Uber and Lyft don't save money, time, or the planet
latimes.com
latimes.com
Isn't this because most cities have ridiculous rules that disadvantage Uber drivers while cabs are allowed to park out in front? They have no convenient very short term parking, instead they're sometimes made to wait on the side of the highway, which makes the ride more expensive. They also charge fees. LAX charges $4 per ride [0]
Isn't the fact that people use Uber proof that they provide some value? I think the point is to have an alternative to cabs that are highly variable as per the author's own admission.
[0] https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-airport-uber-parking-...
Taxis are first in, first out. Someone leaves the airport and gets in the first available car.
Uber is like the bubble sort of queuing theory. It's random in, random out. A driver and a passenger are matched with no regard to the queue, then, if not specially managed, the driver occupies a spot until that passenger gets there. If anyone calls a car too early or is at the wrong place, they've just congested the system pretty badly. Total waiting time slows down.
Second, you can't...go up to a rideshare driver and hire them (as a ride share driver). You have to use the app. So having them physically available, though potentially decreasing some wait times, doesn't help most people who hire them. Taxis, on the other hand, you can just walk up to and hire. So having fixed locations for taxis scattered around the terminal makes more sense with the model.
Third, you have a priority ordering problem. Rideshare drivers are given rides in the order they arrived at the airport, but the location of their passengers varies. It's possible someone orders while they are walking through the terminal or when they already have their bags. This also relates to the large size of airports (as mentioned above). Taxis, on the other hand, are hired at the physical taxi and can leave immediately.
I think ridesharing companies could fix all of these problems by creating a 'taxi' mode in their apps where people could walk up to a set of waiting drivers and grab one, but they haven't done so.
> I think ridesharing companies could fix all of these problems by creating a 'taxi' mode
Uber actually offers this already in some places. Here in SF, I have the option of calling an actual taxi from the app, and I linked in another comment to a page about Uber's further interest in hailables. IIRC it also supports cash walk-ins in India, and it acquired Autocab in UK.
They're the same as personal pickups, one car looking for one specific person.
There's no doubt it's an inefficient system. But it's bizarre that there are hundreds of meters of dedicated curb space for personal car pickups, but all of a sudden when rideshare companies came in the airports are pretending it's some huge inconvenience to the system and forcing them to meet up in the back of the parking garage a mile away.
Which can't just park in front of the terminal and wait, either.
Certainly Uber and Lyft provide value, but I personally have seen that value plummet in markets where the rides aren't subsidized by VC money.
And, yes, for most people--especially outside of city centers--owning a car is going to be cheaper than hiring a ride to go everywhere.
Flying into San Diego is a much better experience in comparison.
It was HORRIBLE. A total shitshow. As someone who travelled a few times a months, it added 30-60 minutes to the time it took me to get home.
There's several articles written about how terrible it was. The only thing that saved them, ironically, was COIVD & the collapse of travel. When it comes back it's going to be a disaster all over again.
If you are traveling to a new city/airport you never really know what you are going to get. Regardless waiting is normally better than getting into a taxi that will change you an unknown amount.
Yes, but that value might be, that some people feel better because they think they are doing something for the climate.
There are legitimate concerns with Uber/Lyft putting more cars on the road, but I think that would flip once autonomous driving becomes viable. Then network capacity planning rules can be used to reduce total number of cars.
Disruptor comes along to stagnant industry. Pumps cash into growth, discounts get many people on board, crap service is made up for with liberal refunding by customer service. Push for profitability hits discounts, acquisition slows because it's no longer cheaper than the thing it was disrupting before, customer service stop refunding things and customers leave because they realise the service has pretty bad flaws. Incumbents have finally met the new table-stakes features to compete, disruptor isn't significantly better.
See also: takeaway deliveries, meal kits, buying books online, and pretty much anything else.
These cycles always look like they're going to be a 100% improvement, but always end up being a 10% improvement once everything settles down.
Sorry, but Uber is a 100% improvement service improvement over cabs in many areas.
I lived in Chicago for six years and not one single cab I took during the whole six years would accept a credit card, despite being obligated to do so. If I didn't have cash I was told that we could drive to an ATM or I could get out.
