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OPINION: Web makes a market for rides, ridersJan 22, 2009 (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Oddly, Eileen Bruskewitz was wondering whether there was some way to harness all the empty seats in cars driving around Madison at just about the time Eric Dewhirst of Ottawa, Ontario, was helping invent one. The Canadian is hoping to make money, though he and his partner were first aiming at reducing driving. Bruskewitz, a member of the Dane County Board, was hoping to help people get around, though she also wants to spare taxpayers from overpriced rail transit. And Dewhirst's idea is working for at least one Verona man, Bob Radford, who really wanted to encourage community. It's funny how markets can reconcile differing satisfactions. Dewhirst's invention is a Web site called PickupPal. It amounts to an online ride board. Like other social networking, it's free for users; the entrepreneurs hope to make money on ads. They started it in summer 2007 and have about 125,000 users now. The site matches passengers and riders, letting them work out times and price, if any. "If everybody went for free, it'd be great, and it wouldn't make a difference to our bottom line," said Dewhirst. It did vex a bus company, which hauled PickupPal into court for violating an Ontario law restricting carpools. The law was meant to stifle competition for buses. PickupPal won. So far, it hasn't run into such trouble anywhere else. Not that online carpool hookups are going to replace traditional transit any time soon, but they are what you might call a form of "smart" transit. They're an alternative for those who don't or can't drive, yet by being able to match up a ride going just where and when a passenger wants to go, they differ from the way transit usually works. Which is sort of a non-smart system. The bus or train goes along a known route, at known times. You just make sure you're there. This works beautifully when a lot of people want to go in the same direction or to the same place. It's not as easy if you're trying to get across Madison on a Saturday afternoon. Radford was doing that, driving from Verona to his Unitarian congregation. He and other church members were looking for a way to help people carpool, maybe be a little more community-oriented. Radford, who works in computers, tried PickupPal and found someone else in the 1,600-member congregation who regularly needed a ride from south Madison. "I was looking for the church connection," he said, and now he and his passenger sometimes stay and chat after services, since the friend no longer has to rush for a bus. Bruskewitz sees other possibilities. She's been fascinated by the idea of upgrading Madisonians' travel options, not by adding more traditional transit but with something more informal. She suggests jitneys. Such small buses or vans owned by individuals serve as transit today both on Caribbean islands and in poorly bused immigrant parts of New York. They were hauling perhaps a third of Madison transit riders in the 1930s, something city fathers disliked as competition for buses. Bruskewitz didn't get a friendly reception when she floated the idea a few years ago. She's undeterred. Were drivers and passengers more easily able to connect, she said, "that would let people know they could get a ride wherever they have to go." People would be less constrained by where buses run, and city planners would have less reason to try to make people live near where transit can serve them. Bruskewitz hadn't heard of PickupPal until I mentioned it, but she said it sounds promising. It fits right in with her grass-roots take on transit. "You don't have to have government own the vehicle," especially, she said, "when you think about all the spare capacity in our cars." That's one remarkable thing about Dewhirst's site: It amounts to people cooperating without having to be told how by authorities. The site's seen a big uptick, said Dewhirst, because of Ottawa's 45-day bus strike, which illustrates one downside of centrally run systems. The slowness of bus networks to keep pace with the spread of cities would be another. Setting up a ride market provides a more responsive and resilient alternative to driving. It's a useful antidote to the spirit of the moment, that we the sheep need a more powerful governmental shepherd. Not that government's unnecessary -- no one runs an army better -- but in this Facebook age, you'd think supply and demand can meet in new, inventive ways. Indeed, when it comes to rides around Madison, it seems they already are. Patrick McIlheran is a Journal Sentinel editorial columnist. E-mail [email protected] To see more of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.jsonline.com. 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