Help center

A: It's as easy as 1-2-3:

1. Start by joining.
2. Confirm your email address (we will send you an email with a confirmation code that you will need to enter on our web site to confirm your email address).
   
3. View your matches and contact the other travelers by phone or email. See a Sample match-list. Please review our guidelines on How to carpool.

Financial arrangements are between you and your match, CarpoolWorld does not get involved in the financial transaction, some people share the cost of gas, others coffee, it’s really up to both parties to discuss what is fair. We give you an estimate if you are carpooling with 1 other person how you could split the costs based on the price of fuel, additional weekly costs for tolls, parking, if applicable, etc. Use the Home then click the card: "Costs and savings calculation".

A: You can change the status of your trip once you are logged in. In the top banner click on "Trips". We will display a list of the trips that you have registered so far. To delete your trip, click on the button "delete trip" beside your trip to change your trip status from active to:

• Passive (if you would like to re-activate at a later time, other travelers will not see your profile in their matches).
• Deleted (we purge trips flagged for deletion 30 days after your last log in date and other travelers will not see your profile in their matches).

If you have a variable schedule and/or destinations, create a new trip for each combination of schedule/destination by going to the menu option "Trips", then click the button "add a new trip". Each trip will have it's own matches (because the schedule differs and possibly the destination also).

If you have no matches for your trip, maybe your filters are too specific. Start by going to the matches page, and reviewing your filters one by one, our software approximates the best matching criteria, but feel free to fine-tune to increase the matches displayed. For example if you pick to be matched only with the gender "female", you will only be matched with travelers that have answered the question for the gender, if they forgot to specify their gender, then they will not be shown in your matches.

To delete your entire account including all of the trips posted and to stop receiving notifications from us, once logged in, click on the menu option "Settings" --> "My preferences", then click on the button: Remove my account

A: You can change your trip information once you are logged in. In the top banner click on "Trips". We will display a list of the trips that you have registered so far. To edit your trip information, click on the button "Edit trip" for the trip you wish to change.

A: You will not know for sure until you enter your trip information and confirm your trip. We post summary information about trips around the world but that will only give you a broad indication of our current coverage. The best way to find out is to enter your trip and see your personal match-list. If you are the first traveler in your area, then other travelers in your area will see your trip when they register. You are also free to delete your trip any time.

A: Whenever you enter or change your email address, we send a confirmation email immediately, containing an Email Confirmation Code, to the email address you entered with your trip information. Check your email for that confirmation email, it should be there as soon as you do your next email 'send/receive session'. If you don't receive it, then there are two possiblities: One, you did not enter your correct email address into our system. Go back into the system, correct your email address, and check again for the confirmation email. Two, a spam filter on your computer or on your network has re-directed our confirmation email to a spam folder. In this case, or if you have any other problem with the confirmation email, please just send us an email and we will gladly help you further.

A: First, make sure your search radius settings are good. Please tune up your matching preferences (time and distances) radius from origin and destination, detours, etc. by using the Distance filters on your matches page (after you log in your matches will be displayed, just use the pull down list on your schedule to specify your from-to time range differences and distance differences. We set them automatically based on your trip distance, but you may need to adjust them. It's easy to do it yourself, but just send us an email if you're not sure and we'll be happy to help. It's also possible that there are no other travelers in the system at this time with trips similar to your own. Please don't get discouraged, our database grows every day. If you live in a major suburban area of a major city, you will probably have a few decent matches already. But in other areas, you may be one of the first, or indeed the first, traveler in our system. Your trip will be followed by others, and they will see you when they join up. To speed up the process, tape up a sign on the public bulletin board in your company. Or tape signs at the bus stop or train station. You can even earn commissions by signing up employers in your community for our CarpoolWorld group software as a service.

When registering your trip, specify that you are interested in vanpooling. You will have an additional option on the main menu called: My Vanpool. Select this option to describe the status of your vanpool, number of seats available, rules and cost sharing calculation. You can also provide a custom google map so that people can see the targetted corridor along the route and pickup / drop-off points. To create your own map, view this google tutorial once your map is created, use the option to add your map to a website / Embed on my site view to retrieve the map id ex: for the Map id, use only the code after "mid=" in the code below in this case 1DbM6oKofFSl2EGMsMT9Hz627MQ4OOhRF would need to be entered in the form

<iframe src="https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=1DbM6oKofFSl2EGMsMT9Hz627MQ4OOhRF" width="640" height="480"></iframe>

A: Our system matches trips automatically using the trip origin and work/destination locations that you and the other travelers have provided. If you think there is something wrong, send us an email and we will verify your coordinates. We set the default search radii automatically. Our system logically selects the best potential matches in your area, and sorts them by the criteria you select. You should be able to contact the first few matches to follow up to see if you can arrange a carpool.

