As students begin making plans to head home for Thanksgiving break, Student Assembly has provided a new option to ease transportation woes. Last week the Assembly launched its pilot ride-sharing program, "Dartmouth Carpool," a Facebook application that allows members of the Dartmouth network to more easily set up carpools.
The application is sponsored by ZimRide, a ride-sharing web site launched in 2007 that has served over 300,000 users. The site allows individuals to either request or volunteer car rides to common destinations via social networking web sites like Facebook.
Assembly President Molly Bode '09 said the goal of Dartmouth Carpool is to provide a convenient service to students, as well as cut down on carbon emissions. By setting up carpools, students can decrease the number of cars driving to the same destinations and lower the school's overall generation of pollution. The program may also "help [students] save a little money or make a little money" by charging fares for rides, according to Bode.
Dartmouth's ZimRide program is expected to be especially useful for freshmen students who do not have cars and find it difficult to find rides from upperclassmen, Ruth Hupart '08, assistant to the Sustainability Manager, said.
According to Bode, ZimRide will be most useful for finding rides to places where many students live, like Boston or New York City. Hupart added that if the program catches on, Dartmouth Carpool could be used to organize trips around the Upper Valley.
Cory Cunningham '10, Class of 2010 Assembly representative, said the pilot program will allow College administrators to see how well ZimRide works among the student population. Cunningham is a member of The Dartmouth Business Staff.
If the Facebook application gains enough popularity, the College may purchase the complete ZimRide program, which would allow for a permanent link on Dartmouth's web site, Bode said. Hupart added that this would open the program to non-Facebook users, particularly faculty and staff.
One of the primary concerns of using an online carpooling service is safety. The major advantage of Dartmouth Carpool is that users have access to information about who they plan to carpool with, Hupart said. By using Facebook as its platform, ZimRide allows users to inspect and evaluate their potential drivers' profiles. Users are also able to comment on drivers or passengers with whom they have ridden, providing feedback for other users to gauge the safety of their ride.
The Assembly's goal is to have 500 Dartmouth users by Thanksgiving. Cunningham hopes that as more people add the Facebook application, the program will publicize itself through the site's news feeds.
ZimRide has gained national media attention in recent months, including coverage by ABC World News. The program is used extensively on six college campuses, including Cornell University where, after six months, "over 3,500 students and faculty, or 16 percent of campus, had added the Carpool application and posted over 2,000 rides," according to the ZimRide web site.
From Cornell's actual usage data, ZimRide calculated that average annual savings would be $54,540 for a school with 1,000 users -- students would avoid 108,000 miles by carpooling and the community would save 83,808 gallons of gasoline, the ZimRide web site said.
The Dartmouth ZimRide application is part of a broader initiative to reduce campus-wide carbon emissions. Zipcar, a membership-based car-sharing company, currently has two cars on Dartmouth's campus, which students and staff ages 21 and older can reserve for a fee.
"Not all students are going to be able to use [Zipcars], so ZimRide will be more far-reaching," Bode said.
