Be smart, join a carpool...

With petrol prices having gone up, KT looks at carpool choices made by commuters.

For five weeks, French national Soraya (sur-name withheld), an event manager and film maker, managed to share a ride. "I was very lucky," she says.
Soraya, who has been in Dubai for the last 14 months, paid Dh120 per week to her car-pool buddy and driver, an Indian woman, to pick her up from Downtown and take her to office at JLT.
"I know it was more expensive than usual prices. But I was okay with it because of the convenience."
By not taking the bus and metro, Soraya says she saved 45 minutes to 1 hour, one way. In the shared car, they reached office/home in 20 minutes. Both the women had offices in JLT, in adjacent clusters. Their work timings matched. They got along. The carpool was a success.
Money and time were saved, green house gases reduced.
The Indian lady lived in Business Bay. They'd go to office and back together. Soraya enjoyed the time they spent in the car talking. They became friends. They spoke about life, husbands, and beauty tips. With so much chatter, music in the car didn't stand a chance.
"We talked a lot. We never stopped talking. No silence, never," she laughs. The carpooling came to an end because for Soraya it was a temporary job. She now has her own company.
"I am a freelancer". Freelancing means no carpool.
Carpools and the UAE
A common enough sight in the UAE: One person sitting in one car stuck in one lane forever. You almost feel sorry for your trapped fellow commuter. The car heads from Dubai to Sharjah on a week-day rush-hour evening, for example. There's chaos on the roads. Nothing moves. Only engines run, a/cs run, and radios run.
Exhaust fumes become smog because nobody carpools. This reality is a far cry from marketing phraseology of 'optimum utilisation of resources', and dreams of a 'sustainable future'. It's a glaringly inefficient way to live.
The Road Transport Authority, Dubai, (RTA) that recently launched the carpool app sharekni says the high demand on private cars and low usage of group transport (7 per cent) is causing traffic congestion. The present rate of private car ownership in Dubai is as high as 541 cars for each 1,000 people, with an average number of passengers in each car as low as 1.3 people.
Too many cars, and too few people in each. With our collective car fumes, we're generously contributing to plummeting air quality. Depressingly, the expected increase in Dubai population is 296 per cent by the year 2020, bringing the expected number of private cars in Dubai by 2020 to1.5 million. Which means the annual increase of traffic expenses is Dh4.3 billion.
Naturally, these figures have a bearing on how much time it takes you to get home from office, as it has a direct impact on traffic congestion. So why are we so unconcerned about cutting costs, sharing expenses, saving time? Could it be that we're smitten by the cheap fuel logic, even though it's just gone up?
Private carpools
French national Benjamin de Terssac, 'Founder and Chief Driver' of the website Carpool Arabia, himself carpools to work everyday.
"I'm driving Asmaa (another carpooler) every morning from downtown to Knowledge village. We live and work close to each other so it's convenient for both of us."
Terssac is a former management consultant. A year and a half ago he turned entrepreneur full time, facilitating rides across the emirates. On Carpool Arabia, there are 500 rides offered daily, 80 per cent passengers, and 20 per cent drivers."
Terssac says that according to the metrics they use - registered users, rides offered, and rides booked - they've had a 30 per cent growth every month. The company is a year and a half old. "We don't own cars, we don't own drivers, we facilitate," he says.
So if you commute everyday from say Dubai Marina to Abu Dhabi, you would pay Dh35 for the ride, one way. And back and forth would cost Dh70 a day. This against the Dh500 a cab would cost, back and forth.Terssac believes what's missing in Dubai is regulation for carpools.
"Till 2008 carpooling was banned. Then RTA came around. And now there's the app. But lot of people have misconceptions about carpooling. They think it has to do with smuggling, or with something illegal. And I can't blame people for thinking that because there are illegal drivers ferrying passengers without having a driving license. But the government needs to regulate - maybe free Salik for carpools. They should support private companies because we help decongest the roads."
Another car pooling online site, pompomcar.com that positions itself as "Middle East's First Car Sharing Network didn't respond to queries made by Khaleej Times.
Why don't more people carpool?
Syrian national Cherbel Gabro is not a regular user of carpools. A media person, he had to once commute regularly to Abu Dhabi from Dubai. He has his own car so was always a 'driver' (as opposed to 'passenger').
Commuting reg-ularly from Dubai to Abu Dhabi, he said he had "no expectations" of the carpool service. Gabro says he just "wanted to try the carpool apps".
And after trying it out, his take is that they are "very complicated". Companies need to make them a lot simpler for users if carpooling here is going to succeed is his take. As for why he thinks more people don't carpool: "Distances here are not very much, unless you're going from one emirate to another."
Also, he says, people's homes aren't easy to find, "addresses not easy to get into." So if someone has to be dropped off and the detour is a long, intricate route, that's not appealing to a driver.
Meet nice people
Another carpooler, also French, Anne (surname withheld), a firm manager in the financial industry, says she works long hours as a trader so doesn't like to drive herself to Abu Dhabi. Plus carpooling costs her Dh60 a trip as against the taxi fare of Dh500. Listing off reasons to carpool, she says: "Metro doesn't cover all of Dubai. It's too hot to stand and wait for a taxi sometimes." Anne who has lived in the UAE now for four year now, says: "I think we could be more efficient in the UAE."
She advises first time users of carpools to carry exact change placeswith them. If the fuel fare is Dh65, not everyone will have change for a 100. Giving an insight into the good bits of carpooling, Anne says, "I've met a lot of nice, open minded people in the carpools. I wouldn't say friends, but sometimes in the day we exchange whatsapp jokes."
Anne also says that most people are actually very nice, and want to save money and time, and be environmentally conscious.
"In fact 80 per cent of the drivers I carpooled with the first time don't want you to pay, they say, next time onwards."
nivriti@khaleejtimes.com