Vancouver Doesn't Have Uber
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
The Vancouver taxi app suffers from the same problems. No rating system, so your driver can just abandon you or take a weird route.
These are the reasons Uber became so popular in other cities. If you are a businessperson in Vancouver with an urgent need to get somewhere you basically need a private driver.
Car2go and Evo car sharing services are good, but in competitively high demand. (I have found myself literally racing others on foot for the available ones.) Locals are desperate for driving solutions that don't involve long-term parking. And that still leaves visitors out of luck.
Then he is an utter idiot. How many of those 60 cities do you suppose had perfectly workable public transit systems he could have used? I'd bet quite a few of them.
Uber is great because it allows you to be lazy. Turn up in a city you've never been to, hit a button, go. That doesn't mean they should have carte blanche to do whatever they want, wherever they want.
When I'm in Vancouver I either use the (pretty good) public transport options, or an app I found to reserve a taxi, which works just fine. Or (gasp) walk around the beautiful city.
The public transit may be nice, but as a tourist, I didn't bother with the bus timings and such: it was way easier to get a cab. Under such circumstances, Uber/Lyft may have made it much easier, especially since, at times we felt flagging down a cab was impossible.
This is the sorest spot of "Uber culture" for me: wealthy and educated people who would put skills and pressure into keeping public transit sharp and usable for themselves (and therefore everybody else), instead "opt out" for their own private needs and leave public transit to rot.
If local governments would like to learn from this and come up with their own solutions, perhaps even hiring some of these smart people to help them, that'd be great. But I don't see them doing any of that.
Also after using Uber in Toronto, I am super jealous and want it here.
Transit in Vancouver is pretty good but it won't help you late at night. I've fully given up ever trying to get home after a Christmas party (I get a hotel room now and transit in the morning).
Broad age range, from 18 year-old coop interns to 35 year old parents and 50 year old senior execs.
An Uber would be there in 4 minutes and take me door-to-door.
I usually just walked in these situations. (It's about a 25-minute walk.)
Although, the note the article ends in, it's pretty clear that it's an ad.
This co-opting of the 'sharing economy' to mean unregulated subcontractors is ridiculous. It removes the risk from Uber as a company and places it on the clients and the drivers. Vancouver (and BC) has determined this a risk to great.
If Uber wants to operate in this jurisdiction, they must play by the rules of that jurisdiction. If they refuse, then so be it. They certainly aren't losing money because of it, just losing OUT on it.
These regulations are not commandments from God, they can be changed. And it's not immoral to try and change them. The current rules are terrible for consumers.
The idea that literally all zoning and transport regulation came as a result of the hotel/taxi lobby is ridiculous.
What?
Since when?
Are they going to have big tech companies paying big tech company?
Is this just based on the outrageous housing prices?
> With spotty public transportation and a dearth of taxis, Canada's third-largest city seemed built for ride-sharing
Never had a problem with transit in vancouver. Taxis are stupidly expensive, but skytrain + a bus is usually not too bad.
He could have rented a car for around $50/day for a compact. Want something more flashy? Mustang Convertible for around $80/day.
Also: > "It's the only city in the world that I need to hire a driver"
He's never been to Seoul, one of the largest cities in the world, which also has effectively no Uber presence...
I use public transportation twice a day every weekday but that doesn't mean I wouldn't also, occasionally, need to have need of Uber. They serve different needs, is that so hard to understand?
> If you have an absolutely urgent need to get somewhere, I'd argue that you didn't plan well
If only there was a service that existed to help you get somewhere if something goes terribly wrong with your plans! Somebody should turn that into a business and make money.
Yes, because they serve the same need -- to get you from one place to another. They have different uses, sure, one being for something time sensitive and one for something potentially not, but they do not serve different needs. It's not fair to conflate need with want, because while humans generally need to get from one point to another, they don't need to use Uber. There are other options.
> Somebody should turn that into a business and make money.
That business model exists already, it's called a taxicab/livery service.
By that argument, you don't need airplanes either because we have greyhound. They don't serve the same need, they serve similar needs.
> They don't need to use Uber. There are other options.
So what? We don't need transit either, everybody could just take 2-4 hours to walk to work. What's the difference? I'm taking your poor argument and extending to the absurd conclusions that result from it. Why must we have fewer poorer options when we could have more better options? Is that not progress?
