The Verge –  “A year ago, navigation app Waze made a risky bet on carpooling, a type of commuting that has waned since its heyday in the 1970s. It launched Waze Carpool, a dedicated app that lets nonprofessional drivers offer rides to people who are traveling on a similar route for a nominal fee. So how’s it been going? Pretty good it seems, according to some statistics the company released on October 10th to celebrate its first year in the carpooling business. Waze [owned by Alphabet/Google] says carpool customers completed more than 550,000 rides globally last September. (Waze Carpool is available in the US, Mexico, Brazil, and Israel.) The company predicts that it will cross 1 million monthly rides by early 2020. Carpool customers in the US collectively drove 25 million miles last year, which the company estimates helped reduce carbon emissions by 20 million pounds, thanks to combined rides. But Waze would not reveal the total number of people who are using the app, nor would it comment on its retention and turnover rates…”