Lyft's dump-your-car challenge expands to 35 more cities

Lyft is happy enough with its Chicago car ownership challenge to spread it across North America. The ridesharing service is launching a Ditch Your Car program that offers a similar challenge in 35 cities, including New York City, San Francisco and Toronto. The basic principle remains the same: sign up by the end of September and, if you're lucky, you could get enough free transportation options to leave your car at home. What you get varies from city to city, but you'll typically receive Lyft Shared credit, Zipcar access and a local pass for either mass transit or bike service.

Those who get in will participate in the challenge between October 8th and November 6th.

This is a publicity move, of course. Lyft no doubt hopes that you'll like the experience so much that you'll extol the virtues of these services to anyone who'll listen (and make for great ad material). With that said, it's not necessarily wrong about the basic message. When services like Lyft and Uber are expanding beyond pure car hailing to incorporate two-wheeled options and mass transit, there isn't as much incentive to own a car as there was even a few years ago.