Flexible carpooling is built up route by route. Each route has an equivalent return route.

A flexible carpool route starts at a 'flexible carpool park'. As mentioned previously, cars are parked in areas according to the destination, in a special design to make it easier to form fuller cars.

The flexible carpool park is located where the traffic converges, in the suburbs before the on-ramps for the freeway. It might be inside the clover leaf, or even over top of the road.

The route goes to a destination that's close to where lots of people work, or perhaps to a transit station. At the destination there is a drop-off point.

The return route starts at a pick-up point near to the drop-off point, and ends back at the flexible carpool park.

Routes are chosen based on the number of single occupant vehicles (SOVs) that go past a convergence point and on to the destination. The routes with the most SOVs are likely the best routes to establish a flexible carpooling route.

Potential routes are identified in two key ways:

1. Traffic engineers carry out analysis of the traffic flows and find potential routes, or
2. People who would like to use flexible carpooling register on a website and indicate support for a route that has already been proposed, or propose a new route that they believe will work. You can do this now if you work in New York by going to New York Routes.

It takes time to build support for a route, and to then convince the transportation authorities to establish the route. But it is worth it in the long run as everyone will save fuel, emissions, and time.

Next learn more about pick up and drop off points.