4 ms·

Carpooling is made much more viable by self-driving cars. Could easily see people being willing to share a ride if the computer matched up people from the same

Carpooling is made much more viable by self-driving cars. Could easily see people being willing to share a ride if the computer matched up people from the same neighborhood for a ride automatically and the cost was shared.

brndnmtthws 9y ago
There's this innovative type of carpooling called a 'bus', where you can fit more than 30 people onboard at once! The cost per person is incredibly low, too!
- sverige 9y ago
  I suspect that people who don't use buses avoid them because they can't choose the other 29 people who will be riding with them.
- YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 9y ago
  Not really. In reality, even the buses of England for example end up driving so many trips relatively or completely empty (to provide adequate service so that you could do without a car) that they end up producing more emissions per kilometre compared to personal vehicles – you can't do that with incredibly low costs, nor can you calculate the costs by thinking of only the full buses, when that's hardly the complete picture.
- WillPostForFood 9y ago
  At this particular moment, according to Google Maps, it would take 2hours 5min to get to SFO by a mix of bus and train, or 23min by car. Bus/Trains are cheap, but when you have more than 30 people on board you probably have to make a lot of stops that slow down the trip. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Googleplex,+Amphitheatre+Parkway,+Mountain+View,+CA/San+Francisco+International+Airport,+San+Francisco,+CA+94128/@37.5186343,-122.53035,10z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x808fba02425dad8f:0x6c296c66619367e0!2m2!1d-122.0840575!2d37.4219999!1m5!1m1!1s0x808f778c55555555:0xa4f25c571acded3f!2m2!1d-122.3789554!2d37.6213129!3e3 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Googleplex,+Amphitheatre+Par...
kelnos 9y ago
Waze Rider and Scoop are actually pretty great for matching people up for carpools (and are specifically for that purpose and that purpose only, unlike Uber Pool/Lyft Line), and yet I don't see a large number of people using either service. I suspect people with cars are still very protective of their ability to completely control their schedule; agreeing to ride in someone else's car makes it difficult to run errands after work without first stopping at home to pick up the car, for example. And what if they have a ride scheduled for 5pm but find out at 3pm that they need to stay later? With enough scale it shouldn't be hard to find an alternate ride, but we're not to the point where people can expect that to be easy. I think people could definitely rearrange their lives a bit to make this better, like planning to run errands on weekends, or close to home (instead of work). Or setting reasonable boundaries with their employer (I'm scheduled to leave at 5pm, and not a minute after -- unless you want to pick up the tab for a taxi). But people are selfish, and stuck in their ways, and would, for some reason, prefer to sit in traffic.

brndnmtthws 9y ago

There's this innovative type of carpooling called a 'bus', where you can fit more than 30 people onboard at once! The cost per person is incredibly low, too!

sverige 9y ago
I suspect that people who don't use buses avoid them because they can't choose the other 29 people who will be riding with them.
YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 9y ago
Not really. In reality, even the buses of England for example end up driving so many trips relatively or completely empty (to provide adequate service so that you could do without a car) that they end up producing more emissions per kilometre compared to personal vehicles – you can't do that with incredibly low costs, nor can you calculate the costs by thinking of only the full buses, when that's hardly the complete picture.
WillPostForFood 9y ago
At this particular moment, according to Google Maps, it would take 2hours 5min to get to SFO by a mix of bus and train, or 23min by car. Bus/Trains are cheap, but when you have more than 30 people on board you probably have to make a lot of stops that slow down the trip. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Googleplex,+Amphitheatre+Parkway,+Mountain+View,+CA/San+Francisco+International+Airport,+San+Francisco,+CA+94128/@37.5186343,-122.53035,10z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x808fba02425dad8f:0x6c296c66619367e0!2m2!1d-122.0840575!2d37.4219999!1m5!1m1!1s0x808f778c55555555:0xa4f25c571acded3f!2m2!1d-122.3789554!2d37.6213129!3e3 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Googleplex,+Amphitheatre+Par...

kelnos 9y ago

Waze Rider and Scoop are actually pretty great for matching people up for carpools (and are specifically for that purpose and that purpose only, unlike Uber Pool/Lyft Line), and yet I don't see a large number of people using either service. I suspect people with cars are still very protective of their ability to completely control their schedule; agreeing to ride in someone else's car makes it difficult to run errands after work without first stopping at home to pick up the car, for example. And what if they have a ride scheduled for 5pm but find out at 3pm that they need to stay later? With enough scale it shouldn't be hard to find an alternate ride, but we're not to the point where people can expect that to be easy. I think people could definitely rearrange their lives a bit to make this better, like planning to run errands on weekends, or close to home (instead of work). Or setting reasonable boundaries with their employer (I'm scheduled to leave at 5pm, and not a minute after -- unless you want to pick up the tab for a taxi). But people are selfish, and stuck in their ways, and would, for some reason, prefer to sit in traffic.