Carpooling (also known as car-sharing, ride-sharing, lift-sharing), is the shared use of a car, especially for commuting to work, often by people who each have a car but travel together to save cost and to promote other socio-environmental benefits. In some locations, there are special facilities intended to encourage carpooling such as designated pick-up points and high-occupancy vehicle lanes which only allow cars with multiple riders at certain times of the day.





Carpool projects have been around in a structured form since the mid-1970s and have recently begun to more extensively use the Internet and other software support systems. With the recent advent of mobile phones and SMS, there is a push to integrate these technologies into more flexible systems on the internet.