While waiting for the public transport system and road networks to improve, ridesharing, or carpooling, promises to be a quicker way to reduce traffic and save cost.
In Malaysia, we are conditioned to believe that we must have a car, and in many cases, this is largely true. Our public transportation system is not exactly optimal or reliable, and while walking and cycling are great alternatives, the distance to travel and the weather may not be encouraging.
This has led to the rapid growth of the number of cars, resulting in increasingly congested traffic. Most cars on the road are single-occupancy vehicles – i.e. cars occupied solely by the driver. And obviously, a car can accommodate more than one person. It is highly likely that many of these cars are headed in the same direction, if not towards the same destination. With that, the amount of idle personnel-transport capacity at any time is extraordinary.
