Lyft Carpool: A New Way to Commute

No driver background checks or vehicle inspections, per the TOS [0]:<p>&quot;The Carpool Platform is operated by Clara Rides, Inc., not Lyft, Inc. Clara Rides, Inc. is not a Transportation Network Company or a transportation service. Clara Rides and Lyft do not conduct criminal background checks on Carpool Drivers, perform vehicle inspections on vehicles used for Carpool Rides, or provide insurance for Carpool Rides.&quot;<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lyft.com&#x2F;carpool&#x2F;terms" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lyft.com&#x2F;carpool&#x2F;terms</a>

A few notes on items I find a bit strange here.<p>1. To get from the East Bay to SF in the carpool lane you need 2 passengers (3 people total - or a car that only seats two)<p>2. The East Bay already has a pretty nice system for this called the Casual Carpool which is probably its biggest competition. The Casual Carpool is just a bunch of spots (usually BART Stations) where drivers can stop and pick up a few other passengers to get in the carpool lane across the bridge and <i>usually</i> the passengers chip in a few bucks for the toll. This system is pretty good and works well considering the need for 3 folks in the car to get carpool lane access. The Lyft model is a lot harder to coordinate picking up 3. The biggest issues with Casual Carpool are that there&#x27;s no revenue for the driver and it&#x27;s mostly one way (inbound in the morning). The eastbound after work system is not as efficient, there&#x27;s a common pickup area downtown with stops indicating destinations but it can be hit or miss on whether passengers are there when you&#x27;re ready to go home.<p>Long and short of it I think this is a Peninsula solution not really an East Bay to SF one yet.

Neat that a &quot;ridesharing&quot; company is finally helping people actually share rides.<p>I imagine something like this would be a lot easier for municipal governments to swallow, compared to the current &quot;not a cab but yes it&#x27;s actually a cab&quot; model.

We&#x27;ve been doing this in Vancouver, Canada for 5 weeks now (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;sparerides.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;sparerides.com</a>). It is great to see another player doing true ridesharing. Lyft actually started with a business model similar to this (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;zimride.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;zimride.com</a>) but saw much greater growth with the taxi model so rebranded and pushed that instead.<p>While HOV lanes are a large incentive for drivers, we have seen that many of our drivers here in Vancouver are looking to either cover the cost of parking and driving, or meet new people. These solutions generally work best in dense metro areas with relatively good public transit (I.E you have to be able to get home, if you can&#x27;t find a carpool home).<p>Also interesting, Uber is not allowed to operate under the existing Vancouver taxi regulation. Because carpooling does not provide an income to the driver, the car is not considered a vehicle-for-hire, making systems like Lyft carpool and Spare Rides legal in Vancouver and I&#x27;m guessing many other cities that have pushed Uber out. This is a really good way for Lyft to grab those markets before the regulation changes.

It is good to see Lyft moving towards a more civic minded direction in their business model. A lot of &quot;disruption&quot; talk is simply code for deregulation.

I&#x27;m the CPO and Co-Founder of Scoop automated carpooling - www.takescoop.com. I wanted to jump in with a few thoughts.<p>It&#x27;s exciting to see one of the ridesharing&#x2F;ride-hailing companies focus their attention on where the pain is still high - the commute. 100M Americans still wake up everyday, grab their keys, and get in their car to drive to work. On average, that drive lasts at least 25 minutes.<p>The negative impact of driving alone is enormous - congestion in our communities, $250B out of our pockets every year, and a huge toll on the environment. Autonomous vehicles, hyperloops, or whatever the future has in store might change this - but not for a while.<p>So, carpooling is obviously something I&#x27;ve spent a lot of time thinking about - and I think Lyft is doing some smart things here. I like the Rider scheduling buckets. We do something similar with Scoop - every trip is scheduled with &quot;time slots&quot; that help align Rider and Drivers&#x27; schedules.<p>And of course, Lyft&#x27;s availability around the Bay Area is nice. For Scoop, we really focus on partnering with employers and 511 (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;carpool.511.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;carpool.511.org&#x2F;</a>) to strategically open &quot;routes&quot; into different Bay Area cities. We do this carefully, to ensure that commuters can really rely on their local Scoop community for a carpool every single day.<p>There are also some important ways that carpooling is really different from ride-hailing, and it&#x27;ll be interesting to see how Lyft, Uber, etc. address that. For example, who you go with really matters. 45 minutes in a car isn&#x27;t the same as 10. How you get home really matters too. In the case of no carpool, a regular Lyft or Uber with surge-pricing will make for an unhappy commuter.<p>Our team of 13 works really hard every day to try to take cars off the road, and are excited by anyone who wants to try to do that too. To that end, we just opened up our newest route today to tackle congestion in a new community. Starting today, you can schedule commute trips with Scoop into Palo Alto. All trips to Palo Alto are just $1 - sponsored by the Palo Alto TMA and Stanford Research Park. And we&#x27;re excited to have great partners like the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce and companies like Tesla, Palantir and HP.<p>PS: If you do want to try to help, we&#x27;re hiring! Email us at jobs@takescoop.com or visit <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;angel.co&#x2F;takescoop&#x2F;jobs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;angel.co&#x2F;takescoop&#x2F;jobs</a>.

I wonder what this will do the the already established causal carpool for crossing the bay bridge. At the moment, it&#x27;s free for riders, the benefit for the driver being that they skip the toll.<p>On the upside, I had a friend who was a rider, and had lots of stories of terrible drivers. Once he witnessed the driver hit a person and then drive off, and then drop off my friend. My friend called the police, but I guess with Lyft carpool this type of thing wouldn&#x27;t happen, or at least not as often?

