Sept. 22, 2000
E-van pools
As a former president and board member of the Los Alamos Bus System, I must say that Heidi Ann Hahn wrote an excellent letter (http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/pa/News/letter2000-208.html) describing the limitations of current van pools. Conceivably, one could imagine a transportation system which would combine the physical infrastructure of a large van pool system with presently available communication networks.
Could the huge number of cell phones, land-line phones, pagers, e-mail accounts, voicemail systems, Internet service providers and palmtop computers that we all use everyday be combined with the vans and drivers from the pools?
Let's say Heidi has five different work locations and schedules. If she had the opportunity to pay per ride, as she desires, she could ride in whatever pool was more convenient for her. How? If there were a central clearinghouse or dispatch system for matching van pools with riders, a rider could contact the central system with one of many possible electronic devices, be it cell phone, land phone, e-mail or Internet.
Let's say it was 6 a.m. on a Tuesday, with her schedule changing at the last minute, and Hahn had to find a ride to work. Sipping on a morning double latte, she could use a touchtone phone so she could punch in her starting location, desired pickup time and her destination. An automated software system would route her request to the most appropriate van pool driver. Let's say the driver had a text-capable cell phone, which then would receive the transit request from Hahn. If the driver could pick up Hahn, he/she would simply key the response code into their cell phone, the confirmation would be received by the central dispatch, that confirmation would be automatically routed to Hahn, and she would know that a van would be on it's way!
As part of the central dispatch, Hahn (or anyone) could either have a pre-paid debit account with the system, or each ride could be charged to a pre-approved credit card (I prefer a debit system).
Speaking in familiar terms, at a lab like Los Alamos with technology out the wazoo and about 10,000 employees, am I wrong in assuming that this is a very do-able idea?
Could the Lab consider drafting an RFP (Request for Proposals) that would encourage a private company to develop such a system? (I'd like to see a for-profit approach to encourage the development of new transportation technologies -- similar to the current CRADA process.)
--Murray E. Moore