Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Waze Carpool

waze.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 406 posts

Re: Waze Carpool

#341

Post by ACow_Adonis »

nerdponx wrote: post #69
pavel_lishin wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just described the pure software world solution. What happens when the commuter I pick up vomits in my car? Or steals something from my car? What happens if I get picked up by a person who changes their mind about where they're going? Or decide to take an unplanned detour to go to the store, or back home to grab the laptop they forgot, or to score some heroin? What happens when the driver gropes me? Or I grope th…

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.

Cynically, if this is true, is it possible they switched because of the sheer profitability opportunities of the taxi-industry vs car-pooling.

Looking at this, i would think that if (and I'm certainly not saying it would/will happen) car-pooling became enabled and socially popular, it presumably both has naturally thinner margins than a taxi service, plus take out significant demand for individual trips from the likes of a taxi service.

Re: Waze Carpool

#342

Post by ACow_Adonis »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #54
cornholio wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike Uber, they appear to talk about a real carsharing system, as opposed to a taxi service with a lower entry barrier. The prices will be much lower since we are talking about the marginal cost of adding another passenger to an already happening trip - and with full info on where people are going, Waze effectively has an endless supply of trips that are happening, it's just a matter of displaying a pop-up "Hey, Al…

You just described the pure software world solution. What happens when the commuter I pick up vomits in my car? Or steals something from my car? What happens if I get picked up by a person who changes their mind about where they're going? Or decide to take an unplanned detour to go to the store, or back home to grab the laptop they forgot, or to score some heroin? What happens when the driver gropes me? Or I grope th…

I'm actually kind of fascinated that an app that potentially sovles a problem via enabling a social solution is actually being phrase as a "software world solution".

More so, I'm amazed that what would previously have been deemed a "social issue" that you just have to deal with every day in dealing with other people in a car pool or society in general is now being framed as a commercial issue that needs customer support/someone to blame other than the people involved in the actual car.

Rather than being a software world solution, it seems we're heading further and further down the path where what is deemed a "solution" is the thing that tries to remove any element of social-interaction/community and places that in the context of commerical/legal interaction.

Have we really gotten to the point where its so radical to suggest that we survive without a commercial entity to blame when we car pool? And that this entity is doing something that helps us by enabling car pooling, rather than hurting us or which is responsible for what happens to us when we carpool?

Edit: I mean, the other thing about carpooling...these are people who have likely been:

a) have a verified form of identification b) commonly live and work in your own community c) will grow to commonly carpool with you

actually, there's an issue from the provider's point of view. After the initial contact and period of time...i need them in this as a third party...why exactly?

Re: Waze Carpool

#343

Post by Libturd »

tytso wrote: post #318

The really big difference between Waze Carpool and Uber/Lyft is that the driver is paid at most 54 cents a mile (e.g., gas money), and Waze will only match the driver with passengers for two trips / day. So it is not designed to be something where the driver will make a living, but really just as a way for a driver to get some company, maybe take advantage of the HOV lanes, and it gets some cars off of the road to re…

you will drive daily with complete strangers at the wheel of a giant piece of metal moving 60+ MPH?

lol.

Re: Waze Carpool

#344

Post by newaccount4434 »

valuearb wrote: post #262
pron wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same thing that happens in the non-Waze case: you kick them out, call the police, get mugged etc. It's not so simple. Normally people, at least in cities, rarely hitchhike or take up hitchhikers. The goal here is to make it acceptable, and naturally greatly increase the frequency this is happening. This can be reasonably taken as an endorsement by Google to the driver/passenger, because it is -- they want this…

You are assuming hitchhiking is unsafe. It may be less safe than other forms of transportation, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's especially unsafe. News outlets love stories about strangers abducting children because of how they draw eyeballs, but that happens to be extremely rare. But the anecdotal examples make you overestimate the risk of it. And this is safer than hitch-hiking. The vast majority of people p…

I somewhat recently learned about the propaganda from the FBI in the 60's and 70's to discourage hitchhiking. (possibly a covert assault on civil rights protesters hitching to rallies) It's easy to be scared of failure, suffering or what can go wrong... but not everyone is excited about what could go right.

