Via<\/a>, with huge presence all over the United States, charging a flat fee of US$5\u00a0for any journey between two locations.\u00a0Via is\u00a0the creation of two Israeli businessmen, modelled on a fleet of privately owned commuter vans that shadow bus routes in Tel Aviv. In September 2013, the service was introduced in New York, with no marketing to announce its arrival.\r\n\r\nThe company has not witnessed\u00a0explosive growth experienced by\u00a0competitors Uber\u00a0and Lyft. Via's creators have attributed this to the\u00a0dependency on multiple passengers hailing and sharing the same vehicle\u00a0which makes\u00a0coordination was more intensive. This\u00a0has made Via more cautious about expanding. However, they also\u00a0pointed out that there has been\u00a0no shortage of people who require rides within Via\u2019s area of operation, where density ensures that many riders will have nearby destinations.\r\n\r\nSWAT rides also have several restrictions in place: Rides need to be booked at least 30 minutes in advance or pre-booked the night before by 10pm. Commuters need to walk a distance \u2013 no more than 300m \u2013 to pre-designated waiting areas that include bus stops, taxi stands and other landmarks. They also have to share their rides with others.\r\n\r\nAlthough rides are only conducted between 7am and 10am during weekdays\u00a0and cordoned off to a specific few areas, the number of users for the app, which is still\u00a0in its beta phase, has grown to a whopping\u00a01,000 users in under a month.\r\n\r\nThe SWAT app comes after the Beeline app, an initiative developed by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore,\u00a0a similar on-demand service that matches users and private bus operators through route suggestions from users.\u00a0Beeline has an average of 20 to 25 passengers per route, with about 15 pre-determined routes per day.\r\n\r\nAnalysts have hinted that SWAT could potentially fill a niche in the market\u00a0for commuters during peak hour who do not want to worry about availabilities of Uber\/Grab or taxis.\r\n\r\nThe ride-hailing market is becoming increasingly saturated, and we are surprised to see entrants piling in to capitalise on the popularity of ride-sharing at lower costs. It will be interesting to see whether new players emerge in the market, or how existing dominant players such as Uber and Grab will react to changes in this evolving market.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier last month, new local start-up Rush announced their foray into the ride-hailing market, claiming it has the tools to give Uber and Grab a run for their money. Now, a locally developed on-demand ride-sharing app called SWAT is looking to do the same. Here’s the catch: The firm will\u00a0charge commuters a flat fare of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[727],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carro.co\/sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carro.co\/sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carro.co\/sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carro.co\/sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carro.co\/sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carro.co\/sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16560,"href":"https:\/\/carro.co\/sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4036\/revisions\/16560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carro.co\/sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carro.co\/sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carro.co\/sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carro.co\/sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}