During recent years, Israel introduced "plus lanes" where only vehicles carrying above a certain amount of passangers are allowed. There are +2 and +3 lanes (the number indicated includes the driver), where there are constant patrol of motorcyclist police that can fine you around $150 if you drive solo.

Israel also passed into law the ability of commuters to offer paid rides to strangers without needing a special license or insurance, on the following conditions:
>the driver can offer up to two rides a day max, each ride can have multiple passangers.
>the driver can charge up to $0.6 per kilometer ($0.96 per mile).
>the driver and the passanger must arrange the ride beforehand (from an app, etc.) - the driver is not allowed to pick up random passangers from the road.
>only up to 4 passangers + driver are allowed per ride.
>the ride's direct expenses "must be shared equally among the passangers" (vague, this is included in the $0.6 limit, 'expenses' cover everything from tolls to fuel).

So what is the difference of "paid carpooling" from Uber/Lyft? Firstly there are multiple studies showing Ubers actually increase congestion in cities since they keep driving around looking for riders, and they also convert bus users and bike riders into Uber users. Because of the paid carpooling limitations, only regular commuters would want to offer rides, as it isn't that profitable to do full time, and not really possible with the 2 rides per day limit.
These paid carpools are also perfect for small town dwellers who commute daily to the big city and in the case of many such Israeli towns, cannot rely on buses. Even with perfect bus services, many small Arab towns (with population up to 10K) in the hills are extremely hard to service.

This system is far from perfect, and it was a compromise to satisfy the strong taxi lobbies in the ruling Likud party.

So what do you think of it?