Waze made its first step into transitioning from a map based app into something more, a mobility company, by opening up its Waze Carpool app from BETA testing.
How many times have you been commuting to work, school, or just driving home and noticed so many empty seats in cars driven by single drivers. Waze is working on solving that problem by connecting people who already share similar routes driven at around just the same time and allowing them to earn a bit of cash along the way. In a blog post that went live earlier today (Oct. 10, 2018) they’re opening up that specific carpool section of their app to the millions already using Waze and to anyone who wants to get in on this “social experiment” of sorts, android and apple supported.
The Verge does a good job explaining in a little more depth how it all works but basically don’t think of Waze Carpooling as Uber and Lyft. Whereas those two aforementioned ride-share apps are very much profit driven by the drivers and demand, Waze Carpooling, as the carpool concept goes, allows commuters to sync schedules with one another and matches people with almost the same if not the same commute. To stem the profit-making scheme at the bud, Waze limits Carpool users to (2) drives or rides a day, so ideally this is your commute to and from work/school/etc.
http://gty.im/1010007880
If you think of a hypothetical city dominated by one industry, much like some Detroit cities are (insert one of the big 3 car makers) you’re going to have people in your vicinity who also work where you work and have a similar 9-5 schedule. Instead of going around, asking by word of mouth if you know anyone who you can carpool with, HR can start a program where employees download Waze and everyone can sync up schedules through Waze Carpool. It takes the guesswork and business of manually syncing schedules out of the equation, Waze acting as a third party.
Replace work with school, college, or some regularly scheduled activity and the same principle applies, you’re going to have people who live around you going to the same place. Waze Carpooling incentives drivers and frees up anyone who’d rather not drive.
Personally, I think this will be a big hit for colleges. With enough people signing up and on the app, there’s a good chance that someone is going to have a similar schedule to you on a good number of days in the week. For carpoolers they don’t have to buy a permit and drivers who need a car can subsidize the cost of a permit through Waze Carpool. And there’s literally nothing the University can do about it.
More importantly, unlike Uber and Lyft, there are no extra cars being added to city streets, it’s using the cars already out there.
Finally, there are few apps out there connecting people in platonic ways. This is a great way to meet people and connect with humans in a real way. In a world that’s supposedly more connected, this is a great way to actually…connect.
I hope Waze Carpool takes off and becomes a thing in workplaces and education, it’s a real middle finger to established forms of getting to work or school.
Source: Waze Carpool
