Issaquah's iCarpool rideshare service wins $50K prize

Issaquah-based company iCarpool, an online company that arranges and promotes ridesharing, won first place and $50,000 this morning from the World Congress of Intelligent Transportation Systems in Stockholm.

Starting next year, iCarpool will run the regional www.rideshareonline.com Web site, under contract with the Washington State Department of Transportation. The site is managed by King County Metro Transit and has 10,000 subscribers in Washington and Idaho.

The site will become more powerful in several ways, said Cathy Blumenthal, rideshare coordinator for Metro:

• Oregon will join the network.

• Prize giveaways and contests will be added.

• Improved trip calculators will tell users the costs and greenhouse-gas effects of single or shared trips.

• More matchings will be provided for non-commute trips, such as rides to sporting events.

• Maps will show potential riders along a linear route to work, instead of just in the user's immediate neighborhood.

iCarpool.com competed against 115 other entries from 20 countries in the ITS Congestion Challenge, a global contest for ideas to reduce congestion, said spokeswoman Theo Chisholm of IBM, one of the contest's sponsors.

Seattle is the nation's ninth most congested metro area, according to the latest annual report from INRIX, a traffic-data firm based in Kirkland.