Traffic gridlocks are a perennial problem in cities, draining productive hours and guzzling precious fuel. Not just that, they add to the pollution too. One way to tackle this is through ride-sharing (where you share a taxi with other passengers), a solution you could consider to save on commute costs while doing your bit for the environment.

How it works

If you live in a major city, there will be taxi service providers who let you opt for a shared ride, where you pay lower fares. Your taxi booking may appear no different from a regular non-shared service. But usually, if it’s a sharing service, the service cannot be availed if you are travelling as a group of more than two people.

In the case of Meru, Uber and Ola, the service provider takes on the responsibility of finding a cab, matching your route and travel time with anyone else interested in travelling the same route. The fare may be fixed at 50-70 per cent of the full fare.

Other services, such as Smart Mumbaikar and Sharetaxi act only as passenger aggregation sites.

Here, you either look for someone who has already booked a cab and is taking the same route or you book the cab and find others to share. The fare is split between the passengers.

Sharing a cab with unknown people may raise two main concerns — safety and delays. These issues have prevented wide adoption of this trend. But service providers are solving these issues so that the comfort level of passengers is increased.

Ensuring safety

Concerns about safety have been the main deterrent for many commuters considering sharing options. Riding with a stranger in a cab can be a potential risk that must not be taken lightly. This can be addressed through appropriate security checks. The credentials of the passengers are verified in three ways. A Government provided ID, such as PAN or Aadhaar (cross-checked against the Government database), is required for using many of the services. The person’s mobile number is also authenticated.

A background check is performed by looking at the contents of their social media account. For instance, service providers check if the user has posted objectionable content, run a check on their friends and also establish their place of work through contacts in the social media.

Some services also work with companies to establish the credentials of their employees or confirm the place of work by verifying work email ID. Nearly all of them allow women passengers to travel only with other women passengers. They also ensure that one’s contact details are not disclosed to others.

You can also share your ride details with your friends or family and list their contact details for use during emergencies. Many also offer a panic button in their app for emergencies. Still, these may not guarantee that you may be comfortable with the co-passenger. Meru allows only sharing of cabs between two bookings so that one person sits in front and the other in the back to create physical separation between passengers. Ola lets users create social groups and share rides within the group.

You can also share your experience after the ride and rate the other travellers. The feedback can help others in future passenger selection.

Handling delays

Another irritant is when other passengers are late, thereby delaying one’s trip. Here again, technology comes to the aid. Algorithms use the pick-up location and estimated traffic congestion information to decide on the passengers.Meru, for instance, limits the extra distance to less than five kilometres.

Others, such as Goodbyebus in Chennai, offer pick-up at only designated spots along the route, to reduce the travel time for the first passenger on-board. And thanks to GPS, the providers can easily locate you to determine if you are going to delay the vehicle. The provider also intimates if the vehicle is delayed so that you can decide on other alternatives.

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