Bengaluru: For residents of Sarjapur Road, the daily commute has become a test of patience with hours lost in traffic, bumper-to-bumper jams and public transport that often fails to keep pace with the area’s growth. Now, instead of complaining about the nightmare, the residents are trying something different: a carpooling app of their own.The Sarjapur Residents’ Welfare Association (SRWA), an umbrella body representing more than 125 apartment and villa communities, has moved its carpooling initiative from chaotic WhatsApp groups to a dedicated platform called Society Rides. The move comes as traffic snarls at Dommasandra circle, Muthanallur cross, Kodathi gate and Carmelaram gate become an increasingly painful part of daily life. The idea is simple: log in, find a verified neighbour heading your way, match the ride and share the journey.Society Rides is built around community trust. Users must be verified through their apartment or villa before they can offer or seek a ride. A one-time invite code issued by the community administrator confirms their membership. Once inside, residents can see rides being offered by name and flat number, find trips entering or leaving their community, and even discover overlapping journeys elsewhere in Bengaluru.Sarjapur residents had tried carpooling before, but the effort never really took off. “We just had WhatsApp — one-to-one. Communication on people going at a particular time and picking them up, all this was not easy,” said SRWA co-founder Joy VR. The volunteer-run initiative attracted fewer than six active participants.With major road improvements and Metro connectivity still expected to take another two years, residents decided they could not wait for infrastructure to catch up. The unfinished flyover at Dommasandra Circle, which has remained incomplete for five years, has only reinforced that feeling.Interestingly, the app-based solution did not originate in Sarjapur, it was started by former army officer Abhijit Bhattacharjee (56), who observed the same problem in his gated community in Delhi. “Every day I used to see a whole bunch of cars going out at 9am, each having only one rider,” he said.Bhattacharjee reached out to the association which led to the initiative.He believes conventional carpooling struggles because strangers are reluctant to share rides. Inside residential communities, however, the equation changes. “Because it is within the residential society, we are much more considerate and comfortable with our own neighbours — there is trust, there is accountability.”The app does not take a commission or handle payments. It merely suggests a nominal Rs 3 per kilometre.For SRWA, the app is about more than saving fuel or reducing the number of cars on the road. Two recent incidents have added a safety dimension to the initiative. In both cases, women residents returning from the airport alleged that cab drivers told them midway through their journeys that they had reached their destination, leaving them in unfamiliar locations before demanding additional money to continue the ride.SRWA is now encouraging residents to use the app to coordinate airport pickups and share rides whenever possible. Members have also been advised to contact the police helpline if a cab driver attempts similar tactics.For a neighbourhood accustomed to waiting for better roads, better public transport and better connectivity, Sarjapur residents are now attempting something more immediate: if the city cannot fix their commute, they will try to fix it themselves—one shared ride at a time.
