Wasn't this the whole point of "ride sharing" to begin with? Connecting people with similar start and end points to reduce the number of vehicles. When the "sharing economy" term first started going around it was in reference to something more akin to this. What we got instead was totally-not-taxis-but-actually-taxis like Uber and Lyft, and car sharing services like Car2Go and ZipCar. Both types of companies are very much NOT ride sharing. Apparently there were several others competing in that space as well.

Uber had better hurry the fuck up with driverless cars, and put them on the road the same way they did their drivered cars. That is, ignoring any laws to the contrary and brute forcing their way through legal pushback.