New rideshare website for the North Shore

Are you looking for a ride to Portage next Wednesday?  Hoping to share gas expenses on a trip to the cities this weekend?  Well, thanks to the efforts of a local non-profit, there’s a website you can go to for help. 

 

“As we all know, Cook County is remote, and we’re always trying to get places, especially Duluth, Thunder Bay, the Twin Cities, up the Trail, out to Hovland, out to Lutsen, so there’s obviously a real need for transportation here.”

 

That’s George Wilkes, he’s co-chair of the Cook County Local Energy Project, or CCLEP, a non-profit citizen’s action group working to promote energy efficiency in the community.  They’re partnering with local internet service provider Boreal Access on the new rideshare website.

 

“We realized that the ridesharing that went on at Boreal Access was actually very effective, but we thought it might be nice to improve on that, and we got a grant from the Lloyd K. Johnson Foundation to create a website, a ridesharing website, dedicated to improving ridesharing capabilities and delivery-sharing capabilities in the county.”

 

The new website, called North Shore Ride Share, is up and running and will officially launch on Tuesday, July 27.

 

“People can go to the website and take a look. If you need to go someplace, you can take a look to see if there’s rides available, or post that you need a ride.  You do have to register on the site but that’s fairly painless, and we really encourage everybody to utilize the site.”

 

To register for North Shore Ride Share, go to www.boreal.org/rideshare.  To celebrate the website’s launch on Tuesday, July 27, the first 25 people to post rides will receive gift certificates from Buck’s Hardware in Grand Marais.