BlaBlaCar purchases OUIBUS

[radamfi]

This is old news but I have only just noticed. The car sharing broker BlaBlaCar has purchased OUIBUS from SNCF. In return, SNCF has become a shareholder in BlaBlaCar. Curious how they plan to integrate long distance coaches and car sharing.

Anyone used BlaBlaCar?

 

[Bletchleyite]

I doubt you'll find many in here who have. Certainly I would find car sharing with a randomer impossibly socially awkward.

 

[telstarbox]

I would consider a carshare if:

I drove to work (which I don't currently) at an out of town location (hospital, business park, industrial estate etc), and a colleague was going the same way, and it was mutually convenient; or

I was going to e.g. a large music festival and others were going the same way (sometimes the festival organisers will link their website to a car share portal). This has worked well in the past

But I wouldn't bother looking for one-off car journeys even for long distances - the chance of finding someone who wants to do a similar journey at a similar time without significant diversions is small, and on corridors where there *are* lots of people going the same way, there is usually a railway!

If I was a non-driver and desperate to save costs, I would have thought traditional hitch hiking at a motorway slip road would be more likely to find a willing driver than a rather esoteric website.

 

[Soyyo]

I’ve used BlaBlaCar as an emergency measure going from Málaga to Almería. It was a comfortable and inexpensive journey, with plenty of different departure times. Cost was 12 euros as opposed to 17 on the coach. The downside as someone remarked is if you hit unlucky with the random strangers. In practice most people are okay.

 

[Shimbleshanks]

This is old news but I have only just noticed. The car sharing broker BlaBlaCar has purchased OUIBUS from SNCF. In return, SNCF has become a shareholder in BlaBlaCar. Curious how they plan to integrate long distance coaches and car sharing.

Anyone used BlaBlaCar?

Not personally but my French Missus' family have used it quite a bit and it's always worked well, I'm told. It's surprising how easy it is to find journeys even to or from small places and it certainly fills the gaps in a country where public transport is pretty rubbish away from the main cities. One of my brothers-in-law used it travel from his village in south-west France to the nearest airport to catch a flight, for example. I asked them about the 'social awkwardness' bit and apparently they deal with it by hardly a word being spoken on any of the journeys...

 

[Bletchleyite]

Not personally but my French Missus' family have used it quite a bit and it's always worked well, I'm told. It's surprising how easy it is to find journeys even to or from small places and it certainly fills the gaps in a country where public transport is pretty rubbish away from the main cities. One of my brothers-in-law used it travel from his village in south-west France to the nearest airport to catch a flight, for example. I asked them about the 'social awkwardness' bit and apparently they deal with it by hardly a word being spoken on any of the journeys...

I think the idea of organised ride sharing is much more established in mainland Europe than here. Germany has had the "Mitfahrzentralen" for years (traditionally physical offices that coordinated it, primarily for the likes of students) and that's a country that historically has had excellent public transport coverage, unlike France.