And a whole lot cheaper than light rail

Waze's carpooling app starts to take off, suggesting (along with Uber, Lyft, scooters and bikes) that free market, ride-sharing transit solutions can have big impact at a fraction of the cost of big, failing government mass transit solutions.  Andrew Hawkins at The Verge explains:

"A year ago, navigation app Waze made a risky bet on carpooling, a type of commuting that has waned since its heyday in the 1970s. It launched Waze Carpool, a dedicated app that lets nonprofessional drivers offer rides to people who are traveling on a similar route for a nominal fee. 

"Waze says carpool customers completed more than 550,000 rides globally last September. (Waze Carpool is available in the US, Mexico, Brazil, and Israel.) The company predicts that it will cross 1 million monthly rides by early 2020. Carpool customers in the US collectively drove 25 million miles last year, which the company estimates helped reduce carbon emissions by 20 million pounds, thanks to combined rides. 

“We have what we think is a magic number,” Josh Fried, head of Waze Carpool, said in an interview. “And that is four rides... If we get you into one carpool, and then you end up completing four carpools, you stick [with the service].” 

"Waze defines a carpool as one driver plus one rider, though earlier this summer, the company updated the app to let drivers pick up more than one passenger at a time for a maximum of four riders. Drivers are paired with riders with nearly identical commutes based on home and work addresses. And drivers and riders are limited to two rides per day. This is not a money-making service; rather, it’s an attempt by Waze to test the waters in the growing ride-sharing market.

"Carpooling has been on the decline over the last several decades. In the 1970s, in the midst of a gas crisis, around 20 percent of Americans shared rides on the way to work; now, that number is around 7 percent. 

"Carpooling is just one mode of transportation, and increasingly, there is a highly competitive race among big tech firms to transform their respective apps into one-stop shops for all modes of transportation. Uber just launched a major redesign with the goal to become an “operating system” for cities.

Read the whole thing here.