Tagged by: Lyft

“Life is Better When You Share the Ride”

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Since I grew up in California, I was very young when I first heard or read the word “carpool.” Considering that my vocabulary at the time consisted primarily of nouns, the compound word did not make sense to me. Nobody was swimming. Was it a joke about traffic swimming through busy lanes, I thought? Enter Logan Green and John Zimmer. There’s nothing funny about the two young businessmen who propelled carpooling (the verb) down the fast lane of social entrepreneurship.

Logan Green announced his creation of the ‘Zimride’ service in 2007 on Facebook, which was one of the first online ride share companies inspired during his trip to Zimbabwe. The name caught his friend, John Zimmer’s, attention online. The ZIM, however, was just a “crazy, fateful coincidence.” But it was no coincidence that Zimmer had already thought about the transportation challenges facing the US when he took a Green Cities class at Cornell. This class highlighted the fact that 80% of highway passenger seats are empty and the second highest household expense is owning a vehicle. Out of every challenge comes an opportunity.

The two eventually launched Zimride as a social media platform, where drivers could create profiles highlighting their preferred destinations and departure dates. The service then matches drivers and passengers, while allowing for people to post interests and reviews. In many ways, this has created new networking opportunities for those looking to make new professional connections.

Zimride’s success has taken off, becoming the largest service of its kind. There are more than 400,000 users in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Lake Tahoe, Las Vegas, New York and Washington D.C., including 130 university and corporate networks.

The two created Lyft in June 2012. The app provides on-demand, short-distance rides within a city, which organically encourages networking within one’s immediate neighborhood. When they launched Lyft, they introduced the iconic pink mustache logo in an effort to add a fun component and sense of community to the ride experience. And YES, they are big furry pink mustaches that attach to vehicle’s grill.

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This is where the future of urban transportation lies…in creative ways that we can all pool our resources to cut costs, build relationships, reduce the impact on the environment and have more fun. So, how many miles have been driven using Zimride and Lyft? Over 200 million miles, which is the equivalent of driving around the world 8,000 times. This has provided saving of over $100 million for the platform users.

I was reminded of how rare carpooling is when I noticed that the carpool lanes in LA require only TWO people. My hope is that Zimride will take off to the extent that major metro markets will consider increasing that number to THREE, which seems much more admirable when it comes to ridesharing. Until then, you can inflate the blow up doll or pick up a hitchhiker to get from A to B faster. Or maybe you can just check out Zimride and Lyft. Your passenger may even throw in some gas money, give you a good review or provide you with an intro to your next boss. Worse things have happened!

Since I grew up in California, I was very young when I first heard or read the word "carpool." Considering that my vocab...

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