Finding a ride is entering the digital age in Baltimore.
Lyft, a San Francisco-based company, is to launch its ride sharing application Thursday afternoon. The “app” allows people who need a ride to find drivers headed in the same direction.
Company officials say the idea is to create a sense of community among riders and drivers. That sense comes, in part, from trying to make the experience enjoyable, they say.
Lyft vehicles sport fuzzy pink mustaches; passengers sit in the front seat with the driver and exchange a fist bump upon arrival.
“We thought about the entire physical experience and wanted to put delight into that and kind of make it easy to break the ice,” says company co-founder John Zimmer.
Drivers, who are recruited through social media ads, must pass background checks and their vehicles must pass a safety inspection before they get their mustaches.
Passengers don’t pay set fees, as they would in a taxi, but make “donations” through charges to a credit card account that is stored in the app. The driver gets 80 percent of that and the company keeps the rest.
Not surprisingly, the taxicab industry and the Public Service Commission are looking with suspicion at Lyft and similar ride sharing apps. The PSC has launched an investigation into Uber, which already has launched in Baltimore, to determine whether it should be subject to state regulations as a “for-hire” sedan service.
Dwight Kines, regional vice president for Veolia Transportation, says what Lyft calls a green approach to transportation is really electronic hitch-hiking.
He says they are “very concerned about any of the applications that dispatch directly to the drivers; in other words, don’t go through a licensed limousine company or a licensed taxicab company.”
Kines says his company, owners of Yellow Cab, Baltimore’s oldest taxi firm,
has received letters from insurance companies that have denied claims because personal vehicles were being used in a commercial manner.
Zimmer says Lyft has a $1 million liability insurance policy that covers the company’s drivers in the event their personal insurance won’t pay.
“It was designed to drop down to the first dollar in the case that someone’s personal insurance is not collectible,” says Zimmer, who declined to identify the insurance carrier.
Lyft launches at 4 p.m. The company has scheduled a launch party at 6 p.m. at the Museum of Industry on Key Highway.