How carpooling can help crack the Delhi odd-even puzzle

The twin problem of pollution and congestion in Indian cities is due to presence of too many cars on roads with too few people. It can be tackled to a great extent if there are fewer cars with more people. Both informal and organised carpooling can be a viable option for those who don't want to get off their cars and get into a public transport bus or metro.

Informal carpools have been in operation for a long time. People going to offices from employee residential colonies or living in neighbourhoods often share rides. In the national capital, chartered buses used to ferry people from residential areas to designated office locations in central Delhi without any stops or standing passengers till the 1990s. With the internet and mobile telephony becoming popular, a few entrepreneurs attempted organised carpooling in 2000s. Websites like Indimoto and Koolpool had thousands of registered users in Delhi and Mumbai a few years ago. But those were pre-Android and smart phones days, so organised carpools worked through a complicated system of registration, email and SMS.

The introduction of odd-even formula and availability of technology-based carpool options have brought the concept of carpooling to the mainstream for the first time. Carpooling has been proposed by the Delhi government as one of the options people can use during the odd-even experiment and even beyond.

Transport aggregators and app-based taxi services have joined the effort to make carpools convenient. People who use cars do so for three reasons: a planned trip, say from Delhi to Jaipur, Manesar or Dehardun; a planned commute - a trip within the city or daily commute to office; and an on-demand or unplanned trip within the city. For all the three types of commuting, rideshare options are available and workable through app-based services. BlaBla Car, a ridesharing company, claims it has logged one million seats shared in India within a short time, totaling 55 million trip-kilometers shared. Remember, these numbers are for trips shared in personal cars, not in taxis, by individual carpoolers.  

Taxi apps like Uber and Ola have also entered the rideshare segment. They are offering shared taxi rides within cities. In effect, this is a form of commercial or organised carpooling. Informal taxi sharing is a common practice in Kolkata, while shared autos are the cheapest form of travel in NCR regions like Noida, Ghaziabad and Faridabad. Ridesharing apps are trying to do the same on a citywide scale and with far greater convenience. People going to the same place at the same time, including commuters driving themselves to work, will be able to share their journey in a cab. Uber says cab sharing now makes for about half of its trips in San Francisco and over 30 percent of its trips in Los Angeles.

For those who don't want to share a taxi with strangers, Ola has launched a social ridesharing app. This would allow customers to travel with members of social groups they are part of. Colleagues from a workplace or friends from a college can come together to share rides amongst themselves. A user can join multiple groups or simply choose to share a ride with anyone or request creation of group with due email verification. A maximum of three people can share a cab together via Ola Share. The service was introduced in Bangalore a few months ago and has reportedly got good response. Two major stakeholders - employers and government agencies can play a major role in promoting carpools. The government should frame a carpool promotion policy laying down ground rules for commercial carpools and to avoid legal or regulatory hurdles.

In addition, private carpools need to be incentivised. Unlike some Western countries, we have not seen government support for organised carpooling in India. Local bodies in countries like America, Canada and Australia provide various incentives to promote ridesharing such as dedicated lanes for "High Occupancy Vehicles", reserved parking lots and lower toll charges for pooled cars.

On the other hand, employers should be encouraged to promote carpools among their workers. Very few companies have enough parking spaces for their employees. This limited space should be earmarked for those sharing cars. IT companies in Noida and Gurgaon can come together to promote carpools among employees from different organizations located in same hubs.

The odd-even experiment, irrespective of its shortcomings or its final outcome, has provided an opportunity to rethink urban mobility and a chance to explore various options to decongest and reduce air pollution in our cities. Let this opportunity not be wasted by vested interests.