The nearly 50-year-old Bay Area tradition of Casual Carpool, or getting rides to work with complete strangers who want carpool-lane privileges, was discontinued once the pandemic hit. But Casual Carpool is poised to possibly return this summer.

The Bay Area has had a commuting life-hack since long before the word “hack” was meant as a good thing. It’s the old tradition of Casual Carpool, where cross-Bay commuters would stand at a designated spot before or after work, get in a car with complete strangers (sometimes for the cost of a dollar or two), and the driver of said car would be able to drive the whole carload to or from work in the faster, cheaper carpool lane. The whole thing actually started during the 1970s in response to a public transit meltdown, and the informal and unorganized tradition continued right up until COVD arrived to make the practice of riding with strangers a completely unhealthy arrangement.

The Chronicle wondered back in March if Casual Carpool would ever return. What they did not know was, at the time, someone was already working on bringing Casual Carpool back, albeit in the form of a small commuter activist Facebook group.  


But those activist commuters are starting to make an impact. NBC Bay Area did a segment last week on the possible return of Casual Carpool. Though Casual Carpool was always, well, a casual, leaderless, and grassroots practice. So it’s been only the work of volunteers trying to bring it back.

“I’m very sad to see it gone at the moment, but we are firm believers that it can come back,” volunteer organizer Camille Bermudez told NBC Bay Area. “Part of what's changed now is we have so many return-to-office mandates. So many companies. We estimate about 332,000 people will be coming back in to San Francisco. We also know that BART and other forms of public transportation are going to be potentially affected by budget cuts. So we just want to give another option to our commuters, our community.”


According to the above Instagram post, the effort started in earnest today, though only with volunteers positioned at an SF Financial District stop with signage and flyers. They are not physically driving passengers to the East Bay, nor vice versa. But a report in today’s SF Standard says that the reborn Casual Carpool’s volunteer organizers have found that “community surveys indicate that the best time to start may be mid-August when school resumes.”

And so currently, the resurrected Casual Carpool effort is still just collecting survey information and plotting out pickup spots. But you can help them make it a reality by filling out the survey, or checking out the information on their new Casual Carpool website.

Related: Tell Us Your Casual Carpool Stories [SFist]

Image: Miriam W via Yelp