I think social factors for car pooling are far bigger than route planning.

To be honest, I wouldn't trust an algorithm to decide with whom I ride. I would like to see a few people that match my schedule and route, and then individually inspect their profiles and make contact to arrange the trip details.

What would you expect from a service that matches people into car-pools?

The problem here is that it still leaves drivers with all the overhead. While it's good that they're making all the profit generated, the scalability and reliability aren't great because of that.

Taxis are a business that particularly benefits from at least minor consolidation. A company with a decent reputation and a handful of cars is likely to have connections with local businesses to get the word out, and they're also able to absorb vehicle wear and damage while still turning a profit.

If my cab breaks down it gets towed, I grab another cab, and we keep making money. If my own vehicle breaks down doing rideshares, suddenly I have no transportation and no means of income until it's fixed.

On the customer end, cabs are also a lot safer. You're riding with someone who's been vetted, who has a decent driving record and who can pass a background check. They've also potentially got a lot more time on the road than someone who's starting to drive for Uber and hasn't run into the logistics issues yet. Never mind that they're probably local and familiar with the area, whereas every single Uber I see around here has out of state plates.

Actual ride sharing, like, independent people using things like bulletin boards to both get to work together at a mutual benefit, is a fantastic practice. But when you try to make it some big service you basically get a half assed replacement for taxis that shift the financial burden onto drivers and cut prices as a result.

I personally like the way Indrive operates in relation to setting up prices and fees. You can agree on a price with the drivers, like you offer 5$ and they give you they're offers in return 6 or 7$ and you agree with the price, what i dont like in fact is the usage of google location services (google services) and that it is propietary

You could basically give drivers 100% of the profits minus hosting costs/development costs (dev might fall away depending on the model).

I would assume that drivers are hosting their own instance, and they get to decide both (a) how much they charge and (b) what portion of their profits they donate to the devs (especially modifications they need).

Money, ratings, reputation, identity stuff are all better solved with blockchain than with federation in my opinion. You don’t want to have to check the repuation of each instance, every instance might handle ratings differently etc… It would be a mess. Rather you’d want to only be worried about driver reputation.

I think this is already happening with taxi services. Here in Athens, there are a dozen of services you can call to order a taxi, and people (at least younger generations) are aware of most of them and use them depending on their preferences.

Also, another layer of passenger protection could be the instance they use. Instance admins could filter the driver instances they federate with, allowing only drivers with specific criteria. An issue I see here is that the federation criteria would be much more strict, potentially marginalizing people or making the barrier of entrance more difficult.

I feel like a bid/ask function wouldn't be that technically difficult to implement.

A driver can punch in minimums: Maybe there's a driver who is only willing to drive for $10 per ride, $0.50 per minute, and $0.25 per mile at a particular moment in time, and maybe a multiplier or premium for certain routes that involve tolls or larger passenger groups, etc., or a discount for pre-booking at least certain number of hours or days in advance. Maybe the pricing could take into consideration more variables (idle time versus driving time, pickup distance, minimum rider rating, etc.). Potential riders punch in their desired routes and they get real-time pricing information on the available drivers and the quoted price according to each driver's formula.

The formulas shouldn't be that hard for the driver or the passenger, from their interface, as long as the service has access to go route data.

lol I never stopped to think about it. Now that I have, I am terrified.

Some quick thoughts:

1. For Uber like services, I always assumed drivers and passengers are going to reside to separate instances that each tends to their needs. So, driver instances could negotiate with passenger instances and come up with fair pricing.
2. Each driver could enter their rate and have their instance automatically bid for them (assuming they are available) when a new ride is requested. The passenger (or their instance) gets to decide which driver to use.

Disclaimer: I am not trying to make any money out of this. I just hate big corps and like coding.

What you could do is an open source platform that integrates all car pooling services and gives you the best option.

Interesting take! So far, my carpooling MVP has been about bringing people in contact, assuming they can handle money transactions on their own. As you mention, jurisdictions are going to be a huge problem, which I wouldn't dream of handling on my own.

Here in Greece, the most popular media for carpooling is a Facebook group, where people can post either offers or requests for trips. So I tried to think of an MVP that could provide help those people while (a) not having to use Facebook and (b) have an improved user experience.

Absolutely, I would consider instances that are run by cooperatives, probably with some segregation between drivers and passengers.

Other examples of instances could be:

• LGBTQ only passengers (or drivers) - I have friends that are afraid to take taxis because they don't trust cis-men taxi drivers.
• Female only passengers (or drivers) - pretty much the same issue
• Localized instances - Jurisdictions are hard to manage.
• Unions

I have probably seen too much NotJustBikes lately to say anything positive or constructive about car sharing and how it affects society.

It's nice to meet a fellow fan of NotJustBikes, them and AdamSomething have been pivotal for me. Sometimes I'm wondering if I am doing an Airbnb (aka trying to patch a broken system, making everything worse in the process). However, I truly believe transportation (both people and goods) is important, and the software supporting it should be open.

Wow, I took part on that challenge, I forgot all about it. Thanks for the suggestion, that's what I am doing this weekend.

Obligatory link to submission for anyone to laugh at me.