[silverado]

I am speaking only from Hinjewadi point of view.
Most companies are happy to allow people to WFH, so i am assuming this will stay for a long time.

So whenever people start going to office, there will be considerably low traffic and less number of people going to office in initial days/months.

Hard core car poolers have a set group, and if the same people come with you day in day out, you are minimizing risk somewhat.
Car owners will have to take extreme measure of sanitizing their cars once the ride is over, how many are willing to do it? remains to be seen.
These are times when you are paranoid about meeting your neighbour, in such times i doubt car owners will put up their cars for pooling IMO.

My approach is wait and watch.

[ramnaresh_2000]

In Telangana, they are planning to lift the lockdown on May 7th. Final decision will be taken on May 5th. However, lockdown extended or not extended, I have already made up my mind that I will not go to office for at-least 1 more month after full lockdown is lifted.

Prior to Corona crisis, I used to use s-Ride app regularly, as I travel 60 kms daily for work. Made sense economically to car pool and make some friends and improve network. Now, I will just travel alone until vaccine is released. Once the summer is over, I will travel by bike to reduce the costs.

My company is planning to bring people on rota basis, i.e. few people will work on Monday and Thursday only, remaining days they will WFH. Same way, few people will work only on Tuesday and Friday. This is a good start, this will impose social distancing and avoid crowded situations in office. They also mentioned that they will be using only 50% of the cubicles.

[Neo18]

Voted for "time will tell" .Initially as the lockdown is lifted ,I too will avoid car pooling and limit all forms of socializing. But if a cure does not come quickly, I will have not have much options. Economics will kick in sooner or later and make choices for us. It is easy to say that one will buy a new car and not pool but it's neither a practical nor economic choices for most of us, especially in metros. Let's see how it pans out.

[pgsagar]

Many of us were critical of American car culture and applauded efficient European public transport system. Well, looks like Covid-19 has helped Americans emerge smarter. Even in India, most of us lamented over the sorry state of public transport. But now, for a long time everyone will avoid public transport and carpooling, unless there is no alternative for him owing to financial constraints. Carpooling even among colleagues is risky because after business hours and on weekends, everyone has his own sub-set of friends/relatives to spend time with. In other words, no one knows who's been where.

[handsofsteel]

I am going to play the dissenting voice here. How many companies have the real estate to maintain a proper social distance at their premises? I continue to work during the covid phase (essential services). Even though I have a big corner office, there are innumerable people and staff who still have to come in. There are meetings to be attended (you seriously think the conference halls are going to be fumigated three times a day?). Elevators anyone? Though we were all very sensitive in the beginning, human nature takes over and things revert to normal. In such a case, if u share an office, a workstation, a lunchroom, a canteen, an elevator, even a common loo, why not a car? This is exactly what your logical mind will ask you. So, I see no difference at least for those who go out to work. They may well be attired in a mask and gloves but no other difference.

[nirmaljusdoit]

This pandemic has brought about changes in the way we look at life, especially the hygiene factors both personal and around us. Hand wash, sanitizers, etc have become a necessary practice.

In light of these changes and more to come, it would be interesting to analyze the impact that this would have in time to come upon the shared mobility areas of transport.

As the lockdown ends and we start going back to using these ride hailing services, what would be our outlook towards the hygiene factors of cabs ? From my personal experience there have been a number of unsatisfactory experiences while using cabs both Ola and Uber, with dirty seats, messy carpets, greasy headlining, foul odor, driver cleanliness etc. There have been instances where i have cancelled the cab on the spot due to such issues.

(Mods, kindly edit or move as required)

[1.2TSI7DSG]

While we talk about car pooling, a number of us use 'share' rixa, Tam Tam (and all the exotic '3 in all' and 8 more outside) machines. I am used to taking the economically friendly shared auto from station to home when I am in Mumbai. The other option which I use is to walk 3.5 kms in case I don't find one or there is a heavy jam at one of the junctions in the route.

To the people who can afford, single rixa /uber /ola works; what happens to those who can't? What happens to the surge pricing/traffic? Will even a single ola / uber be a reasonably priced option? And even whether the single ola / uber be safe?

I personally looking to buy a sub 5 l car for my wife whenever her wfh ends. She used to take a private shuttle to the office. Also what happens to company busses. Do we run them at half capacity/load them to normal/ cancel all of them?

While shared mobility be an option for the future. I am not sure and only time will tell.

[pranavGTI]

Carpooling is ruled out, first place. To work, it would be just me and my morning music. With more people WFH, Pune city roads should be traffic less and driving should be a breeze. Any other drive would be with my family and home cooked food for long time. I'm simply avoiding taking any risk for now.

[pganapathy]

Short of the vehicle being a pigsty, I generally am not too fussy. Of course, if you have grease on the seats i will not sit there, but a little dirt doesn't worry me. With regards to sanitizer, I couldn't care less

[vshankarhere]

As someone who is a regular Bla Bla user for my drives in Bangalore-Chennai-Coimbatore triangle, this is a disaster. I always used to offer rides and ended up reducing my expenses a great deal. Now with the Corona outbreak, am ain't going to offer any rides, at least for a year. Forget ride sharing, taking public transport too is a strict no no for me in the foreseeable future.

[Reinhard]

A bit off topic, but on similar lines as car-pooling -

Self Drive -
Self-drive rented car business is also going to take quite a dent in near future. Revv, ZoomCar, SelfDrive etc are going to have quite a tough time ahead I suspect.

Their investment done already in car inventories and maintenance facilities (parking lots, support staff etc.) must be causing quite a lot of debt I believe.

Shared Corporate Transport -
If you are in Pune, Mumbai, Bengaluru, NCR - you have seen MetroZip / OfficeRide / Shuttl / CityZip buses for sure. Many of you might have been using these.

How many IT employees will be comfortable going back to these afterwards? Forget about the future - there are hundreds of folks who have invested in contracting their buses into Shuttl. Many by acquiring brand new buses in large numbers. Since a month already, the buses are all idle. While they might be sitting okay with some revenue due to people who may have paid for a whole quarter's pass etc. things surely aren't too happy right now for all that money invested in the buses! And no certainty of when the business will take off again.

[bejoy]

The majority voted for no more car-pooling. Is this the new normal? I used to offer pool via carpooling app before the pandemic and has since then stopped giving until last week. I wanted to check the current scenario and here are some observations:

1. Since return to work being mandated by most of the companies, the people looking for pool has to increase. However, I don't see the requests in the app compared to earlier. May be the flexibility offered by the companies has caused a demand/supply imbalance and it resulted in a catching up phase, where there are no minimum pool seats on offer now.
2. App based cabs are scarce now and the costs are very high. I don't see many cabs on the road compared to pre-pandemic days, other than the company cabs.
3. The carpool app providers (Quick Ride, sRide, etc) have suffered a lot during the pandemic and they diversified into taxi aggregator service, bike pool, so on. It seems they are going to make up for the losses. Quick ride increased their platform fee from 6% to 20%, i.e. those offering pool gets less incentive.