Ridesharing - What's the Hangup?

For most people, it’s a given that ridesharing is a proven way to reduce gasoline usage and traffic congestion; a fact that’s borne out by the fact that in California, statewide car pool lanes carry an average of 2,518 people an hour. That’s more than 20,000 people a day, including vanpools and buses.

That is a lot of people – more than twice the number who ride in the congested lanes during those hours – yet, it’s a small number when compared to the probable number of cars and drivers on the road every day – in the U.S., there are over 200 million personal use vehicles. And car occupancy rates have fallen from around 1.64 to about 1.58. With “transportation accounting for nearly 60% of all anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels in California,” we can expect air quality and the overall health of the environment to suffer accordingly.

So, if we know that ridesharing reduces carbon emissions and alleviates traffic congestion, why aren’t more people doing it?

Cost Sharing

As long as they’re sharing their car, many people would like to share the cost of driving it, but they’re not sure how to calculate that cost fairly. Most ridesharing services assume trip partners will work it out amongst themselves, but many drivers figure it’s too much trouble. It also means that cash has to be exchanged, making the sharing of trips less safe and more awkward.

Personality

This is an issue that’s defined by questions such as “what if they talk too much/too little, hate my music, smoke or hate smoking?” and others; questions that can be distilled into one – what if we’re not compatible?

Security

This is a big issue – in a choice between offering a ride somewhere or accepting one and taking a chance on sharing space with a felon versus driving alone, most people would rather drive alone. But many people would rideshare if they were confident that those they share time with on the road were safe to be with.

Addressing these issues isn’t easy, so most ridesharing services are limited to work commutes for people at the same company – usually large companies or the government – or left to the discretion of the potential driver or passenger.

ZoomPool was created as a solution to the challenge of resolving these barriers to modern ridesharing, both for one-time trips as well as for regular commutes. It’s not Internet hitchhiking anymore – it’s more like eHarmony in the carpool lane. It's our belief that ridesharing can be safer, less of a chore to manage, and more fun as well.

And from the numbers of those ridesharing compared to the number of those who could be doing it, it’s clear that ZoomPool's solution is both timely and needed if we’re going to make more significant increase in ridesharing and in improving the overall health of the planet.