SAN FRANCISCO, June 30, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Striking transit unions in the San Francisco Bay Area look likely to ground the BART rail fleet starting at midnight tonight. With the nation's 5th busiest rail transit system out of action, highway networks will also be grinding to a halt due to the resulting increased traffic.
For the first time, people stranded by a public transit strike are able to use smartphone technology to find an alternative way to travel to work. Avego enables people to instantly find nearby commuters, share the cost of the journey and gain access to HOV lanes, and has been funded by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) for real-time ridesharing projects in the Bay Area, Santa Barbara, Austin (TX) and Washington, DC.
Avego already has a strong base of daily users in the Bay Area with thousands of spare car seats available. Due to the strike, thousands of additional seats have become available over the weekend, as hundreds of people are signing up for the service daily.
"People are wondering how they're going to get to work on Monday morning," said Sean O'Sullivan, Avego CEO. "Tomorrow, the highways are going to be impassable without access to HOV lanes. What they should do right now is go to BARTstrike.com and learn how to rideshare their way into work."
To help with the crushing demand surge expected by the strike, Avego is also deploying a fleet of vans and buses to help many of the 400,000 commuters who typically ride BART daily. Avego services will be available from key Park & Ride lots at stations in the BART network. Drivers going into the city looking to share their seats are encouraged to drop into nearby Park & Ride lots on their way into the city and pick up one or more passengers to get access to HOV lanes.
The Avego app is available for iPhone and Android devices. Users can sign up for the service or download the app from http://www.avego.com.
Park & Ride lots and other Avego pick-up points and hours of operation will be updated throughout the strike. Avego ridesharing bus services will travel between Contra Costa, Walnut Creek, West Oakland, Montgomery Station and other BART locations.
For more information about specific Park & Ride lots or other last minute updates, check the http://www.bartstrike.com website or follow @bartstrike on Twitter.
About Avego
Founded in 2007, Avego is a world leading company in ridesharing technology, helping people team up to solve the commute. Headquartered in Cork, Ireland, with offices in Washington DC, Silicon Valley, Austin TX, and Dublin (IE), Avego's customers include cities, governments, public transport operators and tens of thousands of individual consumers and private transport operators. For more info on Avego, see www.avego.com or download the app from the iPhone App Store or Android's Google Play.
SOURCE Avego
