Sharing taxis

Methods of Sharing taxis or Vehicles for hire have been shared all round the world for as long as there have been vehicles. The wikipedia article wikipedia:Share Taxi details many of these.

In the UK a taxi driver is not normally allowed to broker journeys between strangers, however there are people offering web/mobile services to achieve this. Some of were commercial businesses from the start but some started for other reasons, for example Airport Transfer Service was started by a person who rented out property in the alps and need to get people up to the resort from Geneva Airport, it developed into a partnership with a local taxi company and then went europe wide with a contract with easyjet. There are now many companies in the airport transfer sector and some are diversifying into access to ports and stations.

Texxi is an interest concept where potential customers text there post code to a central number which then texts them back with joining instructions for a taxi to take them home from a nightclub.

Students at Nottingham University are understood to use informal texting between peers to organise taxi shares rather than pay the bus fares that are in fact higher than the equivalent taxi fare split between a number of people.

When Liftshare reached 100,000 members then launched a taxi-share service. Until that point taxi companies had wanted to participate but were discouraging, but with a membership of 100K it was felt the time was right. As of April 2008 Liftshare has 220,000 members.