I can see drivers&#x2F;passengers travelling together for weeks or months at a time. So you&#x27;d probably just want to quit Lyft and enter a private arrangement. Is there anything in Lyft&#x27;s business model to prevent or mitigate this?

interesting. didn&#x27;t lyft start off as zimride which is a carpool app?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;zimride.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;zimride.com&#x2F;</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;08&#x2F;29&#x2F;6000-words-about-a-pink-mustache&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;08&#x2F;29&#x2F;6000-words-about-a-pink-mus...</a>

I&#x27;d probably be willing to do this if they gave me insurance, tied it to the regular Lyft rating system (and maybe let me set a threshold of 4.5 rider score or something?) and if the Bay Bridge were a HOV-2 v. HOV-3.<p>I don&#x27;t do Casual Carpool right now because of 1) insurance 2) not knowing who the passengers are 3) not really knowing how to do it.<p>I hope Lyft will tweak this to work better for my use case. Otherwise, it will probably be a US-101 solution only.

How do they handle commutes back? With carpooling to work, that is always my biggest concern - will I be able to get a ride back.

Google&#x2F;Waze is trying something similar <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;cars&#x2F;2015&#x2F;07&#x2F;google-owned-waze-launches-ridewith-carpooling-app-on-android&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;cars&#x2F;2015&#x2F;07&#x2F;google-owned-waze-launch...</a>

Curious if this allows for picking up two passengers so that one can use the carpool lane in areas that require 3 passengers (notably, the Bay Bridge). If not, most of the value for both parties is drastically diminished.

It seems the natural progression of this service is not paying each other $5-$10 for a ride, but some sort of service that allowed getting and giving credits for sharing rides.<p>Most of us in the bay area have cars (because public transportation is stinking horrible). I want more to lessen my burden on the environment&#x2F;save money on gas by sharing the road. A more natural pair would be to easily find people who share my commute and then rotate rides.

Since this is limited to one passenger only, would this allow for drivers that have two-door cars? I&#x27;d love to use this all the time if that&#x27;s the case :)

Sounds really interesting but will it be available for 2 doors cars (like a mustang)?

I wonder what the ettiquite is when sharing a ride like this? On a bus or in a cab there is no pressure to make conversation with the other passenger&#x2F;driver, although sometimes they may be chatty. In this situation I&#x27;d feel pressure to make conversation with the driver, but what if I want to just read? Would that be rude?<p>If I found a good driver I would just deal directly with them because (a) I know they share my route and (b) I don&#x27;t need to get to know them again each time I commute. That would be money off the table for Lyft though.<p>But I would not use the service because I have kids to drop off and also I may not finish at the same time every day.

This was essentially Lyft&#x27;s first idea right? I believe it was called Zimride?

Hey Lyft: I have a truck (in addition to my fuel and earth friendly bike). However, I know a lot of people need help getting stuff home from home depot, babiesrus, best buy, etc. How about a summon a truck option?

Interesting. This new service from Lyft has some similarities to the ride-sharing service of French startup company Bla Bla Car. The French company is doing well in European countries but hasn&#x27;t launched in the US.

I expected a feature similar to UberPool but having the limitations on this being your daily commute is very cool. Encourages a different set of drivers and seems friendlier.

Really would love this in Orange County, CA. I think it would work very well in SoCal where there isn&#x27;t a lot of transit but many routes are fairly deterministic.

Someone on HN tried to make a similar service in Africa (I can&#x27;t remember who you are, sorry!) and found that eventually the commuters just worked together to commute and cut out the middle-person.<p>$10 per ride is really not a lot of incentive to drive an hour to the city with company that you don&#x27;t want, who may not want to listen to your music&#x2F;podcast, or smell your farts, or listen to you sing along to Rebecca Black.

How does Lyft expect to maintain a financial middleman relationship in a carpool relationship? What incentive does a commuter have to keep paying Lyft?

I wanted to join their previous Line effort, but re-read my insurance policy and found it falls under prohibited commercial driving. The terms now encompass any participation in online ride-coordinating services. Government needs to step in because individually the insurers have no incentive to allow this.

I don&#x27;t drive or live in the bay area. What sort of typical time savings does the carpool lane give you?

10USD from San Jose to SF?! AWESOME

Lyft are spending time and money on things like this (it looks great to be fair) but they can&#x27;t be bothered to compete with Uber in markets outside of the US.<p>Seems a bit of a shame really...

Very similar to wunder&#x27;s current model. (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wunder.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wunder.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;</a>)

alt eu <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.blablacar.co.uk&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.blablacar.co.uk&#x2F;</a>

Any idea if commuter benefits are eligible for this? If so, this sounds better than my Caltrain ride.

This would be better if you could ride with the same people or persons on a regular basis.<p>Maybe at reduced lyft fees.

I wonder if people will take this to the airport with airport employees.

Just tried to sign up but apparently my route isn&#x27;t ready yet.

at a cost of $4-10 per ride (I read correctly I hope) does it make financial sense for commuters in bay area?

Awesome! Congratulations on the launch!

this service is complete shit. my trip to SFO from Golden Gate Park was 2.5x the amount of time it could have been, and I saved 7% on my final bill.<p>lyft is bleeding is dry with this new service, i highly recommend against it.

I totally would have used this last year when commuting from SF to Menlo Park. It&#x27;s too bad I sold my car and quit my job, would have been fun to meet some cool people and make some extra money at the same time.

I liked this when Uber did it last September. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;newsroom.uber.com&#x2F;ubercommute&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;newsroom.uber.com&#x2F;ubercommute&#x2F;</a> it&#x27;s great to see Lyft picking up from a great idea.