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starlab:

When stuck in a taxi on one of Beijing’s many clogged ring roads, I’ve often marveled at how empty the other cars are. From the tiny pod-like QQs to the palatial Darth Vader-esque Audi A4s, Beijingers were typically driving alone. Sure, China’s collectivist history — and crowded streets and public transit — would seem conducive to ridesharing and carpooling. But in these fast-developing Chinese cities, the car often symbolizes and delivers a departure from the crowdedness of the street and a fast track to the private comfort of middle-class living. Once in the university district, when stuck in a hot, thick crowd amidst a hot thick traffic jam, crossing the street on my way to the light rail, I found myself envying the privacy of the lone luxury car driver stuck in front of me. Sure, I was moving slightly faster, but he was listening to his radio, the king of his own dumb, fat, mobile castle.

Can these two strains — the selfish and private and the shared and public — find a peaceful co-existence? Wired?

In Wuhan, China, over 200 residents have participated in a groundbreaking new program to reduce pollution and traffic congestion: they’re carpooling.

Despite increasing the ever-present layer of smog in major cities, carpooling has yet to catch on in China. That’s mostly because carpool organizers fear being charged with running an unlicensed taxi service, a strict violation of transportation laws. It’s also why the Wuhan carpoolers require an application process and place signs in their windows that read “Carpooling with neighbors.”

“If ‘carpooling with neighbors’ can be carried out across the entire city, traffic pressure will be significantly alleviated,” an anonymous transport official told China Central Television. Still, he emphasized that “carpooling is illegal if a fee is charged.”

The carpooling project is the work of the residents’ committee of Wuhan’s Changqing Gardens housing complex. Zhang Aoqing, director of the property owner’s committee of the complex’s No.2 sub-community, conducted a survey that found more than 80% of drivers in the community traveled alone.

A few days later, a sign appeared asking residents to join in “carpooling with neighbors.” Twenty drivers signed up to carpool on the first day, with 162 drivers offering rides the next day.

According to CCTV, the community consulted with legal experts to develop a form that riders and drivers could sign to prove that no money was changing hands. Passengers must also pledge to “be totally responsible for their own personal security while carpooling and to not require car owners to take responsibility for safety accidents that may occur while carpooling.”

After nearly a month of sharing rides, there haven’t been any reported incidents of the police harassing carpoolers and the program has expanded to additional communities.

But even if this leads to illegal cabs — as, experience teaches me, it likely will (there are plenty of black cabs across Chinese cities) — that’s still going to be illegal cabs that are helping people get around together, faster and cheaper, using cars that already exist.

—ALEX

Photo: Flickr/ernop

androidappsonly:

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