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Comment by awalton | Hacker News Reader

Let's face it, Ridesharing ate their lunch. I was a religious SuperShuttle user until Lyft showed up - it usually cost me roughly the same amount to take a Lyft shared, I didn't have to wait on the right van to show up, and instead of winding through taking a half dozen other people home first, it often takes me straight home, or at most with a couple of stops.

It's a hard world for traditional scheduled taxiing to be in, when you can summon a vehicle to you on demand.

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I remember one time my wife and I took the Super Shuttle home from SFO to Mountain View. It took about two hours since we were the last stop and in fact the shuttle went north a little first before turning south. That was the first and last time I used their service.

I love Lyft but I took a shared lyft for the first time and the driver did three circles around a busy block trying to find a GPS dot (that never moved) that was obviously on the other side of the street, and after an extra 10min jammed an extra person in the car when we hardly fit, despite our protests. That was the last time I took a shared ride.

That’s good for you and for Lyft, if you’re going to protest an extra person because you barely all fit, you’re not a good candidate for shared rides.

I was more bothered by the incentives which require you to spend forever waiting for a driver to figure out how to read a map, locate people, while also being unsafely crammed into a sedan. All because the driver wants to make a few more dollars. Which he could have earned more via tip and a positive review. But mostly is the massive time variability as they could accept multiple rides on the way and reroute each time.

I’m sure it works fine most of the time but I’ve never been a patient/people person who feels it’s worth my trouble to save a few dollars.

My father had a stint driving cars and he was appalled by the story since it was common to a) treat customers with respect (including their time) and b) expertly know how to navigate around a city.

If we’re lowering the denominator of quality of service with casual drivers then I’d rather offset that risk by reducing such responsibilities and variables on the drivers.

In this case, the driver is supposed to mark the other passenger as a no show after 60 or 90 seconds. There's a timer that counts down on the driver app. Many drivers will wait longer, however.

> jammed an extra person in the car when we hardly fit, despite our protests

Are you talking about more people than seatbelts? Or just having three people across the back seat?

If you choose pooled options ride-sharing companies go by the nominal capacity of the car, so four passengers plus the driver in a standard five-seater car.

He probably means that one or more of the two, soon three, people in the back were rather large.

Yes and it was a subcompact sedan while both people had large backpacks on their lap

I am curious how hard a problem it is for the system to figure out what side of the road the driver should be on. Could they put a little arrow or something in the UX so I could point to which side of the street I'm on? Ideally before I order the car so the dispatch algo can prioritize cars that are more likely to approach from the correct side.

If the street is busy it can be hard as a pedestrian to safely get to the other side of the street. I've also had drivers just go the wrong way like I was standing between Gough and and Octavia on Market maybe 10-15meters from Gough. The driver came down Gough and turned left on Market at which point I knew it would be > 10 minutes before they could make all the correct turns to get back to pick me up. I cancel the ride and was surprised the system didn't direct them better.

Looks like civilian GPS accuracy is 4m or so. I could imagine that dropping someone's dot in the middle of a street, and then a driving having to guess which side of the street the error is coming from.

...or know that even numbers are on one side of the street and odds on the other as happens (I'd guess) everywhere.

Some places will put both evens and odds on the same side of the street if there's only one side, and then use more numbers if there is subsequently development on the other side of the street. Some places will assign a new house number whenever a new building is added, no matter where it is located. Some places will number in clockwise (or counterclockwise) direction.

It was a 3 lane one direction road and each time he went to the right hand side because the instead of trying the left handside. And instead of waiting for traffic to clear and thinking she might be on the otherside of the building he went to the back...twice.

This kind of service could probably be impproved with route optimisation and booking using an app. A certain delivery company is already using route optimisation for parcel deliveries so that their employees don't have to think about it, just follow a set course. I don't know if it's enough, though. People would rather take ride hailing services out of convenience anyway. Maybe it could work for smaller vans 6-9 seater with 2-3 stops max instead of cramming up into a shared ride.

I used to use a shared van service fairly regularly. After the second or third time my ~1 hour airport drive turned into a 2-3 hour late night marathon, I stopped doing it.

I had just started using the local Coach airport shuttle because it was so convenient and have begun to travel more. It announced it was shutting down a week or so ago for the same reasons.

Ridesharing will cost me double each way or risk leaving my car at the airport. I'm beginning to dislike Lyft and Uber.

When I was in Vegas it wasn't even worth using them. The lined up procession of cabs is more convenient than trying to find the one car you're supposed to get into, not to mention the same at every airport where ride sharing is just an inefficient mess of slow ubers and riders making rounds in a packed parking garage.

> The lined up procession of cabs is more convenient than trying to find the one car you're supposed to get into,

Lyft has a new feature (I forget what it's called) where instead of directly matching with a specific driver, you get a four-digit number and then stay in line and get in the car when your turn comes. At that point you match with the driver using the number you got.

I haven't seen that yet but it makes a lot of sense. 1:1 matching at a busy airport doesn't really scale. It's one reason I tend to default to cabs flying into airports (and usually take an Uber/Lyft on the return).

I just used this at LAX, it was slick. Much better than my last trip through.

This is actually pretty interesting, but still seems like more ceremony than cabs anywhere that is similar to Vegas in that they have designated pickup areas (I don't know where else this may apply).

One of my drivers told me there was some regulation coming down that would allow the cabs to be more competitive price wise with Uber (I think I paid maybe 10-20% more than the Uber on average I think). If that was the case I'm not sure what benefit fiddling with my phone would offer at all.

I guess the one good thing is it potentially keeps cab prices low there.

McCarran taxi lines in Vegas can be pretty awful. However, ride-share pickup also doesn't really work well at airports where personal pickup/dropoff is already a total mess. One of the things you see happening is rideshare pickup being pushed out to locations away from the terminals.

I'm mostly at the point where I do whatever is most convenient and don't worry too much about the cost. At home, I usually just reserve a car.

I think the good part about taxis is that I do not have to summon them at all. There’s always a line waiting wherever I want to leave from (except at LAX, because they don’t understand the concept of taxis... seriously, who takes a shuttle to their taxi, that’s insane).

That depends on the Airport and the time you arrive. I have definitely tried to take a taxi before only to be told "Big flight from XXX just arrived at terminal Z, they are routing all taxis there".

I think a good airport has one exit everyone leaves from, which will have one line of either waiting taxis, or people waiting for taxis.

yeah but Lyft and Uber

* are often forbidden directly at airport gates

* you need an US sim phone card for phone apps. As a non US person I usually don't have that before traveling to the USA ;(

Or WiFi, which most airports have.

Wifi doesnt often work outside at airports, where you actually find and get in the car.

Having tried this, it's dodgy at best. Wifi at the waiting areas is rare, especially since they're often located pretty far out at the behest of taxi companies.

At McCarran (LAS) I ended up just splitting a taxi cash with another guy from the queue after Defcon. Though considering the taxi driver _insisted_ on taking me to my terminal (for another $7 since he had to leave the airport and re-enter) I was annoyed I couldn't review him.

You can’t sign up for Lyft with WiFi can you.

That’s what I can’t understand: how do SS rides cost so damn much. For that experience I’d expect a flat $10 fee

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