mySociety.org was:files en huisvesting

[Bart Meerdink]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Voor degenen die inspiratie kunnen gebruiken op het terrein van
'maatschappelijk relevante' IT-toepassingen:

http://mysociety.org/

(Zie ook het artikel:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39117566,00.htm )

en meer specifiek op het terrein van carpooling:

http://mysociety.blogs.com/mysociety/2003/11/ehitching.html :

eHitching

FROM: Chris Ewels

What NEED does this meet?
Connecting potential passengers and drivers - enabling car pooling and
reducing transport costs.

What is the APPROACH?
It's a bit like eBay. Drivers and potential passengers register. You
type in your proposed journey (or text it in), possibly like
'lastminute.com' you can enter your flexibility in start/arrive time and
location. Then there's a range of choices. Initially it could link
passengers and drivers 'for free' - using route finder info it could
also link passengers who may only want a part of the route being driven,
i.e. they needn't have the same start and end destination. Could also
propose a 'fee' the passenger pays the driver based on the mileage,
pitched so the cost would be roughly half that of coach travel.
Alternatively the eBay approach could be used and the driver could post
up the voyage with minimum bid rate and passengers could 'bid' to travel
in that vehicle. All financial transaction would (initially) have to be
done between driver and passenger as logistics of organising website to
handle this would be nasty. Otherwise it could just be a free service
that connects folks.

What are the BENEFITS to people?
It could kickstart hitchhiking once again. There's an added level of
security over conventional hitchhiking since both passenger and driver
have to register at the site so there's at least one level of check
possible if anything happens and, for example, the police need to be
contacted. Currently lorries aren't normally allowed to pick up hitchers
for insurance reasons - if there's way that firms can make money through
an easily managed scheme such as this then maybe this will encourage
them to change such regulations. If eBay is anything to go by, people
may even start running 'private' services between places if they can get
the passengers and an unofficial needs-based private 'public transport'
system is born!

What is the COMPETITION?
Never heard of this working yet. It'd need good publicity to encourage
take-up, maybe getting agreement from national coach etc carriers to
enter their data (so if there's no private car low cost bid available,
the passenger can at least be offered a more expensive coach or train
option - could bring more passengers to the coach companies).

What BUDGET & LOGISTICS are required?
Depends on the level of complexity built into it. Maybe eBay could be
encouraged to do this for you? If it ever really took off and payment
was exchanged between driver and passenger via the site then the site
could cover costs with a 2% surcharge or similar.

November 2, 2003

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