Jayride Australia is now alive! 19 months to the day since we opened our doors in New Zealand, we have begun our steps towards bringing our unique brand of green travel to the world.

Jayride is Australia’s new, best carpool and rideshare travel website. In not long at all we’ll be helping Aussies and travelers to share a ride from Sydney up the east coast, or even cross that big ol’ desert in the middle. We reckon this will be a great service for backpackers, people looking to find travel buddies, and Sydney-siders looking to split the cost of all those god-awful tolls.

Honestly though. “Jayride brings carpooling to Australia“… it has a nice ring to it! Tell your friends!

We don’t normally like to blow our own trumpet, but we’ve been getting some really great feedback lately on Jayride and I thought I’d share some of it. In addition to Dunedin regional councils deciding to work with us, and various raving fans on Twitter (like @philipnewmannz and @velofille), today we received this email from Lex B:

SERIOUSLY! This is without a doubt the best site I have stumbled accross in
2009! You guys need to get you bums into gear and get some advertising going on! Send all your members bumper stickers or something, to get the word out there. I live in Auckland city and have told everyone at work this morning and they agreed what a great idea it was and have browsed the site. Two people have now found transport! We need more people knowing that this site exists! You cant come up with a good idea like this and then act like its a secret… Billboards, posters, and stickers, even advertise in the “ADSHELL” inserts in bus stops! You’ll get everyone onto the idea! Love your work guys, lets get everyone onto this!

Pretty cool huh? This makes us feel all warm and fuzzy.

Word of mouth is a pretty major thing for us – so if you are also a raving fan, you can help by getting talking and spreading the word. Remember, Jayride’s all about connecting people, so the more friends you convince to join us, the more rides you’re going to find! Help yourself :) and have a great weekend.

Without coming across like Big Brother, we’ve been watching you… But mainly we’ve been watching how you use our site and have learned a lot from it :)

One benefit is that we’ve now got plenty of ideas for new features that you’d all love to see. The other is we can give you this great list of tips and tricks for ways to improve your Jayride experience! So without further adue:

How to get the most from carpooling online

1 – Share a return ride

Want your rideshare to get twice the attention? Don’t forget the drive home. There are plenty of reasons why a passenger may only want to travel one way, so if you share them both you could find a different passenger for each. Twice the attention and twice the fun!

2- Add a price, but not too high!

If you drive somewhere regularly, chances are you’ll have a good idea of how much it costs you. Many Jayriders list their rides as free then comment ’split costs’. By listing a price you’re helping potential passengers by sharing your know-how and will generate more interest.

Beware of profiteering though! Although it’s tempting to charge $100 for a ride to the dairy, you’re just going to put potential carpoolers off and end up paying for the whole trip yourself.

3 – Add some via’s

Driving from Auckland to Wellington? Would you consider dropping someone in Hamilton? Of course you would! It’s easy for you and helpful for them.

Jayride let’s you add Via locations on any ride, and by adding a via your ride becomes more helpful for passengers, and easier to find.

4 – Shameless carpool self promotion!

If you’re a regular web-user you’re probably using some other community sites. Share your Jayride listing with your friends on these sites! By pasting the URL of your ride listing onto Facebook, Bebo, Twitter (or wherever) your ride will get lots more attention, and you can still benefit from the safe, secure way that Jayride handles your email and personal details.

Or you could go crazy like one of our fans and make something like this!

We hope this list of ideas helps you out! Give them a go and you’ll more than double your chances of finding a successful carpool. Good luck, and happy Jayriding :)

Jayride got some of nice media coverage lately! You can view it all online too.

Check out Sam Giffney of Zenbu fame helping us promote Jayride in Auckland on Tamati’s Transport Tiki Tours

Or see Chris Hopkins the old-school ex-scarfie helping us promote it in Dunedin with Jayride Aims To Reduce Number Of Vehicles On The Road

If you’d like to talk us up in the media, we’d like to hear from you too!

We’ve come a long way since our launch in December last year, and we couldn’t have done it without you, our great kiwi carpoolers! Congratulations for showing New Zealand that sustainable transport really is that easy.

Very soon we’ll be celebrating our 2000th member. In addition to our undying love and affection, we’re going to reward that special person with a wee $50 fuel voucher to spend how they like…

If you’d like to be in to win it, simply register with Jayride here. To find out your member number, share a ride then take a look at the bottom to see your ID. If you don’t share a ride, that’s OK, but you won’t know if you’ve won until we email you :)

We know it’s small, but we hope it’s the thought that counts. And as a final thought to the winner, don’t forget that a petrol card is the perfect way to pay the driver of the next rideshare you take…

Enjoy!

Do you want to be on TV?

From 7am to 8.30am on Thursday 14th May, Tamati will be at Britomart in Auckland and wants to interview Jayride members!

If you carpool in Auckland, have ever rideshared with Jayride, are passionate about sustainability, or just want to be on TV, head down to Britomart on Thursday next week and join in the fun.

They’ll also be giving out prizes for people who show up on sustainable modes of transport.

If you’d like to know more – visit TVNZ or contact us.

Today we fixed the infamous tomorrow-bug.
This little glitch caused some rideshares to immediately expire as soon as the were listed. Today we found the cause and fixed it.
Jayride is now free of all reported bugs! We’re pretty excited about that :)

Jayride’s the perfect place to help you save money on gas this Easter holiday. Sharing seats on your trip lets you share the cost of your travel and get everyone where they’re going cheaper. Jayride costs nothing to use and is specially designed to match your travel with others’ for one-off trips.

If you haven’t tried it yet, come online and share your ride (there and back), meet people and save money… it’s easy and fun!

Jayride was featured in the Christchurch Press the other day as a good way to save money for people feeling the recession crunch. It’s official, carpooling with Jayride saves you money…

Job losses are growing daily and the ranks of the unemployed are expected to swell this year as the recession cuts deeper. AMANDA MORRALL checks out some supports and survival tips.

To read the full article visit Stuff.

A persistent problem with Jayride’s email system has finally been fixed. Over the last two weeks the Jayride site has been failing to send out some crucial emails; including registration confirmation emails, support inquiries and messages to ridesharers.

The good news is it’s now repaired and back to fully operational. The bad news is many of those emails have been lost. Moving forward we’re looking at ways to make sure nothing like this happens again.

For anyone who sat at their inbox repeatedly looking for our confirmation email, please accept our apologies!