Freedom Square: Three People! With One Click!

Having a personal vehicle in large cities is becoming increasingly difficult every day. Finding parking is a challenge, traffic is frustrating and time-consuming, and most importantly, air pollution and global warming pose a greater threat than ever. While urban population growth has led to more diverse and numerous urban transportation services, taxis are often unavailable when we need them the most. Many taxis are old vehicles that contribute further to air pollution, and beware of taxi drivers who might try to cheat tourists and inexperienced passengers! Lyft, characterized by its pink mustache, was founded in 2012 by two young men in their twenties in San Francisco, California. John Zimmer and Logan Green, the founders of this startup, had also launched ZimRide in 2007. By 2014, the value of both ZimRide and Lyft surpassed $300 million. While ZimRide aimed to 'carpool for intercity travel,' Lyft started as an urban service. If you want to travel from your city to another, you can use ZimRide, but for going just a few streets away—or even across town—Lyft comes to your aid. If you intend to work as a Lyft driver, you must first undergo a brief interview with company experts, and your vehicle must pass a technical inspection. Your criminal background is also checked by the company, and if you have a criminal record, you likely won't be able to drive. All operations of this company are conducted through an app on your smartphone. If you are a driver, you log into the system, and if someone nearby needs a ride, you are notified. You then have fifteen seconds to respond with a yes or no. Passengers can read your profile before choosing whether they want you—and your vehicle—to be their driver. After the short trip ends, both the driver and passenger rate each other (one to five stars) and write reasons for their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the experience. Uber, another similar service, was founded in 2009 and officially began operations in 2010, also in San Francisco. Like Lyft, all Uber operations are handled through an app on smartphones between drivers and passengers. Uber quickly expanded its coverage to many cities and grew to over 45 different countries. Paris was the first city outside the U.S. to adopt Uber. Two other companies operating in the shared transportation sector are Zip Car and Car2Go. Zip Car started in 2000 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Car2Go began in Germany in 2008. These companies own their vehicles, and passengers can rent these cars by the hour. The difference between this type of rental and traditional car rental companies lies in both the rental duration and the vehicle return location. Zip Car has its own parking lots in various cities. You reserve one of these vehicles through your smartphone, pick it up, and then return it to the same parking lot. Car2Go has made this even easier. You find the nearest vehicle through your phone, reserve it, and have half an hour from the reservation time to reach it. When you finish your task, you can park it anywhere you want—as long as it's within a specified urban area. This means you don't even have to return it to its original spot. In all these services, no cash changes hands. Passengers' credit cards—whose details they have previously provided to the respective company—are charged, and the amount is deposited into the driver's or company's account. If a person does not have enough money in their account, they cannot use the service, which is a significant difference from traditional taxi services where if a passenger says they have no money after reaching their destination, the driver has limited options. Lastly, traditional taxi drivers—whom we recognize by their yellow and orange cars—are the main opponents of these startups. In major U.S. cities, including the capital, Washington D.C., many protests have been organized against these companies, but their response is that customer acceptance and satisfaction indicate that something is wrong with the traditional taxi model!