Share Your Taxi With FareShare

While I am a customer of public transit, some of my friends use taxis on a regular basis. NYC taxis are some of the least expensive even after the new 50 cents surcharge to help pay for transit. Are there ways to reduce the cost of using a taxi and, at the same time, reduce the number of cabs needed to transport people around the city?

FareShare is a new startup launching this week that aims to answer both of those questions. FareShare allows you to enter, the desired time, where you are going and where you are located and find others who are looking for similar trips.

FareShare is currently available for the iPhone. The FareShare team completed extensive taxi analysis and they note, “we looked at data from more than 14 million taxi rides taken all over New York in March 2009. For that single month, there was an average of approximately 456,000 fares each day (ed note – seems high in discussions), and almost 10 million single person taxi rides.” Based on their analysis and their proximity settings, they estimate that 1 in 4 taxi rides could be shared.

Here’s how the app works:

• you enter your desired time and trip details (starting point and destination)
• if another FareShare user looks for a similar trip, FareShare alerts both users
• both users can enter details of their outfits and also upload a photo to make spotting the other FareShare user easy
• users can pay with cash or can Paypal each other (I think FareShare takes a cut of the PP transaction)
• after the taxi ride, users can rate the other party

Clearly the key for FareShare is getting enough of an audience to be able to complete the taxi shares. I assume apps for other mobile devices will help with user reach.

I’ve embedded the FareShare demo video in the first comment below.