Uber Opens Up UberPool To All San Francisco Users

Uber has spent the last four years transitioning from a service mainly aimed at helping so-called “ballers” get less expensive black car service to one that nearly anyone can afford and use on a regular basis. Now, with the launch of a fare-splitting offering called UberPool, the company is cutting costs of getting around town even more.

UberPool is a new product that allows Uber passengers to elect to share their ride with others who are taking the same route and lower the overall cost of the ride. It exists alongside other tabs in the Uber app and allows users to save up to 40 percent off the cost of a merged ride.

Uber announced the introduction of the product early last month, making the service available in beta to users a couple of weeks ago. But now, after testing the product with about 100,000 passengers in the last few weeks, Ubers is making it available to anyone who wants to try it out in San Francisco.

Uber isn’t the only company to enable users to share rides, however. Competitor Lyft introduced a similar offering, called Lyft Line, a day after the UberPool announcement. Operating in San Francisco for the last three weeks, Lyft Line also lets users split fares when they are going in the same direction, with discounts as deep as 60 percent.