Ultimately, I believe a big reason why hitchhiking is not very prevalent is that both the cost of air travel and vehicle ownership has gone down significantly over time. (adjusted for inflation)

Re: Waze Carpool

#345

Post by tejasmanohar »

_m8fo wrote: post #19

Why isn't there a service that says: 1. Hey this is my route every morning. 2. Lets you see people's routes and "join". This doesn't need to be a centralized service. People could organize things among themselves. There are carpooling sites, but it requires a critical mass to be useful.

I downloaded Waze Carpool, and it feels just like that.

Re: Waze Carpool

#346

Post by mjs7231 »

tytso wrote: post #318

The really big difference between Waze Carpool and Uber/Lyft is that the driver is paid at most 54 cents a mile (e.g., gas money), and Waze will only match the driver with passengers for two trips / day. So it is not designed to be something where the driver will make a living, but really just as a way for a driver to get some company, maybe take advantage of the HOV lanes, and it gets some cars off of the road to re…

I was interested in checking this out until you mentioned driver is paid at most $0.54 per mile. That really stinks for city travel where commute times are long and parking at the downtown destinations is expensive. There is no incentive for me to pick up a carpooler on my 30 minute 6 mile drive into the city where parking costs $26/day. In rush hour traffic, it'll easily add an extra 15-20 minutes to my commute each way to pick anyone up.

It would subsidize $6.50 of my parking but I'd end up with an extra 30-40m of driving each day. Perhaps it's better than nothing?

Re: Waze Carpool

#347

Post by jcranmer »

joncrane wrote: post #174
JacobDotVI wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Washington, DC has slug lines, which are exactly that. http://www.slug-lines.com/Slugging/About_slugging.asp

The weird thing about this is for some reason it's huge in NoVa but not so much in the Maryland suburbs. Or at least it used to be. Not sure why.

Slugging doesn't seem to really exist on a sustained basis anywhere other than NoVa. My guess is that it requires a specific set of circumstances to take off: SOV commutes need to be generally feasible (so that you have drivers), HOV lanes need to exist (so that drivers have a reason to pick up passengers), you need specific job loci (to make driver/passenger matching exist), and you need commuter buses (to provide the passengers).

The Pentagon and I-395 provide one of the most optimal conditions for slugging, with the added bonus that you have effectively direct access ramps from Springfield and the Pentagon that completely bypass the regular lanes. Since I-66 was HOV-only during the rush hour until recently, that probably retarded the existence of slugging despite HOV lanes (since the SOV backup wasn't so feasible). Similarly, the lack of HOV lanes in MD (save for 270) also retard the impetus for slugging.

Re: Waze Carpool

#348

Post by s0rce »

komali2 wrote: post #227
Retric wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read up on DC slug lines. We are talking 10,000's of people doing this daily with very minor government support for the last 15+ years. Mostly awareness and signage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slugging

>In the San Francisco Bay Area, with the third-busiest rush hour,[3] casual carpooling occurs on Interstate 80 between the East Bay and San Francisco. As of 1998, 8,000 to 9,000 people slugged in San Francisco daily.[5] However, after bridge tolls were levied on carpool vehicles in 2010 , casual carpooling saw a significant decline and etiquette became more uncertain Woah boy I have racked up so many toll violations,…

Smaller toll but still a toll. Do you not have a fastrak. I can't understand how anyone in the bay area who drives doesn't have a fastrak it saves so much time. You don't even need to keep it with you just register the license plate with the website.

Re: Waze Carpool

#350

Post by halflings »

ansible wrote: post #239
Retric wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read up on DC slug lines. We are talking 10,000's of people doing this daily with very minor government support for the last 15+ years. Mostly awareness and signage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slugging

I was reading an article about 10 years ago about this ride-sharing in the DC metro area. We discussed how a smartphone app could make all this much easier and smoother. We didn't follow up on it back then... It wasn't (and won't likely to be) the only big missed opportunity in my life.

Survivorship bias makes us forget about the other dozens of "taxi/carpooling apps" that did not succeed.

"The Upstarts" [0] talks about some of those.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Upstarts-Airbnb-Companies-Silicon-Cha...

Post reply on HN