Ride Sharing (aka organised hitchhiking)

The concept of ride sharing has gone through a few phases of development in Europe. Unfortunately, the name given to the concept has gone through at least two phases of retardation that make it a little inaccessible to us Auslanders.

I once recommended Blablacar to an Australian friend travelling through Europe and was met with a pause, before being asked if I (and in turn, they) was serious. I realised, too late, that saying Blablacar out loud does in fact make you sound a little insane, but when I explained that its predecessor was called ‘Mitfahrgelegenheit’, my friend started to seriously doubt if Europe was still the same artistic and creative well that once created symphonies.

Here are some suggestions that suck, but kill ‘Blablacar’: Ride along, Gute Fahrt, Never Drive Alone, Freerider, Come with, Go Go Gadget…

Anyway, the idea of ride sharing is quite simple: if someone is driving from one city to another and they have seats free, they post the ride online, outlining what time, and from where they are leaving, how many people they can take and for what price. It is one of the fastest and cheapest ways to get between cities in Europe, I have used it many many times and met many interesting people on the way.

It is totally trusted by both passengers and drivers and works using a similar system to eBay using reviews and reputation to rate users. I have travelled from Munich to Venice, Budapest, Rostock, Berlin, Innsbruck, Salzburg, Vienna, Cologne, Brussels… all with random people and never had a problem.

Whenever we drive from Munich to Dortmund to visit my girlfriend’s family, we hire a car, drive the whole way there and back. If we manage to get three fares both ways, we actually profit slightly on the trip. ie. The cost of petrol and the cost of hiring the car is less than what we make from transporting 6 people on our journey (the fines from the invisible speed cameras usually mean we lose money in the end… but that’s a different post). The passengers are also happy because the fare is still way cheaper than a train or bus and much faster.

I believe this system works purely because of the relatively even population density of Europe. Getting to a smaller country town may be a little harder, but jumping between major cities is a breeze and you can almost always find someone going your way just hours before you decide. All the major meta search integrators like Rome2Rio and Goeuro are incorporating Blablacar into their search results.

It’s basically hitchhiking in an app and it’s just one of the many ways that Europe rocks.