The Easyride transportation brokerage demonstration in Newport News and Hampton, Virginia was initiated in July 1978 to assess the effectiveness of transportation brokerage in achieving higher vehicle occupancies. Easyride is a service of the Peninsula Transportation District Commission, the transit authority serving the cities mentioned above. Easyride promotes that form of ridesharing which best serves a site's employee's needs by collecting trip data at employment sites and providing matchlist and ridesharing promotional materials. Easyride provides special transportation service for the handicapped through Handi-Ride, a demand-responsive transportation service involving both Easyride-provided service as well as contract services provided by a local taxi company. Easyride also brokers special transportation services through a 16(b)(2) procurement review program and a vehicle leasing program available to local social service agencies. Easyride's experience with the rates of matchlist usage and carpool formation demonstrate the need for assistance to employers with follow-up promotions to matchlist distribution. Easyride's Handi-Ride program demonstrates that this type of service can be provided effectively through a combination of user-side subsidies and publicly operated service. A 16(b)(2) procurement review policy and a vehicle leasing program for social service agencies can be useful elements in a comprehensive special services transportation coordination effort. The most significant demonstration finding is that a brokerage program offers a transit authority opportunities to provide alternatives to conventional fixed-route-and-schedule bus service. Brokerage enables the transit authority to provide service extensions in areas and markets unsuited to fixed-route transit and, where appropriate, to substitute alternative service for existing bus service which is not cost-effective.