A Better Rideshare Needs Riders Too

By Sacramento Collaborative Review Editorial Team · August 2026

There is something appealing about a simple idea: What if the people who actually make rideshare work owned more of the platform themselves?

Drivers provide the cars, fuel, maintenance, time and labor. Riders provide the demand - and ultimately the money that sustains the system. Yet much of the economic power in conventional platform rideshare rests somewhere between them: with the corporation controlling the app.

This was the question behind Sacramento Collaborative's earlier discussion of a community-centered alternative to conventional rideshare. But an alternative already exists in Sacramento. Fare Co-op describes itself as a multi-stakeholder federated cooperative in which drivers hold 50 percent of ownership. Fare says full driver-shareholders can earn 85-90 percent of platform profits, while its current California membership options include a free fractional path beginning at 55 percent. Fare also promotes no surge pricing and rider savings compared with major apps.

It is an ambitious experiment - and precisely the kind of experiment worth watching. But there is another participant in this cooperative equation who cannot be forgotten: the rider.

Four ordinary rides in Sacramento

We recently opened Fare, Uber and Lyft for four ordinary Sacramento trips. These were not laboratory tests. They were simply spot checks from the apps, made around the same time for trips a Sacramento resident might actually take.

*Lyft was displaying promotions in these observations. Its displayed pre-discount prices were $24.97 and $37.94 respectively. These four spot checks are illustrative, not a statistically representative price study; rideshare prices and availability change with time, location, demand, promotions and other factors.

But the small experiment revealed something more interesting than a price comparison. Imagine being the rider in the first example. You believe drivers deserve better compensation. You like the idea of cooperative ownership. You would prefer your transportation spending to benefit the people actually providing the service.

Then you open the apps. One service offers a car in perhaps a minute or two. The cooperative alternative asks you to wait much longer - and may cost more. What do you do?

The cooperative paradox

This may be one of the central challenges facing people's alternatives in the platform economy. A cooperative can offer workers greater ownership, greater voice and a greater share of the economic value they create. But if achieving that requires consumers to consistently pay more, wait longer or accept a less reliable product, the cooperative faces a difficult path toward mass adoption.

That does not mean the cooperative idea has failed. It means ownership is only one part of the problem.

Can we make rideshare better for the driver without making it worse for the rider?

We think the answer has to be yes.

From driver and rider, to driver and rider

A people-centered rideshare system should not simply transfer more money from passengers to drivers. The more transformative idea is to reduce unnecessary extraction between them.

A genuinely collaborative alternative should move closer to:

The driver benefits from better compensation and meaningful participation in the enterprise. The rider benefits from competitive prices, dependable service and perhaps eventually some form of participation or reward as well. The platform becomes infrastructure serving the transaction rather than the dominant economic actor within it.

Fare shows both the possibility and the difficulty

Fare's structure deserves attention. Fare currently describes itself as a multi-stakeholder federated cooperative, with drivers holding 50 percent of ownership, co-founders 30 percent and a technology company 20 percent. Its public materials describe local governance and voting rights for member-owners.

Its compensation structure also needs to be understood carefully. Fare's current California membership page says a full solo driver share earns a net 85 percent of platform profits, while a fleet share earns 90 percent. Fare distinguishes these percentages from the gross amount a passenger pays because hard costs and operating expenses come first.

These are meaningful differences from the conventional platform model. But technology and ownership do not automatically create a functioning transportation network. You still need a car nearby when somebody presses the button. And that may be the harder problem.

The chicken-and-egg problem

Consider a driver who joins an alternative platform. They turn on the app Monday. Few requests arrive. They try again Tuesday. Perhaps one trip. By Wednesday, they naturally spend more time watching the platforms where the passengers are.

Now consider the rider. They download the cooperative app because they support its mission. The first time they try it, the nearest driver is fifteen minutes away. The second time, there is no nearby driver. The third time, they do not bother opening it.

This is the network-effect problem in its simplest form.

Good intentions get the download. Good service gets the next ride.

