Is this something new? Or is it old news? If nothing has changed, it's unusable for much of the United States. I live in rural Oregon, and it could be a helpful service. Last I checked, it was restricted and not available.
Waze Carpool
121–130 of 406 posts
Re: Waze Carpool
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe cities should start running a "luxury service" tier along the bus lines that charges 3x the fare, has cushioned seats, etc. Need a smart phone to request a stop. Make it once an hour or so and a sleek black and silver exclusive color. Don't even call it a bus, rebrand it as the stress-free shuttle and get a few celebrities to be "spotted" on them. You may laugh but this would probably be a hit.
I'd pay at least 2x the Muni fare if they would guarantee I wouldn't be mugged or spat on by a mentally disturbed homeless person.
[deleted]
Re: Waze Carpool
#123The number of private tech companies that reinvent the BUS and think they're geniuses is staggering. But god forbid we just fund public transportation. We wouldn't want poor people using our service.
A few month ago I would have read your comment and thought that bus can't really compete for the fine grained point to point transportation.
Then I went to Sydney in December. The public transportation system there is super impressive. You have a location-based app where you can tell you want to go from point A to point B (from an address, a click on the map, your favorites), it will instantly provide you with many options, with time, duration and price, showing you where to take it from.
It seems there are buses every 5 minutes. During the route the app will buzz you 2 and 1 stop before your actual stop. Oh, and the bus card allow you to take the light train and the ferry. You can also check your credits directly in the app, even recharge it I think.
It changed my perspective on how to use public transportation. In Los Angeles for example I would check which bus/train I should take, download the timetable to see the frequency and where to stop. In Sydney, I got confident in a way that I would just stop caring about planning first. Just open the app and it'll tell you how to go where you want to go.
Re: Waze Carpool
#124The number of private tech companies that reinvent the BUS and think they're geniuses is staggering. But god forbid we just fund public transportation. We wouldn't want poor people using our service.
A lot of places do not have a competent public transportation system or one at all. Public transportation also doesn't satisfy everyone's needs the same way ridesharing does (access to stops, time in transit, etc.). Even though ridesharing competes with public transpo, it does not eliminate it's need.
Re: Waze Carpool
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you put it that way, I start to think Amazon should get into this business. I'm sure everyone has one bad customer experience incident with them, yes, but overall they're one of the highest rated for customer experience. Then Amazon would say "Hey, while you're on your way there, mind taking a few packages with you?"
Now that I think about it, Amazon would be perfect to do it. I can't remember the last Amazon package I got that wasn't on of their contract, on-demand drivers. Amazon already gives them packages and the optimal route to take and a pretty good estimate of how long that'll take the driver. They could use that and have the driver pick up/drop off people along their route and know a pretty good time frame the driver wou…
Optimal route or optimized route? I was under the impression that calculating an optimal route was NP-Hard and not feasible to do at scale.
Re: Waze Carpool
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly how Uber turned into a taxi service. They tried ridesharing, it turns out that people in cars do sketchy things and piss each other off, or worse. I would rather see local grassroots organizations take on this project.
Lyft started as an offshoot of Zimride[0], a long-distance ridesharing platform. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimride
Similar to BlahBlahCar? Seems to be very popular in Europe.
Re: Waze Carpool
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same thing that happens in the non-Waze case: you kick them out, call the police, get mugged etc. The pure software world exists from Google's perspective, they provide zero support and then it's just a matter of individual choice if you want to use the service or not. Google can go a long way into making this significantly safer than random pick-up: you can select female only drivers or riders, only riders from…
> The same thing that happens in the non-Waze case: you kick them out, call the police, get mugged etc. So how do you keep the bad drivers/passengers from using the app again?
This should be taken care of once we start implementing a people rating system similar to the one seen in Black Mirror's Nosedive:
Re: Waze Carpool
#128I was in Israel last year and they just love Waze. Everything is Waze this and Waze that. They have an absolute belief in Waze as a brand. Most have no idea it is owned by Google, nor seemed very interested when I mentioned it. So I'd say if they can get this working anywhere, it will be in a traffic-riddled country full of people who obsess over journey times and who absolutely love this brand.
Can confirm. Just like "Kleenex" in some places, Waze has become the generic term for GPS Navigation here in Israel. Honestly, I have no idea why people still use it when Google Maps has an infinitely better interface and no ads.
In addition to the routing being better in Waze as others have commented, Waze gives you a heads up on potholes, speed traps, red light cameras, etc. I don't believe those features exist in Google Maps.
Re: Waze Carpool
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe cities should start running a "luxury service" tier along the bus lines that charges 3x the fare, has cushioned seats, etc. Need a smart phone to request a stop. Make it once an hour or so and a sleek black and silver exclusive color. Don't even call it a bus, rebrand it as the stress-free shuttle and get a few celebrities to be "spotted" on them. You may laugh but this would probably be a hit.
I'd pay at least 2x the Muni fare if they would guarantee I wouldn't be mugged or spat on by a mentally disturbed homeless person.
If the bus was just built with a compartment for just you instead of everyone clumped together, I would pay a lot more.
Re: Waze Carpool
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any references to stories/articles about their ride sharing efforts? Was it prior to their incorporation as UberCab or an experiment from further along?
No links but I'm pretty sure they started off as actual ride-sharing, as in an app to help people car-pool. I'm assuming there was an "a-ha" moment when they realised the laws protecting state-authorized taxi services could be circumvented if you hailed the taxi via a phone app rather than by flagging them down.
Uber started as a better car service and had little to do with ride sharing. Go read their pitch deck. https://techcrunch.com/gallery/here-is-ubers-first-pitch-dec...