Uber's ride-sharing plan, UberPool, is coming to New York City this week, aiming to provide cheaper rides for locals.

UberPool was first launched in San Francisco in August. The offering is similar to the company's uberX service — the lower-cost alternative to its black car service — but lets riders save money by splitting the cost with other passengers.

Kimiko Ninomiya, senior marketing manager at Uber, noted in a blog post on Tuesday that many uberX trips in New York City have "lookalike" trips — or trips that start near, end near and are happening around the same time as another one. Most of these trips transport one or two people, leaving two or three empty seats, Ninomiya added, claiming that riders can save up to 50% on their fare by using UberPool.

This is Uber's estimate for an UberPool ride from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to the East Village in Manhattan, about a 15-minute drive without traffic:

Image: Uber

Beyond the savings, Ninomiya also claims that UberPool helps the environment by keeping fewer cars on the road. By Uber's reckoning, one fully utilized UberPool car would be the equivalent of eight other cars. The ride-sharing company extrapolated and said UberPool could replace 1 million cars in New York City.

Image: Uber

The UberPool option will begin rolling out for New Yorkers on its iOS app on Thursday and on Android the following week. The offering comes a week after rival Lyft introduced a twist on its Lyft Line carpooling service that lets drivers sign up to earn money on their daily commutes by taking on passengers.

The entry also follows a hellish couple of weeks for Uber, during which a BuzzFeed report detailed the hypothetical plan of Uber's senior vice president of business, Emil Michael, to dig up dirt on journalists prompted a torrent of bad publicity.

The UberPool introduction in New York gives Uber a chance to change the subject.