Not to mention that the drivers almost invariably talked on the phone the entire time. And while not the norm, I had half a dozen confrontations with cab drivers who were obviously trying to scam me with "broken meters" or obviously roundabout routes.
I haven't had a single bad experience with an uber or lyft. Most are unremarkable, which is fine. So 100% of my cab experiences in Chicago were bad and 100% of my uber/lfyt experiences have been fine or better.
Of course not everywhere is Chicago (though US cab companies generally seem to have miserable service). Tokyo taxis have world class service, and it is perhaps not a coincidence that Uber has only a tiny presence there.
Funny you mention this. I actually had a bad taxi experience in Japan of all places: asked the hotel to call for one multiple times, 40 minutes later it never showed up, so I requested an Uber, and got a car in 5 minutes (this was in Kyoto, though, not Tokyo)
Uber has crap service? I was under the impression the whole point of Uber becoming so ubiquitous as to become a verb was that you could actually get service at all in a timely fashion whereas cabs had a terrible reputation.
IMHO, if you're only looking at rides, you've got your consumer hat on and I think you're missing the big picture. Uber is still not done trying to eat the world so to speak. The food delivery vertical is one of its most well known growth markets, but it also has eyes on the actual hailable taxi market[0], buses/high capacity vehicles[1], deliveries/logistics market (uber direct[2], uber freight[3]), it's building up loyalty program strategies a la costco/amazon prime/visa (uber pass[4]), etc. Basically, anything that remotely involves wheels is game for Uber.
This thirst is what I think characterizes unicorns: Google started as a one trick pony with search, and now has maps, docs, android, GCP, Waymo and a million other things. Amazon was a just a book store and now it's basically synonymous with online shopping and cloud infrastructure services.
[0] https://www.themuse.com/jobs/uber/hailables-lead
[1] https://www.uber.com/en-EG/blog/introducing-uber-bus-a-new-w...
[2] https://www.uber.com/newsroom/moving-more-of-what-matters-wi...
How quickly we forget. When I did traveling-consulting for a year and a half — a mistake — I heard horror stories from the quite recent past: for instance, the New York taxi driver who clearly wasn't supposed to be the one driving the cab and thus refused to take a credit card payment (as mandated by law) with the (working) credit card machine. Instead he demanded cash, and drove my colleague to an ATM against his will holding his luggage hostage. And the one time I took an actual taxicab home from LaGuardia — hoping to save the hassle of a pickup in the cold — my driver got pulled over for running a red light.
Yeah, Uber and Lyft are both sketch as heck, but they've got nothing on the world's taxis.
Freaking Taxis are mafias, and the people that drive them are part of it. I consider them part of the problem, specially now that there is an alternative.
Uber, Didi and others may be a lot of things (over here I feel they became more expensive), but bad service they definitely don't have.
Have you recently had to supply Uber with your photo for "mask proof," before requesting service? Are you comfortable with all the grotesque data mining they're doing with that in the name of "health & safety?" Have you read about Uber's horrific data mining practices, privacy violations, and generally bad-faith actions they've undertaken against individuals and drivers?
In places like Mexico especially, these sorts of things should concern you immensely. Perhaps it's still worth it for you - however, perhaps it's worth considering the lifestyle you and other Uber users live, and considering whether living in densely populated & corrupt major metropolises is actually a good economic decision in the long-term. Without these horrific starting conditions, the point of Uber's existence in the first place is highly suspect.
This is kidnapping.
Food delivery is very low margin and companies have realised there is pretty much no money to be made here as an expensive middle man. So in many cities food delivery companies are creating their own food preparation businesses to try to make profit that way. Most of these markets are low margin and providing wheels alone isn't enough to pay for an expensive multi-national.
This doesn't even get into the constant scams I would run across. Usually it was just drivers not running a meter and then charging some ridiculous price at the end of the ride. I don't care if you want the fare "off the book" so you can pocket the whole thing. Hustle your employer all you want, but don't hustle me.
I got into the habit of asking them to run the meter every time they started to drive off without starting it. If they still insisted that it was broken, I'd ask how much they wanted to charge me. If it was reasonable, I would accept. If it was stupid, I'd get out.
