In short: Waze announced today that it’s Carpool service is going to be expanding nationwide starting today. This comes after the company had been testing this experimental service for about two years. The idea behind this is to get more cars off of the street, as it is pairing people up that are headed in the same direction. So it’s a bit like Uber and Lyft, but not quite, because you are carpooling with the person, hence the name “Waze Carpool”. This is not a money making service, so this won’t be another side-hustle that you can do. Riders are charged a maximum of 54-cents per mile, so it is actually going to be pretty cheap. Riders and drivers are also limited to two rides per day (essentially, to and from work). Both riders and drivers can also specify if they want to be partnered up with people that are coworkers or of the same gender, to make things easier.
Background: Waze initially started Carpool back in 2016 in the Bay Area – an area that was in desperate need of something like this, seeing as there were a ton of people going to the same office buildings, but only one person in each car, causing a ton of traffic. Since then, it has expanded to about five different areas, including Waze’s home of Israel. It has garnered quite a bit of praise, which is why it is now available nationwide.
Impact: There is a network of over 100 million people using Waze, so Google and Waze are both betting big that it can help get more cars off of the street and relieve traffic congestion in big cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City and Chicago. Of course, Waze will need to do some promotions to get people to actually use Waze Carpool, but it shouldn’t be too hard. Considering the driver wouldn’t really be spending much more money, or going to far out of the way to pick up or drop off the rider. And that is the whole point of Waze Carpool.