In addition to public and private transportation, Phorego is building a new genre: Social Transportation. While public transportation is inflexible and private transportation is costly, social transportation will be fast, flexible and inexpensive or free.
The vision is big and the time is right: With slow economy and high gas prices, people wants to save money or generate new revenues. Ridesharing/Carpooling is supposed to be one solution. But current products/services in the market have not been able to address this, because many are inter-city oriented, or don’t have real-time active matching, or operate like a taxi/shuttle service, or mandate a fare and charge a fee. The end result is that the vision is still just a vision.
Convenience and ease of use is the key: Phorego delivers real-time matches to your e-mail or phone with continuous status updates; its street-level matching engine is primed for ad-hoc intra-city use. Safety is another: Phorego lets corporations, universities, governments and communities create and operate their own rideshare groups. Even the general public can do so to improve the safety factor.
Why not pick up your neighbors and get to work in 1 shared vehicle instead of 3 individually? On your way to pick up your uncle at the airport, may be you can give another arriving passenger a ride? How about those working late one night and need to get back home? The college students who want to go back home on holidays? The guys who have too much drinks in the bar at 3 o’clock in the morning? The use of social transportation is endless. Sharing vehicles let riders save time and money while drivers make some extra cash. Roads will be less congested and even the environment wins.
Currently the service is available in USA/Canada on PCs and MACs. Mobile versions are coming starting January 2013. Multi-language (French, German, Italian and Spanish, Chinese) version will be available when the service expands into Europe in 1st quarter of 2013.
As a promotion for this launch, Phorego is offering corporations, universities and communities to create their own rideshare groups for free. Start one now before it expires.