For all the complaints about Uber/Lyft, as a passenger, they are much more reliable and I know roughly what to expect every time.
I think Uber Eats' marketing of "we're not the jealous type" kinda expresses it well: there are use cases where Uber is undoubtedly superior (convenient ride summoning), and for other cases where cabs fit the use case, it's often a low-stakes choice, such that things like branding and reputation might trump other qualitative metrics such as price.
And for what it's worth, in many markets, Uber offers a bunch of price-oriented services that taxis simply aren't able to: the pool service was the most well known offering in the US, but in Brazil for example, it also serves "I need a ride NOW, and willing to pay premium, take my money" (the Prioridade service) and "I'm very price sensitive and willing to ride a motorcycle to save a few bucks" (the Moto service).
Somebody should probably tell that to the millions of public market investors who have bought into these public companies worth tens of billions of dollars.
https://www.google.com/search?q=doordash+stock&oq=doordash+s...
https://www.google.com/search?q=uber+stock
https://www.google.com/search?q=grub+stock&oq=grub+stock
In fact if you're sure there's no money to be made, you could short them all and make a killing. Have you done that?
By some analysis, food delivery companies have a potential margin of about 2% from delivery alone. Which is why these companies are trying to find other ways to take in more per order and hopefully one day make a profit.
I can call a car from almost anywhere in the world and have a ride in a few minutes for a reasonable price - that’s a huge shift.
Remember, effectively you have said law breaking is acceptable. In this case, it may be partly even true, but once this catches on, anarchy, literally one step away.
He may very well be grossing $3k a week but he's not actually earning that much.
Edit: I forgot how many times an uber driver was on the way and then cancelled the order. Or oftentimes they just refuse to go to the centre because of the congestion charge so you get out of the car, request a new car and hope for the best.
Yes, uber provides crappy service. Crappy because it's like a russian roulette - even if you are in the car you don't know if you will be taken to your destination.
I don’t live in an urban area but do live about 15 minutes from the airport in suburbia.
For Uber Eats though, I've had them claim that there is no expectation of food arriving hot. First few times I had delivery problems I got full refunds and the reputation was always "give it a go, worst case you can get a refund anyway". Now it's hard to even get in touch with support let alone get them to acknowledge an order issue, and refunds are almost unheard of.
Edit: I had forgotten about all the issues with sexual assaults by Uber drivers. They tried to downplay the issues, but ended up having to implement a lot of controls to understand who was driving the cars, in some markets they now have to be licenced, it's all changed a lot since the beginning because of how the service was actively dangerous compared to incumbents who were typically much more tightly regulated.
I think they've forced everyone to change now - if they disappeared tomorrow another operator would fill the void. But when Uber first started operating it was a radically improved service.
I submitted an order, it popped up "503 Service Unavailable -- Try again" in the app. I tried again and it went through.
Food showed up, was just finishing up and they showed up and delivered it a second time. Checked and the order had indeed double-submitted two seconds apart, and I was charged twice.
Obvious error. It would have been a superhuman feat to submit the order, readd all the items to a new order, and submit it in two seconds.
I contacted support and explained what happened and they refused the refund because they had delivered the order, so I had to pay for it. "Thanks for understanding." No amount of arguing that this was obviously an issue with their app got anything out of them besides food showed up, you pay for food, "thanks for understanding".
Upside is I went from wasting probably a hundred bucks a week on ordering food to actually getting off my ass and walking somewhere nearby and picking it up myself for half the price.
I had one time where there was someone else's order delivered to me; literally their name was on the bag... the delivery person grabbed the wrong bag. Then I tried to get them to fix it before he drove away and he told me to call the restaurant. Trying to get refund from the delivery service was nigh impossible. I wound up calling the restaurant and the dealt with getting me a refund and the correct food.
I no longer use food delivery at all, unless it's provided directly by the restaurant. Otherwise, I go pick it up.
I don’t wonder about past vs present, I wonder about present vs a possible present where VC funding doesn’t flood the market and destroy competition.
