i think it would be helpful to have a ride board module.

it would probably be pretty easy to create.

it would be nice if drupal would email people "matches" too. (like if i was driving to boston and if someone else needed a ride, as soon as one of use submitted the request/announcement then drupal would email each of us and let me know. this way people would not have to be constantly checking back up at the site.)

erik.

Comments

kika’s picture

Can you describe what fields typical ride board (or transport exchange) message need? Many of these (location, means of transport) can be implementated used taxonomy system, but it is not enough (messages probably need timeout date, num of seats and such)

erikhopp’s picture

hi. ok, i have done a little research on online ride boards.

some of these categories seem a little excessive, but here is what i have found other ride boards featuring in terms of fields:

--------------------
from: city, state (province), country (drop down and textbox option for custom destinations)
to: city, state (province), country (drop down and textbox option for custom destinations)
via (cities to go through):

departure date/time:
return date/time:

name:
gender:
phone:
email:

prefered contact method:

category of trip: vacations, college students, one way trips, roundtrip travel, carpools, business travel, all categories, sporting events, concerts

type: driver, rider, either

--- for driver ---
# of seats available: 1,2,3,4+
age range: 18-24, 25-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60+, any
maximum luggage: none, small bags only, large bag(s)
smoking: smoking, non-smoking, either
listens to: -categories- (music types, news, ?)
costs: shared costs or fees - gas, tolls, rental - number amount or percentage

--- for rider(s) ---
# of people in rider group (total): 1,2,3,4+
age range: 18-24, 25-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60+, any
luggage: none, small bags only, large bag(s)
will ride with: male, female, either
smoking: smoking, non-smoking, either
listens to: -categories- (music types, news, ?)
costs: shared costs or fees - gas, tolls, rental - number amount or percentage

notes: (Special luggage needs; your language of preference; additional trip information: What kind of driver are you looking for? Would you be available to drive part of the distance? etc...)

password (to update/delete listing):
----------------

maybe not all of these are needed.

erik.

Anonymous’s picture

I think this is a great idea.. and boy, thats a lot of fields :)

It could be simplified to something like:
from:
to:
via:
date:
notes:

Posters could throw the contact info and any additional stuff like music, etc.

It would need 2 categories.. Rides Wanted and Rides Offered.

Cron task would remove postings after the date/time has expired.

Would be really great if it would permit recurring rides. i.e. someone offers a ride from A to B every Friday afternoon.

Anyone thinking of tackling this?

erikhopp’s picture

if anyone wants to develop this, i think there would be happy users...

erik

stephen Verdant’s picture

I built the SpaceShare carpool system for events, primarily zip-code based. I've long been hoping to gather and combine with other little green rideshare efforts, and recently began switching to Drupal. It's pretty difficult to describe the fields for a "rideboard module" --> is this for a national carpool system, for an organization with a one time event, for carpooling to work? Each of those tools needs something different. City fields, for example, will work well if people are going to eyeball the list; otherwise a driver from Seattle to LA and one from Tacoma to San Diego are completely unrelated. Zip matching is pretty easy, though it too has limitations. Maps look pretty, but don't necessarily go well with sorting if the other fields (time, smoking) are important but not absolute.

SpaceShare: Replacing Cars with Community

MaskedMarauder’s picture

Do you have a demo of your app available anywhere?

stephen Verdant’s picture

I finally got around to setting up the demo and getting the Drupal code together: http://drupal.org/sandbox/stephen_Verdant/1161014

Would love help -- including people who want to just set it up and use it, whether you're a proficient coder or not.

fabrizioprocopio’s picture

I'm start to enable this feature on my comunity territorial site (Drupal 6).
I think I'll use taxonomy for stat places and arrive places so to let the match more easy.
If someone can suggest a search way or a search module he is welcome

fab

ykoehler’s picture

Hehehe, what about adding an URL to Yahoo MapQuest or something that would then display the road ride graphically ;-)

asmo75’s picture

hmm

have smb solution ?
how can I replace user location stored in user profile (there is one place) with road beetwen two place (two place and line) ?

