Industry | Carpooling & Ridesharing |
---|---|
Founded | 2007 |
Headquarters | Ottawa, Ontario & St. Michael, Barbados |
Key people | John Stewart, Founder Eric Dewhirst, Founder |
Website | pickuppal.com |
PickupPal Online Incorporated was a free online ridesharing service, that allowed its members to coordinate carpooling and ridesharing activities around the world.
PickupPal was founded in 2007 by John Stewart and Eric Dewhirst in Ontario, Canada. The idea was to create an online community that would leverage social networking tools in an effort to assist drivers and passengers to find each other online. The website was launched on January 15, 2008. PickupPal's competitors included Zimride and GoLoco.org. [1]
In July 2008 Trentway-Wagar, a regional bus company requested that the Ontario Highway Transportation Board (OHTB) order PickupPal to cease providing service within Ontario. PickupPal launched an online petition to lobby the Ontario Provincial Government to have the definition of a carpool vehicle amended to all carpool vehicles to cross municipal boundaries and that the restriction that all travel be limited to home and work exclusively. On October 15. 2008 PickupPal and Trentway-Wagar defended their positions before the OHTB and subsequently on November 6, 2008 the OHTB found in favor of Trentway-Wagar. On October 28, 2008 the Minister of Transportation tabled an amendment to the definition of a carpool vehicle that would allow operations like PickupPal to continue to operate in the province. [2]
In 2009, the Ontario government voted in favour of Bill 118 which amended the Public Vehicle Act to not include carpool vehicles. [3]
Transportation in Canada, the world's second-largest country in total area, is dedicated to having an efficient, high-capacity multimodal transport spanning often vast distances between natural resource extraction sites, agricultural and urban areas. Canada's transportation system includes more than 1,400,000 kilometres (870,000 mi) of roads, 10 major international airports, 300 smaller airports, 72,093 km (44,797 mi) of functioning railway track, and more than 300 commercial ports and harbours that provide access to the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans as well as the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway. In 2005, the transportation sector made up 4.2% of Canada's GDP, compared to 3.7% for Canada's mining and oil and gas extraction industries.
The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) is the public transport agency that operates bus, subway, streetcar, and paratransit services in Toronto, Peel Region and York Region in Southern Ontario, Canada. It is the oldest and largest of the urban transit service providers in the Greater Toronto Area, with numerous connections to systems serving its surrounding municipalities.
A high-occupancy vehicle lane is a restricted traffic lane reserved for the exclusive use of vehicles with a driver and one or more passengers, including carpools, vanpools, and transit buses. These restrictions may be only imposed during peak travel times or may apply at all times. According to the criteria used there are different types of lanes: temporary or permanent with concrete barriers; two-directional or reversible; and exclusive, concurrent or contraflow lanes working in peak periods. The normal minimum occupancy level is 2 or 3 occupants. Many jurisdictions exempt other vehicles, including motorcycles, charter buses, emergency and law enforcement vehicles, low-emission and other green vehicles, and/or single-occupancy vehicles paying a toll. HOV lanes are normally introduced to increase average vehicle occupancy and persons traveling with the goal of reducing traffic congestion and air pollution, although their effectiveness is questionable.
Carpooling is the sharing of car journeys so that more than one person travels in a car, and prevents the need for others to have to drive to a location themselves.
Slugging, also known as casual carpooling, is the practice of forming ad hoc, informal carpools for purposes of commuting, essentially a variation of ride-share commuting and hitchhiking. A driver picks up these non-paying passengers at key locations, as having these additional passengers means that the driver can qualify to use an HOV lane or enjoy toll reduction. While the practice is most common and most publicized in the congested Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, slugging also occurs in San Francisco, Houston, and other cities.
Coach Canada is the Canadian affiliate of Coach USA.
Durham Region Transit (DRT) is the regional public transit operator in Durham Region, Ontario, Canada, east of Toronto. Its headquarters are at 605 Rossland Rd East in Whitby, Ontario, and there are regional centres in Ajax, Whitby, and Oshawa. It was formed by the merger of Ajax/Pickering Transit, Whitby Transit, Oshawa Transit, and Clarington Transit.
