Google’s Waze has expanded its operation from San Fransisco. The carpool service is now available in nine counties in Bay Area and other areas in Northern California. With more than 900,000 users in the Bay Area, the service is able to significantly reduce the traffic congestion.
The Waze carpool service was piloted in November last year in San Fransisco Bay Area has now expanded its coverave, according to TechCrunch. The carsharing community is also available in North California from Monterrey to Sacramento.
Waze is a community based ridesharing service with focus on community effort. The GPS-based mobile app is able to connect people from the surrounding area who go to the same direction and enable them to share the car.
The application, according to Forbes, has become a low-cost congestion fighter. It has now partnered with three important partners to promote the community of ridesharing to reduce traffic congestion. Those three partners are Kaiser Permanente Hospitals, Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC and University of California at San Francisco (UCSF),
Different from Uber of Lyft, Wave is a community-based carpool, instead of professional carpool driver. The application connects people who travel to the same destination or direction and allow them to travel together..
With 900,00 users connected through the application in Bay Area, MTC expected more people will commute together which will significantly curb the traffic congestion. In Waze, there is no designated driver who offer the ridesharing service for payment, like Uber or Lyft, but a group of people from the same community who commute together with the “outsmarting traffic together” motto.
The Israeli-based company was acquired by Google in 2013. Waze was originally a maps application that track traffic and helped people by crowdsource the on-the-spot report from users. Later on, Google incorporate the Waze’s GPS-based into Google Maps application.
Its carpool model itself is already operating all across Israel. Users in Israel are able to provide further information which explained themselves like their social media profile in Facebook or LinkedIn.
Watch the 30 seconds explanation of Waze Carpool service from Waze official channel below: