Day 314: Why doesn't ride sharing work better in Sweden?

Ok, I realize this will seem a little bit incoherent, but I'm in the Netherlands at the moment. I'm visiting a friend in Rotterdam and I haven't done a lot here that I can blog about. But I decided to at least take a day to do some things in Amsterdam. So yesterday morning I took a Blablacar from Rotterdam to Amsterdam.

I love how great this platform is working in many places. There were about five rides every morning to choose from. Departing from slightly different parts of the city, but with similar prices. I paid 5 Euros to the driver, plus a fee to Blablacar of 1.60 Euros. All in all 6.60 Euros, which is super competitive compared to the trains that costs almost 20 Euros for the same trip.

And everything worked great. The driver was a researcher from Pakistan who had been living in the Netherlands for six years. He told me he spoke almost no Dutch. Which was of course no problem for me. And then there was another passenger as well, a Dutch guy working in a bar. He was very talkative, and entertained the rest of us for the one and a half hour ride.

The driver dropped us off in the outskirts of Amsterdam and the bar guy offered to take me to the Rijksmuseum where I had an appointment. That was of great help. Not the least since I couldn't pay with a credit card on the tram and didn't have cash, so he paid for my ticket. When we arrived in the city, I said I'd go have a coffee first and he came along. So I had the opportunity of paying him back, and then he walked with me all the way to the person I was meeting. Super nice!

And since I was very happy with the driver we agreed that I would also go back to Rotterdam with him in the evening.

Everything worked perfect and I saved more than 20 Euros. And the driver said he could almost finance his expenses for the car by doing this.

It's an awesome system. But for some reason ride sharing seems to be growing very slowly in Sweden. I always have a hard time to find rides to where I'm going. Why? It's not like the public transportation is working great all the time...