redBus launches carpooling platform ‘rPool’: Here are its features

You will soon be able to save at least 4 to 5 litres of fuel on a 10 km journey! Online bus ticketing platform redBus has announced the launch of an advanced carpooling service on its platform, called rPool. Launched in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune, this new service will allow office goers to avail and offer rides in their personal cars, while commuting between home and their workplace. rPool can be accessed directly from within the redBus mobile app as per the company. If 4 people share one car for 10km via the rPool platform, one can save around 4 to 5 litres of fuel thus reducing the CO2 emissions by 9 to 11kgs. 

Speaking on the occasion, Prakash Sangam, CEO redBus said, “While governments and various other institutions are evaluating multiple options to tackle congestion in cities, as one of the largest facilitators of road travel in the country, redBus is poised to make a difference through advanced technology and professional expertise. rPool, our new carpooling service, is a systematic solution, not only to decongest roads, but also offer commuters, a viable option that helps them save fuel and time. With the right implementation and adoption at scale, carpooling can significantly reduce vehicular traffic during peak hours in urban cities.”

Integrated into the redBus app, rPool will offer a carpool solution to working professionals, enabling them to offer and avail rides, between their homes and offices. It will connect ride givers and ride takers in the most convenient manner possible and the matching algorithm will ensure that ride givers don’t have to deviate or take any detours from their daily work route and ride takers get to travel the maximum distance of their commute as a part of the shared ride.

Features of rPool:   

1. Verified Profiles via multiple checks: rPool is restricted to working professionals undertaking daily commute. Users are verified through their mobile number and their organization’s corporate email id.

2. Safe, secure and, private: redBus has introduced phone number masking which enables users to connect with each other via the redBus app without revealing their phone numbers to each other thus ensuring privacy. Ride takers on rPool would be provided accident insurance free of cost for each ride.

2. Attractive Incentives: Ride givers receive incentives in the form of reward points that can be redeemed at fuel stations and Amazon Pay. Ride takers pay much less than autos/cabs for the same distance. 

3. Inaugural Launch Offer: As an inaugural offer, for the first 500 ride givers in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and, Pune each, redBus would be charging zero commission for the first 5 years.

4. User profiles and feedback mechanism: Creation of user profiles based on user reviews, allowing participants the option of choosing the people they wish to travel with, based on their ratings. The platform also offers women ride givers or takers to choose to travel with women alone, as an option.

Chaitanya Kanuri, World Resources Institute India (WRI India), said, “By allowing three-four trips to be fulfilled by a single vehicle, carpooling can contribute to reduced congestion as well as lower GHG emissions and air pollution- for which transportation is a major source. Care must be taken, however, to ensure that ride-givers on carpooling platforms are only permitted to share costs of fuel and vehicle use with other co-passengers without imposing any additional charges; this is in line with carpooling regulations in other countries like the US and France.