How to Succeed at Ride-Sharing Without Really Trying: A Navigation-Based Commerce and Entertainment Approach to Transportation

Abstract

Transportation is a derived demand | in and of itself, it only can provide disutility (its utility only being a result of getting us where we need to go). Transportation should not be arduous and should not be difficult. As such, the interest in ride-sharing and autonomous taxis (aTaxis) has been growing in recent years as transportation problems gain more and more publicity. Part of making the practice of casual ride- sharing and the use of autonomous taxis a commercially viable solution to the ubiqui- tous problems of dangerous roads, traffic congestion, and general disutility is creating a platform through which people can discover ride-sharing opportunities without re- ally trying. This is where navigation-based commerce ventures are useful. While people are often predisposed to refrain from capitalizing on ride-sharing opportuni- ties, taking advantage of concepts in the fields of navigation-based commerce and navigation-based entertainment can cause ride-sharing to become a more attractive option. Events inherently ask people to congregate in a single space for a brief period of time. These circumstances | a large amount of people with a common interest going to a common location | are ideal for ride-sharing. This project discusses the psychology behind ride-sharing, proposes various business models for a navigation- and event-based ride-sharing system, and establishes the technical foundation for a fully implemented web service named Relevent.