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Ada County has the right idea launching a car pool clearing house using GIS mapping software and matching riders with drivers, but they offer it as a perk for county employees--forgetting the taxpayers who pay for the bills. Like most government folks, they just need a little supervision. In a press release that managed to offer quotes from all three Commishes (two are running for re-election) they extolled the merits of ride sharing and disclosed that anyone who takes a van pool or rides the bus can get $32 a month. While we certainly applaud the efforts of local government to ease the “pain at the pump” for their staffers, what about the rest of us? Can’t resist this one: THERE IS NO NEED TO REINVENT THE WHEEL! Ada county needs to step up and offer the same clearing house for everyone in Ada County. With just a few tweaks the GUARDIAN thinks they could make their in house program work for anyone. Just use an on-line link at the existing county web site. We are told it works like Google Maps, pinpointing addresses. In its simplest form all they need to do is ask people needing a ride or offering a ride to register with their e-mail address and a geographical designator. Contact is made via e-mail. Seems like University bulletin boards used to be full of "NEED A RIDE" and "NEED RIDERS" messages all the time. A step further would be to offer up to the taxpayers the same $32 van or bus incentive they are taking away from us for their own people. Of course the big benefit to having a countywide ride share data base and clearing house would be eliminating any arguments for billion dollar choo-choo trains for Team Dave.