A good comparison is perhaps restaurants. Seamless, Uber Eats and the rest swallowed up the online food ordering business. Slowly more and more restaurants let you order direct, some using startups like ChowNow that facilitate the transaction without dominating it. But it’s still an uphill climb.
Regular taxis? Sure, download this city specific app. Or one of the two city specific apps. Or call one of the local cab companies and find out you picked the one that doesn't consistently dispatch to your hotel so you end up waiting around with zero feedback. Or maybe you call and they show up in five minutes and its great.
There's no alternative to this and it's incredibly valuable to many, even if you don't use it.
I only have a problem with them trying to make it out on the IPO instead of making a profitable business. But this one can not go forever, or the public will wake-up, or the law enforcement will.
I don't think it does mean a complete takeover. There are plenty of industries where being 10% cheaper doesn't mean you "win", and there are plenty where being 10% better doesn't either. In a world of perfect competition and perfect information it might, but it's well accepted that we do not live in that world.
I think it’s an admission their site is an un-curated mess. but come on, are paper catalogs really the best solution Amazon came up with for their online store being cluttered, useless for product discovery, and overrun by poor quality products and fakes?
Time was it was good as you knew it was cheaper than most places but that is generally totally not true now.
the same thing happened on the way back, except my hotel called the taxi, so then the taxi driver gave the bellman $10 and wanted me to give him the $10 he had to pay the bellman (which I did). He also wanted cash and didnt turn the meter on. I worry that if I insist they turn the meter on they would stop and kick me out of the taxi.
And yes Im out of practice. I used to negotiate that we use the meter and I can pay with a credit card before I even get in the taxi.
I have been uniformly cheated by taxi drivers everywhere in the world.
that alone would have me using rideshares even if it was a little more expensive.
This is what keeps these cycles going.
An Uber (I don't really use Lyft since it's basically non-existent outside the US and pre-pandemic I traveled internationally a lot) will meet me wherever I happen to be regardless of where it is in the city, at whatever time I need a ride regardless of hour, pick me up, and take me to my destination via the quickest route determined by a GPS app, for a predetermined non-negotiable price, automatically charged to my credit card or business account without needing to reveal anything or expose any money to a stranger, and without me needing to deal with foreign exchange rates.
A taxi does literally none of these things. The only similarity between a taxi and an Uber is that they both are a stranger driving me somewhere in a car. After that, an Uber is a better experience that saves me both time and money every step of the way, while being massively more consistent and reliable. Taxis suck, and there is effectively no way to make them better without essentially cloning what Uber does, which gets us right back where we're at.
I'm seeing this more and more these days, and I'm not sure the cause, but a lot of articles in "reputable" newspapers making bold claims that nobody who has had even an inkling of experience with the subject matter would make with a straight face. Uber has many issues, I will grant, but to claim it isn't a better experience in every facet than a taxi isn't just stupid, it's dishonest.
To be fair, the author had a very specific use case with respect to cost and time, with well known fares and availability from the airport to home.
But I think the author would agree with most of your points, it goes on for a bit about how much she does not like Taxis.
The interesting claim is the one about eco friendliness and how much driving around without a fare, or going to a fare Uber takes up.
The "planet" angle is IMHO grasping at straws to set a specific tone for the narrative, because frankly who thinks about that when taking a cab? If this wasn't just lip service and carbon emission/congestion actually mattered to her, there's public transit from LAX!
I wrote in a comment downthread about an anecdote of a guy that had lost his job due to covid and had found an income safety net w/ Uber. You could argue that he contributes to carbon emissions/congestion by driving, but what exactly is the writer expecting the alternative to be? Sitting at home receiving free stimulus cheques? Working at McDonalds flipping infamously high CO2 producing beef patties? Working as... a cab driver for a cheaper fare for her exact use case, but still incurring roughly the same role in carbon footprint and congestion overall?
Trying to twist "I want to have my cake (nice Uber experience) and eat it too (for cheap)" into "think of the environment" just seems like virtue signaling IMHO. She just saw two services that were functionally equivalent for her needs at different prices and took the cheaper one. Most of us would've probably done the same. This is a non-story.
