Single Occupancy Cars Grind SF Bay Area To A Halt

SAN FRANCISCO, July 2, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- With a reported 60,000 extra cars flooding the streets of San Francisco due to the BART strike, the worst traffic in 15 years has descended upon the city and the Bay Area.

The majority of cars travelling into San Francisco are still shockingly empty of passengers. This is largely due to the perceived difficulty in finding ridesharing partners.

Tens of thousands of commuters, however, are flooding to http://bartstrike.com and http://avego.com to find partners to share their journeys with. Ridesharers get access to HOV lanes that fly them past the other lanes, while also splitting the cost of their journey.

"After coping with Monday's gridlock, commuters now know the lunacy of thinking that driving single occupancy vehicles to work will beat the strike," said Sean O'Sullivan, Avego CEO. "Owing to the explosion in traffic as well as expensive and unavailable parking, Dante's Inferno has now been realized in the streets of San Francisco."

Avego reports that their ridesharing capacity grew by an incredible 8,825% in the first day of BART strike action alone. As a result, thousands of additional seats are available for carpooling all across the Bay Area. Carpooling is 1/9th the expense of taxis and taxi-style ridesharing apps.

"Clearly, single occupancy vehicles are not an option under the circumstances," said O'Sullivan. "We ask people to go to http://bartstrike.com and sign up to find others they can carpool together with."

The Avego app (available as a free download on iPhone and Android devices) allows people to split the cost of the commute while providing safety and convenience benefits such as identity confirmation and automated commute management.

About Avego

Founded in 2007, Avego leads the world in ridesharing technology, helping people team up to solve the commute. Headquartered in Cork, Ireland, with offices in Silicon Valley, Austin and Dublin, Avego's customers include cities, governments, public transport operators and tens of thousands of individual consumers and private transport operators. For more on Avego, see www.avego.com or download the app from the iPhone App Store or Android's Google Play.

SOURCE Avego