Carpooling with people you like may reduce car use by up to 60 per cent

Actually enjoying the company of the people you carpool with is key to making ride-sharing work, according to new research by the University of Waterloo.

In factit could decrease car trips by almost 60 per cent.

Bissan Ghaddar, a professor of management engineering at University of Waterloo, wanted to better understand what keeps people from carpooling.

According to the 2011 NationalHousehold Survey, only17 per cent of people who commute to work by vehicle carpooled.The other 83 per cent drove solo.

Social aspect underestimated

She said while people are drawn to carpooling for the cost savings and environmental benefits, there's also a social aspect that's often underestimated.

"Some of the people who opt out of car sharing services are people who didn't enjoy the ride. Mostly you don't want to have an awkward silence in the car or the [discomfort]of being with a stranger," Ghaddartold The Morning Edition's host Craig Norris on Wednesday.

"[Carpoolers]are alsolooking at sharing cars with people they enjoy the ride with. They are looking at the experience as well asreducing costs."

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Most carpool matching programs are focused on getting vehicles off the road, and don't take into account the personalities and interests of people in the car. If that changed, satisfaction rates would increaseand car use would dropbetween 40 and 57 per cent, according to the results of the study.

Twitter matchmaking

Ghaddarsurveyed potential carpoolersto learn how strongly they weigh the social component of ride sharing.

The survey also asked if people preferred to engage with those with the same interests, or if they were open to socializing with people who have differentinterests.

Then, working with IBM and two Italian universities, Ghaddar mined for mobility patterns among Twitter users in Rome and San Francisco. The Twitter users were then put through a matchmaking algorithm built using survey results to find potential carpooling matches. The algorithm took into account logistical factors and social preferences.

If the Twitter users were to follow those matches, the needfor cars reduced by 57 per cent in Rome and by 40 per cent inSan Francisco.

Those results were recentlypublished in the academic journalTransportation Research Part C.

"With the current new disruptive technologies for cars coming into effect, we're seeing nowadays that there's a shift to shared economy models, where people are planning to own less and less cars," Ghaddar said.

Ghaddar said she sees a future where autonomous vehicleswill know when and where you want to go, and what types of people to pick up along the way.