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The casual carpool is back, starting Aug. 12 at Lake Merritt

August 8, 2025

Casual Carpooling Sign

Susan Shaheen, the Transportation Sustainability Research Center’s co-director, discusses casual carpooling in Oakland, California.

Susan Shaheen may be more excited about the return of carpooling than even the members of SF Carpool. She’s dedicated a big chunk of her life to studying the phenomenon. 

A professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley, Shaheen studied casual carpools in the 2000s as a response by transit users to BART strike threats. She was surprised to learn how significant carpooling was as a commuting strategy for many East Bay residents. 

“ When I was doing this work about 10 years ago, what I was showing was that about 75% of the people who are using casual carpool would’ve taken public transit otherwise, but about 10% of the people were drivers,” Shaheen said. “So it was competing with public transit.” 

Read full article here.

The Oaklandside

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