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Comment by kitcar | Hacker News Reader

Last time I was in Montreal my Uber driver wouldn't drop me at the airport, instead he dropped me at a hotel attached to the airport - he told me reason being in Montreal undercover police officers have been known to wait in the departures drop-off area and impound cars if they suspect you to be an Uber driver.

Interesting side note the driver actually was an airport employee - he would drive for Uber twice a day, once to work (he would hang out by the area of the city with lots of Hotels to try and catch and airport trip) and once on the way home. I thought that was kind of awesome.

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Actually using ridesharing to share rides. What a novel concept.

If Uber was based around this kind of thing then I would support them. Their current business model (for the most part) is one person going to one place. It's identical to driving everywhere yourself, without the hassle of parking.

I don't know about you or the guy above, but I pretty much always use Uber Pool/Lyft Line over the single rider versions when it's just me unless I'm in a huge rush. Most of my friends do the same, and I started using both services more then they introduced the feature.

Quebec didn't allow uber pool, afaik

At the Toronto Airport, Uber rides from the terminal into the city are upwards of $60. But take an AirTrain one stop to a hotel and it drops to $25. I think we need government regulations, but just like pure unfettered capitalism, it works in some markets, in some ways, but fails miserably in others.

What do you mean by into "the city", downtown Toronto? Pearson is actually in Mississauga, not Toronto and a trip from Pearson to downtown Toronto could take up to an hour in the (very likely) traffic on the 427 and Gardiner during the day. The cab flat rate to downtown is also ~$60.

No idea what an AirTrain is. Do you mean UP Express? Why stop at Weston and pay $5.30 and not just take it all the way downtown for a meagre $12.35? During heavy traffic your travel time would be roughly equivalent to a cab.

Anywhere really (I particularly go to the west end), its the big difference you should note.

AirTrain = Linktrain [1]. Take it to the alt-hotel (for free) right at the airport and grab an Uber Pool to save 50-60% of the cab fare and get dropped off right at your door step with all your luggage.

[1]: https://www.torontopearson.com/en/link/#

there should be an Uber mode where the driver enters their destination and they get a notification when someone else is going to the same place

Isn't that more or less Lyft Line?

There is.

They have that.

I always thought this idea had greater potential for extremely long car rides. If I'm taking a business trip from NYC to Boston, I'd be okay with a tagalong as long as they provide some gas money. It would have to be something scheduled in advance, but the ride would probably be more pleasant than taking a bus, and I'd be willing to drop the tagalong off somewhere besides the city square.

There is such a service in Europe, called Bla Bla Car[0].

[0] https://www.blablacar.com/

This sounds like BlaBlaCar which is (I hear) popular in Europe.

it's relatively popular.

There's a Montréal-Toronto facebook group with 18k members I've used a few times to save on gas money. Typically people charge $30-$40 per seat for the 6 hour trip.

I drove a guy who was trying to make an app which would do this, but I can't remember what it was called. It started as a Vancouver-Whistler ride share e-mail list.

> there should be an Uber mode where the driver enters their destination and they get a notification when someone else is going to the same place

There is on Lyft: https://help.lyft.com/hc/en-us/articles/213586028-How-to-use...

It's also on Uber

> impound cars if they suspect you to be an Uber driver.

How do they impound the vehicle if the driver is in it? Do they arrest the driver first?

I suspect they make you get out and call a cab home ;) Plenty of police at the airport, wouldn't be hard.

How did he guarantee that he would get an airport bound passenger?

Not a likely story. If the driver was an employee at the airport, turning on uber before his shift might result in him driving in the opposite direction for an hour and missing his shift.

In some cities Uber drivers are able to choose drop-off areas, but I don't believe Montreal is one of them.

This is/was common in china as well.

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