Ridesharing platform HitchPlanet has bought Maritime Rideshare, adding 8,000 East Coast users to its base of more than 20,000 customers in the West.

Vancouver-based HitchPlanet and Maritime Rideshare are both ridesharing services – that is, they allow drivers with empty seats in their car to link up with people who need a lift, cutting travel costs and reducing fuel consumption. The companies did not reveal the terms of the deal.

By buying out Maritime Rideshare, which started in Prince Edward Island in 2012, HitchPlanet now has communities on both coasts and plans to expand to become a true coast-to-coast service.

“We have come a long way since our genesis offering rideshares between Vancouver and Whistler,” said HitchPlanet CEO and Co-founder Flo Devellennes in a statement. “We saw a very strong market opportunity because of limited options for non-drivers or those without vehicles in Atlantic Canada. The popularity of Maritime Rideshare also gave us confidence in the Atlantic market.”

Maritime Rideshare was developed by a company called Seeets, which went through the second cohort of the Launch36 (now PropelICT) accelerator.

The statement said HitchPlanet is among the new breed of for-profit companies driven to create impact and change the way business is done. Through technological innovations and new business models there has been a surge in collaborative consumption and peer-to-peer platforms in the global market.

“Ultimately, HitchPlanet is a community,” said Devellennes. “We feel strongly that technology is our tool, not our objective.”

The company, which received $150,000 in angel investment last year, has set the goal of attaining 50,000 members who have shared 500,000 kilometers of journeys by the end of 2016. Members so far this year have logged 184,000 kilometres.

It also hopes to create 10 jobs across Canada including two in the Maritimes, this year.