I, like almost all Americans, own a personal vehicle, so the only time I would use Uber is if I'm traveling a long distance. The carbon footprint of my Uber is a tiny tiny tiny fraction of the carbon footprint of my trip. I do things like buy carbon offsets with my plane ticket to try to balance this out, but I am not ignorant of the environmental impact of international travel.
Specifically:
>In 2015, Uber founder Travis Kalanick gave a TED talk in which he vowed the new rideshare business model would get “more people into fewer cars,” dramatically reduce air pollution and, as he put it, “reclaim our cities today.”
Uber are concentrated on where it's popular. Good luck finding one if you are in the suburbs, you'll get infinite cancelations and wait forever, where in my experience taxis will never cancel once confirmed and usually confirm wherever you are.
A city taxi would scan the most lucrative areas, and my never show up where it's convenient for me to be picked up.
I don't understand how this drastic difference goes unnoticed. The fare is not the only factor; availability, convenience, and control are no less important.
You see this in NYC. Yellow cabs are fairly easy to find in Manhattan (below 96th Street anyway) but you'll never see them in many areas of the city.
The medallion system was invented to stop too many taxis appearing such that drivers couldn't earn an income. There are a ton of problems with this system and then the city decided to protect the "assets" (taxi medallions). Often ordinary people had bought these.
Anyway, to combat this Manhattan-only problem, they invented the green cabs. These were much cheaper (medallion-wise) but couldn't pick people up off the street in Manhattan (below 96th).
The result? Green cab drivers just picked new high-traffic areas and didn't want to take people to Manhattan. Why? Because once dropping someone off they couldn't pick someone up so they'd have to lose time and money driving out of the area.
And on top of all this it used to be impossible to get a cab at all around shift change times (3-4pm was the bad one). They had to invent solutions for this (eg taxis stationed at certain areas like hotels so you could still get to the airport).
And even if you get a cab you then have to communicate where you're going. The number of times I've had a driver mis-hear street numbers (eg 14th vs 40th) is astounding.
While in the cab you're subjected to a loop of advertising (because, hey, more revenue). You can mute it but it's an added annoyance.
After all that you then have to pay and for some reason cabs seem to be a common source of having your credit card skimmed (anecdotally; I have no proof of this).
Uber/Lyft take away all the friction of finding a cab, telling it where to go and paying. The reputation system does a decent (but obviously not perfect) job of curbing the worst actors (drivers and riders).
How anyone could think this doesn't have value is beyond me.
Cost structure wise there's no $1 million medallion to pay for built into the Uber price. The price is still below cost but that gap seems to be narrowing.
Except for all the drivers who cancel on you, all the trips that it refuses to find a driver for, the drivers who go the wrong way and don't speak English... oh and while they're at it, not only do they screw over the customer, but they also screw over the driver.
"On Sunday, I decided to forego the long wait for a Lyft and the absurdly high congestion pricing. I hopped into a cab and was home in 15 minutes. The tab: $34.69.
The driver asked me for cash, of course.
But when I brandished my credit card, he did not utter a peep of protest. Maybe — just maybe — I have Uber and Lyft to thank for that."
At the risk of sounding too skeptical but these are the kind of quotes dreamed up by the marketing department. The kind of quotes that have no connection to the actual mission of a company. There is probably no KPI anywhere to be found within Uber that says: "Traffic reduced %".
Even worse these quotes are often all based on "gut feeling" and "well sounds logical" kind of emotions with no factual basis whatsoever. Which probably isn't a surprise since it's marketings task to handle emotion.
Do all these cities have apps for their local transportation models? Of course! As a weekend visitor (or work traveler) do I have it? Of course not! I just want to go places and not fight with the mode of transportation. I don't give a fig whether its a bus/train/cab/pedal cart I just want to go to the places I want to go without fighting with transport.
Even without them coming on to you when you're trusting them to take you home at 2am, you'll always end up with them pretending to be confused or surprised that - yes - you want to use debit, and then them pretending the machine is broken until it somehow isn't... (I'm assuming they do this so they can pocket the money or do some sort of tax fraud?)
Cabs represented a combination of the worst service and experience I have not really seen in any other industry - say what you want about them - but Uber has a kind of accountability that cabs never have.