A: On the matches page, fine-tune the Distance filters. Adjust the origin, ending, trip, and detour distance ranges to increase or decrease the scope of your match search. This way you will bring in additional potential travelers.

A: Once you are logged in, click on 'Trips' and change your email address. A new confirmation email with a code will be sent to your new email address. Retrieve the code from your email inbox and type it in to the confirmation screen, or click on the link provided in the new email to confirm your new email address.

A: Our system works by Earth geometry only, it does not know where the natural boundaries are. There are good reasons why we do it this way: First of all, a natural boundary for a car, such as a park or a one-way street, may not be a problem for commuters who will be walking to their carpool. Another example is that your back-door neighbor could have a long way to drive to your house, but he could also just walk across the back yards. Downtown, you can walk through building complexes but cars have to drive around. So we need to match potential carpool partners based on 'walking closeness' between their trip origins or places of work. You need the road network to plan your driving directions, to estimate the travel time, or to find alternate routes, etc. But to match carpool partners, you need to know how close together the homes are, and how close together the places of work are. And you need to perform the geometric calculations efficiently over your entire database for each search, a process that we pioneered. Still, if you do feel that there is some significant topographic issue in your area, just put a note in your description box to advise the other travelers and that will take care of it.

A: If you organize "one-time" events for people and would like to promote carpooling to those events, please create a group you can also take a look at the list of events registered up to date. Examples of event postings include concerts, festivals, weddings, parties, conferences, picnics, etc.

A: Yes and no. You can change the name that is displayed to other users when they see you in their matches by accessing your settings, then your "personal profile" and changing your name. The name that you use to login will remain the same, but the name that will be displayed to other users viewing your profile will be what you specify on your personal profile.

A: Because they don't know about us yet. Maybe gasoline, highway tolls and parking are not expensive enough yet or incentives are not appealing enough.

CarpoolWorld matches trips by using the exact latitude and longitude coordinates of the trip origins and destinations. Every point on Earth has its own unique latitude and longitude coordinates, and these coordinates never change. Latitude says how far North or South a place is from the Equator, and Longitude says how far East or West a place is from Greenwich (London), England. Our Links page has more information about how latitude and longitude work.

Translating a street address into latitude and longitude coordinates is called 'geocoding'. CarpoolWorld automatically geocodes street addresses in most countries. Everywhere else on Earth, we geocode based on your city and country names, and you can also enter your own latitude and longitude coordinates directly.

Our system will find the latitude and longitude coordinates for your trip origin and work/destination addresses automatically in all of the countries listed above. But if you want to find and enter your own geographic coordinates, please note the following:

Most Internet map sites show latitude and longitude in the user-friendly decimal format, instead of the traditional 'degrees-minutes-seconds' format. We use the decimal format also.

You will see that some available geocoding information is very precise. The latitude and longitude numbers can go to 6 positions after the decimal point, which is a precision of about 5 inches, or 11 centimeters! When we calculate the similarities between trips we round off to 3 digits after the decimal point, which is precise to about the nearest yard, or meter, which is extremely precise for our needs.

All points in North America have a negative longitude (negative numbers indicate that a place is west of Greenwich, England), and a positive latitude (positive numbers indicate that a place is north of the Equator). So if you live in the U.S. or Canada, make sure your longitude numbers include the minus sign. Similarly, if you live in Australia or New Zealand, remember that your longitude coordinates are always positive, and your latitude coordinates are always negative.

Our latitude and longitude data entry windows expect the numbers to be in the decimal format,
where latitude is between -90.000000 and 90.000000
and longitude is between -180.000000 and 180.000000.
We strip out any non-numeric characters. You can use your browser's 'copy-and-paste' tool to copy the latitude and longitude coordinates for your home and place of work from an Internet map site into our data entry windows. You'll have a latitude and longitude for your home and a latitude and longitude for your place of work, so that will be four copy-and-paste actions altogether. If you use some other method for getting your latitude and longitude, such as using an automotive or hand-help GPS receiver, just type the numbers into the data entry windows. Remember that Western longitudes (as in all of the U.S. and Canada) need a minus sign in front of the longitude number, and the latitude number is positive (you do not need the plus sign). In Australia and New Zealand, longitude is positive and latitude is negative. In Europe, the latitude is always positive, but the longitude can be positive or negative depending on whether your are East or West of Greenwich (London), England.

