02 - Lift Share

Summer 2008 and a ticket to the Latitude Festival (nice one) is stuck to the fridge. Reading through the festival website, those organisers are imploring me to use public transport. Looking into it, that ain't gonna happen. I can most likely get there, say by train to Halesworth, but coming back on the same day at who knows what time rules it out. One option they'd like me to consider is sharing a car.

Which is how come I find myself registered on liftshare.com, "the world's best journey matching system". Registered, but never used in anger. Until today, that is.

Thinking ahead for once in my life, I went on to the LiftShare site last Thursday to give it a go. I added a new journey, specifying start (Ipswich, IP1), destination (Adastral Park, IP5), leave time (08:00 on 21/7/2009), return time (17:00 on 21/7/2009) and flexibility (+/- 30mins). All pretty straightforward so far.

You then act like an ill-prepared arsonist and Search For Matches. Rather cleverly, you're presented with a map showing potential travel buddies. Those little cars are coloured in different ways:

* green - offering a lift journey
* red - seeking a lift journey
* blue - offering or seeking a lift journey

Yep, it's a bit like Guardian Soulmates. Top of my list was a sky blue vehicle leaving from a couple of streets away. More details please:

* male, 40-60, travelling Mon/Tue/Wed/Thu/Fri, offering or seeking

I hit the "Send a request to share" and sat back. Within half an hour, (let's call him) John had responded via email to confirm the offer. Needed a few more emails to sort out the details due to our innate Englishness: when would you like to leave? Well, I'm flexible: what about you? And so on.

Bottom line is within 5 minutes of leaving the house on a drizzly day, I was at his door, an otherwise complete stranger, and two minutes later we were Adastral bound. Interestingly, for me, he threaded his way down to Sproughton Road and on to the A14, i.e. what my son would call the fast road. Needless to say, I don't bike that way to work.

As we zoomed over the Orwell Bridge, he said that most of his colleagues also drive to work from either Ipswich or Woodbridge, and that this was the first time he'd been contacted via the liftshare website. Though coming past Foxhall Road, he happened to spot a friend of his on a pushbike. Into the site and he parked in his usual spot, all of 20m from my office.

And he was good enough to give me a lift home too: cheers, John.

Cost - zero to me; would it be wrong to tip?
Duration - 20 mins (8:30 - 8:50), plus 5 mins walk from the house

Pros - sharing a car has got to be A Good Thing
Cons - needs planning ahead