I hope cabs as they were just die. Good riddance. I'm so tired of the harassment.
But then the problem is: Deregulated taxi industry with smartphones, GPS, and an app can accomplish much of the same thing. So it's hard to argue these two specific companies should still be losing money and valued highly.
Uber and Lyft as entities are not required for this change in transportation to continue because the tech and software has become increasingly commoditized. But they did kickstart the change. Both of those things can be true.
Your time is precious and it's often better spent doing more important things than paying full attention to the road.
Personally, I'd love a return to boring but accurate descriptions.
Same thing with the "Grab" app in Asia, its just not worth fighting the cab drivers in Manila or Bangkok, when you can get a Grab driver they will give you zero drama but the cab drivers in those cities will haggle you, not use the meters, try to get you to go to some tourist trap, etc. Its not like that across those entire countries (Davao City notably has absolutely amazing taxi drivers) but the big cities are terrible.
South Korea, Japan, and Singapore have such amazing public transpiration options there's little need for taxis most of the time (though its worth noting that when I have used them I had zero issues in those countries, even in Seoul and Tokyo.)
When people used it for employment, not sharing their ride but operating like a cab driver, uber leaned in and the stage was set for the clashes and class action that results in regulation, price increases, etc.
If they had stayed niche and stayed smallish, ride sharing could have accomplished what it was supposed to. Greed is powerful, and drivers saw no need to limit to just sharing a trip to the mall, and uber saw no reason to prevent people from using their platform for it.
Still, the fact that most cars sit idle IIRC > 95% of the time seems like there should be some genuine opportunity frontier. I think the dream was always to get to a point where autonomous driving and somewhat centralized route optimization could generate real efficiencies. But the Uber/Lyft needed to get people out of their own cars en masse for that to work. Autonomous driving didn’t appear at the right time for everything to work out, I think.
The taxi driver/credit card thing varies on city, by the way. L.A. taxi drivers are always grumpy about taking credit cards. Chicago taxi drivers have no problem with it (I think because they've discovered that they tend to get better tips with credit cards than they do with cash which makes up for the processing fees. Fast food places discovered something similar where accepting credit cards increased their average order price enough to make up for the loss in net revenue from CC fees).
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1. This, admittedly is the case in some cities as well. Los Angeles (used to? I remember there was a proposal to change this but I don't know if it passed) banned cabs from picking up passengers who hailed them from a corner and that's the case with the suburban taxis in the Chicago area as well—they can only pick up dispatch rides, except at the airport.
Ok, cabs work fine in Chicago. If I get off a plane in city Foo, I have no idea what I’m going to get from a cab. I know what I’m getting from an Uber.
There’s also some tacit acknowledgement in your comment that in many places local cabs are decidedly not fine. The last traditional cab I took in the SF bay drove 90 mph and charged me twice as much as an Uber. Why would I go back?
I still tend to avoid Uber/lyft in that area since I’ve had too many bad experiences with drivers over there, but that seems to be what everyone does these days.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/278...
Best feature of Uber vs traditional taxi is you don't need to tell the Uber driver where to find you.
I suppose the post is actually complaining about airport rules.
My friend recently got in a taxi and the cabbie immediately asked how much she thought the fare would be. She said "I'm not sure, maybe $15?"
The Cabbie turned off the fare meter and said, sure, $15 it is.
The reality is that uber and lyft are just not actually competitive in NYC. And rather than wait around for a lyft coming from god knows where, through manhattan traffic, it really is easier to just walk outside and stick your hand up. It can be much, MUCH cheaper, too. When I was in SF, Lyft wanted $72 to go from SOMA to Lower Haight--not what I would consider acceptable.
> The reality is that uber and lyft are just not actually competitive in Manhattan < 90st if you need to go to Manhattan/Brooklyn.
In most of New York taxis are nowhere to be found and they often refuse to leave Manhattan/Brownstone Brooklyn. Another big thing is that it's not big deal to walk to Ave to flag a taxi if you are young, healthy and it's not pouring rain (there are no taxis on streets) but imaging if you have limited mobility or have to carry heavy bags. Uber/Lyft is godsend in those cases.
