[Rajeevraj]

Carpooling or in more generic terms-Ride-sharing has suddenly become a buzz word in the major cities grappling with traffic and pollution. People are spending hours on the road and in the absence of a robust public transport infrastructure are forced to rely on personal vehicles for their needs. The government has also stepped in with measures to control pollution. The Odd-Even rule being implemented by the Delhi Government is one such initiative.

Amidst all this, the Ride-sharing/carpooling concept is picking up. There are a bunch of small and large car pooling initiatives/options available. So thought this is the right time to start a dedicated thread for Ride Sharing. To start off, a look at the various options available today.

UberPool

What is it: A pooling option from Uber where you can call for a cab with the option of enabling pooling. Available in Bangalore and Delhi

How does it work?

• Slide over to the uberGO option on your app
  
• Set your pickup location and drop-off locations and request
  
• You’ll see 2 options – “Share your car” and “Get your own car”
  
• “Share your car” is uberPOOL with a guaranteed fare upfront, so you know exactly what you’re going to pay
  
• Regardless of whether you’re matched or not, the fare will always be less than uberGO. Uber says your fare can be up to 35% lesser.
  
• Currently uberPOOL is available only between 7AM – 9PM, 7 days a week.
  
• In Delhi you also have the option of signing for UberPool as a private driver. You can make 2 trips per day. Please refer to this thread by Bhpian quickdraw for the details and his experience.

Additional Info: Uber India

Ola Share/Ola Pool

What is it: Ola Share is a Ride Sharing option by Ola available in Bangalore. Ola Pool is an option in the app via which a private driver can volunteer to offer their ride for pooling. Available in Delhi post implementation of the Odd-Even rule.


How does it work?:

• The Share carpooling feature, can be used by customers in Bengaluru at an introductory flat fare of Rs. 50
  
• Ola Share uses advanced algorithms to match users who plan to travel on the same route in real-time, within users' identified social groups. When a user selects his drop location, Ola will match users from common groups who are also looking for a cab on the same route in real time.
  
• Once additional users en-route are identified, the driver's device gets an alert with navigation to their pickup location within minutes, to join the ride.
  
• CarPool : This will appear as a separate category on the Ola app in Delhi-NCR, using which customers can choose to share rides in their private cars.
  
• First time hosts can register by entering their vehicle details on the Ola app and make themselves available by clicking on ‘I am driving’ and entering their destination.
  
• Users who want a ride can click on ‘I need a ride’ mentioning their drop location. The Ola app will use algorithms to match users from within a user’s Friend List or anyone traveling on the same route in real time depending on the user’s choice.
  
• Once additional users en-route are identified, the car owner’s Ola app gets an alert with navigation to their pickup location.

BlaBlaCar

What is it?: A French company that provides the platform to enable Inter City Ride Sharing.

How does it work?

• As indicated in the sample above. The process is simple. Login to the site. Search for a ride by entering the source and destination.
  
• List of folks who have offered rides along with start and end points, destination, price is displayed. Take a look at the Ride Comment for information about the car owner, their reasons for travelling and other journey details.
  
• Click on Contact Car owner and send a private message to the car owner to book your seat with them. You'll then get their phone number. Be at your planned meeting point on time. Bring exact change to pay the car owner the agreed contribution during the ride.
  
• There are different rating systems and reviews which enable you to get details about the person offering the ride.
  
• You can also sign up to offer a ride. For every ride that you offer, there is a suggested price based on the distance travelled and the estimated fuel consumption. The suggested price can be amended to an extent, being decreased by as much as 50% (and increased up to 25%) of the suggested price. There is a strict ceiling, which ensures that co-traveller costs help offset real costs incurred by car owners and that car owners do not make a profit.

Further Details: Blablacar

PoolCircle

What is it? A standard pooling platform for both Inter City and Intra City Pooling.

How does it work?

• Similar to the options above. One can sign up and search for rides or offer rides
  
• Options to chose/create cirlces to pool with. Women only pooling, Trust Points, Ratings are other safety nets.
  
• Options for regular pooling, one off pooling and even inter city pooling.
  
• Concept of Pool Share to share costs. On a per km basis. max ceiling fixed by PoolCircle.
  
• Partnership with an event management company for enabling seamless integration to events organized by that company.

More Details: PoolCircle


Few more other options

• CoYatri: An intercity ride sharing app
  
• RideAlly: A share taxi app.
  
• SRide: Similar to the Car Pooling Apps mentioned above.
  
• Meru Car Pool: Similar to Uber Pool and Ola Share.

