10am in TOD: Australia/New Zealand
Topic: Demand/Consumption
Tags: hitchhiking, original, technology [list all tags]
Have you ever stood at the bus stop watching hundreds of cars go by and wondered just how many of those cars are headed to the same place you want to go? Wouldn't it be great if you could just stick out your thumb and get a quick ride rather than waiting 10 minutes for the old bus?
Imagining the Future
Imagine if, instead of congested lanes of large cars with one person on board, we had a stream of traffic picking up and setting down passengers to help them get to their destination - a truly 'rapid transit' service in action on every street.
Can you picture this future where every car is instead a mini-bus? Or are you turned off instantly by the modern day stigma associated with 'hitchhiking'?
Hitching a ride used to be quite socially acceptable. Nowadays (at least in the 'civilised' west) somebody sticking out their thumb on the side of the road is seen as a much less than desirable passenger. Equally, were you to decide to try your hand for ride, you might not be all that comfortable with the first person who stops for you - after all, what sort of creep would pick up a stranger off the side of the road?!
Hitchhiking into the Future
It doesn't matter whether it's hydrogen, batteries or gasoline under the hood - if it's two tonnes of metal carrying one person then it is grossly inefficient. Clearly, we have the roads and spare seats in the vehicles to get us where we want to be. In our more frugal future, we're going to need to make better use of those spare seats.
For those of us standing on the side of the road waiting for a ride, what we lack is a means of connecting us to a driver who doesn't know we need them. But the technological solution to this problem is already close at hand - it is simply a matter of integrating three common functions:
- A mobile (cell) phone to inform the world of our current location and where we want to go.
- GPS units to work out where we are standing and which drivers are coming our way.
- A means of paying the driver a small fee for the ride.
Introducing the 'iHitch'
Let's call this new device the 'iHitch' - a phone, GPS and payment system all in one - a simple challenge for the likes of Nokia, Apple or Garmin. The next step is equipping a critical mass of passengers and vehicles for it to be a practical option. And finally we will need some software which, when told where the drivers are going and where the passengers want to be, can make the optimum connections between the two. Seems simple really!
Of course, depending on your destination, it might take more than one 'ride' to get you from 'A to B'. With public transport, a journey that requires multiple connections with long waits in between can quickly become tedious and very time-consuming. But if at each change you're only waiting a minute or two for the next driver in the sequence to keep you moving then much more complex trip patterns suddenly become a lot more viable. This is especially true since the speed of travel in one small vehicle will be faster than in the big old bus which has to stop every few hundred metres to pick up and set down more passengers.
The incentive for the passengers are pretty obvious, and as fuel prices start to bite and the affordability of the next tank of fuel becomes a serious question, the benefit for the driver of being able to share the costs of running their vehicle becomes pretty compelling too. When oil was cheap, it was easy to choose the privacy and comfort of having a vehicle all to oneself. But that equation is shifting quickly, and some old and well ingrained habits may be ready for change.
Breaking down Barriers the eBay Way
Technology is the easy part - the far more challenging problems are those we have created for ourselves. To make our hitchhiking future happen we're going to need help overcoming the significant social and cultural barriers. But the answers are out there - in this case we need only look at other models of social interaction over the internet.
Consider how the eBay model of 'rating' buyers and sellers could be applied:
- If you smell, talk dirty or are otherwise poor company in a confined space, your 'passenger' or 'driver' rating will quickly plummet.
- If things work smoothly and your rating is high, you won't have to wait long for a friendly driver to pick you up and get you on your way. High rated drivers may also be able to charge a little more for their services.
On a busy route in the middle of the day, you might be happy to offer a ride to a B-rated passenger but if you're looking for a ride home at 3am in the morning you might prefer to wait a little longer to get a AAA-rated driver. These personal preferences would be adjusted in your 'iHitch' and the software makes the matches according to your criteria. The more stringent you are, the longer you'll have to wait!
Every Car is a Mini-Bus
In my case, instead of a bus stop it's actually a tram that I end up waiting for at all hours of the day and night. I hope it won't be long before I can stand there, plug a destination into my 'iHitch' and have a driver pull up moments later, long before the tram would have arrived. Instead of every oil consuming vehicle being the problem, they become part of the solution in the form of a mini-bus.
As the scheme becomes widely adopted, the number of vehicles on the roads will drop as more drivers leave their car at home, choosing the new speed and convenience of riding as an 'iHitch' passenger instead. Not everybody can be a passenger (even a real bus needs a driver!) but a substantial reduction in traffic and oil consumption is readily achievable.
