As kids we’re warned not to accept rides with strangers. But when my editors told me to take Uber Pools around Sydney and write about the characters I meet, I had little idea I’d be in for fashion critiques, tales of backseat romances, plenty of awkward silences – and mostly solo rides.
When it first launched before Covid, Uber Pool was perhaps the truest form of ride sharing.
Not only would passengers literally share rides, it offered seriously cheap fares – lower than even the artificially low rates Uber initially charged in early years to capture market share.
The novelty of riding with a stranger, and the more circuitous routes at prices not much higher than a bus ticket, proved popular. It was also like playing Russian roulette – passengers still got the significantly cheaper fare even if the algorithm failed to match them with a co-rider.
Uber’s pool option disappeared at the outbreak of the pandemic, and while it has since been reintroduced, its savings are now less pronounced, and marginal if the algorithm doesn’t find you a co-rider.
I was curious if passengers had re-embraced sharing confined spaces with randoms. Post-pandemic data shows Australians are driving private cars more than ever. Have Sydneysiders become a special breed of overly precious recluses?
To find out, I set off to take Uber Pool aimlessly around Sydney for the better part of a week.
Scarred by my former colleague Brigid Delaney’s experiences of co-riders ignoring her, I made an effort to project myself as someone you’d want to get in a conversation with.
To me, this means the opposite of real estate agent energy. I was polite to drivers, avoided overpowering cologne and dressed casually, as if meeting friends at the pub.
But as I’d soon learn, riding in Uber Pools can make even those with strict hygiene standards begin to wonder if they have body odour.
‘They don’t want to talk to each other’
On the first night, I headed out shortly after 7pm.
I greet my first co-rider – a woman in her 20s – as she enters the car and get a smile and a one-word answer.
Soon, she’s ignoring my questions, seemingly pretending to be deep in her phone, scrolling.
I totally get someone might want to avoid a conversation with a random guy. But I can’t help wonder: why take a pool ride?
Once my co-rider is dropped off, my driver tells me it’s rare for pool passengers to talk.
He says, as a driver, he despises pool trips at night as it’s often drunk passengers who try to bring mates along.
“They don’t realise when they’re drunk, they’re booking just one seat, not the whole car,” he says. “They only see the cheaper price,” he explains. This becomes a common gripe from drivers. Some admit they instinctively reject pool trips, as drunk passengers wanting extra seats for friends get refused entry and leave bad reviews.
While I get the occasional co-rider, it’s a mixed bag. There’s the student we pick up from the University of Sydney’s engineering school, who ignores my greetings as he pretends to be busy reading the label on his water bottle as if he’s Facetiming Mount Franklin. The driver felt so bad he leapt in, talking to me about his family.
Cancellations are also a pain. When booking a ride from Redfern to Marrickville, in Sydney’s inner west, my first driver cancels on me. My second one does too. Clearly, the phenomenon of Uber drivers cancelling shorter trips also applies to pool.
A driver finally arrives, and a few minutes into our trip I’m thrilled at a ping from my Uber app that another rider is joining.
As we detour to collect them, my driver explains his theory: most pool passengers are in their 20s or 30s, usually heading home at night when they’re not rushing. “They want to save money, they don’t want to talk to each other.”
My co-rider, Rama, joins in Erskineville. The young finance professional is heading home after work drinks. She says that while she opts for Uber Pool frequently, this is only the second time she’s ever been matched with another passenger.
“It’s a bit of a gamble, I was actually hoping I’d be lucky tonight and that it’d be empty,” she says. But her bad luck is my good fortune, as she tells me more about the appeal she sees in Uber Pool – cheaper rides from a company she feels has been offering poorer service over time.
Discounts and backseat marriages
It’s unclear how much money I’m saving. On a ride from Marrickville to Edgecliff, the pool quote is $23-$24, instead of $30 for the UberX private ride. I book the pool, but by the end of the ride in which I’m the only passenger, I was charged $31, because my driver has taken a toll road which I don’t even think saves us much time.
An Uber spokesperson says pool trips are up to 10% cheaper than UberX, with the potential to save up to 30% more if matched with fellow riders. In my experience, the actual amount saved was unreliable.
