RideCheck says that it can handle the massive ridesharing needs of NYC commuters during the transit strike, at its website..

RideCheck.com serves every town near NYC. It allows adults to search rides based on various criteria, including starting point and destination names and zip codes, gender, smoking habits and colleges.

So, a commuter can insert a starting zip code in Long Island, say Great Neck, and an ending zip code in the Wall Street area, and search for all rides; the rides can then be browsed for other factors, such as gender and smoking terms.

A person can also instruct the site to report back on rides of interest that are posted in the future. This way the user does not have to continually re-check the site for newly listed rides; instead the website alerts the user. The site also has various security measures.

The website is currently free. “The more people that use the site, the more effective it will be for everyone,” says Mitchell. The website can handle more than 50,000 inquiries daily.

NYC commuters can use the site to post or find a work-bound ride; they will receive email confirmations when a ride is accepted. Ride posters can post a ride for three extra passengers, meeting Mayor Bloomberg’s four-person requirement for Manhattan.

Then, the group can easily arrange amongst themselves to return home together and to repeat the commute the next day, and so forth. The website works for rides completely within Manhattan Island, too; just use zip codes.

Articles on RideCheck have been published this year by the Wall St. Journal, news and travel websites, and various college newspapers across the continent covering over 160,000 students.

They include the newspapers at Baruch College at The City University of New York, Illinois Statue University, North Dakota State University, Northeastern University, Rutgers University, Tufts University, the University of New Mexico, and the University of Waterloo in Canada.

RideCheck was founded by Clyde Mitchell. A rideboard user during his student days at MIT in the 1970s, he realized that the rideboard ride was often the best alternative, even within the heavily traveled Northeast Corridor, despite hourly air shuttles and regular bus and train service.
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