Zimride matches drivers, passengers

— UC Santa Cruz student Lauren Vargas was spending a lot of money on gas for frequent weekend trips to Southern California to keep a long-distance relationship going.

But then she discovered Zimride Inc., a San Francisco company that blends ride sharing with social networking. Now she covers her costs by renting otherwise empty seats in her car to passengers willing to pay $20 to $30 to make the same trip.

“I always have two, three or even four people to drive down with,” said Vargas, 20. “It’s cheaper than a plane ticket and faster than a train. And I’ve met some cool people I probably would not have met.”

Founded in 2007, Zimride built its online carpool-matching service at select universities, a similar route Facebook followed in its early days. Indeed, Zimride received $250,000 in seed money from a Facebook investment fund.

But Zimride, which claims to be the largest online ride-sharing service in North America with 300,000 users, began to branch out Wednesday, offering services to any travelers looking for rides or riders between the Bay Area and Los Angeles, one of the busiest transportation corridors in the world.

One driver was offering a Labor Day weekend trip from Palo Alto to Los Angeles for just $25 one way.

Drivers and passengers can sign on to the service at zimride.com, post where they want to go and check out the Zimride and Facebook profiles of ride-sharing matches.

“We wanted to create a new form of transportation for everyone that’s built on this community of sharing rides,” said co-founder John Zimmer.

Catering to students

Zimride built its business on selected university networks, catering to students needing cheap transportation to and from campus or to their homes. The company then began working with companies looking to increase their employees’ ride-sharing options.

The service has booked more than 100 million miles worth of trips, and Zimride has 110 clients in 30 states. They include the University of California campuses, Stanford University, the University of San Francisco, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of North Carolina, JetBlue Airways and Facebook.

Zimride initially concentrated on closed networks that provide an extra layer of security – requiring a campus or corporate login – to build its business and prove the service worked. Zimride generates revenue by charging companies and colleges an annual service fee.

But the move to open up to the general public gets back to the company’s original vision – to create a greener, low-cost, grassroots transportation system for both regular commutes and long road trips. In fact, when Zimride began marketing trips between the Bay Area and Southern California, the company was already offering rides to locations outside the state. One driver seeking passengers for the Burning Man festival in Nevada was asking $80 for the round-trip drive from Berkeley, while another driver sought $8 for a round trip from Buffalo Grove, Ill., to Chicago.

Zimbabwe system

Co-founder Logan Green was inspired by what he saw on a 2005 trip to Zimbabwe – a grassroots public transportation system – and derived the firm’s name from that country. The name also made sense when he met Zimmer through Facebook, where the service started as an application.

Zimmer had also been thinking of building what he called “one network where you can find a ride where you need to go.”

Better connections

There are other online ride-sharing sites, including Ridester, Carpoolworld and eRideshare, and government agencies’ trip-planning sites like 511.org. Then there’s Craigslist, which lists hundreds of thousands of posts by drivers and passengers looking to share rides.

Zimmer said he believes Zimride can offer a better experience than just a ride-sharing bulletin board. He said Zimride gives drivers and passengers a better idea of who they are sharing rides with because the site’s user profiles and Facebook connections include photos, contact information and personal preferences such as favorite music.

Drivers and passengers are encouraged to communicate with each other before the trip to build trust. Passengers can also pay for their trips ahead of time. Fees are based on mileage, and Zimride plans to take a 10 percent cut from trips booked by the general public, although it is waiving the fee initially as a promotion.

Lauren Vargas said she usually checks to see what other Zimride drivers are charging, setting her fees just high enough to cover gas and maintenance. She has also made her profile viewable only within the college community and carefully looks over prospective passengers’ profiles.

“I wouldn’t want to be driving down with just anybody,” she said.

She used to make the trip to Anaheim every other weekend to maintain a long-distance relationship. And it’s worked.

“I couldn’t hold that relationship up without Zimride,” she said.

E-mail Benny Evangelista at bevangelista@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page D – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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