Collaborative consumption and the history of carpooling

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Back in 2010, Rachel Botsman wrote a book titled "What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption," which was one of the first popular riffs on what can happen when you meld financial uncertainty, eco-motivation, and social networking. Essentially, it looks at new methods of balancing surplus and need. There are lots of things that it just doesn't make sense for me to own -- a jigsaw or a cargo box for the roof of my car -- but are still very valuable to me the one or two times a year that I really really need them. During the last few years, we've posted about myriad new start-ups formed around the collaborative consumption idea, like Miki Krimmel's Neighborgoods. Since then, so many compelling businesses have sprung up in the sharing realm -- from Airbnb to Spinlister -- that Silicon Valley "super angel investor" wrote in The Economist that peer-to-peer markets are "the most thought-provoking sector I see developing in 2012." Of course, what's old is new. Shareable magazine, the publication-of-record on collaborative consumption, posted a fascinating article on the history of carpooling.

From Shareable:

Ridesharing began shortly after the introduction of the Model-T, America’s first automobile priced with for the middle-class. By the end of 1914, the US had fallen into a recession at the same time it was seeing a flood of cheap new automobiles on city streets. In San Francisco, enterprising car owners began offering seats in their cars for the same price as a street car fair, known as a jitney. Within nine months, the “jitney” craze had spread all the way to Maine.

But while the sudden explosion of carpooling demonstrated its enormous potential, it also gave rise to significant backlash as irate streetcar operators fought the new form of competition with the collusion of city and regional governments. Since then, ridesharing’s popularity has typically lived or died at the mercy of government policy. By 1918, new liability regulations succeeded in reducing ridesharing by 90%.

"The History of Carpooling, from Jitneys to Ridesharing"

• [ChicagoD]

  When I ride alone I ride with Hitler? Well, then I’m not alone, am I? Wait, what?

  • [Donald Petersen]

    And he’s an unbearable passenger.  Keeps tuning into Radio Disney and messing with the heater controls.

    • [golvio]

      Not just Hitler, but Ghost Hitler!

      • [Antinous / Moderator]

        Zombie Hitler or GTFO!

• [Nadreck]

  In Ontario carpooling is totally illegal.  Pressure from the (government granted) bus monopolies.  Several websites where people could look for rides have been shut down on this basis.

  • [MiG]

    I don’t think that’s accurate, is it?  

    While I don’t agree with it, the issue with the rideshare websites is that they were offering rides in exchange for compensation.  So, basically, taxis.  And if you’re going to run a taxi, then you need to have all the permits and stuff that taxis need.

    I know several people who carpool in Ontario every day.  It’s not illegal.  

• [glaborous_immolate]

  I was just thinking that carpooling hadn’t met the modern regulative state. But Ontario shows that it has. 

  Imagine, people taking rides from people they may not know, putting their LIVES at risk. Same reason there’s not real free market in daycare or medicine.

• [silkox]

  Why does it always have to be about cars? Here’s a great example of how it can be not about cars (or can be about not-cars, too): http://undriving.org/ .

  • [David Pescovitz]

    It doesn’t. In my post, I link to Spinlister, which is about bicycles. And Airbnb, which is about vacation rentals. And Neighborgoods, which is about everything.

• [parrotboy]

  Vancouver has had an excellent car co-op for at least ten years.  I was a member for eight years (until I moved away) and miss it a lot.

  By miss it I don’t mean I miss the (slight) inconvenience of booking and finding cars – the co-op is big enough and has hundreds of cars.  I miss it because I rarely spent more in a month on car usage than I currently do on car insurance along. 

  I also miss the variety of options.  I certainly do not need a pickup truck every day, or even every week.  But at least once or twice a month I really, really could use a truck, and the co-op had them available, as well as multi-passenger minivans, station wagons and a lot of other options.

  I also know, for a certainty, that I would not currently own my home if I had owned a car for the ten years prior to buying this house.  Our culture of car ownership is a massive blind spot in financial literacy, and it continually amazes me that people simply assume that they need a car in all circumstances – particularly while struggling to make ends meet.  No, our infrastructure has not caught up and is a functional barrier to reduced car dependency (particularly in the US), but that can and will change.

• [ShareMyStorage.com]

  Whether its car-pooling or sharing storage space its not really a new concept.  Its a traditional form of human interaction that become eroded post WW2 with the heavy global emphasis on increasing GDP which led to hyper consumption – the rest as they say is history.  

  Whats great about this movement is the fact the new tech is taking us back to old norms of behaviour that lead to sustainable consumption, stronger communities and more bang for your buck.

• [darrrrrrn]

  I find it hard to take anyone seriously who talks about curbing consumerism but looks forward to Sex and the City 2.

• [amovensusa]

  Thanks for citing our piece on Shareable! We were just as surprised as anyone to learn that ridesharing goes back literally to the dawn of the automobile era. And we thought we were so ahead of the curve…

  We’re also blogging about collaborative consumption (and a lot of other stuff) at 
  http://us.amovens.com/blog-us/, and you can learn more about modern web-enabled carpooling at http://us.amovens.com/.

• [ocker3]

  I really liked the concept of the video, but it kind of drags on. Perhaps I’m just too post-something, but is this concept Really so new? Mostly a good talk, but needs an edit for length.