🚕 How Family Taxi Works

Family Taxi is a private ride-coordination app for families, friends, and small groups (carpools, homeschool co-ops, and similar) who already know and trust each other — not a public rideshare marketplace.

Ride Networks

Everything in Family Taxi happens inside a Ride Network — an isolated group, e.g. "The Wright Family" or "Maple Street Carpool." You can belong to more than one Network at once (for example, your own family and a neighborhood carpool), and you can hold a different role in each. Switch between Networks any time from the network name at the top of the app.

Networks are Closed (invite-only) by default and are never publicly listed. A dispatcher can optionally mark a Network Open, which lets people who already have its short join code ask to join — but nothing about an Open Network is discoverable by anyone who doesn't already have that code.

Roles

Your role is tied to the Network (the "membership"), not to your account — you might be a Driver in one Network and a Rider in another.

Role	How you get it	What you can do
Rider	Default when you join a Network	Request rides, cancel your own rides, manage your Family Members
Driver	Dispatcher grants eligibility, then you switch it on yourself	Accept/decline ride requests, update ride status (arrived / on board / completed)
Dispatcher	Whoever creates the Network	Everything a Driver can do, plus: invite links, approve/deny join requests, manage members, billing, and deleting the Network

Family Members

A Rider can add children or other household members under Settings → Family Members. When requesting a ride, pick who it's for — you can select more than one Family Member at once if, say, two kids need the same pickup and drop-off at the same time. Drivers see everyone's name and any notes (allergies, gate codes, etc.) on the ride.

Getting Into a Network

When you create an account, you don't automatically belong to any Network — you'll get there one of three ways:

• Create one. Tap Create Network, name it, and you're its Dispatcher.
• Redeem an invite link. A Dispatcher shares a link (by text, email, whatever) — opening it joins you instantly as a Rider, no approval needed.
• Look up a join code. If you know a Network's short code and the Dispatcher has set it to Open, you can submit a join request. It sits pending until the Dispatcher approves or denies it. Closed Networks (the default) don't accept join requests — invite links only.

Requesting a Ride

From the Rides screen, tap + Request Ride. Choose who it's for (yourself and/or one or more Family Members), fill in pickup, drop-off, date/time, and any special instructions. A map preview shows the route. If you pick more than one Family Member, it's treated as one trip — the same driver takes everyone, and accepting, declining, or cancelling applies to the whole group at once, not each child separately.

For regular trips (school runs, weekly practice), check Make this a recurring ride series, pick the days of the week and a date range — the app creates every individual ride at once. Recurring series currently support one passenger at a time; for a multi-child recurring carpool, set up a separate series per child for now.

Cancel any pending or accepted ride from its detail screen. For a series, you can cancel just one occurrence or the whole remaining series.

Driving

Once a Dispatcher grants you eligibility, a Be a Driver toggle appears in your Settings — flip it on to start seeing ride requests, and off any time you're unavailable. In driver mode, the Rides screen shows every pending request in the Network; the first driver to accept claims it (and, if it's for more than one Family Member, claims all of them together). If you can't take a ride, decline it with a reason — it stays visible to other drivers, and only becomes fully "declined" once every driver has passed on it.

On the day of the ride, update its status as you go — Arrived, Passenger On Board, Completed — each one notifies the rider.

Running a Network (Dispatchers)

• Invite Links — create, label, cap the uses, or set an expiration on links that let people join instantly as a Rider.
• Network Code & Join Policy — toggle Open/Closed, and approve or deny pending join requests.
• Manage Drivers — grant or revoke driving eligibility for any member, or remove someone from the Network (this only affects their standing in this Network — their account and any other Networks are untouched).
• Billing — a Network needs an active subscription for members to request, accept, decline, or cancel rides (viewing existing rides always works). Subscribe from Settings → Billing; manage or cancel any time through the billing portal link there.
• Deleting a Network — permanently removes the Network, every ride and invite link in it, and cancels its subscription. This cannot be undone.

Notifications

Family Taxi sends push notifications and emails for the events that matter: a new request (to drivers), acceptance/decline (to the rider), cancellation, status updates on the day of the ride, and reminders 1 hour and 24 hours before an accepted ride (to both rider and driver).

Getting Rides Into Your Calendar

Three options, from no setup at all to fully automatic — none of this is Google-specific:

• Nothing to set up. Every ride-acceptance and cancellation email already includes a calendar file that works with any calendar app — Google, Apple, Outlook, all of it. Just open the attachment.
• Subscribe once, stays current. Under Settings → Calendar, copy your personal link and add it to any calendar app as a "subscribe by URL" or "add calendar from URL" calendar. It automatically reflects your accepted rides going forward — no per-provider integration needed, though the calendar app decides how often it checks for updates (commonly every few hours, not instantly).
• Instant sync, Google only. Drivers on Google Calendar specifically can connect it under the same Settings → Calendar section for immediate, two-way sync — rides appear and disappear the moment they're accepted or cancelled.

Installing as an App

Family Taxi works in any modern browser and can be installed to your home screen like a native app: on iPhone, tap Share → Add to Home Screen; on Android/Chrome, tap Install App when prompted (or from the browser menu).

Questions?

Email contact@perseitylabs.com. See also our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.