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I imagine you suffer from market size problems. This works when one destination has strong mass transit connections (e.g. the casual carpooling over the SF Bay

I imagine you suffer from market size problems. This works when one destination has strong mass transit connections (e.g. the casual carpooling over the SF Bay Bridge), but without that, pairing seems hard. If I'm going from X to Y, what are the odds that there will be another person traveling along this route that within the next M minutes will be near X? Note that M must be small to encourage me not to use alternative options. If there's not enough drivers, passengers stop using it. Not enough passengers.. drivers stop using it. Because of the need for both source and destination alignment, unlike the taxi which just needs source alignment, much larger critical mass is needed for this to be useful.

eastbayjake 11y ago
> If there's not enough drivers, passengers stop using it. Not enough passengers.. drivers stop using it. It would be nice if this integrated with an always-on app while driving, like Google Maps[0], so as a driver you could always be aware of nearby opportunities to pick up passengers going your way. I think it would be more difficult for passengers -- because of the possibility a driver could cancel or lollygag, a 15 minute wait is a huge investment that could result in you still having to find alternative transportation. [0] This was very uncomfortable at first as the son of a UPS driver, someone who's usually able to find a place again after going there just once, but now I navigate with Google Maps for routine trips in the Bay Area just to find shortcuts around traffic. I'd imagine integrating with onboard navigation would make this even easier for most drivers with newer cars.