After you put in your coordinates, click the button to find matches. View a sample match page here The innovative TripMatch^TM process then shows you the other trips in the database that are the most similar to yours, ranked starting with the closest, as follows: The system adds the distance between your trip origin and the matched trip origin to the distance between your place of work/destination and the matched place of work/destination, to calculate the total distance difference between the trips. As a result, when you look down the list of matches, you may see people whose trips start a little closer to yours but end farther away, or maybe start a little farther away but end closer. We call this calculation the 'difference between trips'. We also calculate 'your detour' and 'their detour', which show you how far out of the way you or the other traveler would need to go for you to pick him up and drop him off, or for him to pick you up and drop you off. We let you re-sort the list by any of these calculations. If you are the first person in your area using this system, you may not see many (or even any) matches yet. If so, just try to tell other people about us! Here's a Poster.

When you send your emails, tell the other traveler that you are looking for a carpool, and tell him/her approximately where you work, and ask for a response. In fact we provide standard text so you will just need to click 'send'. Please see our Safety, privacy, and terms of use agreement page for additional information.

When sending your email please specify your tentative carpooling schedule. This schedule information can be imported in Microsoft Outlook, Apple iCal, Google Calendar or other standard calendar tools by yourself or the recipient of the email when reviewing your inbox messages and using the "Download calendar invitation" link.

By default, if you are a driver, the log entry will show that you are driving alone for the schedule that was specified for your trip and travel days. The log entry is for 7 days, starting on Monday. If you are a passenger, the log will be defaulted for mass transportation for the days of the week that are specified in your trip schedule. Please fine-tune the defaults to your usual commuting habits and update them frequently so that the savings and expenses are as close to your reality as possible.
The fuel price is defaulted to the US Department of Energy National average price for all grades when you first log your trips. Please try to update it to the last price you paid at the pump whenever you report your data. You may add additional weekly costs for tolls, parking, public transportation or other costs (the shared cost of fuel in a carpool or vanpool will be commuted automatically). Please also update your car's average fuel consumption and additional comments for your own logs.

Please choose for each day of the week that you are commuting the appropriate mode of transportation from the list provided, each mode has a percentage of efficiency associated to it as listed below:

Choosing the right mode

• Do not commute;0.00
• Drive by myself;1.00
• Carpool with (1) one other person;0.50
• Carpool with (2) two other person;0.33
• Carpool with (3) three other person;0.25
• Carpool with (4) four other person;0.20
• Carpool with (5) five other person;0.15
• Carpool with (6) six other person or more;0.10
• Small vanpool;0.14
• Large vanpool;0.10
• Walk or bicycle;0.000
• Take motorcycle or scooter;0.10
• Work from home / telecommute;0.00
• Take mass transportation;0.00

How much time do you spend traveling each way?

Specify for each commute the amount of time (from the time you leave your origin to the time you reach your destination) you spend commuting each way.

How far do you drive?

Tell us the approximate distance traveled for each way that you commute.

Are you the driver?

Check the box to indicate if you are the driver or the passenger.

Downloading your trip log to an excel spreadsheet and recording your savings

From the point in time that you enter your commute habits, they will be computed daily and translated in carbon footprint, miles/km savings, time and money savings. You can download an excel report of your commute habits and use the data for your own analysis with any spreadsheet tool.

Maintaining your trip log

You can change the historical information up to 4 months in the past by clicking on the week that needs to be modified and by updating the details for that week. The "last week entry" is used to generate the future weeks data.

Using the calendar to see your history

Each day is represented on a calendar view for review, the footprint (time, CO2, currency, distance) for each commute is shown for each of the calendar days that you are commuting.

Analyzing your commuting mode efficiency benefit and viewing your footprint

The Commuting Mode Analysis displays on a weekly basis, for each mode specified a history of your commuting distance, calculated efficiency benefit, miles saved, carbon footprint and CO2 saved.

When you create your trip, you have the option of specifying your SMS address. This address is composed of your 10 digit cell phone number or pager number and cellular phone company domain name (see below for a list of commonly used suppliers). This will allow you to receive text messages (up to 150 characters) on your cell phone or pager and to send messages to other travelers that have provided their SMS addresses. This address is not shown to the other travelers. Some cell phone providers charge additional fees for messages received and/or sent. List of SMS Gateways

If you have other questions, please feel free to contact us.