In a crunch, one can envisage the same system being pushed to its limits with each vehicle 'saturated' with passengers and only the bare minimum number of drivers taking their cars out on any given day. In an 'oil shock' scenario, I can see it being possible for a city to keep functioning and successfully moving people around on essential journeys using a small fraction of their previous total oil use. The extra time involved in picking up and setting down passengers may even be won back through less congested roads so the speed of individual travel may not drop.
But the key here is preparation - if the crunch hits first and you don't have the tools in place then it's very hard to co-ordinate the drivers and passengers and chaos (and doom) rule instead.
So getting an 'iHitch' scheme up and running in your town could be a valuable insurance policy, even aside from the direct benefits. And unlike other major infrastructure responses to peak oil which will take several decades, the 'iHitch' solution can be rolled out as fast as you can manufacture mobile phones.
So, will technology cut our future fuel bill in half? Sure, and that high-tech future might be a whole lot closer than you think.
With thanks to the Beyond Zero Emissions discussion group in Melbourne (amongst others) for part of the inspiration behind this story and the impetus to put pen to paper.
Phil,
This is similar to a scheme I have been thinking about where there are fixed routes from designated stops. The riders simpoly line up at the "going to town stop" and passsing drivers know that they will drop them off at another designated stop. Bit less flexible but doesn't rely on hi-tech.
I'm actually quite impressed with your system and think you should register the trademark immediatley!
One of the hurdles is the legal restrictions on running either a taxi service or bus service which your service may fall under. You might get away with it as long as there is no formal payment beween drivers and passengers. If a passenger was to drop a handful of change on the floor and accidentally leave it there when they alighted well that might just be good fortune for the driver of course and would be very hard to police. The tax office would be interested in drivers who receive payments too so I really think you have to do this on the honour system and a cash in hand basis.
I really like the idea of rating passengers and drivers.
I could be accused of being naive here, but I would like to think that in the interests of solving the oil crisis that Governments can find a way around the bureaucratic hurdles.
As long as the drivers are not making a profession out of picking up passengers, the tax office won't mind. It will be treated as a 'hobby' (like selling stamps on eBay) unless you start to earn so much from it that you're actually exceeding the costs of owning and running the car.
There may well be some restrictions on 'running a taxi service' so I hope that Governments can find us a way around that. It would be a shame (but not necessarily surprising) for a good solution to our oil crisis to be blocked by a little piece of bureaucratic red tape!
Thanks for your support:
http://www.reddit.com/comments/6wacy/the_ihitch_high_tech_hitchiking/
http://digg.com/environment/The_iHitch_High_tech_hitchiking
You've identified the first political problem you'll have to face. The existing taxi industry will scream very loudly about this as it effectively destroys the value of their business and industry overnight. Many of them have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to obtain a taxi plate and a mass carpool system like this would be seen as a huge threat. Who are the pollies going to protect? The GST and income tax paying taxi industry or the upstart car pool business?
I think it's a great idea and one that the various groups looking at solutions need to work on. But I do believe that to implement something like this you have to make it attack proof from the law and that means the communication aspect of it and the way people pay eachother has to go underground so as to avoid any confrontation with the authoritys. I'm sure there are plenty of ways to do it if we think about it long enough.
The taxi industry needs to have the cleaners put through it anyway. The fact that the licence plates are worth all that money shows that there is a lot of potential to make monopoly rents at present. (In fact, both the passengers and the drivers are exploited by the existing system, and the transport service provided leaves a *lot* to be desired...)
I think the system would need to be government mandated/regulated, and open standards applied to the technologies. Otherwise, there could be a segmentation of the market as in myspace/facebook/bebo etc. (as this may not be patentable). Eventually a dominant player would emerge, and they would be able to increase prices, and reap imense profits from the scheme.
If governments receive a small 'hitch tax' from every lift. This could offset the losses from taxi taxes (and could therefore counter the lobbying effort), and would be simple to do if an electronic payment system was involved.
Many insurance companies and the government are interested in fitting vehicles with GPS trackers (improved calculation of premiums), and this would provide an added incentive for people to take it up, on which they could capitalise. I'm not sure I actually approve of the 'big brother' aspect of this, but it's a commercial consideration.
If the government/police had access to each vehicle tracker data, any crime might be reduced, as it would be easier to catch people.
I don't like where my thoughts are taking me though! I'd prefer a simpler solution.
I think this is a brilliant idea. I also think it would probably be considered illegal in most parts of U.S. now.
Taxis are licensed and regulated. "Jitney cabs," while efficient and potentially providing a great service to low income people in lower density areas, are generally illegal. Your idea would probably be illegal under the same laws that ban jitneys, though you are proposing something that would be a giant leap forward over any jitney system.
