We Need a New Term to Describe Uber and Lyft

Companies like Uber and Lyft have been dubbing their services "ridesharing." These companies contract with drivers who can make money by offering rides. Jason Pavluchuk from the Association for Commuter Transportation argued that calling these services "rideshare" made it harder to advocate for other models that more aptly deserve the term, like carpool and vanpool services where people actually ride together.

Uber and Lyft are really new variants on taxi service. They let people use a car they might already own (though Uber is also offering loans to drivers to get new cars), but they are still doing it as a job. If you use such a service, you're not sharing someone's car; you're paying them to give you a ride.

Other companies like Sidecar have envisioned a model where people already driving from one place to another offer rides to someone who happens to be going the same way. That's a little bit more "sharing" than the app-based taxi-like services.