PickupPal – an innovative rideshare site
Tags: carpooling, PickupPal, rideshare, social networking, Transportation
One of our readers sent us a tip about PickupPal, a globally-available and free carpooling website. PickupPal hopes to reduce carbon emissions, combat road traffic congestion, fight high gas prices and enable people to connect and improve the environment by facilitating ridesharing.
PickupPal is a simple concept and easy to use. First, both passengers and drivers log into the website and say where they are and where they are going. PickupPal then matches up passengers and drivers who are going the same way. Then, PickupPal notifies drivers of potential pickups. The driver can make an offer to a passenger based on how much they want to charge for a ride. The site then informs passengers that they have been offered rices. The passenger reviews the offers and chooses the driver with whom they want to ride based on the price and their profile. From there, drivers and passengers chat back and forth in PickupPal’s message center to work out the details. Finally, when the driver gives the passenger his or her ride, the passenger pays. It’s almost like taking a taxi and creating community at the same time!
You may be wondering about how safe PickupPal is. At first glance, it does not appear to be much better than hitching a ride. However, the website runs on a reputation system like Ebay or Couchsurfing. You can see potential passengers and drivers’ profiles and see how many rides they have done and what kind of ratings they have been given by the PickupPal community. The site has a good summary of safety tips here: http://forum.pickuppal.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=30.
You can learn more about PickupPal from their website! Check it out here: http://www.pickuppal.com/.
