UTAS-Ride: organization-based ridesharing platform for commuters

While commercial ride-sourcing service providers, like Uber, have gained enormous popularity over the last decade, non-commercial and incidental ridesharing is rarely an option for ride seekers. Although incidental ridesharing is beneficial in easing urban congestion and environment, it is not accepted by a number of people due to stranger danger and time delay. Organization-based ridesharing allows coworkers within the same organization to share rides for commuting purposes. The similar commuting time and certain level of acquaintance among co-workers make organization-based ridesharing more acceptable than other forms of ridesharing. Thus, this paper proposes an organizational ridesharing platform called UTAS-Ride for mobile devices. UTAS-Ride allows its users to create a unique carpool for the affiliated organization and share rides with co-workers in the carpool. Functions like user validation and routing are provided to separate different user groups and calculate routes. The platform is an exploration regarding organization-based ridesharing on mobile devices.