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Comment by xfour | Hacker News Reader

Up next the Austin method. Local competition fills the void providing better service than before proving that it's the technology not the company that's making the difference. Being Canada it would be funny to see a government corporation as the replacement ala liquor.

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Non-austenite here. If I arrive in Austin by plane and Uber or Lyft isn't working, knowing nothing about the local alternatives, I guess I have to take a cab.

You could just spend a few minutes researching that before you arrive or something… it's hardly the biggest imposition.

lol

Or even just... take a cab? Other than the lack of VC subsidies, even in cities that don't have great taxi services generally, taxis usually work reasonably well getting to and from the airport.

while ripping you off ($)

Where do you think the money that you pay for a taxi fare goes? Who exactly do you think is getting rich off this rip-off?

Have you considered that perhaps, the cost of a taxi fare is close to the cost of operating a car + having a 60 hour-week driver make a living wage (Without VC subsidies)?

Hell, a lot of hotels have shuttles to/from the airport.

What you need is literally a single Google search away.

https://www.google.com/search?q=austin+ride+sharing&oq=austi...

But hey, cabs are fine too. It's your call.

If you arrive anywhere and assume the corporate alternatives you are used to aren't available, you will choose to use the local available services? How is this unreasonable?

I think possibly there will be no dominate player but rather a region by region balkanization.

I imagine the problem problem you describe will be solved by an aggregator service. You will just open the app and select from amongst the local players.

Do such apps exist already?

Honestly I don't know. I would be surprised if someone wasn't working on it if not. But I'm not sure if there is yet a critical mass of regional players yet to warrant it. But maybe that's a catch 22?

I'm surprised to hear people say the local competitors were better. That's really not true. It's possible they were as good (never actually were in my experience) however I can't think of one way that any of them were actually better than Uber or Lyft.

Edit: I should point out that I mean "better for the rider." From what I understand some of the services had much more driver friendly policies and payment structures. I have heard of people choosing based on that.

Austin was doing fine with the competitors until the Texas State Govt. passed a law overriding city regulations. I think that was a huge mistake. We were doing fine with the competitors, and I would have continued to use them despite them being slightly more expensive, if only in spite at Uber's actions.

This is a very common trend in Texas. Big cities, especially Austin, are liberal, whereas the state government is conservative. So the latter will do anything it can to spite and annoy the cities. The Uber debacle was just one example.

I don't know why you are being downvoted, this is exactly what is going on. Texas republicans seem like trolls to me, always trying to use their power in the State Houses to annoy and infuriate their more Urban constituents. DJT didn't win by a huge margin in Texas though so I'm hoping that pretty soon these clowns will get kicked out and we will have responsible representatives.

Meanwhile, their asinine antics are having a very real effect on the economy of Texas: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/opinion/sunday/texas-unem...

I tried the ride sharing alternatives in Austin at SXSW this year and it was back to the bad old days of unreliable transport. For instance, the taxi that was supposed to pick me up arrived in 40 minutes and also picked up someone else so I had to request another one.

There are ride-sharing alternatives like Fasten, RideAustin. I will concede that they are more expensive and unreliable during heavy traffic times (weekend nights).

Austinite here. I still use the local competition even after Uber returned.

Attempt to secretly fund recall effort through a shady 'non-profit activist group' for a local city council person, wasting local tax money and time...

Spend $10,000,000 mail-bombing the local citizens to avoid paying a fraction of that to properly fingerprint their drivers via a deceitful and confusing ballot initiative... (I really did love receiving four of the same mailer on the same day, all addressed to me. That I had already received eight other copies of in the preceding week.)

Realize you should have just gone to the mercenaries in the GOP State Government who are all for local community control as long as they're the ones controlling everything locally...

And then people wonder why I'm anti-Uber. Lyft was involved as well but they don't have all the additional scandals of Uber, so I'll cut them far more slack.

There is local competition, Teo Taxi, I'll take them over Uber anytime. The prices are about the same, though their coverage is still somewhat limited.

I would still have to use Google to find alternatives to Uber / Lyft in Austin. I used Lyft to get to the airport and was told that business was brisk. This was one week after they returned.

The problem was multifold. There was no less than 3 companies that ran into Austin, and none of them were really prepared to enter that or any market. No real mindshare, buggy software, too expensive, etc.

For what it's worth, liquor retail is not nationalized across Canada. Most places have private liquor stores.

"The cancer is only in your kidneys, not in your whole body".

Regional state-owned monopolies are still state-owned monopolies. Oregon also has a state-run liquor store, and it's hours (and service attitude, and selection) sucks.

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