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Comment by jandrese | Hacker News Reader

I'm waiting for the inevitable backlash when Uber starts cutting drivers off after 39 hours in a week to avoid having them classified as full time.

I'm expecting this to increase fares, but currently there is a lot of room between Uber's fares and traditional taxi fares so even if they went up 20 or 30% they would still be a fair bit cheaper.

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> I'm expecting this to increase fares, but currently there is a lot of room between Uber's fares and traditional taxi fares so even if they went up 20 or 30% they would still be a fair bit cheaper.

In almost every place I've been to in the US in the last few years, Uber has not had competitive prices at all. They did back in ~2014, but their rates have been higher than yellow cabs and taxi services for a while now.

FWIW, this is not my experience at all. As just one example, I was late to a wedding event in Phoenix shortly before the pandemic, was about to call an Uber ($35), and decided to take the taxi that had just pulled up to the hotel to save a minute. My total metered cost was something like $80.

The only place I've been where this is true is NYC, which have piled regulations onto Uber (specifically and professionally licensed drivers, registered vehicles, etc) to the point that it seems to have closed the cost gap with taxis (who of course are also subject to these regulations). That is to say, Uber the company operates in New York, but it doesn't operate "Uber the ridesharing service", from an economic perspective.

OTOH, I don't have a ton of data points, since even at price parity taxis offer worse service, less accountability, less traceability (eg for lost items), worse incentives, less price transparency, etc etc

I live in an area where the cab service was especially expensive, so it probably helps Uber. In the old days it was $25 to travel the 4 miles between my house and the airport. Lyft is closer to half of that last time I used it.

We used to suffer (and yes I mean suffer) with Super Shuttle to the airport and back. Rideshare was cheaper, direct, and faster. I used the savings to tip the driver an extra $10 I was so pleased about not being driven all over the county before coming home.

The cut off would likely be at 29 hours. Health benefits are mandatory at 30 hours+.

It's also going to be pretty bad when an employee-driver ends her shift 1 hour away from home and she has to drive back without the ability to make any extra money.

They can end their shift before that last ride, or drive for another company.

Not if they're employees.

It'd be interesting to look at pricing by city. I bet they implement predatory pricing, i.e. undercut in small markets to crush competition, then raise prices.

Regardless in NYC Ubers tend to be about the same or more expensive during normal hours. And significantly more expensive during peak times. How much of the surge pricing goes towards the drivers pay? I'd wager margins are excellent for Uber during surge pricing.

There will come a day when each city will operate it's own system to facilitate app based taxis (will be on some standard protocol), and Uber a central entity out of SF won't be competitive or will be taxed out. Why let an entity extract X% of each ride out of its economy? Not worth it.

In NYC, your Uber driver is professionally licensed as a taxi/limousine driver and driving a vehicle that is registered as a for-hire vehicle. I'd bet this alone helps close the cost gap between rideshare and taxi, since there's nothing "rideshare" about it really - you're still paying for a professional driver with licensing costs, vehicle registration costs, extra insurances, sometimes even vehicle modifications, etc.

These debates about Uber/Lyft/etc employment status always seem to omit that there are two very distinct classes of people finding work with these services - one group is doing it part time in their personal vehicles, and the other group is doing it full-time in commercial vehicles. The interests of those two groups don't necessarily align.

Thought for Uber. License the software they already have (maybe at a certain rate and/or percentage of revenue) to the businesses and/or governments and let them handle the employee side of things

There are a dozen or so of such platforms like this that already exist.

It might increase fares, although I'm wondering if that effect might be mitigated somewhat as drivers simply move hours worked whatever the cap is to some competing platform like Lyft.

My hope is that we'll eventually get to the point where we'll be able stand up a decentralized alternative that will allow us to cut out the Uber middleman.

Uber is such a better experience that I'm willing to pay a slight premium just to never sit in a taxi again.

In my experience nowadays Uber drivers are just Taxi drivers who started Ubering in their own cars. I was thinking the other day how I used to get mints and water bottles and maybe a conversation. I get that about 5-10% of the time nowadays. I started using Black more often because I've taken dates in some Ubers that were practically falling apart, I'm worried about our lives in some of them along with some crazy driving.

Also nowhere near the rudeness of cabbies but they HATE only having to drive a 5-20 blocks to take you between neighborhoods. Always hoping for that 30 mile ride.

I mean the issue there is compensation. You won't pay more than $X for that super short ride, but for the driver, they just went 5 minutes out to pick you up, and now only get paid for 5 minutes of driving. That ride costs $Y but you would complain about paying that...

Just can't seem to please every customer...

Maybe it's a good time to make a new rideshare startup that actually treats drivers like independent contractors.

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