Cab Sharing Company Launching at Northwestern

A company based on sharing a cab ride with like-minded people is making its launch at Northwestern University.

Eric Goldwyn, a doctoral student and adjunct professor at Columbia University and Hunter College in New York, is a co-founder of CabEasy - a business based on the premise of people wanting to share rides and fares with others, but not with total strangers.

Goldwyn, director of planning and policy for the start-up created by Jonathan McKinney, said a recent Virginia Tech study showed only 7 percent of respondents would be willing to ride with a stranger, while 96 percent would go with a friend.

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CabEasy - an app currently only open to people affiliated with Northwestern through a school’s .edu email - has put together a way to match people with like interests, so it won’t feel like you are with a stranger.

“We saw a greater percentage would want to share a ride with someone at the same school,” Goldwyn said. “We wanted to think about what would make people share and found affinity groups, like-minded people would be a good way to organize riders.”

Since a number of schools are limiting vehicle access on campus, it only made sense for Goldwyn and his group to test drive their app at a college.

Northwestern was also a logical pick for a pilot program.

“The size of the school and it’s proximity to Chicago make it an ideal test case for our business,” Goldwyn said.

Here’s how it works.

Once logged in, users will see rides that have been posted and have an option to post their own ride and ask another user to split the fare. It is secure to only those affiliated with a University email address so it’s safe in terms of preventing a random person from getting into the system.

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If the concept proves to be popular at Northwestern, Goldwyn says the goal of his group - which includes McKinney and Fazal Yameen - is to have it at other Chicago-area schools such as the University of Chicago, Columbia College and the Art Institute.

Through partnerships, they would then target up to nine other markets as the next step of expansion, Goldwyn said.

“But we are still just testing the concept and refining it how we can,” he said. “We want to learn as much as we can from our roll out so this is a time to try things and tinker and respond to the positive or negative feedback. Once we’ve figured out what works and what doesn’t, we can be more aggressive as we target new markets.”

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The app is available to Northwestern students live at the IOS store.

The Evanston school has a previous affiliation with the CabEasy team and member Jonathan McKinney. Goldwyn credits McKinney for the idea and motive force behind making the app.

In 2013, he set-up another Northwestern specific taxi-sharing website, under the name CabCorner that matched students going to the airport. The site matched about 40 rides. CabCorner began four years prior to that as a tax-sharing platform designed to match New Yorker residents seeking to share yellow taxis.

CabEasy is funded by SOS Ventures and powered by SideCar.

Follow CabEasy on Twitter