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by chimeracoder 4227 days ago
I don't think this is a small market at all.

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.

1 comments

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.
What advantage would this app offer over the Lyft app?
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.