Last updated: March 18, 2022
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Legality of pricing
Poparide helps drivers share the costs of driving by connecting them with passengers travelling in the same direction. To comply with local carpooling laws, drivers must ensure that their Poparide earnings do not exceed the shareable (operating) costs of their vehicle, which include gas, insurance and maintenance.
The Canadian Automobile Association (CAA) provides an excellent driving cost calculator that we recommend drivers use to estimate their specific annual shareable costs. To help them stay within legal limits and to ensure fair pricing for passengers, Poparide caps the price per seat at 17 cents per kilometre.
The cost of driving
The CAA estimates the annual cost of driving a car in Canada is around $9,500 a year. They have also found that 60% of Canadians underestimate the annual costs of owning and operating a vehicle by as much as $4000.
The basis of our price cap per kilometre is a calculation using several averaged values for the cost of gas, insurance and maintenance. Depreciation, credit repayments, licensing and registration costs do not qualify as shareable costs under most carpooling legislation and are therefore not included in the calculation.
- Average gas price across Canada, March 2022: GasBuddy
- Average car insurance rates across Canadian provinces, July 2021: Arc Insurance (Insurance Bureau of Canada)
- Maintenance is highly variable based on the vehicle's age, but averages range between $500 and $2,000 annually
- Depreciation, licensing and registration are not shareable (operating) costs
- Poparide trips on average have 1.8 passengers booked
Price capping
To ensure fair pricing, Poparide caps the price per seat at 17 cents per kilometre. We then round the price up to the nearest dollar. The 17 cent per kilometre limit is based on:
- the "Carpool cost per km" value calculated above, 12.2 cents per kilometre
- some reasonable variations in fuel efficiency, gas and insurance prices
- pricing data compiled by Poparide over time based on platform activity
Drivers can and often do offer a lower price than the recommended amount to attract more passengers.
How we calculate recommended prices
When you post a trip on Poparide, we will calculate a recommended price per seat for the route you are posting on, based on the data we have from other drivers posting on that route.
If there is not enough data available for the route you're posting on, we will calculate a recommended price based on the distance and the average price per km on Poparide.
Please note that we give you full control of your trip's pricing and that you can adjust prices on your trip at any time.
Comments
5 comments
Please note that as of December 12, 2018, we have updated our pricing strategy to let drivers edit the pricing for their trip even after they have booked passengers. We've also added the ability for drivers to edit the prices of segments of their trip, when they add stops to the trip.
More info at https://www.poparide.com/blog/smarter-pricing/
on return trips (say to a ski hill) are the prices listed on the app round trip or each way?
Hi Kelsey, all prices on Poparide are one-way, and passengers will have to place two bookings if they want a return with you.
It appears that since you've made it so that drivers can modify the price of trip segments separately, the prices for each segment no longer recalculate when you change the price of the whole trip.
For example, if I am driving somewhere that the recommended seat price is 40$ with a segment costing 35$ and I increase the total trip seat price to 60$, the seat price of that segment remains 35$ so in order to change from your recommended trip price I'd have to change each segment price individually which is very frustrating. Is there something I'm doing wrong? or is this a glitch you guys need to fix?
Hey Adam, that's correct, we do not suggest prices for segments based on the overall trip price; instead, we suggest prices based on the average price for each segment from the data we have, which prices trips at a market price for which people have historically booked.
We've decided to take this approach as it's fair for passengers, and ensures drivers get bookings and do not overprice their trips. If you do wish to change the price upwards, we do allow you to change the prices for each segment of your trip.
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