But agreed. I think in ¬Dense Manhattan, Uber and Lyft have been a nice improvement service-wise, at least as far as a guarantee you know a ride is coming, and no hassles about payment and/or source/destination.
It's funny to me that you see this anecdote as something that reflects well on the taxi industry in NYC.
In fact, I frequently offer taxis flat-rate to a destination if its busy and uber/lyft are at capacity. It's can be a nice feature about taxis, though agreed my friend was taken advantage of in this scenario.
What you're describing isn't a feature of taxis. It's illegal, unless the city has determined that a flat rate must be used (like to/from the airport). This actually is a feature of uber/lyft, though. They show you a flat rate up-front, prior to calling a ride.
And that's a huge problem, by the way. When you are in a city you don't know, you also don't know how trustworthy the taxi system is.
Once you interact enough, you get a history of problems. But for each interaction, the odds are that you will find a perfectly honest driver.
Calling a cab to pick you up at your home and take you somewhere else in the city would be a more common use case to compare to, but likely would not support the author's claims, which is probably why they don't mention it.
The pollution claim may be more valid: I have no thoughts on that other than the speculation that, if rideshare vehicles are spending 40% of their time driving without passengers, I bet they're returning to places where they're expecting to get more lucrative calls. This seems like something Uber and Lyft could somewhat mitigate with their pricing or compensation structure, if they wanted to. So, a problem for sure, but not one that's inherent to ridesharing.
I also wonder why taxis wouldn't have the same problems. I recall reading that buses drive without passengers about 25% of the time, so it's not like this phenomenon is unique to rideshare. Based on common sense and observation, I would assume taxis are deadheading about as much as Lyft and Uber, but can find no citation for it.
Lastly, the fact that this article has links to supporting resources, but those links are disguised to look like unstyled body text, is really frustrating.
You know what I don't have a choice on? My tax dollars that pay for inefficient, unprofitable, and terrible service from public transportation.
Washington DC spent hundreds of millions of dollars on brand new subway cars that were supposed last 40 years, now they all need to be replaced after 3 years. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/over-half-washington-d-...
Without the market test of profitable / unprofitable, politicians keep shoveling dollars at boondoggles that don't make any sense. I like Uber and Lyft because they respond to the needs of their customers. Government transportation is - at best - decent. It never blows you away, and is usually behind schedule, dirty, broken, and full of employees who don't care.
Public transportation does not have to be terrible, by the way. Many cities have great public transit - Montreal and Hong Kong are ones I've personally experienced that had great public transit systems. But I get the sense that a lot of US cities treat public transit as a parasitic entity taking up space and leeching money. When providing public transit is not a priority it's not surprising that it becomes compromised in ways that ruin its utility.
> Washington DC spent hundreds of millions of dollars on brand new subway cars that were supposed last 40 years, now they all need to be replaced after 3 years.
By the way, isn't this the fault of the (presumably private) contractor that built the things? It's not like a bunch of bureaucrats built these things with their welding rigs and wrenches. Until there are meaningful penalties for these kinds of fuckups by the private sector, why wouldn't they treat public projects as free money? It's what the profit motive dictates.
Your link doesn't say that. They were all taken offline, but the issue is with the wheel assembly, not the entire car, and it seems likely to me that only a portion of those will have to be replaced.
When I lived in NYC, I rarely used cabs, lyft or uber.
The reason it isn't done right in most of the US is because people think it needs to make a profit. That leads to it being underfunded, which means it doesn't run often enough, and doesn't have enough coverage, which leads to lower ridership, which leads to people like you complaining that we're wasting so much money on terrible service.
Stop thinking of public services as companies.
The tech was good since it works well at scale. The better way would've been to rent the tech to actual taxis around the world so that you have one app a user can use. But it was a lot more lucrative to sell the pipe dream that we're not a cab because we have an app, or that we improve congestion.
Other than a bit of convenience, Uber is a technocracy push.
And yet people enjoy their services enough to voluntarily pay for them :)
Just to go back in time, when Uber was not global, what was the difference then?
Uber provided reliable service, continuous stream of realtime updates, and an easy-to-use UI