Ultimately, fewer than a quarter of the pool rides I booked had a co-rider. What did happen frequently, however, was midway through a ride, I’d get a notification I’d been matched with a co-rider. It said we’d pick them up shortly, before they’d promptly cancel.
One driver told me this was common; someone being tempted by the discount at the booking page, but once they saw there’d be a co-rider and a longer trip, cancelling to try their luck again.
This trend makes it difficult to know how popular Uber Pool is in Australia. An Uber spokesperson says pool trips have grown by a factor of 3.7 in the last year, and the number of pool trips was 65% higher in the first half of 2024 than the same period of 2019.
But these figures don’t differentiate between actual shared rides and pool trips where no co-rider is matched – which I found to be the norm.
However, there is anecdotal evidence of Australians getting friendly in Uber Pools. A colleague recalls striking up conversation with a stranger in a shared ride. After getting along with them, she got out with them at the house party they were headed to.
There are also reports of romance blossoming. “We’ve even had a few couples making their way down the aisle after hitching a ride together!” Uber’s spokesperson claims.
In fact, one driver, in his broken English, tells me he once had two passengers who got a “friendship” out of the ride.
“They were becoming very friendly with each other in the back,” he chuckles when recalling the ride from the city to Manly one weekend afternoon. “They got out together at his place.”
It seemed I was destined to be ignored by fellow passengers or meet my future wife.
Passengers clearly leave impressions on drivers. During one trip a driver bragged about some famous sports personalities he had driven. I nod along, but become uneasy when he recites one star’s home addresses in an attempt to impress.
More often than not, it’s just me in the car, talking to drivers about how antisocial the average passenger is.
One driver tells me two passengers struck up a conversation recently about US politics, before having a loud argument about Trump.
Icebreakers and fashion critiques
One night, going from Ashfield to Moore Park at the end of the night, I get talking to my driver Francis, an older Chinese-Australian man in his 60s, who wears thick 80s-style glasses and a terribly lopsided toupee.
I’m lamenting to him how lonely my Uber Pool trips have been. He nods and tells me he runs icebreaker exercises.
“I like to introduce them to each other, and get them to ask each other a question to find something in common.”
Most people are receptive, but some have told him to “piss off”.
He says he’s done 6,500 trips – both privately booked and pool rides – in his years as an Uber driver, and of those just 20 have been pool rides with more than one passenger.
One of these roughly 20 trips has led to a date, he says, between two travellers – an Italian man and a Scottish woman.
Francis believes this says much about who we are.
“Tourists and people from outside Sydney like to talk. But Sydneysiders think they are far too busy. This is a money-driven city, so people don’t want to be delayed where they’re going, so if they even take a pool trip, they’re preoccupied during it, thinking too much about themselves.”
“I honestly think people in Sydney are so lonely,” he says.
My phone pings. We’ll be picking up a co-rider.
Lynn, a 26-year-old in a glamorous red dress, gets into the car. She’s heading home after a concert.
True to his word, Francis introduces us, and when I mention I’m researching Uber Pool habits for a news article, Lynn is “thrilled”.
Lynn, a personal stylist, is not fond of public transport and doesn’t have a driving licence.
This explains why she’s a loyal pool rider.
“I know it’s an expensive habit, taking Ubers everywhere, but either someone’s driving me or I’m not getting back home. I just don’t care to drive, I’ve never been interested to get behind the wheel.”
When I say how refreshing it is to find a talkative co-rider, Lynn tells me I’ve struck gold.
“I’m the chattiest person in the world, and I’ve got good stories.”
What’s a good story, I ask?
“I was Azealia Banks’ personal assistant for three days,” she says.
Lynn then wonders out loud: maybe I was too plainly dressed to invite conversation in Uber Pools. “A bit more colour could suit you well. Try something outlandish.”
The fashion critique leads to a bizarre conversation with someone I’d otherwise never have crossed paths with.
As we continue talking in the backseat, I can see Francis is elated, taking his hands off the wheel at times to clap as he watches us in his rearview mirror.
