Seattle Smart Traveler (SST) is an application of World Wide Web(WWW) technology to test the concept of automated dynamic ridesharematching. In SST, the rideshare clientele interact with the ride-share system using only WWW pages. SST collects spatial and temporaltrip information using a series of WWW pages, performs a match usingstructured query language (SQL) specifications to a database engine,and supports both the standard phone-based contact methodology aswell as two new, unique e-mail-based contact methodologies. SST wasoperated in parallel to a traditional, regional rideshare system forone year, and the two systems were marketed to the user community ona side-by-side basis. SST and the traditional system acquiredapproximately the same number of new users over a nine-month testperiod, however, there was little overlap in the population using thetwo parallel systems. SST demonstrates that there is a userpopulation that can be reached using internet technologies forimmediate/dynamic ride- matching that is not reached by traditionalridematch programs. This paper also reports a new statistical modelfor quantifying rideshare matching and carpooling. The model isvalidated using the SST experi- mental results, and the modeldemonstrates that the carpooling process is a quadratic function ofthe number of users participating.
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