When a whole suburb is taking self-driving car every morning to get to the train, I guess someone will innovate and start offering rides in a minibus or even a bus.
Having the commit will make it maore feasible to fund vehicles that are intended for a specific area, and the pool model allows Uber to recover margin during pricing surges and users who don't want to pay the commit (after all, the discount on the fare would only apply to the portion of the pool fare ascribed to the subscribed to the passenger).