Uber, the American firm behind the successful taxi app, is planning to roll out its carpool feature in the UAE. The app, which works by using your smartphone’s GPS to find your location and connects you with the nearest Uber driver, has already seen a large amount of usage in the country.
Uberpool, the in app carpool feature, works by splitting the cost of a journey between two commuters who are taking a similar route together, potentially making the trip 50% cheaper for you and giving you the chance to connect and talk to someone you never met before. Or you could just awkwardly stare at your feet while twiddling your thumbs.
“Imagine Sheikh Zayed Road during rush hour with half the cars. The way we’re going about that is a product called UberPool. Instead of each person taking their own car, what if we could aggregate demand of customers so multiple customers could share one car? The driver always has a passenger, or passengers, in the car, drivers earn relatively more, and customers – because of that efficiency – pay less.”
– Jambu Palaniappan, Uber’s regional general manager for Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, in an exclusive to 7DAYS.
Uberpool has already seen wide usage since its inception last year, spreading to over 15 cities including New York, Paris, Bangalore and San Francisco, where over 50% of trips are made with UberPool.
The introduction of UberPool to the UAE has been made in light of the growing traffic congestions as cars seem to outnumber people here; Dubai’s traffic congested roads are getting busier with the number of cars expected to increase by 10 per cent – from 1.5 million to 1.65 million – all before 2016.
Source: 7DAYS
