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In India I experienced low tech ride sharing. You stand at an intersection and a three wheeler asks you where you're going. You get in, and the driver heads to
by 99_00 10y ago
In India I experienced low tech ride sharing. You stand at an intersection and a three wheeler asks you where you're going. You get in, and the driver heads to a major intersection near your destination.
Along the way he asks other people standing at intersections if they are going his way, and if they are they pile in. The more people he stuffs into his three wheeler the more money he makes per trip.
It was an unpleasant ride.
- danesparza 10y ago+1 for 'it was an unpleasant ride'. I think that's the biggest friction point many ride sharing apps face.
- nashashmi 10y agoSubways are also an unpleasant ride at the moment. But if it is cheap enough, why not?
- johansch 10y agoSubways are primarily unpleasant because of the (worst parts of the) clientele, not because of the rider density. Just the simple act of requiring riders to have a credit card will get rid of >90% of the unpleasant co-riders.
- ryanx435 10y agoWhat is the point of public transportation if you don't want the public to use it?
- mojowo11 10y agoRiding in an Uber Pool has always been perfectly pleasant for me. Quiet and awkward in some cases, but not unpleasant. Some basic restrictions about not cramming people into the vehicle like it's a clown car should alleviate most concerns about unpleasantness, I'd think.
- randyrand 10y agoI took an uber pool on a normally 30 minute drive. It took 1.15 hours. Made 4 other pickups and drop offs on our way back. I'm okay when ride sharing means 30% longer trip times. But 150% longer was too much for me.
- dx034 10y agoHow does that work? I've never experienced more than 2 riders (each 1-2 people) on a ride, and thought they wouldn't do that? In that case I'd definitely contact Uber. Sounds like the driver didn't drive as he was supposed to.
- randyrand 10y agoSorry if that was unclear. 2 pickups, 2 drop offs. I wanted to make clear that we didn't just pick the people up. But they were both dropped off first too. Worse yet, the other destinations meant that for my 20 mile drive, we drove through residential the whole time.
- truncate 10y agoIn terms of reducing traffic, these shared three-wheelers, to pick-up/drop-off more rides, stop just about anywhere. At-least, that was the case in Noida and Greater Noida (cities right next to Delhi). Around certain regions, they were primary reason for traffic-jams.
- rhino369 10y agoWashington DC has a more formal (but still unoffical) version of this called slug lines. http://slug-lines.com/ http://slug-lines.com/ You stand in a line and people pick you up. But in DC it's free because the purpose is the ability to use HOV lanes/roads.
- s0rce 10y agoSF Bay area has a similar thing, casual carpool http://sfcasualcarpool.com/ http://sfcasualcarpool.com/. I always see them waiting in line on my way to work but I'm not going the right way to pick people up.
- grecy 10y agoTraveling in remote parts of the world it becomes very obvious we in the developed world are now using "tech" to go back to the way things were. Uber and AirBnb are extremely popular all through Latin America and Africa - there just is no app. You walk up to a human and ask, a price is negotiated and you have a ride or a place to sleep. In a lot of ways, I think these kinds of apps will actually lower the standard of living in developed countries (less regulation, less safety, less insurance, etc.) which is probably a good thing, because it should make stuff cheaper too.