Lift Club South Africa

Liftclub-SA is a web portal which enables commuters to find a lift or to offer a lift to other commuters travelling to various destinations.

People are able to form or join voluntary lift clubs by registering for free as a members of Liftclub South Africa.

The Web portal utilizes Google-maps to display routes and is accessible to anyone who can access the internet, or through their wap functions on their mobile phones. This project will endeavour to work closely with mobile operators and provincial and municipal transport authorities.

Liftclub SA  has launched its pilot phase and  is steadily attracting interest as it becomes known in the social networks and broader public domain.

Liftclub SA  is a project  which will attract strong support from national authorities like the Department of Transport, Department of Environmental Affairs, Department of Economic Development among others, as it directly promotes their own stated public objectives.  It also has an appeal to corporations who have a direct interest in caring for their large numbers of staff commuting to their offices on a daily basis.  Apart from general commuters, there are thousands of learners and teachers who travel to schools and institutions of learning and have a great need for this service.

Benefits for commuters and community

The system has the potential to benefit a wide range of target audiences, including:

• People from impoverished communities and in rural areas where this target market is often the worst affected by lack of available transport facilities;
• People living in suburbs and urban middle class;
• Disadvantaged communities living remotely from places of work who have a daily commute of long distances;
• Disadvantaged communities who do not have lifts available for children to be picked up from school; and
• Students and learners travelling to places of learning.

Benefits for Government

The initiative strongly supports the Traffic Demand Strategy (TDM) of the National Department of Transport and adopted by municipalities. The TDM is aimed reducing the acute problem of traffic congestion. Government has called on all citizens to share lifts in order to reduce the number of vehicles on the road.

The project also contributes to a greener and cleaner environmental as required globally by the Kyoto Protocol targets.  The reduction of the number of vehicles on the road will address the global environmental challenges to reduce the level of carbon emissions and air pollution.

The Mobi-site

The mobi-site is fully functional and offers access to all cellphone users using their wap services.  The next phase of development will focus on offering enhanced services to users of all mobile users.  These would include using sms services for registration of users on line, sending alerts of rideshare matches and for other required communication with members.

For more information email info@liftclubsa.co.za

Visit the LiftClubSA website.