My First Waze Carpool Experience

Now that I have purchased a car to supplement my Radwagon, I have been looking for ways to make it environmentally & economically friendly.

Here’s my recipe for reducing the impact of my car on the environment.

1. Bike as often as possible.
2. Work from home as often as possible. I aim for 1–2 days per week. This has other benefits — zero commute time, focus time away from the office, I can take a break by getting things done around the house. Every day I don’t drive to work saves ~40 miles of commuting.
3. Carpool!

Carpooling is a fantastic way to reduce your carbon footprint. As a driver, you’re taking another car off the road.

Finding a Carpool

There are a few good ways to find a carpool. The most comfortable one is to simply ask around at work and see who is on the same route as you. This is how I found my first carpool partners.

Now that I have kids to drop-off at school, the matter is more complicated. The drop-offs cause me to leave a little bit later than most of co-workers. I had a hard time finding a co-worker who was on the same schedule.

That caused me to look outside of co-workers for a carpool partner. I turned to Waze.

In the Waze app, you can set up a carpool profile that allows you give & get rides. You set your Home & Work location and leave times, it automatically pairs you with potential riders. It also handles the payment of gas money right in the app.

My First Waze Carpool Experience as a the Driver

Yesterday was my first time driving a Waze carpool. The night before I sent a message to a potential carpooler (let’s call him Max, not his real name), and he accepted. According to Waze, he was only a few minutes off my beaten path. I used my kids’ school as the ‘start point’.

Me and my briefcase.

I dropped off my kids like a normal day, then proceeded to the pickup location specified by Waze. Max actually sent me a message confirming pickup time about 15 minutes beforehand — I appreciated that just to make sure we were still on.

After driving a few minutes, I was at the pickup location. Max was there, standing outside. I picked him up and we were on our way. On the way in, we talked about our work lives and companies, which made for easy conversation to start. It turns out we’re both in Analytics.

I dropped him off at the building right across the street from ours — what an awesome match!

It turns out his leaving schedule was flexible like mine. He was able to leave as early as 3pm, but could wait until 6pm. We left around 4:30.

In the evening, our conversation opened up a little more. We talked about his home country and soccer — fun topics. It was definitely more entertaining (not that carpool partners need to be entertaining — it can be great when they’re quiet as well). We also took more advantage of the carpool lane. When I dropped off Max, I was actually still eager to continue the conversation which bodes well for future carpool opportunities.

From the app perspective — I missed a few required clicks. I didn’t officially start the trip until after we arrived. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect — but at the end I was able to log the trip successfully.

Here’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s simple but I managed to botch it. I’m guessing I’m not the only one.

1. Navigate to the pickup appointment in the Waze app. (Click the little waving passenger in the bottom right, then find the appointment) .
2. As soon you depart to pick up your carpool partner, “Start the Pick-up”. This will share your location / ETA with them (like a Lyft ride) so they know when to expect you.
3. When you pick up your rider, confirm that you have picked them up in the app.
4. The app will then give you directions to the drop-off spot .
5. When it’s time to drop them off, mark them as dropped off in your app to end the trip. Easy peasy.

My first day as a Waze carpool driver was great! I definitely recommend you try it out.

The app limits you to 2 rides per day to prevent abuse of the system. There are some promo code links for Waze carpooling in this article, but I wasn’t paid / contracted by Waze or anyone to write this.