Why taking Spare Rides is better than taking public transit or owning a car

There is a new app in town. Ridesharing has come to Vancouver! If you are in Vancouver and you haven’t tried using Spare Rides for commuting to work or school, you are missing out.

I think we can all agree that transit here can be quite good. Buses usually come on time, and the SkyTrain runs quite often. But for some commuters its a nightmare — whether it means getting sandwiched in between people or seeing that infamous bus text “Sorry Bus Full”, we have all run into experiences that are less than desirable.

Those who get fed up with using transit to get to work everyday typically opt in to buying a car and begin driving to work every single day. Driving to work can easily cut anywhere from 30 minutes to an 1 hour off some Vancouverite’s commutes, so its clear why some people choose that as their primary option.

But when you choose to drive to work, you also choose to spend enormous amounts of money on gas, insurance, parking, and maintenance. An average person spends upwards of $10,000 per year when commuting using their car to work on a daily basis.

Thats where Spare Rides comes in. With Spare you can kiss goodbye to both the discomfort of public transportation and the high cost of driving everyday.

In the past few months hundreds of people in Vancouver have started using Spare to take their commutes to the next level. They have essentially started ridesharing to work.

Ridesharing isn’t a new concept and has existed for as long as cars have been around. Spare, however, is the first app to make it simple enough to do on a daily basis. Spare takes the technology that is in everyone’s pocket and optimizes a system that has been around for over a hundred years. The reason it hasn’t been done until now is simple. Ridesharing, as it has existed for the last century, is just too much of a hassle. Traditional ridesharing involved a phone call between people and a commitment to one driver (or passenger) for a long time. That driver is might sometimes be late, get sick, or want to leave at a different time. It is not flexible and is not reliable. Spare changes all of this.

To use Spare on your way to work you just tap to create a trip for the following day and you get matched with a driver who works either at the same place as you or a neighbouring workplace. There is no commitment — you just take the trips on the days you want to. You can select anywhere between 1 and 10 trips a week and if you don’t want to go, you don’t! No need to cancel on a carpool you’ve had for a year. Spare handles it all. Using this new app takes away the pain of traditional ridesharing brings it into the 21st century.

Try using Spare Rides on your next commute. It is pretty awesome!