Pawel

Snow Valley Consulting’s picture

I have a project for anyone that thinks they can take this on. We are looking at re-vamping www.kootenayrideshare.com and below are our current thoughts. Contact me if you think you can do this (or would like to get together with us on building this module.

1. a long distance ride board (trips more than 100 km)
2. a local/commuting ride board for each Kootenay community
(trips less than 100 km, and a way for regular commuters to hook
up)
3. an intelligent system (!) that can match rides inside of
rides...for example, if I'm going from Cranbrook to Calgary, it
will intelligently offer people looking for rides from Fernie to
Calgary the option of seeing my ride.
4. membership, with possibility of Facebook or other social
networking site links so people may find out more about who they
might be riding with
5. good looks/design

Some other features to think about:
6. the ability to "rate your ride"
7. a "recreational portal" that includes rides offered/wanted to
Kootenay ski areas and popular recreational areas/climbing
areas, etc (and perhaps create a linked but separate ski/board
rideshare networking group on Facebook)
8. a "shopping portal"...to coordinate trips to popular shopping
destinations like, I am going on a targeted shopping trip to MEC
or IKEA in Calgary, Huckleberry's in Spokane, Evergreen in
Slocan Valley, etc.
9. other?

---
Fernie Mountain Bike Club

drasgardian’s picture

I've recently (site went live yesterday) written some drupal 5 modules and put together this site: www.coolpooltas.com.au. There's still a couple of pieces of functionality I'll be adding soon (including the ability to rate your ride) and then hopefully commit the modules. The smart stuff you described in point 3 isn't too hard with the google maps API, which I'm already using to plot the trips out. The recreational portal and shopping portal you mentioned might be similar to our Home2Hub module. The membership/social networking you mentioned in point 4 we've implemented using the relationships module.

So I might be able to help out with your project. I'd also like to hear from anyone else interesting in ongoing contributions to the carpool modules I've come up with so far.

shanefjordan’s picture

Are you willing to share the modules you've written to put this site together? It looks like an awesome site and I would love to work with your modules for the possibility of using something like this on the site I'm currently working on.

Thank you,
Shane

pgingao’s picture

Hi have implemented a carpool web site www.carpool.com.pt but it's only google maps API and some php. We now have around 2000 registered users but the functionality is far from what we need! I have to say this project is also free for our users and it has been mainly maintained by me and my wife.
My plan was in the near future to build something in Drupal because the extensibility is desired on this kind of projects but I stumble upon your www.coolpooltas.com.au and it matches exactly what I had I mind! I am willing to contribute to your development in exchange of a clone for me to use for Portugal, off course with our branding and a different template.

Please let me know if you are interested on this or any other form of partnership!

Thanks

Paulo

shanefjordan’s picture

I used the fields you have listed and made a ride board. Now, the one I made is not really anything spectacular, but it does work. I created a content type (Ride Share) and then added CCK fields to that content type. I then created a copy of views to show listings based on certain criteria. Granted, I could have created one view and then just enabled exposed filters, but I thought our users would find this much easier than the filters. I made Signup enabled for the content type, so that the user can use that to allow people to signup for their ride. This allows the creator to set the number of people they want to allow, once the max number is reached, i'm able to remove the listing.

Since there is not currently a module available in Drupal and we are not really sure if our users will even use this type of service, it made the most sense to build something with what was available. We are planning on making our site live in September, so I will not be able to give any feedback from actual users until then. Our thought is that if this system is utilized, we can then ask our users what features/changes they would like and build a true module. Really, this system may work fine and then just build a module that would try to match rides, incorporate gmap, etc.

If anyone would like to see how this actually looks, I can take some screenshots of our test site.

Thanks,
Shane

pzula’s picture

Would be nice to see some examples of this and perhaps a walkthrough of how you went about creating this

forestmars’s picture

Discussion is over here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/51813

groundstate’s picture

I have started working on this type of module and plan to release it to the community.
Please consider making a small to medium sized donation if you'd like to help this happen in days rather than months.
Thanks!
https://www.gofundme.com/z8qq9954