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Cyber Hitching: Riding out high gas prices
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Published: June 6, 2008
HUDSON, Fla. -- Here's what caused Crystal Guillen to make a bold change in her life: spending $350 a month on gas and tolls for her daily commute to MacDill Air Force Base.
So Guillen placed an ad on Craigslist to see whether anyone wanted to share her 88-mile round-trip commute. Her 2008 Volkswagen Passat gets 29 miles per gallon, but the commute still cuts deep into her family's budget.
There sits her post, between someone offering cheap rides for convicted drunken drivers who lost their license and another from someone seeking a rider to New York, offering "room for one nonsmoker, no drugs."
Guillen is among a new breed of otherwise content solo motorists who have turned to Internet ride boards to find passengers and save on gas.
Some call it cyber hitchhiking or Internet carpooling, but as regular unleaded reaches $3.60 per gallon, Guillen calls it essential.
"I never would have considered anything like this before, but these are desperate times," said Guillen, a Navy petty officer second class stationed at MacDill.
She hasn't had any takers so far, but she remains hopeful. Record gas prices have more people visiting Internet ride boards every day, experts say.
The creators of Internet ride boards say the sites capitalize on one of the Web's best characteristics: the ability to connect strangers who share similar interests or desires. In this case, that means sharing rides to save money.
Web-based ride board users include everyone from people seeking to share a daily commute, to a lift to the doctor to something more outlandish. One recent poster wanted to share a ride to a fetish convention in Miami.
In the last several months, people citing high gas prices grew among the usual posters on Craigslist's local ride board.
Michael Sogluizzo made his first post on a ride board as part of several ideas he's exploring to cut gas costs, such as taking the bus or buying a motorcycle.
He commutes about 16 miles each way from his home in Palm Harbor to Port Richey, where he is a postal worker.
He hopes to fill his Kia Spectra with several other motorists who, like him, drive alone.
"There's a huge waste of money in having four or five vehicles traveling the same daily route carrying only one person," said Sogluizzo, 51.
Commuters can choose from an array Internet ride boards.
Craigslist is comparatively wide open, and allows people to post almost any information they like. Drivers usually include the destination, their schedule and whether any compensation is expected. Those seeking rides are similarly free to post, often offering money and companionship.
Several Web-based ride boards require users to register and answer an array of questions to match would-be carpoolers, such as the make and model of the car, the driver's schedule, the destination and whether they allow smoking.
They send a list of possible matches to the user.
Several of the Web-based ride boards are free to drivers and riders, making their money by selling ads on the site.
Ridester.com doesn't charge registered users to offer a ride or search for a ride. If a match is made, the company gets a $2 ticket fee and a 9.5 percent processing fee on the driver's asking price.
"Gas prices are eating people alive, and now we have the technology to bring all these people together," said Steven Schoeffler, who started his Web-based car pooling company eRideShare.com in 1999.
The site averages 1,600 visitors each day, double the number it got when cheaper gas flowed in February, said Schoeffler, who works out of his home in Edwardsville, Ill.
The site has more than 13,000 ride share listings throughout the United States and Canada.
"People are starting to make connections with each other and can cut their gas bill in half immediately," Schoeffler said.
Donna Lenning's first venture into Internet ride sharing didn't come without apprehension.
The Seminole Heights resident sold her car last year after a series of medical ailments and the loss of her job in the Hillsborough County property appraiser's office.
About a month ago, Lenning started as a customer service representative at Verizon's office near Veterans Expressway on Hillsborough Avenue.
Lenning found Greg Carlson on an Internet ride board. Carlson began advertising his driving services on ride boards about three years ago as gas prices began to rise.
"He saved my life, that's for sure," said Lenning, 53. "But it was a little scary. You don't know who these people are. He could have been a stalker."
The founders of Web-based ride boards don't believe the Internet poses any additional risk to carpoolers. They note that hundreds of thousands of people share rides every day without incident.
Schoeffler encourages riders to meet in public places, and only after getting to know each other through e-mails and phone calls.
Brian Bass, creator of RideSearch.com, put it this way: "It's like a dating service, except you don't have to be as picky."
Baird Helgeson is a staff writer for the Tampa Tribune.
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