Readers have long complained about the $50+ taxi fares that are typical for Capitol Hill residents (especially for those of us living far east of Broadway) getting to and from the airport. Though we have light rail service from downtown, service may not be available and/or desirable at some hours of the day and sometimes, you’re carrying too many bags for the train. Two Capitol Hill residents have developed ridepenguin, a free application that allows you to stave off the awkwardness of asking strangers standing on the cab line to share a cab by allowing you to anonymously announce your desire to share a taxi and then matching you with interested parties. The application is available both through a website and via mobile browsers. It now handles requests both to and from SeaTac.
I asked Ben Eidelson and Jason Prado for some tips on best practices for using the ridepenguin service:
- Make your ride share request as soon as you land, so that you can allow for the maximum time in finding a match
- Text an identifying piece of information (e.g. wearing a red sweater) to your match
- When splitting the fare, err on the side of tipping the cab driver generously (since you’re saving so much on the base fare)
Eidelson and Prado, who met while they were Stanford students, went on to work at Microsoft and have now co-founded everythingIsTheBest LLC (Eidelson still works at Microsoft).
In addition to ridepenguin, they continue to work on projects that help people (like themselves) solve every day problems. An issue that currently interests them is calendaring. If you want to help them learn more about your Capitol Hill calendar habits, take part in their short survey.
Kudos fellows. Expand this for general city-wide use and you will be gods.
Interesting, but, very college kid stuff.
And to bilk the cab company out of 20.00?
Interesting. I would rather share a beer at the gay bar. Save money and could lead to romance ….
Or share a ciggie out front of the bar …. now that could be REAL bonding, via nic fit.
The application works city wide in Seattle
Also to help the environment – better 1 cab than several
By general city-wide use I mean: not just to/from the airport.
Well done, super simple and to the point.
Yeah, cause only college kids want to save money. Or use coupons. Or go to happy hour to save money.
I like these “community building” types of ideas. I could have used this app. way back in the beginning of December when I had to take a harried cab ride to SEA-TAC to catch my flight on time. I guess if I reallly wanted to save money though, I would have planned ahead and took the light rail.