Uber, Moia, Freenow & Co.: That’s what the new driving services do

by time news

2023-05-12 16:07:18

Many people are familiar with car sharing and bike sharing: You register with the provider and can then usually use free cars or bikes ad hoc, be it at stations or distributed throughout the city.

“At the beginning, the users conclude a framework agreement with the provider and provide proof of their driver’s license. After that, they can book the vehicles around the clock,” explains Martin Kagerbauer, an expert in transport at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).

But what is behind the new terms ridesharing, ridehailing or ridepooling that you hear more and more often? An overview.

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Literally translated, ridesharing means sharing a ride. This is understood to mean the usual carpooling opportunity or the formation of car pools by private individuals. “The journey would take place anyway, as with the classic car sharing service,” says Martin Kagerbauer.

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Travel expenses are usually shared or offset against each other. Because free spaces in private cars are made available with ridesharing, it also works where the bus and train offering is sparse. Typically, work colleagues get together to commute to and from work together.

Ridesharing does not have a commercial background: According to Kagerbauer, it is one of the “non-commercial take-along systems”. Above all, it serves to spread the operating costs among several people and, ideally, to make mobility cheaper for those involved.

However, ecological goals can also play a role, since journeys are bundled and emissions are reduced. From a social point of view, this is “a goal worth striving for,” says traffic and mobility expert Martin Randelhoff.

Offerer: Originally, there was only carpooling based on verbal agreements, for example among friends or colleagues. Today, however, internet platforms and apps that people use to carpool to network ensure greater efficiency. According to Kagerbauer, these services often incur service fees for the mediation, depending on the provider. Examples of providers are Blablacar or Clickapoint. According to their own statements, both companies do not charge any fees in Germany.

This is how ride hailing works

Hailing can be translated as “to summon”. In ridehailing, you summon a vehicle with the intention of taking a ride. Such offers are also called driving services. They accept orders via websites or apps. Since ridehailing is one of the commercial systems, one also speaks of rideselling, explains Martin Kagerbauer.

The basic feature is: “The vehicle is only used by the person or persons who have requested the vehicle together,” says Christina Warta from the Mobility Department of the City of Munich. The paying passenger determines where the journey goes.

The fare is typically calculated based on time or distance. With ridehailing, the starting point and destination are directly connected. Ridehailing services can usually be paid for directly in the app. Real-time tracking of the journey on the smartphone is also mostly standard.

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However, ride hailing is suspected of only bringing additional, individually used vehicles onto the often already congested streets, which may be used by people who would otherwise have taken the tram, subway, suburban train or bus.

One Study involving the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) confirms this assumption at least for the ten largest US metropolitan areas. Because ridehailing takes you directly from the start to the destination, “no intermodal mobility behavior is encouraged”, criticizes transport scientist Kagerbauer.

After all: Ridehailing provider Uber, for example, has also been showing public transport connections as an alternative in its app since summer 2022.

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One is tempted to attribute the classic taxi, which stops at the side of the road at a hand signal, to ridehailing. But in Germany it is regulated differently: “From a legal point of view, the taxi is public transport and has an obligation to transport – ridehailing is not,” says Kagerbauer with a view to the Passenger Transport Act, which, in addition to the regulation on the transport of people in motor vehicles, is decisive for driving service offers is.

Offerer: First, there is Uber. The provider works with licensed rental car and taxi companies whose drivers have a passenger transport license. In 2021, the intermediary Bolt also started in Germany according to the same principle. Taxis or rental cars with a driver can also be booked via the Freenow app. The US provider Lyft is known, but only active in North America.

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Pooling means something like “putting together”. With ride pooling, trips are bundled together. Instead of carrying passengers individually, similar routes are combined,

“Ridepooling is essentially a modernization of demand-oriented transport, such as the on-demand bus, which is flexible in terms of location and time and has its origins in rural areas,” explains Martin Kagerbauer. Another historical forerunner is the shared taxi.

However, modern ride pooling services work with the support of an algorithm and usually require apps in order to be able to use them: “The mobile phone is the focus,” says Kagerbauer.

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Together with the others you usually only drive part of the way in a rough direction. There are no fixed routes and timetables with ridepooling. On the way, people get off or on, similar to buses and trains in local public transport (ÖPNV).

In practice, however, detours are often made for this, says traffic scientist Kagerbauer. Nevertheless, vehicle kilometers could be saved by pooling. Professional drivers are on duty.

Some therefore see ridepooling as a mix of public transport and taxi: “If the feeder function is fulfilled, ridepooling is an intermodal transport offer,” says Kagerbauer.

Offerer: Clevershuttle operates nationwide, cooperates with local transport companies under various labels, but had to file for bankruptcy at the beginning of May 2023 after the majority owner, Deutsche Bahn, withdrew from financing the provider. According to the company, the regional companies were not affected by the insolvency and should initially be continued. In Munich, for example, the “Isartiger” collects passengers. The provider Moia, which is active in Hanover and Hamburg, will in future also serve selected bus stops on the outskirts of the Hanseatic city. And in the east of Berlin, the Rufbus Muva has been operating as the successor to the “Berlkönig” since late summer 2022.

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