[Christ]

I used to carpool. I had a rule - I'm here on time, you had best be. If not, you'd better have taxi money on stand by.

My friends were only ever late once.

Besides, that, I've spent time hitching rides, I've caught rides on rail cars, I've even hopped on flat beds with pipes or whatever the load of the day was. It's not as bad as it seems, I had fun. When they stop at a light or intersection near your stop, hop off, and noone's the wiser.

Some larger metro areas have "slug" lanes now, where they've developed a hitch-hiker program with etiquette. It's a very efficient random carpool method, and if you screw up too many times, you get excluded from the "society" that it's built.

Park and rides are a great place to park - and ride. Not the bus, man! Get on a bike and finish your commute!

Many of us can't carpool in the traditional sense, but there is a possibility that your routes all converge at a point somewhere away from work where it might be convenient to pack it all in one vehicle and finish the commute, saving fuel for some of you, at least.

It's not always about what you can save yourself, sometimes, it's about how much you can save others, as well.

You can also simply ask that someone from the group buy you lunch on the days that you're the group driver, which saves you and everyone else, because lunch is cheap, and they can all split the cost to "pay you back".