
Scoop gets Bay Area cities to pick up the tab for carpooling - jsadow
https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/04/scoop-gets-bay-area-cities-to-pick-up-the-tab-for-carpooling-to-alleviate-traffic-jams/
======
pasiaj
I was commuting between SF & Sunnyvale a year ago for a couple of months. For
the whole time I tried to find a service connecting people for carpooling.
Found several but none of them had a meaningful number of active users.

It was mind boggling to sit, day after day, in stalled traffic on the 101 with
two empty carpool lanes on my left and four lanes filled with lone drivers all
the way between San Jose and San Francisco.

~~~
eweise
I wonder if traffic would improve if didn't take away lanes for carpooling.

~~~
Tiktaalik
It wouldn't.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand)

~~~
bobbles
This doesnt really explain why it wouldn't. In fact it talks about the exact
opposite where people are choosing cars over public transport

~~~
Tiktaalik
More lanes means a temporary decrease in congestion, which incentivizes people
to choose automobiles as their primary form of transportation, which fills up
the roads again. Repeat this cycle endlessly as roads are widened.

Basically widening roads doesn't decrease traffic in the long term. This is
why LA and Houston and other car dominated places have wider roads than
anywhere else and terrible traffic.

Google "Induced Demand" and you will find a ton of articles about this such as
this one. [http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/11/californias-dot-
admit...](http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/11/californias-dot-admits-that-
more-roads-mean-more-traffic/415245/)

The core issue is that automobile oriented infrastructure infrastructure isn't
very efficient at moving people in the first place. If you're going to spend a
lot of money to increase transportation capacity, extra car lanes is a poor
choice.

~~~
thesimpsons1022
in theory yes but i don't see any proof that traffic would increase as much as
the increased capacity. reminds me of bogus economic arguments. in your
universe we could make a 10,000 lane highway and there would still be
congestion.

------
jusben1369
It's interesting. Lyft originally was 100% focused on car pooling. I wonder if
the time is better now for this type of offering.

~~~
muzz
Technically that was Zimride, the original startup by the same two founders
but is actually a separate entity.

~~~
seattle_spring
Boy do I miss zimride. Much more useful to me than Lyft.

------
santaclaus
Scoop has salespeople out in force in Oakland -- waiting in line at the DMV
some lady from Scoop was lobbying all the bored people in line hard.

~~~
seanp2k2
Ooh boy, I doubt that will work out well for them. Captive audience, but I
can't think of a place where people are less likely to be receptive to
marketing than the DMV.

