Q&A: Pie Ride, Cairo’s New Ride Sharing Service
Pie Ride is a new, community-based ride sharing service in Cairo that hopes to take a shot at the city’s notorious traffic problem. We loved the idea so much we contacted them to find out more.
1. Tell us a little about the Pie Ride service?
PieRide…strives to offer Cairo’s daily commuters a reliable, economic and convenient means of transportation.
We send a car with a professional driver to pick customers up every morning, drive them to work and back home, utilizing technology to offer ride sharing to match our clients up with individuals in their work/school community to share cost. Our service is 50% cheaper than a taxi, safer and far more reliable.
Instead of battling Cairo traffic, our customers can spend their time on the road engaging in productive activity or just relaxing or listening to music.
2. Concerning Egypt’s current political situation and resulting safety concerns, do you think now was the right time to introduce Pie Ride?
Actually, we believe now is the perfect time for a service like ours. People need a service like PieRide now more than ever. People are concerned about driving alone or taking a cab, not to mention Cairo’s traffic is getting worse every day. We carefully vet, train and track our drivers to guarantee their trustworthiness. We also collect customer feedback and use a rating systems to help us determine which drivers are doing a good job, and which ones aren’t.
3. What locations do you serve?
Currently we’re serving route 6th October City – Zamalek and Dokki area, this also includes Mohandiseen, Dokki, Agouza and parts of Nile Cornish near the Nile City towers. We are also starting another route between Maadi and the locations above. We have plans to expand to many more routes in the coming months.
The best way to do it is to go on our website and request the service. Even if your route is not available yet, we take your request into consideration when planning new routes and we contact you once we start it. You can also contact us by email on PieRide@PieRide.com for any inquiries.
4. Do prices change according to the distance?
Prices change per route. We have segmented Cairo and Giza into zones and the price tag is defined as the price to go from Zone A to Zone B and back. The price is preset and paid in advance and doesn’t change if the trip took longer or shorter than average.
5. How did you come up with the Pie Ride idea?
We grew tired of wasting our time and energy in Cairo traffic or finding parking spots. We think of a private car, as a resource, that is not utilized efficiently; you’re stuck in a traffic jam that seems to snake down forever and you look around you and most of the cars have a single passenger on board, that’s 75% of unused capacity. What a waste. Carpooling doesn’t work either because no four people have the exact same schedule. PieRide seemed like the obvious answer to a chronic problem.
6. Why is Pie Ride a good idea for Cairo?
Cairo public transportation is underserved in terms of reach and capacity, which forces a large number of daily commuters to use passenger cars. They spend an average of 3 hours on the road hassling with traffic while they could be working or relaxing.
PieRide offers commuters a means to spend that time on the road more productively and help them get to work in a comfortable, stress-free manner. Also, PieRide takes three cars off the road for each car it sends out, which on a scale large enough could ease traffic congestion on certain roads. We hope we can trigger a virtuous cycle.
7. Do you plan to take it anywhere else?
Of course, our venture in Cairo has been overwhelmingly positive that we think we can apply the same model to cities similar to Cairo. Those will be populous cities with low-capacity public transportation and spread-out residential and commercial communities.