Fare's public-facing materials emphasize a grassroots referral model designed to recruit riders and drivers together. That is significant because it recognizes that a rideshare network is a two-sided community, not simply a pool of drivers.

At the same time, emerging cooperative platforms have to meet the ordinary expectations created by mature competitors: clear onboarding, simple payment, reliable mapping, nearby drivers and predictable service. Supporting a cooperative model should not require riders to ignore these basics.

Good intentions may persuade somebody to download an alternative app. Good service is what persuades them to keep using it.

Maybe the missing ingredient is collaboration

The obvious answer to insufficient driver availability is: recruit more drivers. But perhaps that is only half the answer. What if we recruit drivers and riders together?

Imagine a neighborhood organization encouraging hundreds of residents to try a cooperative rideshare platform while simultaneously recruiting enough drivers to serve that particular area. Imagine a university community doing the same around campus. Imagine an employer coordinating participation around shift changes. Imagine community organizations, drivers, riders, technologists and researchers identifying particular Sacramento corridors where enough supply and demand could be concentrated to make the service genuinely dependable.

Instead of attempting to compete with Uber and Lyft everywhere at once, an alternative could create small zones of reliability: one neighborhood, one employment center, one university district, one commuting corridor, one airport market - and then expand.

The airport provides an intriguing clue

Our fourth Sacramento observation was particularly interesting. For a trip originating at Sacramento International Airport, Fare showed a pickup estimate of approximately 2 minutes and 42 seconds. Uber and Lyft both showed approximately two minutes.

Why? We do not know. Airports naturally concentrate rideshare drivers, some drivers may use multiple platforms, and other operational factors may be involved. One observation cannot establish causation.

But it illustrates something important: when sufficient driver density exists, the rider's experience changes dramatically.

Perhaps the critical measurement for an emerging cooperative is not simply, “How many drivers have joined?” It may instead be: How many active drivers and riders can we bring together in the same place at the same time?

Collaboration may itself be infrastructure

We often think about digital platforms as technological infrastructure: apps, servers, maps, payment systems, algorithms and databases. Cooperative platforms may require another form of infrastructure: social infrastructure.

Trust. Community organizations. Driver networks. Rider networks. Local employers. Universities. Researchers. Public agencies. Neighborhood associations. And people willing to coordinate their participation long enough for a viable marketplace to emerge.

Large conventional platforms built enormous networks with enormous amounts of investment capital. A community-centered alternative may never possess comparable financial resources. But communities possess another resource: the ability to organize.

Perhaps collaboration can substitute for at least some of the capital normally required to create network effects. That proposition deserves to be tested.

Supporting an alternative means challenging it too

Believing in cooperative ownership should not mean giving a cooperative platform a free pass. If the app is difficult to use, improve it. If riders cannot find drivers, understand why. If prices are not competitive, examine the economics. If drivers join but do not remain active, ask what prevents them. If customers repeatedly report the same problem, listen to them.

A cooperative should arguably demand more accountability, not less, because its purpose is supposed to be serving its participants.

We should therefore view Fare neither as something to promote uncritically nor something to dismiss because it has not yet matched mature competitors. It is better understood as a living experiment. Experiments teach us through both successes and difficulties.

A better rideshare needs riders too

Our original interest in people's rideshare began with concern about the people behind the wheel. That concern remains. But this small Sacramento experiment has added something important to our thinking: the person sitting in the back seat matters just as much.

A sustainable alternative cannot ask drivers to sacrifice indefinitely for cheap rides. Nor can it ask riders to sacrifice indefinitely for fairer driver compensation. The real innovation comes when we design a system in which both benefit from reducing unnecessary extraction between them.

From driver and rider, to driver and rider.

Technology can build the connection. Cooperative ownership can change who benefits from it. But neither alone creates a community. People do.

Perhaps Sacramento's opportunity is not simply to build another app. It is to explore whether a city can build the collaboration that allows a different kind of app - and a different kind of digital economy - to succeed.