Within a minute of visiting the site, I was able to find several potential rides to San Jose and other points south (Luckily I work out of Blnktags converted live/work warehouse in San Francisco). You can easily search for a recurring rideshare partner or just a one-off trip.

Zimride’s business model is innovative too. According to Techcrunch, the servce is capped at fifty people from any one business or school. Once fifty people have signed up, Zimride approaches the business or school directly with their paid options which all more people to use the service. Several universities are already onboard, including Stanford and UCLA. The cost is $9500/year which is a lot less than each school or business developing and maintaining their own in-house ridesharing system. I was pleasantly surprised to find University of Wisconsin La Crosse (the college from my hometown) on the shortlist of featured networks.

Next time I need to get somewhere that BART & Caltrain don’t easily reach, I’m going to try Zimride.