Santa Monica commuters can get $3 rides to and from work through the end of August.
Riders who join Waze’s Santa Monica Carpoolers group can pay $3 for a seat in a carpool for the next three weeks, and first-time users will get $20 in carpool credits. The Waze Carpool app matches drivers to riders with similar commutes, based on their home and destination addresses. Drivers commuting to and from Santa Monica with Waze Carpool earn an average of $5 per ride, a spokesperson said.
“Waze Carpool wants to encourage everyday drivers to try carpooling and take cars off the road,” said Mona Weng, a strategic partnerships lead at Waze. “A carpool group for specific cities allows commuters to connect with others who are also carpooling in their communities.”
Users can schedule rides up to a week ahead of time or request them on-demand, but both drivers and riders are limited to two rides per day. Multiple users can plan to carpool together through a group setting. The app also allows users to filter drivers or riders by gender, employer, mutual friends or star ratings.
Waze, a Google-owned company that is best known for its navigation app, partnered with GoSaMo, the city’s transportation management organization, to offer $3 flat rides for the month of August.
The campaign follows two features Waze launched within its carpooling app earlier this summer.
Carpool Calendar allows users to schedule rides and drives from a calendar view and set recurring rides with one tap.
Multiple Riders enables drivers to invite multiple riders with different pickup and drop-off points for a single carpool, whereas before only riders were able to add themselves to an existing carpool.
“This was our most requested feature, and benefits commuters traveling in cities with HOV-3 lanes,” Weng said.
Waze Carpool first launched in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2016 and expanded into five states, as well as its country of origin, Israel, before launching nationwide last October. It is also now available in Brazil and Mexico.
madeleine@smdp.com
