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Uber and Lyft are coming to B.C., so what does that mean for Poparide?

With ride-hailing imminently entering our home province of B.C., we are frequently asked the question, “What will be the impact on Poparide?”. The quick answer is that Uber and Lyft are inherently different from Poparide and therefore we don’t think they will have a big impact on our business.

Uber and Lyft are essentially crowdsourced taxi apps that dispatch drivers to pick up and drop off passengers on-demand and for profit, usually on short distance trips within a town or a city. These services are commonly known as “ride-hailing” or “tranportation network companies” (TNCs) under regulatory frameworks.

Poparide, on the other hand, is a real ridesharing platform that helps drivers fill empty seats in cars when they are already driving from A to B, usually on distances of at least 50 kilometres. In this scenario, drivers are looking to collect money from passengers to cover their costs and are allowed to do so under provincial carpooling regulations.

As a result, consumers can expect to pay an equivalent taxi fare when using a ride-hailing app such as Uber or Lyft (at least $1 per km). In contrast, Poparide trips are much cheaper (10c per km on average) because passengers are only contributing to the driver’s expenses.

Let’s put this in perspective. On a trip from Vancouver to Squamish which is 65 kilometres, a Poparide seat costs $8 on average. A taxi or ride-hailing fare will likely cost over $65, or eight times more than Poparide.

We believe that the introduction of ride-hailing in British Columbia will stimulate growth on Poparide’s intercity ridesharing network. 

As seen in other provinces where ride-hailing operates, more passengers in BC will be using ride-hailing as a means to travel to Poparide pickup points for trips that are departing for other cities.


For more information on this topic, we invite you to read the article we published in April 2019 entitled Uber and Lyft are not ridesharing.