On 04/10/2015 20:35, Neil Williams wrote:
On 2015-10-04 17:04:17 +0000, JNugent said:

A public transport operator is free to apply for the necessary
permissions to make that work.

Actually they aren't; there is (and I did some research on this in
conjunction with a friend in the transport industry) seemingly no legal
framework under which such a thing can operate. It fails on bus
legislation (no fixed route/restricted area of service), and on taxi
legislation (shared use at separate fares).

It's just that the passenger decides on the sharing, not the driver or
operator.

The passenger would still decide on it, they just would get the option
to say "find me some people to share with to keep my journey cost down"
to the operator, rather than them having to arrange the share themselves.

Not legal, and vanishingly unlikely to become legal any time soon.

See whether you can work out why (clue: the PCO's FIRST priority is
always passenger safety).