King's Highway 412, or simply Highway 412, is a tolled controlled-access highway in the Canadian province of Ontario. The route is 8.9 km (5.5 mi) long, connecting Highway 401 with the eastern extension of Highway 407. The route lies entirely within Whitby in the Regional Municipality of Durham, travelling within one kilometre of the border between Whitby and Ajax and Pickering.
Metrolinx is a Crown agency of the Government of Ontario that manages and integrates road and public transport in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA), which comprises much of Ontario's Golden Horseshoe region. Headquartered at Union Station in Toronto, the agency was created as the Greater Toronto Transportation Authority on April 24, 2006. The agency adopted its present name as a brand name in 2007 and eventually as the legal name in 2009.
Lyft, Inc. develops, markets, and operates a mobile app, offering vehicles for hire, motorized scooters, a bicycle-sharing system, and food delivery. The company is based in San Francisco, California and operates in 644 cities in the United States and 12 cities in Canada.
The Canadian province of Ontario first required its residents to register their motor vehicles in 1903. Registrants provided their own licence plates for display until 1911, when the province began to issue plates. Plates are currently issued by the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO).
Shared transport or shared mobility is a transportation system where travelers share a vehicle either simultaneously as a group or over time as personal rental, and in the process share the cost of the journey, thus creating a hybrid between private vehicle use and mass or public transport. It is a transportation strategy that allows users to access transportation services on an as-needed basis. Shared mobility is an umbrella term that encompasses a variety of transportation modes including carsharing, Bicycle-sharing systems, ridesharing companies, carpools, and microtransit.
Zimride by Enterprise Holdings is an American carpool program that matches inter-city drivers and passengers through social networking services. It is offered to universities and businesses as a matchmaking service. The company was founded in May 2007. After the launch of the Lyft app in May 2012 for intra-city rides, the Lyft app rapidly grew and became the focus of the company. Zimride officially renamed as Lyft in May 2013, and the Zimride service was sold to Enterprise Holdings in July 2013. As of July 2013, the service had over 350,000 users and has partnerships with Facebook and Zipcar.
Carma Technology Corporation is a real-time transportation technology company headquartered in Cork, Ireland. Its flagship product, Carma Carpooling, matches users with nearby commuters and enables them to share the cost of driving. Carma also has offices in San Francisco, California and Austin, Texas.
SmokinginCanada is banned in indoor public spaces, public transit facilities and workplaces, by all territories and provinces, and by the federal government. As of 2010, legislation banning smoking within each of these jurisdictions is mostly consistent, despite the separate development of legislation by each jurisdiction. Notable variations between the jurisdictions include: whether, and in what circumstances ventilated smoking rooms are permitted; whether, and up to what distance away from a building is smoking banned outside of a building; and, whether smoking is banned in private vehicles occupied by children.
Logan D. Green is the co-founder and CEO of Lyft, which he founded with John Zimmer in 2012. Lyft grew out of Zimride, a ride share company previously founded by Green and Zimmer in 2007.
A ridesharing company is a company that, via websites and mobile apps, matches passengers with drivers of vehicles for hire that, unlike taxicabs, cannot legally be hailed from the street.
Many communities, governments, and organizations have established rules and regulations that specifically govern ridesharing companies. In some jurisdictions, for-profit ridesharing operations are completely illegal. Regulations can include requirements for driver background checks, fares, the number of drivers, and licensing.
Via Transportation, Inc. is a global public transport, logistics, and TransitTech company headquartered in New York City. Via licenses its technology to cities, transportation authorities, school districts, universities, and private organizations to help build their own technology-driven transportation networks. It operates in partnership with over 400 local governments across more than 20 countries globally, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Israel, Germany, France, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia, Finland, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates.
The 42nd Legislative Assembly of Ontario is the current legislature of the province of Ontario, Canada.