Obtaining that tantalizing Thanksgiving turkey and enjoying dinner with the family and friends has just become a little easier for students making a long journey home. This year, students turned sojourners can utilize Facebook to find (or offer) a ride home for the holiday season.

The “Carpool” application is an online version of the rideshare offers that can be found on bulletin boards in the HUB. A user simply needs to take the destination or point of departure and enter it into a search menu to return a few pages of results. Posting a new request or offer for a ride also places this information on the news feed, informing a user’s network of the situation.

“You can look at people’s profile info and judge whether you want to take a ride with this person or not,” said Logan Green, the creator of Carpool.

The idea to integrate the rideshare bulletin board into Facebook came after Green found himself repeatedly dissatisfied with other means of transportation. Green is a former student of UC-Santa Barbara who had a girlfriend he regularly went to see in Los Angeles.

“I tried using Craigslist … and it worked out really well a few times, but there was always that anxiety; the idea of getting in the car with a stranger is a bit uncomfortable,” Green said.

After a number of disappointments using the Greyhound bus and Amtrak train, Green decided that he had to find a better way to get around. He chose to use Facebook as a platform to start Carpool, hoping to create a single destination where college students can find a safe ride.

The four-month-old application has had 10,000 rides posted in its short history with around 2,000 currently posted nationwide. A search for “Seattle” returns about 40 rides.

“So far, it’s a big disappointment,” said Adrian Tayne, a senior looking for a ride to WSU to visit his girlfriend. “I haven’t found anyone yet, except for a girl that I’d already met on Craigslist. I think the word just needs to get around.”

Green is working on expanding the application to as many college campuses as possible by looking for representatives to help spread the word. He sees the product as entirely marketable.

“We really want people to have fun with this and get rid of that lonely ride home and save money in the process,” Green said. “It’s so much more fun to have a car full of people or meet someone new you became friends with.”

On top of the social aspect, Green points out the environmental allure of carpooling. While those who absolutely need a ride to WSU are simply in search of a car, they are incidentally cutting down on their CO2 emissions by carpooling.

“An application like Carpool helps students find safe rides in addition to cutting their gas expenses and reducing CO2,” Green said. “It’s a transportation solution that can happen right now.”

[Reach reporter Andrew Doughman at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]