I've been looking at the Obama transition website, change.gov, particularly at the American Moment tab, under which is the Share Your Vision tab.  This is where you can share ideas with the Obama transition team.  Since I'm quite impressed with the tpmcafe community I was thinking about ways that the two could possibly interact, and came up with an idea.  People could write posts that are intended to be submitted to change.gov, have the community evaluate and polish them, then submit good ones to change.gov with a link showing all the recommendations and comments.  That way, ideas could be submitted with the backing of a community instead of just being recommendations of individuals.   These ideas, in order to be new to Obama's people, would probably tend to address the smaller nooks and crannies of public policy, and would need a good level of detail, which the comments and discussion could help provide.  My suggestion for a title format for such posts is what I'm using here: Ideas for Change.gov: (fill in the blank).  Following this format would let readers know that the post is a proposed submission to that website. 

One suggestion I would make to change.gov is that they should have a discussion café just we have here at tpmcafe to evaluate, polish, and recommend ideas to Obama's transition team.  This would be an obvious benefit to the website.  Somebody who's been here longer and is more web-savvy would be better able than me to make such a proposal in the necessary detail, so I hope somebody tries.  Here's my first offering:

Ridematch.com

When I commute to work (alone) in my car, I'm always struck by the fact that most of the other cars also have only one person in them.  Clearly, a whole lot of gas is being used pretty inefficiently in transporting people this way, and a whole lot of unused transportation capacity is just whizzing around (or crawling along) on the highways every day.   

The obvious way to save some of this gas and use some of this extra capacity would be to have more carpools.  This would be great if it could be arranged.  Less oil dependence, less traffic congestion, no increased crowding on mass traffic, easier parking, it's a win-win-win-win. 

So why doesn't it happen?  Well, I sure wouldn't do it.  Set aside for a minute the fact that it's hard to find people who make the same commute that I do.  Even if I found some, what would it be like?  Maybe they smoke.  Maybe they're chatty (I'm not).  Maybe they like music I don't, or talk radio.  Maybe their car smells.  Maybe they're bad drivers. Maybe they're secretly driving without a license, or insurance.  Maybe one is a serial killer.  Maybe they're just really annoying.  All in all, there are so many ways that I could dislike carpooling that I'm just not interested.  And I've got lots of company, driving alongside of me every day. 

Some transportation planners advocate a coercive approach to deter driving alone.  They want to make it a lot more expensive, make it impossible to park, force you to put up with more congestion, in general they want to make driving alone so unpleasant that it's even worse than mass transit or carpooling.  Gee, I wonder why this is politically unpopular?

Here's a different approach.  Take steps to make carpooling more likely to be a good experience.  I've checked out a few carpooling websites.  They're lame.  Basically they try to match you up with someone who has a similar commute and that's it.  Actually that's all they really can do because the number of people participating is to small to serve preferences more detailed than that. 

What's needed is the carpooling equivalent of the dating site Match.com.  In Match.com you post an anonymous profile detailing who you are and what you are looking for in a dating partner.  Carpoolers need the same thing.  On my proposed site, Ridematch.com (the name would have to be bought from a current owner) you would post an anonymous profile.  It would have detailed information about who you are, your route and times, what kind of driving experience you prefer, what kind of car you drive, whether you want to contribute by driving or paying, how many people you would be comfortable with, and so on.  People would contact each other in the same way as on Match.com, by clicking on another profile to indicate interest, emailing if the interest is reciprocal, then speaking by phone, then meeting.  The website would also take drivers license and car info and check to see that license, registration and insurance are all up-to-date, and could also check driving records and conduct criminal background checks if any drivers expressed that as a preference and the potential carpoolers for them consented. 

Think about it, lonesome drivers.  Wouldn't you be a lot more receptive to carpooling if you felt that all your important preferences would be honored and the others were checked out for safety?  I would.  This is design-your-own-carpooling, not I-hope-I-don't -hate-this carpooling.  

Now come the policy issues, starting with free-market thinking, which would contend that if this was really what people want, then markets would have provided it.  Incorrect.  The service being discussed here is a network linking different customers.  It only has value to potential customers if it has other customers to connect to, and it needs a very large base of customers to serve the needs of people so precisely.  So it can't get started unless it is already very large.  That means it never gets started by market mechanisms alone.

The obvious policy recommendation that flows from this is that the government should set up this website, or provide funding and subcontract the implementation to a private concern (perhaps Google?).   The government should also advertise the website, and also give business strong incentives when the site is first launched to have their employees put up profiles.  Obviously, participation should be free.  If a large fraction of the commuting population could be signed up, then more and more people would find good matches, and word of mouth would cause more and more signups, creating a virtuous cycle.  At this point the site would have high traffic and so would probably actually be profitable simply from advertising revenue, which could be used to pay back the up-front costs. 

It's also useful to think about how this idea might interact with other social and economic changes and with other policy options.  First, since a recession is now occurring and people are tightening their belts, this would probably be more attractive now as a way for people to cut their expenses.  Also, high oil prices are very likely to return eventually, and this would become more attractive to people in that scenario also.  A lot of people bought expensive SUVs and now are regretting it, and this could be a way for them to actually use those vehicles in a socially conscious way (now that's an amazing thought). 

Another thing that interacts well with this idea is congestion pricing, which means increasing tolls during rush hours to reduce driving at those times and thereby cut down on traffic congestion.  Of course this a good idea on many economic grounds, but it always meets huge resistance because people can't really turn to mass transit at those times, since mass transit is already badly overloaded in many areas during rush hours.  Ridematch.com would allow congestion pricing to be much less onerous because it would give people a reasonably comfortable option to avoid the extra costs.  Also, some commuters now using mass transit would start to carpool, offsetting those drivers who would choose to turn to mass transit if congestion pricing was implemented. 

Fewer cars on the road, less energy use, less traffic, and more available parking.  People could read, snooze, work, chat, or listen to music comfortably while someone else drives them to work in a nice SUV, secure in the knowledge that what they are doing has been accepted beforehand, and that others have agreed to respect their desires.   And all it would take is for the Obama administration to commit some seed money.  No big transportation infrastructure required.  What's not to like?