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| Car Pooling Availability, Problems and benefits in India |
Awareness + Availability
I don't know how many times he succeeded to do so, but at least he tried. He tried to convince some people with car and without car to pool their commute. I don't know if he was doing it to help others or just collecting some data for his future project, personal project, as he moved to Singapore for MBA.
This post deals with car pool advantage, availability, uber availability and some more apps and sites which provide the option. Al last its you who should be interested in using and saving the environment for future generations. Leave your private car behind to enjoy car pooling in India.
Is it good to get car pooling in India?
Car pooling can be beneficial in ways more than that meets the eye. The question that needs to be addressed is ' Why Car Pooling?'
Well, this concept occurs in mind when we see lot of traffic on the roads.
But the advantages are..
1. Generally we see that a guy drives his car to office for various reasons like, avoiding a stressful bike ride, to avoid drenching in rain etc.. But if minimum three people travel in one car, there is a 2/3rd reduction in the number of cars on road.
2. The traffic congestion reduces drastically. And hence your travel time.
3. Because of increase in the number of vehicles, there has arisen a need for road widening. Now the best part of city roads which has trees planted on either sides. Road widening will lead to cutting of these trees. And mind you, the weather, for which your city is preferred, will be affected.
4. Pollution will be in control. And this would encourage more people who have a problem with pollution, to bring out their cycles and two wheeler to travel instead of cars.
5. When cars reduce, the demand for petrol will comparatively reduce. This will lead to reduction in cost of petrol.
6. When petrol and diesel prices reduce, inflation can be controlled since it is directly proportional.
7. When demand for petrol decreases, the amount that is spent on importing petrol will decrease. This helps in increasing the GDP of the country.
Above list is compiled by https://www.quora.com/profile/Nikhil-Madhekar-1
Common Reason people don't like to car pool
- Ego - Its my car, I can't let anyone sit in just to save some bucks. I can afford to pay fuel charges.Everybody is going in their car, why shouldn't I. Let others do it first.
- Advance planning - I need to put up details about source and destination and route I am going to take so that interested people can car pool with me.
- Trust issues - Those details are available publicly on the site where arbitrary people can search and retrieve those. Why?
- Too rigid - Most of the times, we don't just go home from office. Sometimes, there may be some grocery shopping, picking up kid from school, stopping somewhere to run some errands, etc. Not possible when you have to share someone's car.
- Personal space - someone already suggested this. I too am not comfortable sharing my car with strangers nor am I comfortable sharing someone's car.
- Payments - Though its a perfect win-win for everyone, i.e car owner, passenger, city Traffic, society, etc. we need a culture where the car owner is rewarded for the effort.
Possible solution to CarPool
Now I see many cab hailing apps to enhancing their app to accommodate car pooling option. Where car owner will have option to open up and accept co-riders request.
MERU is building its app, Uber already has this option in few cities in India like Bengaluru and from today in Delhi as well.
What will be the perfect step to use and provide car pool.
First of all there must be a location aware lightweight mobile app, which can run on 2G, network as well. There are many people who still use 2G for internet in India.
Features for Provider :
- An app to register their car.
- Set ride cost per person.
- Validated riders request only with current photograph.
- If possible riders should belong to any of the social network eg facebook, linkedin, google+, twitter etc.
- Option to withdraw earned amount or donate to well known NGO.
- Optional: option to select riders age group, working type,
Available options in various Indian cities
Airport Ride Sharing : Rideshare.co gets you a shared cab.
Facebook Car pooling Groups
Bangalore , Mumbai, Pune, Delhi
You could visit Travel With Mate | A Traveller's Companion, Everytime! and enter your frequent travel routes.
Zinghopper - Ridesharing made simple, secure & social
Contriride app for Carpooling
Hopin :- Carpool and RideShare. Hopin- Connect to people going your way, instantly. both app and website
Commute easy :- CommuteEasy : Carpool solutions for India only website
mgaadi :- Home - mGaadi - Go Places! both app and website but only to avail autos.
PoolCircle Safe ride sharing with PoolCircle - India's leading carpool network
Carpool in Bangalore - Carpooling in India,
ridingO - Simple and Dynamic Ride Sharing
Carpool by Meru connects people offering a ride with people looking for a ride.
Uber Solution to car pooling problem
Uber does provide car pooling in other countries and started the same in bengaluru on experimental basis. Today they are expanding to Delhi in the wake of ODD-EVEN logic. Uber provides fairly simple steps to register as a ride provider or customer(same as any other Uber user.)
First step: Sign up to Uber account and get first free ride worth Rs 250/-
Second Step: Read this post to know how Uber Can pool works in India.
Uber Bangalore Carpool coverage Map
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| Uber Car Pool Coverage Area |
Most important links to check next ...
See Also: How to know, if you have already applied promocode
Still not on uber: Uber India Sign up and get 1 free ride
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