Uber Surge Price? Research Says Walk a Few Blocks, Wait a Few Minutes | Hacker News Reader

Uber Surge Price? Research Says Walk a Few Blocks, Wait a Few Minutes

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68 pointsckurose37 comments

Or use this app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/surgeprotector/id925613132?m...

Cool concept, but it keeps crashing (iPhone 6, iOS8.4)

Last time I encountered a 4x surge pricing, I downloaded Lyft ... the minute I ordered it, surge pricing ended (really annoyed me and I went with Lyft anyways). If it wasn't for surge pricing, I'd be cheerleading for Uber. Surge pricing adds a level of uncertainty ... and 4x on a 50 dollar ride is insane if it ends in a few minutes.

Isn't that the whole point of surge pricing? It's attempting to balance supply and demand. On the supply side it's trying to get more drivers where there's more demand. On the demand side, it's trying to see if you really need a ride, or if you can walk a couple blocks or if you can wait a few minutes.

If surge pricing is enabled in order to temper demand until supply can catch up, it promotes supply from places Uber may not like (Lyft).

No app yet to query Lyft and Uber, see who is cheaper at the moment, and launch the cheaper provider?

Here is a website that does the comparison between the 2, but you have to manually enter the surge percentage, http://www.whatsthefare.com/

I think someone mentioned it at least a year ago in a discussion about Uber vs. Lyft.

I actually prefer Lyft, but I use both simply because of surge pricing. Being in Boston though, between Lyft and Uber and their pooling options, I feel like I rarely pay for surge when I'm going somewhere alone.

Also, sometime I Uber or Lyft of the busy area (i.e. outside of a concert or sporting event) and then call another one that won't have surge pricing.

In my experience, surge pricing on a nice day doesn't last long. When the weather is nuts, you're gonna pay. Too bad I'm not a researcher.

just like I refuse to pay covers at bars, I refuse to pay surge pricing. Uber is my go to app, but if they are doing surge pricing than I switch to ihail (an Uber clone run by a taxi company). if they ate busy, than I use lyft as a last resort. I hate using lyft because they don't offer a fare estimate.

using this process I have saved myself 100s of dollars in ride fares.

Maybe someone should write an app that does this automatically.

> I hate using lyft because they don't offer a fare estimate.

Where are you using these apps? In the Bay Area, I like Lyft better than Uber because Lyft gives you a specific fare but Uber gives you a range. (FWIW, there are many other reasons I like Lyft better than Uber.)

How does customer need to counteract if he needs a time sensitive ride? Lets say, I need to go to Airport at time x. Neither I can book earlier to guarantee a ride nor can I wait out the surge.

one unbecomes such a customer and perhaps utilizes a service of a lesser price, or sucks it up and pays the extra fee

Use a transfer service, which offers pre-orders. Uber is losing all my airport rides because they don't have it.

They probably don't want it anyway. It's more profitable for both Uber and the drivers to not take such rides; in the time to and back from airport they could take several within the city.

Also it is too risky - for example if they won't make it in time

If it's profitable for a generic limousine transfer services, why it's not profitable for Uber? Blacklane seems to be profitable too.

I need to take a transfer from Fort Lauderdale airport to Miami in a few weeks and was looking at pricing. Uber was definitely the cheapest, assuming no surge pricing. A scheduled private car is going to be close to $30 more than an Uber.

I'd imagine something related to price segregation and bundle pricing.

Logistics of planning all those orders and rides is expensive.

Sounds like a job for software.

It'd be interesting to see how someone handles vehicle routing problem on a large scale, quickly and optimally.

Isn't that a solved problem since like the early 70s? Even computing power is not a limiting factor now, only those pesky humans bickering about "central planning" and "democratization".

Haha, solved?

Put in the time windows, put the capacity limits, put the pickup and delivery (this isn't same as just delivery).

It's far from solved, and far from efficient. Field isn't even mature as theoretical computer science, not even rigorous enough :D

You have papers talking about their newest hybrid genetic memetic evolutionary deep simulated annealing bullcrap algorithm getting hundreds of citations.

You have services like Routific, Routyn, Viamente, WorkWave, and others struggling with it. No one in this world has the technology powerful enough to optimize at scale. Example. WorkWave is talking about exploiting 45Billion dollar market of optimizing thousands of technicians and their routes, but they can't even scale that on a daily basis for large number of delivery points, given how slow their optimization engine is. Same goes for every service mentioned above. Oh yeah, WorkWave bought Viamente for $4M, that's how much their tech was worth. Seems a little bit low for something that could attack the 45Billion market.

I have not stumbled upon a single one in the last 10 years that has any potential. All are leeching or would like to leech the big companies that can afford a 1 day waiting time for optimization. UPS seems to be all happy about its routing engine, but they too are being weird about it, if it's good then show it.

Someone who solves this for Uber will definitely get its first billion.

This would be a huge engineering effort since the problem is NP-hard :D

Uber did start as a limousine service so it'd be surprising if they didn't consider this scenario.

One uses the many minicab or prebooked services instead? Uber exists for the use case of needing a car right now. Needing a car later was a pretty well served use case in most of the world

Well, typically 5 minutes won't hurt your airport trip. I've only paid surge pricing a couple of times in dozens of Uber trips, and both times it was post-bar hours in Redondo Beach, and the 2x surge price was still far cheaper than here in SF.

I always just try the request again a minute later and surge pricing is usually gone.

Or use a new company like https://fasten.com/ who doesnt do surge pricing.

>No surge pricing ... however if you're late for work ... you can always Boost your ride.

The website explains to boost ones ride is to apply a multiplier to the price. One might call this a surge.

That's just good economics. Fasten clearly understands economics and incentives far better than Uber does.

Uber is the classic case of aggressive government style intervention in a market causing it to collapse - no riders or drivers in high demand areas during surge pricing. This is a total failure of market policy because no price discrimination is allowed.

Fasten is akin to setting minimum wage. They set a low base price but if you want to get somewhere faster or get preference during a busy period then YOU can raise your price by what it's worth to you.

This is a big stumbling block for Uber to which Fasten has a rather decent solution.

That sounds worse than surge pricing as a customer.

>That's just good economics. Fasten clearly understands economics and incentives far better than Uber does.

It sounds like an auction. It's a clever system, but I don't think it represents a more fundamental understanding of economics than Uber's system, which is to raise prices to induce supply to match demand.

> It sounds like an auction. It's a clever system, but I don't think it represents a more fundamental understanding of economics than Uber's system, which is to raise prices to induce supply to match demand.

Uber's system is a central planner trying to simulate the results of a two-sided auction by centrally setting prices to try to achieve a desired result given supply and demand signals.

Fasten's system strips out the simulation and just is an auction, which allows supply and demand to align without requiring central planning.

I think its pretty fair to describe the latter as evidencing a better understanding of economics.

Especially since its been proven that surge pricing doesn't incentivize more supply.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/17/ho...

The simplest way is to move the pickup point ever so slightly until you reach a spot without surge pricing, then simply walk there as it arrives.

Nope.

This doesn't work.

I've walked more than a couple of miles, and waited more than an hour.. the surge stays between 4X to 5X.

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