Those who have travelled to places like Los Angeles and New York in recent years may have come across a service called uberPOOL, an option within the Uber app that allows you to share your journey with strangers to reduce the cost of your trip. You save around 25% on your journey, with the only downside being occasional delays as you pick up another uberPOOL rider.
It first launched in San Francisco in August 2014, before expanding to cities like LA, New York, Boston, London and Paris. Already, uberPOOL accounts for 20% of all Uber rides around the world. Just take a look at the large number of cities to get their hands on the service so far:
- US & Canada: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Washington DC
- Mexico: Mexico City
- Brazil: Sao Paulo
- France: Paris
- China: Beijing, Changsha, Chengdu, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Ningbo, Qingdao, Shanghai, Shenzen, Suzhou, Tianjin, Wuhan
- UK: London
- India: Bangalore, New Delhi
This month, the service continued its international roll out, with the focus now on South East Asia, a region which has already adopted similar services like GrabHitch, launched in Singapore and Malaysia in November 2015. Earlier this month, UberPool made its debut in Manila, while Jakarta got it last month. Singapore is next on the list, with the service set to launch tomorrow – July 1st.
So what about Australia? Though no plans have been officially announced, the South East Asia expansion would suggest that Australia will be next on their list. It was reported all the way back in September 2014 that the service was eyeing Sydney, and the Daily Telegraph reported in February of this year that Sydney’s uberPOOL services weren’t far off.
While we wait for the carpooling service to launch, however, Australia has had plenty of other updates: Last week, Uber launched service to Canberra Airport, finally introduced Uber X to Adelaide in May (with unlimited free rides to roll it out) and has been rolling out the popular UberEATS around the country. Here’s hoping uberPOOL is soon added to the list. But in the meantime, our friends in South East Asia have the new service to enjoy!
Learn more details about how uberPOOL works over on the official Uber website.
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