Which US states have made hitch-hiking illegal? | Answerbag.com
This list is far from complete, Washington state also banned hitchhikers (on the Interstates, and elsewhere?) in the wake of the Home of the Green River Killer's activities. We've quite a series of legal hurdles to overcome in the states.
In addition to resistance from cab/MT companies, consider that of the automotive sales/maintenance industry, and of fuel retailers. As irrational as it may seem now. Of course this would be swept aside in a real crisis situation, but never underestimate institutionalized greed.
Like your plan nonetheless.
No problem with the Taxi industry, just compensate for the old license system and start with something new different.
One issue with the new system is persons and background checks.
If Jack the ripper, some child molester or persons intent on murder is on the "service" you would have problems. Because this scheme would be one easy way of getting someone in a car and taking them somewhere else.
Here in the Washington, DC area, it's called "slugging". It started in 1971. It's free (the benefit now is to single drivers who pick up one or two passengers which then allows them to use the High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes). See:
http://www.slug-lines.com/Slugging/About_slugging.asp
-- Philip B. / Washington, DC
http://www.communitysolution.org/rideshare.html
Great idea Phil !
I don't think you need a new device to do this though - you could build an iPhone application to do it right now (and presumably an Android one, once devices using it appear on the market).
On a related (but less ambitious) note, Tech Review has an article today on carpool web sites:
In Israel it is called sherut and it have been in use since Israels foundation.Between cities and in cities,usually the same rounds busses are going. Fram 7 seaters to 10 or 15 seater minibusses and it is working just fine.You just stop the taxi or minibus and pay about the same fare as the bus would cost.You can get off wherever you want.
I've seen, and occasionally used, this sort of operation in action in a lot of countries in Africa and Asia too - works great (although not always as safe or comfortable as a regular bus service).
Ah, it seems you're nigh on two years late Phil: High-tech Hitchhiking — Sightline Daily (formerly Tidepool)
Posted Dec. 11, 2006.
Check the story out for links and more info. Covers all manner of approaches.
I've used a similar service in Thailand, where you flag down the "bus" (converted pickup truck) and tell them where you want to go - if your destination isn't in the opposite direction to the current passengers they will take you right to your destination, altering the route as they go to get the shortest route between all of the destinations.
It was great.
How do you cope with the jostling to get a window seat so you can take pot shots at the no-such-people-as-the-Palestinian/terrorists as you speed to your settlement ?
I think a key aspect of this might be vetting the membership. A clean record and a recomendation from a current member needed to become a member I think would give people a good feeling about who is stopping to give them a lift. Also you could limit it to people who own cars by making it a "pay it forward" system where each time you give a member of the club a ride you get a credit for a ride yourself. I don't know how the tax man would handle the "pay it forward" system where only once you are clearly a dead beat are you kicked out. No money would be changing hands for the service and there wouldn't even be a non monetary trade involved.
I was thinking about this last night after reading the article.
Actually, it doesn't really need anything high-tech, and can be implemented as a sequence of fairly easy-to-organise steps.
So Leichardt council might choose something stripy like the Italian flag, to reflect the Italian heritage in the area. Hills area might do something with orange spots (because it used to be an orange-growing area before it became suburbia). That forces councils in between to do a slightly-stripy, slightly-spotty flag.
This will consume vast amounts of time, lots of inter-council bickering and lots of chargeable hours to graphic artists. It will also give the local papers something to write up about (and they're quite clearly short of worthwhile material to cover).
After all the time, effort, newsprint and debates are through, everyone will know what their local flags are. Rates notices will get printed with it because the council will need to get their value for money out of the design work. It will be up at the local library, council chambers and who knows where else.
Payment is essentially the same as for buskers -- you just rely on people being appropriately generous. It's more compensation than you would have got if you hadn't given someone a lift.
The total cost of the system is therefore only a few dollars per person (the cost of printing up a laminated book), can grow incrementally and requires no new technology to learn.
This sorts out the matching problem reasonably well, I think. The only aspect I haven't addressed is a rating system for drivers and passengers. Any low-tech solutions for that?
Great idea! But don't wait or rely on councils to do it. Lets just do it.
We need to invent our own flags or maybe just a hitch hiking logo and print the names of the suburbs in English in large letters (saves all the arguments). It is easy enough to distribute the template on the web and individuals can get their own hitching booklets printed, laminated and bound at Officeworks. Most individuals would only need a few locations in their book for use when driving or hitching.
