Seattle smart traveler: dynamic ridematching on the World Wide Web

Seattle Smart Traveler (SST) is an application of World Wide Web (WWW) tech nology to test the concept of automated dynamic rideshare matching. In SST, the rideshare clientele interact with the rideshare system using only WWW pages. SST collects spatial and temporal trip information using a series of WWW pages, performs a match using structured query language (SQL) specific ations to a database engine, and supports both the standard phone-based con tact methodology as well as two new, unique e-mail-based contact methodolog ies. SST was operated in parallel to a traditional, regional rideshare syst em for one year, and the two systems were marketed to the user community on a side-by-side basis. SST and the traditional system acquired approximatel y the same number of new users over a nine-month test period; however, ther e was little overlap in the population using the two parallel systems. SST demonstrates that there is a user population that can be reached using Inte rnet technologies for immediate/dynamic ride-matching that is not reached b y traditional ridematch programs. This paper also reports a new statistical model for quantifying rideshare matching and carpooling. The model is vali dated using the SST experimental results, and the model demonstrates that t he carpooling process is a quadratic function of the number of users partic ipating. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.