If all goes well, Bay Area residents may soon have access to yet another means of avoiding public transit. Waze, the traffic and navigation app owned by Google, is the latest company to throw its hat into the ride-hailing ring with a new carpooling service that's currently being tested in the San Francisco area. Waze Carpool follows in the footsteps of a whole slew of copycat car services, including Boston's Fasten and Via in New York and Chicago.
Waze's new venture resembles its predecessors Uber and Lyft in almost all taxi-alternative respects — with a few key differences. Users will only pay for the gas cost of their ride, meaning drivers won't turn the same profit (or, presumably, develop the same grievances) as they would at the two pioneer companies. And as its name indicates, Waze's ride-hailing service is designed specifically for carpooling and automatically groups passengers to share rides based on location.
The service is geared toward decreasing traffic in San Francisco's notoriously congested metro area — which is perhaps unsurprising, given Waze is first and foremost a maps and traffic app — so carpooling will only be offered during morning and evening rush hours. That means Waze is, at least at first, forfeiting an entire demographic of lost, drunk, 3 a.m. customers.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Waze Carpool is currently operating on an invite-only basis — so just remember, public transportation still exists.
-
Turner: The Secret Sketchbooks – a fascinating portrait of the great painterThe Week Recommends BBC2 documentary examines the rarely seen sketchbooks of the enigmatic artist
-
The controversial Free Birth SocietyThe Explainer Influencers are encouraging pregnant women to give birth without midwife care – at potentially tragic cost
-
Wes Anderson: The Archives – ‘quirkfest’ celebrates the director’s ‘impeccable craft’The Week Recommends Retrospective at the Design Museum showcases 700 props, costumes and set designs from the filmmaker’s three-decade career
-
Nobody seems surprised Wagner's Prigozhin died under suspicious circumstancesSpeed Read
-
Western mountain climbers allegedly left Pakistani porter to die on K2Speed Read
-
'Circular saw blades' divide controversial Rio Grande buoys installed by Texas governorSpeed Read
-
Los Angeles city workers stage 1-day walkout over labor conditionsSpeed Read
-
Mega Millions jackpot climbs to an estimated $1.55 billionSpeed Read
-
Bangladesh dealing with worst dengue fever outbreak on recordSpeed Read
-
Glacial outburst flooding in Juneau destroys homesSpeed Read
-
Scotland seeking 'monster hunters' to search for fabled Loch Ness creatureSpeed Read