Of course there needs to be a protocol which all the participants understand but I think with a bit of thought we could all come up with something that is workable this weekend. POST HERE.
Well, why not just have the book of council area names written in really big letters instead? You could skip the learning the flags part.
Phil
Good Idea, A good "disruptive" technology. When you consider public transport the model hasn't changed in at least 100 years, the last great invention was the omnibus.
On a similar vein I'd like commuter buses to change to a "group charter" model, currently a rushhour bus service maxes out at 25% capacity (start empty, fill on way to destination, returns to start empty). If however you registered on a website and the bus picked up its total load at maybe 2 points and went straight to the general destination then the utilization would double to 50% (Full one way, empty the other).
Of course the problem with all these schemes is as the utilization increases, the costs drop and you are encouraged to travel further, i.e. in the long run they are self defeating of the purpose to use less energy.
Neven
First - let me congratulate you for the great idea; I have been thinking about something like that for a long time.
A similar system has been successfully running in big cities in European countries for years: designated taxi shuttles going through fixed routes, picking up and dropping passengers on request. Besides being much simpler, this one has the advantage that a van can accommodate up to 10-12 people, while most cars can comfortably seat 2 or 3 extra passengers max. It could be greatly enhanced if passengers are given mobile devices calculating the fastest way from A to B.
In US I suspect the biggest problems with either of these schemes will not be technical, but... legal. I imagine the lawsuits if an accident happens with a taxi and the passengers get hurt. Another problem I see is that a big chunk of intown driving in US is on highway which makes stopping and picking up problematic.
Both problems are not idea killers, just something to have in mind.
Great idea!
Now, who's going to rate the drivers?
Stinky car.
Bad music.
Dangerous driving.
Pulling a gun on the passenger.
I'd think twice about climbing into a stranger's car.
Think twice about picking up strangers too. I knew a man who got killed giving a hitchhiker a ride.
But there may be a way for neighborhoods of people to do this with an orderly registration system...you could prearrange the carpools for more locally familiar people going to the same general locations, and your name and address etc would be known in advance in a central database...a bit more structured to prevent dangerous situations perhaps.
This is a wonderful idea. All one needs is a towel. And be wary of Vogons. ;o)
Thanks for the nice exploration of what appears to be a viable Silver BB.
-best,
Wolf in YVR BC
I have thought this so many times!!!
If we could just have some semblance of good leadership, this plan could be done and make the biggest bite in oil consumption we've ever seen.
Phil,
Bright minds think alike . Roughly around the end of September SmartCarpooling.com should begin an eerily similar service to what you proposed, if you were hanging out around Austin, TX's coffee houses about 2 months ago, you should know that its rude to eavesdrop. ;-)
Our development team has gone home for the day, but I will try to get a form up below our current joke image ASAP so that anybody interested in being an alpha tester of the service, the iPhone app, mobile app, or the FB app can do so as soon as they become available. Sorry for the plug in, but it seems like you've been overhearing the conversations behind SmartCarpooling.com and many of your readers seem like the people that will benefit the most by our service.
See you guys soon and as always very interesting posts,
Mario Pulido
mario(at)SmartCarpooling.com
It seems to me that with iHitch, we are talking about adding an additional level of complexity to solve a problem of resource scarcity. In many ways, it would be better to use a less complex system. If nothing else, complex systems are likely to be expensive, especially for smaller cities. They also will not work if there are power outages, and these are likely to be more frequent in the years ahead.
I believe that in Cuba, Castro made it illegal to pass a hitch-hiker and not pick him up, if there was space in the car. I don't think people in this country would be willing to live with such a solution, even if it were fairly safe because of all the other riders.
Right Gail, it's a solution that goes down the wrong path. Essentially predicated on business-as-usual, on maintaining current thinking about "security" and even how to pay the company. This scheme introduces additional complexity that depends on a 99.999 available infrastructure. Plus the individual transactions are starting to sound expensive - ratings, payments, etc....
And for those of us who refuse to carry cell-phones because of the wiretapping? As if I'm I going to carry a GPS, right. I don't want people knowing where I am; that's no one else's business. I suspect this would instantly turn into a checkpoint system; you'd have to have a background check to drive or ride. That's socially destructive in that it moves people more and more into the authoritarian mindset. Castro's solution, on the other hand, is a community building solution. I've not heard of lots of crime hitchhiking in Cuba. Is there? But we can't let facts get in the way of our cultural myths can we? And our own cultural myths might well make crime more likely - at least in US.
cfm in Gray, ME
Need to figure out how iHitch.com gets paid. How about transactions getting handled electronically through a "Paypal" type system.
