Waze Carpool is now available across the USA

It’s up to us to end traffic, let’s do it together!

I recently moved from San Francisco to New York City. While on opposite coasts, with very different pizza quality, one thing they have in common is bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic. Waze was built to address this: “outsmarting traffic, together.” I am proud to see this movement grow to more than 110 million monthly active users globally. Every month, more than 12 million Wazers report over 60 million incidents on Waze. Each report proves something many never thought possible — given the right tools, people will help other drivers and work together to “outsmart traffic” and create a better experience on the road. Through these daily acts of cooperation, we’ve helped each other save time, bypass dangerous hazards, and in the process, we’ve created the most up-to-date map in the world.

There’s also a Waze you probably don’t know. It’s the work we do with cities, municipalities, transportation departments, and first responders through our Connected Citizens Program. With more than 600 partners around the world, covering more than two billion people, we share data and help solve shared transportation challenges and, together, build the cities of tomorrow. But we can’t stop here. To really fight traffic, we need to work together with citizens, communities, private companies, and public organizations — everyone needs to pitch in!

We all feel traffic getting worse; it is a trend that affects all of us. Despite effort and investment, road congestion, environmental hazards, and the strain on our transportation infrastructure continues to worsen. Traffic impacts our daily lives. Everyday tasks — like getting home or to work — are stressful, unpredictable, and inefficient. And as a society, we suffer from the ills of traffic: it’s a dangerous health hazard, environmental burden, and creates tremendous economic waste.

We’ve all experienced that moment when you’re sitting helplessly in traffic, shaking your head at all the drivers around you, wondering why they had to ruin your commute. Well, guess what? Those same drivers are looking at you…and blaming you!

But playing the blame game isn’t going to solve traffic. Unfortunately, in the very near future, neither will flying cars, driverless cars, or magnetic tunnels. As long as we drive in Single Occupancy Vehicles (SOVs), it doesn’t matter who is driving; you, a ridesharing driver or an autonomous robot. Nothing will change.

The cause of our current congestion crisis is simple: too many people are driving alone, in the same direction, at the same time. We all share part of the blame for creating traffic, and therefore, we all share a responsibility to do something about it.

That is why we created Waze Carpool: instead of being stuck alone in traffic, we can get moving together. If we make a slight adjustment to our everyday behavior — like giving a ride to our neighbors in our empty car seats, instead of driving alone — we can make traffic a thing of the past for everyone.

Our vision is to reverse the negative trends in traffic now by using the Waze platform, our data, and our unique ability to connect everyone sharing the road, to share their empty car seats. With the help of our community, technology, and data, Waze Carpool matches people who are going in the same direction. This removes the friction of sharing our rides so we can start leaving some of our cars at home and take steps towards eliminating traffic, altogether. We know that by completing these small everyday acts of cooperation, we can make a big change to the way we move around our cities and improve our lives, together.

Starting today, October 10th, Waze Carpool is available nationwide in the USA. After testing in several states, Waze Carpool helps us use cars smarter. But it all starts with you. You can join the Waze Carpool movement today. Here’s how:

• As a Wazer, you can join Waze Carpool as a driver or rider (or both!). Drive a rider (up to 4) or leave your car at home. Save a little money while helping make the world a better place.
• As an employee or employer, you can encourage your workplace to participate in carpooling. Even team up with Waze Carpool for a month of free rides for everyone at your company. Do good while helping your employees commute, deal with parking constraints, and help your communities.
• As a government official, you can help limit single occupancy cars on the road with congestion pricing and regulations that help promote carpooling. And become the next Waze Connected Citizens Program partner to build a smarter city.

A better transportation future doesn’t need to be the distant future. As a society, we’re underutilizing the powerful tools at our disposal that can reduce traffic today. We don’t need to wait for huge government investments or transformative new technologies to solve this problem. The empty car seats are already there…we just need to cooperate a bit and make a small habit change! Americans come together in times of crisis, such as natural disasters, and have always shown a willingness to help each other, our neighbors, and our communities. We need to treat traffic as such a crisis and bring to bear our ability to cooperate, on our own, for the common good.

We helped create traffic and we can, together, end it.

See you in the carpool lane,

Noam Bardin

Chief Wazer