Lyft adding S.F. to South Bay carpooling service to app

Traffic is seen moving slowly in the north bound lanes of Highway 101 approaching San Francisco. Lyft is launching a new carpooling option on Tuesday that initially will help match riders and drivers commuting along 101 between San Francisco and Silicon Valley. less Traffic is seen moving slowly in the north bound lanes of Highway 101 approaching San Francisco. Lyft is launching a new carpooling option on Tuesday that initially will help match riders and drivers commuting ... more Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close Lyft adding S.F. to South Bay carpooling service to app 1 / 9 Back to Gallery

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission hopes a pink-mustached unicorn can galvanize Bay Area carpooling.

San Francisco’s Lyft, in partnership with the commission, is adding a Lyft Carpool option to the ride-hailing app used by thousands of passengers and drivers. It launched Tuesday to arrange commuter carpools between San Francisco and Silicon Valley on Highway 101, with a promise to expand over time. Anyone can sign up to be either a rider or driver. Passengers will pay about $4 to $10 per ride, with the relatively low amount meant to cover drivers’ costs.

The new service probably won’t add much to Lyft’s lofty $5.5 billion valuation. But it could get current Lyft drivers and passengers to consider using the app for longer trips, as well as draw in new users.

It might do some good for the environment, too. Despite a drumbeat of messages about carpooling’s benefits, only about 10 percent of Bay Area commuters share rides to and from work, a figure that has stayed stuck in neutral for decades. The MTC hopes that Lyft’s brand recognition and substantial reach — the company says it has arranged millions of rides in the Bay Area — will succeed where public-service announcements have failed.

“Lyft is much deeper in people’s minds than 511.org,” said MTC spokesman John Goodwin, referring to the agency’s transit information website, which includes a carpooling section. “They’ve got a big built-in customer base. We’ve got our customer base too. The idea is we’ll bring those two together.”

Lyft will bring features from its standard rides, like cashless transactions, real-time GPS tracking, driver photos, secure messaging between drivers and riders, and driver and passenger ratings. Unlike the on-demand trips for which Lyft and archrival Uber are best known, most rides will be arranged a bit in advance, such as the night before for a morning commute.

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Filling empty seats

“We can leverage our platform to make real-time ridesharing available for Bay Area commuters to fill the empty seats in all those cars on the highway,” said Emily Castor, Lyft’s director of transportation policy. “Our dream is to address the severe traffic congestion people experience on Bay Area highways, especially 101.”

For Lyft co-founders Logan Green and John Zimmer, using the Internet to set up carpools is a long-held vision. Before launching the Lyft service in 2012, they started the company as Zimride in 2007 to arrange long-haul trips between cities. Lyft took off, becoming a unicorn (a startup valued at more than $1 billion), while Zimride’s carpools saw more modest growth. Rental-car giant Enterprise Holdings acquired the Zimride business in 2013.

Lyft and Uber have already laid groundwork for carpooling by getting people accustomed to hopping into strangers’ personal cars for a ride. Both companies already offer cheaper shared-ride options for passengers going the same way. Lyft Line and UberPool account for about half of San Francisco rides and see heavy use during commute hours, each company says.

Both companies have features that let drivers specify a destination, but it’s not clear how widely used those are.

Transit experts said the companies’ reach could spur a much-broader acceptance of sharing rides to and from work.

Companies’ advantages

“These apps may help us create a renaissance in carpooling,” said Susan Shaheen, co-director of the UC Berkeley Transportation Sustainability Research Center. “There are a number of obstacles to traditional carpooling that Uber and Lyft have already started to overcome.” For instance, she said, both have a critical mass of drivers, so passengers have faith that they’ll consistently get matched with a ride. The apps have helped facilitate trust, she said, and their payment systems avert the awkwardness of exchanging money.

David Plouffe, Uber’s chief adviser and board member, has long espoused shared rides as a way to reduce congestion. During a press call this month he said that people could grow used to using Uber on their way to work to pick up fellow commuters. “We are in conversations with the MTC about ways that we can work together creatively,” said Uber spokeswoman Laura Zapata. The company is now running a carpool pilot called UberCommute in Chicago that allows people to sign up as commuter-drivers, get matched with passengers going their way, and get reimbursed for their expenses.

Unlike traditional Lyft rides, the carpool service doesn’t aim to generate income for drivers. Instead, passengers will pay drivers up to the Internal Revenue Service mileage reimbursement rate of 54 cents per mile. For now, Lyft is not taking a cut of payments beyond a 50-cent fee to cover credit-card processing. “We certainly expect it to be (financially) valuable for us long term, but don’t have details to share yet,” said Lyft product manager Lev Popov.

The rules

To sign up, drivers need only submit a photo of their driver’s license, a selfie, their home and work addresses, and banking information to receive the mileage payments. Drivers must comply with state law requiring personal auto insurance. Passengers must have a credit card stored with Lyft for payment.

A bevy of startups are also trying to tackle carpooling, but none has the resources, brand recognition or installed base of Uber and Lyft. The most-established, San Francisco’s Carma, started in 2008 and already partners with the MTC, which showcases it on the 511.org site. It has 13,000 Bay Area users. Other entrants include Scoop and Hovee of San Francisco and Ride of Philadelphia, all of which work directly with large employers, office parks or buildings to arrange carpools among their workers.

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @CSaid