Ride negotiation and payment terms are handled prior to rider entering vehicle. A driver and rider are "vetted" via each's criteria list.
Drivers and riders are not introduced to each other by the system unless they match each other's criteria.
If they do and the donation is close to the requested donation, the driver and rider are introduced via quick pix.
Only after both have agreed to terms will their GPS units reveal whereabouts for convergence.
Payment will be handled automatically when the GPS units of both driver and rider show they are both in the driver's car.
Payment can be handled either as a fixed fee per ride or fixed fee per mile travelled. If miles travelled the correct amount will be transacted at the termination of the ride.
This probably will have to be a commercial and paying business simply because it will be coming up against monied interests such as taxicabs. Having it run as a business eliminates many of the bureaucratic issues because it will become a taxible business and fit into the normal commercial structure of things. The riders and drivers are independent contracters very similar to their role on eBay. iHitch will not take any responsibility past ensuring that riders and drivers match each others criteria. iHitch is a commissioned matchmaker and trusted payment service that brings together riders and drivers in a realtime market.
The rating idea can be embellished with a web of trust. If I pick up a rider and it works well for both of us, we can add each other to a list of trusted agents. If the six degrees of separation business has any validity it would allow a driver to place high value on a rider who was given a ride by a friend or acquaintance.
Employer trust groups could also be set up so people who work for a common employer can set a high trust value on other employees. The sophistication of selection schemes seems truly endless.
I like the possibility of using an iPhone. If the iPhone gets GPS (it may have it for all I know) then the manufacturing end of things has been taken care of. The other hot part is that iPhone people are Apple fanatics and this gives them a bit of rapport prior to meeting. No manufacturing costs - everything is software and Web 2.0. Sounds like a great idea to me.
When the driver and rider are within a few hundred yards they use the iPhone as a walkie talkie to make final arrangements for meeting.
Since every transaction is fully archived the safety of a system like this should make it much less dangerous than public transit.
Good thinking, Phil.
This is really a great idea. I wouldn't be surprised to see something like this running in the next 5 years. Already I search craigslist for passengers/rides to split gas costs on any long trip. I think some system of registering and rating riders/drivers would be critical to the system from a liability and safety standpoint though. As for the issue of laws against unregistered taxis, yeah it is a problem but probably something many municipalities would work around or not bother to police. In parts of Los Angeles there are unregistered taxis which have been running for years and the de-facto governement policy is to look the other way.
The iPhone does have GPS (and can triangulate location from cell phone towers if it can't "see" the GPS satellites).
It really is just a software (and marketing) job to build something like this.
GPS resolution should be fine enough that you can get within 10 metres guided by the devices - no need for a call really.
Agreed. I'm surprised people have been raising the safety aspect so much - the interactions here are fully recorded - it wouldn't necessarily be 100% safe but its no more dangerous than a taxi or bus with a nut behind the wheel. Its not like traditional hitching where driver and hitcher are basically anonymous.
The Blackberry (at least some models) also has GPS but in my experience it chews up the power. I would expect to see GPS becoming more widespread over the next few years in the same way that colour screens and cameras have.
It might be worth sending your idea to the mobile network operators, if they see a way to make some money or keep up with the competition then they might jump start it.
Gail,
Regarding complexity. I'm punishing myself during retirement by studying Organic Chemistry and Molecular Biology. No, I'm not very good at, sad to say. But I come away with a clear sense that the one thing we can say about life is that it's not simple. There is nothing simple about it. But it is stable. And that's what really counts. Stability, not simplicity. I believe it is possible to engineer hyper complex software systems that are robust, low power and stable. I'm not so sure about the low-power end of this but look at Google. When was the last time you Googled for something and got an announcement that Google was "down for maintenance," or "temporarily offline due to an undiagnosed failure?"
One thing that will come of a system like iHitch is that many people who have similar travel habits will become acquainted and continue to rideshare after the initial introduction. I see iHitch as a wonderful enabling technology in that sense. I see it as an introduction and matchmaking service as well as a great alternative to public transit for the occasional ride.
I don't see it as a step in a fundamentally wrong direction because it accomplishes what amounts to a miracle. Remember Paul Simon's classic line in "Cars are Cars?" "We roll up our windows and pretend we're immune." Anything that starts to break down the psychosocial isolation of the automobile is, in my opinion, good by definition. The dominant transportation space starts becoming a social space as well. That's wonderful, wouldn't you agree?
It really does not need to be that complex, here in DC we have had slugs http://www.slug-lines.com/ as part of the culture forever. It is a change in mindset more than technology.