Reducing traffic congestion in Bangalore through Carpooling: Commonfloor.com

Everyone complains about the traffic in Bangalore these days. For that matter, its a chronic problem in every big Indian city. Most of us sit around and complain, and blame the city administration for inadequate planning, not enough roads, poor traffic regulation blah blah.

The folks at maxHeap technologies, co-founded by Lalit Mangal and Sumit Jain (both IIT Roorkee alums) decided to do something about it. So they created commonfloor.com, a social networking platform for people living in the same apartment complex. (ThinkChange India wrote about a similar site called Indimoto here). I know what you are thinking, ‘oh no, not another social networking web start-up’, right. But, looks like commonfloor.com might have a niche (through India PR Wire):

CommonFloor.com, a product by Bangalore based maxHeap Technologies for modern apartment complexes, has enabled communities in Bangalore and enthusiastic residents to actually find and collaborate with neighbors having same route to work. “We were looking for a way to search and sync with people whom we can carpool with. Now its easy”, say Ankur, who uses CommonFloor.com to connect with neighbors for activities and seeking solutions to day to day problems.

If they could actually get carpooling to work, they should probably get subsidies from the city. It not only reduces the congestion, but also lower the emission levels in an already super-polluted city. Have you carpooled before? Share your experiences by dropping a comment.