By Chad Ingram

Do you regularly hitch rides with friends or give rides to others?

The Community Transportation Partnership  run by a group focused on rural transportation options for the county has hired consultant Kate Hall to create a community-based marketing strategy for ride-sharing.
“We anecdotally think it’s happening” Hall says. “We suspect it’s a way people living in rural communities have gotten around for a long time. The first step people are probably going to take . . . would be taking a ride within their known social group.”

Ride-sharing can be a popular means of transportation in rural communities such as Haliburton County which doesn’t have any form of public transit.

A ride-sharing website was soft-launched by the group last year but didn’t have much uptake.
“It was very low” Hall says. “We didn’t have any resources to promote it. It was just sort of there.”

Now operating with a community transportation pilot grant from the Ministry of Transportation Hall said the group will upgrading the website which will include access through mobile devices.
The launch of the new site is scheduled to take place some time in the spring.

In the meantime Hall is looking for data on residents’ ride-sharing practices.

Anyone who uses ride-sharing as a method of transportation is asked to contact Hall at 705-489-2110 or email kvhall06@gmail.com.