An obvious device for reduction of air pollution from automobiles is carpooling since a wild estimate is it could cut at least by half the pollution from cars for commuters.
Google is expanding its paid carpool service throughout California, building on an effort to get more traffic-weary drivers to share their rides to work—and to collect data that could be useful for future transportation services.
The Wednesday move by Google's Waze unit, best known for its navigation and traffic monitoring app, extends the year-old carpooling service outside its initial markets of northern California and Israel. Waze will now be pairing up drivers and passengers across a wider expanse that includes heavily congested highways in Los Angeles and other parts of southern California.
Phys.org: Google expands paid carpooling across California
One answer is to pay people to do it and I have no immediate reason to assail it since maybe it even works.
Waze connects drivers and riders with similar commutes based on their home and work addresses. Riders request carpool rides in advance, but aren't guaranteed matches. Drivers can only pick up one rider; they also get to review the profiles of potential riders in advance and to select the ones they prefer. Riders can only request two rides a day.
The service is primarily focused on rush-hour commutes, when the odds of successfully matching drivers and riders are highest. Waze said tens of thousands of drivers and passengers have registered for carpooling in northern California. It won't begin booking carpooling requests outside northern California until June 6 to give interested drivers and riders a chance to sign up for the program.
Since signing up for Waze's carpooling service in February, Lesley Watson says she gets paid $3.50 to $5.50 every time she gives someone a ride on her morning commute from her home in Oakland to her job at an advertising agency in San Francisco. Sometimes, she also picks up a passenger on her evening commute home, although she usually drives solo on her return trip.
"It has helped me offset my commute costs for gas, tolls and parking," Watson, 28, says. It also has given her a chance to make new friends among the five or six people she regularly picks up through the Waze app.
- PO
That's going to be a hefty cost to Google to offset the pollution. Call it $10 for the roundtrip every day for 100,000 commuters so the daily budget just for the end-mechanic of the payoff will be costing $1,000,000 per day. Google derives benefits in the context of better understanding of driving patterns and the corporation has squillions to burn on it so maybe that represents a value.
The Socialist Left loves it since there's some redistribution of wealth and an excellent reduction in pollution for everyone. While we do not foresee a far-right state adopting such a policy, there may be an angle to play since cities such as Atlanta are plagued by traffic as are many of the largest cities and they may see a reason for the expenditure.
Ed: they can't afford it
We're not interested in Republican logic; we're interested in the future.
That aspect is required since you know already they won't pay for it.
Ed: Atlanta will spend almost 1/3 of a billion each year on reducing traffic?
Yes, that's exactly what they will do because they don't have a choice. The fuel savings alone will result in an immediate cost savings but the benefit is again Socialist so the state will likely argue but that doesn't obviate the necessity of addressing a problem which Detroit and Washington only make worse.
Google is expanding its paid carpool service throughout California, building on an effort to get more traffic-weary drivers to share their rides to work—and to collect data that could be useful for future transportation services.
The Wednesday move by Google's Waze unit, best known for its navigation and traffic monitoring app, extends the year-old carpooling service outside its initial markets of northern California and Israel. Waze will now be pairing up drivers and passengers across a wider expanse that includes heavily congested highways in Los Angeles and other parts of southern California.
Phys.org: Google expands paid carpooling across California
One answer is to pay people to do it and I have no immediate reason to assail it since maybe it even works.
Waze connects drivers and riders with similar commutes based on their home and work addresses. Riders request carpool rides in advance, but aren't guaranteed matches. Drivers can only pick up one rider; they also get to review the profiles of potential riders in advance and to select the ones they prefer. Riders can only request two rides a day.
The service is primarily focused on rush-hour commutes, when the odds of successfully matching drivers and riders are highest. Waze said tens of thousands of drivers and passengers have registered for carpooling in northern California. It won't begin booking carpooling requests outside northern California until June 6 to give interested drivers and riders a chance to sign up for the program.
Since signing up for Waze's carpooling service in February, Lesley Watson says she gets paid $3.50 to $5.50 every time she gives someone a ride on her morning commute from her home in Oakland to her job at an advertising agency in San Francisco. Sometimes, she also picks up a passenger on her evening commute home, although she usually drives solo on her return trip.
"It has helped me offset my commute costs for gas, tolls and parking," Watson, 28, says. It also has given her a chance to make new friends among the five or six people she regularly picks up through the Waze app.
- PO
That's going to be a hefty cost to Google to offset the pollution. Call it $10 for the roundtrip every day for 100,000 commuters so the daily budget just for the end-mechanic of the payoff will be costing $1,000,000 per day. Google derives benefits in the context of better understanding of driving patterns and the corporation has squillions to burn on it so maybe that represents a value.
The Socialist Left loves it since there's some redistribution of wealth and an excellent reduction in pollution for everyone. While we do not foresee a far-right state adopting such a policy, there may be an angle to play since cities such as Atlanta are plagued by traffic as are many of the largest cities and they may see a reason for the expenditure.
Ed: they can't afford it
We're not interested in Republican logic; we're interested in the future.
That aspect is required since you know already they won't pay for it.
Ed: Atlanta will spend almost 1/3 of a billion each year on reducing traffic?
Yes, that's exactly what they will do because they don't have a choice. The fuel savings alone will result in an immediate cost savings but the benefit is again Socialist so the state will likely argue but that doesn't obviate the necessity of addressing a problem which Detroit and Washington only make worse.
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