As we see from the list above, there are a large number of Ride-Sharing/ Carpooling options available and the list is growing. With the rapid growth in vehicular density and no real hope for an efficient public transport solution or mass transit options, Ride-Sharing seems to be the best bet to help reduce congestion to an extent.

Please share feedback and inputs on any Ride Sharing options that you use here.

[silversteed]

I have used BlaBlaCar many times last year. The advantage is, we can choose not to respond to any ride-seeker, and BlaBlaCar merely acts as a means to connect the ride-owner and ride-seeker. I do all possible checks about the ride-seekers before establishing contact - try to find common contacts, social media, etc., to verify the info shared with me. So far, the experience has been pleasant and I could be of help to quite a few people, at the same time reducing my expenses and carbon footprint for inter-city trips.

I got calls from another ride-sharing platform called Rydo (www.rydo.in), haven't tried it though.

The safety concerns associated with a real-time ride sharing system has kept me away from the Ola and Uber systems.

[hybridpetrol]

Car-pooling is an option many did not want to experiment with, due to many reasons such as independence, security, etc. But the scene is changing, with laws restricting the usage of cars are in place.
If even in one or two places, car-pooling becomes a successful and accepted means of travel, the idea will catch up throughout the country in all the metros and major cities.
People have used shared rides in suburban areas, by means of shared autos, or shared vans, but these are commercial people carriers. However, using private cars for ferrying around unknown strangers is something car owners detest, and hence there should be a major shift in mindset for this idea to become successful.

[aajohn]

Uber has announced UBERCOMMUTE in Bangalore today : Allows private drivers to share rides.

https://newsroom.uber.com/bangalore/commute/

[Rajeevraj]

Originally Posted by aajohn

Uber has announced UBERCOMMUTE in Bangalore today : Allows private drivers to share rides.

https://newsroom.uber.com/bangalore/commute/

Adding the link to the FAQ's and a summary from the website.

FAQ Link

HOW DOES IT WORK?

1. Sign up here
2. Existing rider: Click on “Already have a rider account” and sign in
3. New user: Fill the required details to create a new account
4. Upload the required documents
5. Watch the video and log on to the dashboard
6. Add your bank details on the portal
7. Once the account is activated and confirmed by Uber Bangalore team, download the Uber Partner app from here – iOS, Android
8. Sign in and take a clear profile picture and go online.
9. Enter your destination and you are now set to share your ride

DETAILS:

WHEN: Carpooling option is available only between 7AM – 9PM, 7 days a week

FROM-TO: Carpool trips can be requested from anywhere within the Pool city limits and to all areas within the Bangalore city limits.

WHO: Use only your own account on the Uber partner mobile app and select the correct vehicle to ensure riders are connected with only verified drivers. Wrong driver and/or car would be considered zero tolerance cases and could lead to immediate suspension of the account

SAFETY: Do not have any additional person with you when you accept a commute request from a rider in order to ensure that our riders get connected only with verified commuters.

[Car-go-man]

Nice thread!

I happened to use Ola Ride Share just a few days ago and I must say I liked the concept.

To give an overview of it's value-for-money proposition, that same day I booked an Ola auto from my home to my office and paid close to 130 bucks (a normal auto would have charged 20-30 bucks more easily due to the office location).

That very day, on my way back, I tried Ola ride share for the first time. My booking was confirmed immediately and I happened to be the first customer on that ride. My fare was fixed at 119 bucks in a comfortable, A/C Toyota Etios Liva. 11 bucks lesser than the Ola auto itself!!!

As soon as I entered the cab, the driver got another request for ride share that came from the building adjacent to my office. I asked the driver what would happen if the 2nd person needed to go some place that is off-route. He said that if our destinations are way off each other, he'll reject the 2nd request and move on towards my destination while still looking out for new requests.

It turned out that the 2nd person also lived within 2-3 km from my home, so it all worked out very well for us. The Ola driver also revealed that he'll get additional pay from Ola for each additional passenger booked through the ride share. For an Etios Liva, the max. allowed passengers= 3, as per the driver.

[greenhorn]

I read that if you're using uber to carpool with your private car, having your own passengers is strictly not allowed "for security reasons", and your account will be closed -
This sucks. I usually carpool already with another dude, but still have three seats vacant in the back - pity uber won't let this work.