> That business model exists already, it's called a taxicab/livery service.
Unfortunately, in Vancouver, that service is a monopoly that has too few vehicles to serve the population. It has poor customer service that more often than not fails to deliver. If this were a free market environment, competition would come in and solve the problem but it is not.
Uber could be a better business model, could it not?
I'm also not saying that there must be fewer options, and I'm saying there are other options, not one single option (e.g. walking). I'm saying that it's not necessary for Uber to exist because other options currently exist that fill the exact same niche, even if those other options are potentially not as efficient.
In theory, we could replace restaurants and kitchens with Soylent. I wouldn't want to do that, because food tastes good and I like having that option.
On the list of things that are useful, Uber is very high.
What enlightened local governments would do is figure out how to enact some sensible regulations on these new Uber-like services, and then let them set their own prices and compete fairly. Sensible regulations would have to do with employee treatment, such as the whole controversy about employees being "contractors" (which is a hard problem: many of them like working part-time, and even work for multiple services simultaneously, taking calls from one service or the other), and the controversy about how to deal with the auto insurance (this one's easier: they could simply require Uber to self-insure while a driver is on a call, but there's still an issue about when drivers are between calls). But I don't see any attempts by cities to do anything like this; they only want to prop up the existing taxi cartels, and do a terrible job with public transit.
Yes, it really is.
> forcing them to price rides at $75 a ride is just a tactic to drive them out of business altogether, without the government doing anything to actually make the situation better for its citizens
They were classified as limos. I said I disagree with that. It's not some great conspiracy to target Uber, it's an application of the law. Would you rather they get lumped in with Taxi's and forced to follow all those regs?
> What enlightened local governments would do is figure out how to enact some sensible regulations on these new Uber-like services, and then let them set their own prices and compete fairly.
I agree. I support any efforts to bring in law changes to let Uber operate.
I don't support letting them just jump into the market and do what they want.
No, I'd rather the local governments get their heads out of their asses and enact some sensible regulation instead of trying to kill the golden goose that's finally giving people a service that actually works well and that they like to use, unlike the taxis, and at a price that's affordable, unlike limos. Uber is a great thing, but it's in uncharted territory regulation-wise and does need some regulation to make sure that employees (yes, that's what they are when they work for you) are treated fairly, that issues about insurance are known and consistent, etc. I don't see anyone attempting to do this at all.
>I don't support letting them just jump into the market and do what they want.
What's your alternative? The problem is that governments actively refuse to govern properly, and instead work to protect incumbents. If Uber waited around for good regulations to be enacted, they'd be waiting decades, if it got done at all (in reality, it wouldn't). The only way to force governments to act is to do what they've done. As the old saying goes, "it's better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission". There's a reason this saying came about: if you ask permission, most likely you'll be told "no", because people (especially organizations, and most especially governments) hate change. If you go and do it anyway, then the other parties just have to deal with it and are forced to work with you.
Pressure governing bodies to bring in regulation to allow you to operate legally.
Uber isn't some small business fighting against an unfair market. It's a multi-billion dollar multinational corporation that deliberately flouts regulation to attempt to gain a foothold and then strongarm their way to a favorable outcome under threat of pulling service and pissing off voters.
I'm really curious how you think a company would amass billions of dollars without actually being in business first, providing a service, having customers, and gaining revenue. Companies don't just start out as multi-billion dollar multinational corporations.
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I've stated before[1] here how I feel about anti-adblock popups. If you don't want me to view your content because I refuse to view ads, I'll respect your wishes and move on.
However, I don't like being lied to.
Sure, in an indirect economic sense, viewing Bloomberg's content without viewing ads will use their server cycles without providing them income, which in the long run could cause them to run low on funds and have to cut spending on servers, which could adversely affect the performance and content on the site, if Bloomberg continues to choose to operate on this business model. So technically yes, going on the website with an ad blocker is one factor (of many, and not the primary factor) which could hurt site performance and content.
But the wording here is very ambiguous. Nontechnical users reading this text would likely believe from reading this that there is some technical reason that ad blockers directly slow down website performance and content. And this is not the case; the direct impact of ad blockers is to improve the performance of websites and improve the viewing of content. Unless we are to believe that Bloomberg is technically ignorant, this ambiguity is intended to deceive.
I'll add this to the list of unethical behaviors encouraged by advertising.