UW-O, Zimride create carpool program

UW-Oshkosh has teamed together with a social networking website called Zimride to provide students, faculty and staff with a free rideshare program.

Zimride is an organized, easy way to find or share rides with people traveling in the same direction.

Brandon Heise, technical coordinator for Reeve Memorial Union, began working on this project over a year ago to help improve the University's ride board program.

"The history of the ride board at the union, when I was a student here, we had a physical ride board with hanging cards that you would put up," Heise said.

Heise later developed a very basic system for ridesharing on the Oshkosh website, which he said seemed to work pretty well but wasn't utilized as much as it could have been.

In an attempt to make the University's carpooling program more beneficial, Heise decided to implement Zimride as Oshkosh's new ride board.

 "It's the only product that is focused on higher education," Heise said. "Zimride is really integrated with social media and works closely with Facebook when they are developing their product."

An Oshkosh press release stated that, just like with Facebook,  Zimriders can view profiles for common networks, interests and friends before deciding to share a ride.

"Some of the things Zimride does is, you can list your vehicle information," Heise said. "Like, ‘I own a Honda Civic, and it's a 2000, and I don't smoke and I don't want anyone else to smoke, and I like to listen to rap music. You can put all those things in there so that when people are looking at you as a potential ride, you won't pair yourself up with somebody that has totally dissimilar preferences."

According to Zimride account manager for Oshkosh, Curtis Rogers, a Facebook account is not mandatory in order to use the carpool program.

"It requires a school e-mail address to gain access," Rogers said. "A Facebook account is not mandatory. If you are part of the UW-Oshkosh network on Facebook, you can gain access by clicking ‘Login with Facebook' on the home page."

Not only is Zimride easy to access, but it also has a good impact on the University's efforts in going green.

"On top of the environmental benefits, sharing rides can drastically reduce driving expenses," Rogers said.            

Heise also said one of the big benefits of Zimride is its potential to save money. He said he would like to see this program have a significant impact on campus and a positive impact environmentally.

"To me, maybe I should say that ‘green' is the top priority, but I really think that's naturally green," Heise said.