Funnily, uber has no issues letting commercial drivers doing this

[Rajeevraj]

Originally Posted by silversteed

I have used BlaBlaCar many times last year. The advantage is, we can choose not to respond to any ride-seeker, and BlaBlaCar merely acts as a means to connect the ride-owner and ride-seeker. I do all possible checks about the ride-seekers before establishing contact - try to find common contacts, social media, etc., to verify the info shared with me. So far, the experience has been pleasant and I could be of help to quite a few people, at the same time reducing my expenses and carbon footprint for inter-city trips.

In some recent discussions around this in some other threads, the question of how insurance will treat ride sharing along with cost sharing has come up. The point is that insurance can be denied if the car is used for any kind of hire or commercial gain. although car pooling is not for commercial gain, the fact that a payment changes hands make it possible for insurance to interpret it that way.

Did you do any analysis or raise a question to Blablacar on this before starting to use the platform?

[antz.bin]

Originally Posted by greenhorn

I read that if you're using uber to carpool with your private car, having your own passengers is strictly not allowed "for security reasons", and your account will be closed -
This sucks. I usually carpool already with another dude, but still have three seats vacant in the back - pity uber won't let this work.

Funnily, uber has no issues letting commercial drivers doing this

You could maybe try http://www.ibiboryde.com/

This one is tailored for intra-city ridesharing. Never used it since nobody uses it in Nashik but could be successful in the current Delhi scenario.

This makes me wonder, why are these guys keeping so quiet when Ola / Uber, which are primarily cab-companies, are making so much noise about their car-pooling services.

On another note, while we all know the benefits, here is a nice article giving us the challenges of carpooling.

http://yourstory.com/2013/05/carpool...fail-in-india/

Some of these might be trivial, some not so much, but they need to be overcome for the pollution and congestion problem to be resolved. I could think of a few more problems when carpooling with strangers (like handling of the cash transaction at the end of the ride) but we all need to brainstorm and figure out ways to overcome these issues. Maybe someone will take cues from here to build a technology at a new age startup which can solve the problem for everyone. Why not contribute and do our bit to solve it?

[silversteed]

Originally Posted by Rajeevraj

Did you do any analysis or raise a question to Blablacar on this before starting to use the platform?

I did raise a question, their POV is that, we are not using the car for commercial use, and the suggested rates only manage to cover the fuel expenses for the trip. Hence, we are not violating insurance norms - at least I don't make a profit out of it, can't say the same for everyone else.

Going by the logic that Insurance companies can take this as using the car for commercial gain, we cannot take anyone in our vehicles as that can also be construed as making a gain - in some convoluted manner that they can/may interpret.

[greenhorn]

the biggest challenge i have had with carpooling initiatives is that most of our timings are rather dynamic, and so carpooling with a particular person might be a bit challenging. So of these uber, with its real time allocation stands the best shot at solving this

[mustang_shelby]

Originally Posted by greenhorn

I read that if you're using uber to carpool with your private car, having your own passengers is strictly not allowed "for security reasons", and your account will be closed -
This sucks. I usually carpool already with another dude, but still have three seats vacant in the back - pity uber won't let this work.

Funnily, uber has no issues letting commercial drivers doing this

I guess you could ask the dude to register on Uber and seek to ride with you everyday. Then he is not your private passenger, but an "Uber authorised ride-sharer", thus allowing you to pool with more riders from Uber.

[ZMG]

Does anyone know how much will UBER be paying me for every ride I offer? Will it be a fixed cost like 5 rupee a kilometer, or will I be paid more if there is SURGE pricing.
The reason I ask this is, usually when there is SURGE, it is during the peak hours. That translates to the traffic being really messed up in Bangalore.
If I am offering a ride to someone, its okay if its on my way, but going out of route even by 1 km in bangalore is like another 30 minutes of commute (sometimes, not always)

I would like feedback from people who have already used UBER commute in Delhi.

[greenhorn]

Originally Posted by mustang_shelby

I guess you could ask the dude to register on Uber and seek to ride with you everyday. Then he is not your private passenger, but an "Uber authorised ride-sharer", thus allowing you to pool with more riders from Uber.

1 of us will have to pay the other and with uber taking its cut, we will both end up paying uber just to use their app. No thanks!

[AKTRACK]

I have been registered with Bla Bla and Orahi for the last few months. I couldn't get a single chance to carpool (both as a driver and passenger) may be because of odd travelling time. I leave around 1.30 PM from Delhi to Noida. The membership is very low right now. I think it will pick up with time. These companies are the future of mobility. Even though the mobile and internet penetration has increased so much in India, at present it is just limited to Facebook, whats app and candy crush! There are very few users of utility apps like these.

I am also registered with Uber and Uber partner. Have used Uber a couple of times and like it. Yet to use Uber Partner though.