With PENDLA, commuters travel to work together

Why do we use the car? Work is the driving factor

In Germany, 90 percent of rural households and 50 percent of urban households own at least one car. If we look at the reasons why people get into their cars, we see that commuting is one of the main reasons: In Germany, commuting to work accounts for 27 percent of the daily distance travelled, in Croatia even 47 percent. And this only includes the distance between home and work and back. If you look at other work- or education-related journeys, you get almost 50 per cent in most European countries.

One reason is certainly that many rural areas are not sufficiently integrated into public transport. And subsidies and tax breaks provide additional incentives for car-heavy commuting.

From “ride-sharing banks” to BlaBlaCar

However, new solutions are emerging, especially near large cities. Some villages offer subsidised taxis, community buses, on-demand shuttles or even shared e-cars.

Another solution is ride-sharing benches: these are marked benches on main roads where people willing to ride can sit and signal to passers-by that they want a lift. While this solution is straightforward and spontaneous, it is not always reliable and, in the worst case, can lead to being stuck on a bench instead of attending a morning meeting at the office.

By contrast, platforms such as BlaBlaCar are much more reliable. The digital car-sharing platforms have become increasingly popular in recent years, especially for irregular journeys over longer distances. BlaBlaCar has been in business for more than 17 years and now reaches around 35 million members. The offer to users is simple: drivers can enter their route, preferred driving style (chatty or quiet) and the number of free seats via an app. Travellers looking for a ride then submit a request for a suitable ride.

However, for people who commute the same distance to work every day, BlaBlaCar is quite burdensome.

Ridesharing for regular customers

This is where new car-sharing platforms come into play, for example PENDLA. The crowd-based carpooling platform for districts, cities and municipalities wants to support regular carpooling. Just like BlaBlaCar, drivers can add their routes. The app then automatically compares their route with those of other users to find the best match and then displays it on a map. The service is tailored to regular trips, i.e. drivers can choose which days of the week they drive the route and other users can join these trips on a regular basis. A key aspect is that users can see how many other people are travelling in the same direction.

What also distinguishes the PENDLA service from other car-sharing services is that the counties, cities and municipalities bear the costs for the introduction of the service in their area. This relieves the users financially and makes the service more affordable.

The path to sustainability is more than one passenger per car

In any case, there is not much room for additional passengers in most cars. In the EU, the average car carries less than two people. And since the daily commute to work accounts for such a large share of car journeys, that’s quite a few half-empty cars travelling the same distances every day. Sustainability looks different!

But with each additional passenger, the journey becomes more CO2-efficient. Regular carpooling can therefore significantly reduce the negative impact of the mobility sector on our environment.

Another impact of a well-established carpooling service can also be that it reduces car dependency in the long run. If carpooling is a convenient and affordable option, it may eventually eliminate the need to own a car. This in turn increases the chance that other journeys will be made by public transport.

Thinking further, car sharing can also significantly reduce traffic congestion, leading to less congestion and accidents, and also reducing the need for parking infrastructure.

The benefit that is likely to appeal first to most new users, however, is cost reduction. By their own account, PENDLA users can save up to 75 per cent of their travel costs through gas and parking charges, making ridesharing much more sustainable not only ecologically, but also economically.

A joint step in the right direction

Ridesharing can therefore be extremely effective in reducing our emissions. Moreover, similar to shuttle services, it can fill gaps in public transport and, in the best case, also improve local connectivity in the long term.

However, trust is still a general challenge in ridesharing, as people have to book rides with strangers first. Therefore, many platforms – like BlaBlaCar – work with a rating system to highlight trustworthy drivers. But unfortunately, this is not a 100 per cent fail-safe system either; racism, missing payments or last-minute cancellations cannot be completely ruled out.

And as long as company cars are provided by companies and commuting kilometres with one’s own car are tax-privileged, incentives for carpooling are often lacking. For a real green mobility revolution, politics must sharpen up here.

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