Well, there are over 130 million commuters in the US alone making 2 trips per day, the vast majority driving. Quite possibly one of the largest segments in all of global commerce. But you think it's small?
It will be, but it is appealing to a large casual set of the market, and it could reduce congestion significantly in a city if it gets enough traction.
Can't up-vote this one enough; worked at a startup for a while tackling all sorts of traffic related stuff with proprietary IP, industry veterans & more. Suffice to say that there are tons of papers out there which clearly say taking N% of the number of cars off the road reduces congestion by Y% - a very much larger impact than the number of cars taken off.
This is because traffic, in general, is really caused by a small number of cars. It seems like it's everywhere but the root cause (there was a paper even on HN that talked about it) is that people can't follow each other at an even speed. This uneven speed then results in more braking, more backup, etc. A few cars in the lead who don't accelerate properly can have a disproportionately negative impact on traffic flow and average speed.
It's the same problem with queues - the people at the front don't have as much incentive to move quickly, since they're already at the front of the queue.
Probably the only way to really solve it is autonomous cars.
Let's imagine it is a small market and has very minimal impact (which I would disagree with), it is still showing that lyft is trying to build a better product/infrastructure to taxis, not just a comparable alternative. Ie it doesn't matter how much taxis up their game with mobile apps, seamless payments, etc - they still won't offer this type of solution.
I'm not so sure. Business and recreational travel, which I'm guessing is most of Lyft/Uber's business, accounts for a very small portion of all travel. This however, attempts to unlock business in all point-to-point travel... which is monstrous.
I would certainly join if the network effects were similar to that of Facebook and hitching a ride was a simple affair.
The market for casual rides seems to be heavily biased towards rides to/fro airport (I have nothing but personal observation to back this up though), so nothing wrong with going after meaty segments.
I was in SF a few weeks ago and was shocked by how cheap and effective Lyft Line is - it ended up being comparably priced to public transportation in terms of getting around the city. (A tad more expensive, yes, but not an order of magnitude more, as I would have expected).
I've already heard of people using Lyft Line in this way (making money on the way to work), and I imagine that many more people now will, since it's officially supported.
Think about how many people already carpool. Now think about how many people don't carpool, simply because of the hassles of coordinating transportation with another person. Lyft Line addresses that burden.
I used to carpool on my morning commute with about four people, and it was awful trying to coordinate times, or remember who wasn't going to be joining us today because they had to go in early, or who was running late... all sorts of headaches. Because Lyft Line is on-demand, drivers don't have to worry about most of that. The downside is that you don't get the benefit of carpooling with the same people every day, but not everyone would mind that - and in any case, this feature seems aimed at ad-hoc trips (like running errands), not just regular commutes.
Hmm, this makes me wonder if there's room in the market for an app specifically targeted towards people who want to find carpool partners and coordinate schedules among carpool groups.
Lyft seems to be oriented around passengers and vehicles being commodities. This is probably the best move for general taxi service, but work carpoolers may want to either form their own group among friends, or try a couple of groups and stick with one that works for them. Maybe there's value in focusing on helping pre-existing groups coordinate schedules, with finding new groups being more of an afterthought, rather than an implied expectation of a new, anonymous driver and passenger every day.