I use this in LA, its great because there is no bus that travels along my commute. I hope this will see an influx of users, sometimes it's still hard to find a ride
Waze Carpool
241–250 of 406 posts
Re: Waze Carpool
#242Folks from Silicon Valley should ask VCs to sponsor them trip to Europe, where what they are essentially to solve is addressed. It's called public transportation.
Tech companies can't unilaterally create public transportation.
Re: Waze Carpool
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's fine for things to be subsidized and taxes collected so that a way of life is more attainable, that's how societies work. In all likelihood I'm subsidizing the people around here who use NJ transit in place of driving - I hardly have my car on for more than 10 minutes a day and it's around 30mpg. It's just part of a larger give-and-take that we all participate in, I pay for trains I don't use today and they pay…
It's not okay to subsidize things in general, and especially things with massive negative externalities (like cars), when the person using that subsidy can easily afford it. And let's face it, the middle class can easily afford $8/gallon. Nobody wants to pay that, but they can afford it. As a proof that people can afford it, we have dozens of first world counties with strong middle classes that correctly price their…
Replying to the lowest level comment because this is the one where you call it out specifically.
These subsidies aren't driven by an outcry from the population, they're driven by groups of companies lobbying the government. Car companies would almost certainly lobby against reducing gas subsidies - it would cause people to reconsider buying a car.
Lobbyists will also be on the lookout for services like waze carpool because it has the potential to cut in on their business (transit and taxis).
Re: Waze Carpool
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Honestly, I have no idea why people still use it when Google Maps has an infinitely better interface and no ads. In some areas it has much better traffic routing. All it takes is getting alerted to one big jam ahead of time and you'll use it every commute.
Yep. Based on my experience: Waze takes side roads to give you the chronologically shortest route, Google Maps takes the most direct route.
Re: Waze Carpool
#245I live in Israel in a city called Modiin and use public transportion to visit client offices out of town.
The public transportation by train to Tel Aviv, Hertzelia and Haifa is great, but anything else is somewhere between terrible and nonexistent. In the past year I use Waze Carpool and Moovit ( https://www.moovitapp.com/ , both developed and beta tested/dog-fooded in Israel) to get to those "unreachable" destinations at random schedules. A few times the results have been amazingly positive - being able to carpool with someone that lives just next to me and by chance needs to arrive exactly to my destination at the same time - and for the fraction of the price or the hassle of any other transportation method!
In fact - two of these drivers told me their family have gone down from two cars to a single car since using Waze Carpool, Moovit and public transportation to commute on a daily basis - a surprising statement from people living in a suburb such as Modiin. Once I was carpooled by a driver that responded to my request within 5 minutes and spent at least extra 25 minutes just to pick me up from a random spot in Jeruslaem for a 35 minute journey leaving me at my doorstep - saving me at least an hour, and probably for less than I would have paid for a bus.
Re: Waze Carpool
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not okay to subsidize things in general, and especially things with massive negative externalities (like cars), when the person using that subsidy can easily afford it. And let's face it, the middle class can easily afford $8/gallon. Nobody wants to pay that, but they can afford it. As a proof that people can afford it, we have dozens of first world counties with strong middle classes that correctly price their…
Replying to the lowest level comment because this is the one where you call it out specifically. These subsidies aren't driven by an outcry from the population, they're driven by groups of companies lobbying the government. Car companies would almost certainly lobby against reducing gas subsidies - it would cause people to reconsider buying a car. Lobbyists will also be on the lookout for services like waze carpool b…
I prefer a society with car subsidies and the freedom it brings to one with the alleged externalities more compensated for where people are priced into having to settle for transit. Freedom isn't free, as they say. More investment in infrastructure for electric vehicles, like charging stations, and incentives to use them (like NJ already does with waived inspections for example) are a fine compromise.
Additionally, with such taxes on car use, I'm sure a lot of people would just go places less and thus participate in the economy less, rather than take transit. A direct comparison to another country with prohibitive gas taxes isn't perfectly predictive of what would happen here because of cultural and infrastructural differences.
Re: Waze Carpool
#247The 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 o…
Oh man, wait 'til ya get over to Seoul/HK/Tokyo/. In Seoul particularly (maybe others, I only lived here), the government has opened hundreds to thousands of public APIs (e.g. transit; bus/subway current locations, timetables, routes, etc) for public consumption and there's now a ton of different apps to serve different needs and you're free to build your own if none suit you. Even nicer is that they've centralized all of it so you can sign up and manage access to all these APIs via a single platform.
For the interested: http://data.seoul.go.kr/
Re: Waze Carpool
#248The reason why I would not consider Google to legitimately compete with Uber/Lyft at scale in this arena is because it's not part of their nature to staff customer support at the level required to run operationally-intensive businesses. The rate in which something goes wrong in the real world (esp where money in exchanged) is much higher than in a pure software world, and Google is going to try to take the FAQ/chatbo…
Their Google Suite customer service is great, tried it multiple times and they immediately helped me and solved my problems. As far as I know their support is only good if you are actually paying for something.
Re: Waze Carpool
#249I live in Israel in a city called Modiin and use public transportion to visit client offices out of town. The public transportation by train to Tel Aviv, Hertzelia and Haifa is great, but anything else is somewhere between terrible and nonexistent. In the past year I use Waze Carpool and Moovit ( https://www.moovitapp.com/ , both developed and beta tested/dog-fooded in Israel) to get to those "unreachable" destinatio…
However: The app suffers from various minor glitches. For example: Whe I installed the app I have selected "Home" and "Work" addresses, having one of my client's offices as "Work". Since then I keep getting daily notification with suggestions for riding back and forth to my "Office" although I do not commute there daily. The app does not include any option to control those notifications or disable the "Work" address. Customer support did respond quickly to my problem, but did not supply a good solution.
Re: Waze Carpool
#250The 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.
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.
You are literally describing Chariot. Everything except for the sleek black color.