You might have noticed that our sites now feature an analytics section, where we showcase some interesting numbers on the service we offer. You might be wondering how these work, and where we get our sources from. We thought we’d shed a light on how we go about pulling those numbers out and what they represent on a larger scale.

We’d like to also notify our users that these numbers are approximations as it’s difficult to calculate real numbers for such variables – as sometimes what our database tells is not exactly what happens in the real world, but still a good indication.

Average trip price

The average hitch trip is being calculated from all of our four websites, and rounded to obtain the current figure of $17. This illustrates the first objective of the HitchPlanet initiative – giving people a cheaper way to travel. The $50 average bus price figure has been pulled from trying to book some of the most frequent journeys in our database through popular bus websites. This means that using our service is almost 3 times cheaper than taking the bus – not to mention x times more fun!

Seats filled

We determine that a seat is filled when a hitch request has been accepted. This allows us to calculate the number of successfully filled trips overall and use this figure as a starting point to determine how HitchPlanet reduces carbon emissions. 1122 seats would be the equivalent of filling up more than 20 buses of 52 seats!

Km shared

Drawing the seats filled from our database and rounded distances between destinations, we are able to provide a number on the total km shared on the website. So far, 91,333km have been shared – which would translate to driving from Vancouver to Montreal 10 times there and back! The more websites we launch, the more users we have, the more km we share. That also means, the more CO2 we save…

CO2 saved

To calculate this figure, we simply multiply the total kilometers saved by an average emission of CO2 for a passenger car. This gives us the figure in the green weights on the infographic.

The source we use to calculate average emissions of CO2 is the US Environmental Protection Agency, that provides with a number of 0.916 pound per mile, equating to 0.41549 kg per miles or 0.25823 kg per km.

Today’s figure, April 3, 2012, is of 23.6 tons of CO2 saved by HitchPlanet.

But what does this figure mean? According to David Attenborough’s 2006 documentary “Can We Save Planet Earth”, an average American household car pumps 10 tons of CO2 in the atmosphere every year. So, 23.6 tons would be equivalent to saving the CO2 that would have been created by 2 average households for an entire year! This figure is very encouraging, and gives us hope that car-sharing on a wider scale would potentially multiply that figure by factors of ten or even hundreds, would more people be willing to fill up those seats in their cars!

More to come soon on the subject, as we get additional stats in place…