At least for where I live (New Jersey) this is completely untrue. Uber fares today are still far cheaper then Taxi fares were even in 2009. A 12 min ride home in a taxi from my local train station was $20 in 2008... Today in Uber it's $12.
I’m not sure what city the author lives in, but, while Uber is pretty bad, Uber is still better than taxis. Better service, better fares, and better pay for drivers.
Taxis were like the biggest racket around with usually sleazy companies owning the car and paying immigrants and literal slaves from human trafficking poor wages to drive.
There’s this mythical owner/operator that I never encountered.
So I think that’s why Uber is tolerated because they are still better than the worlds shittiest industry, taxi. Maybe the only more hated industry would be debt collectors or hospital administrators or telemarketers.
South side I don’t know, never went there on purpose unless you count Chinatown which is at a red line stop. South side has always been an island.
South side isn't an island, it's half the city's land area and population. To the extent it's cut off from the rest of the city that's an intentional policy choice supported and justified by comments like yours.
That said I’m a Lyft customer to this day because when Uber started they geofenced the southside out.
So those numbers absolutely match up in my city, at least from the rider’s perspective. STILL better than taxis, however. Of course there is inflation, but that doesn’t nearly account for this discrepancy. I can’t provide exact driver numbers but I sometimes have the courage to ask the driver what they are making and on average when I do ask it’s about 1/3 of what I am paying. Never more than half.
From the investor perspective, I wonder if that's good enough-- the people chasing unicorns and 500% IPO paydays would probably be angrier watching it become a low-margin but functionally useful company, than seeing it close up shop.
Over time, there's a lot of pressure on Uber's margins. The technology and business idea are obvious enough that the moat is pretty low. There's little reason for drivers to not be on every available platform, and you can do a splashy "Download our app to get $20 in credit" to growth-hack a new competitor. So you're always at the risk of someone launching a price war, and even if you can drive them out of the market, you'll have a hard time resetting customer expectations.
> There's little reason for drivers to not be on every available platform
So yes and no. Yes in the sense that switching costs for a driver are very low, but no in the sense that not all platforms provide the same value to drivers. A platform that reduces wait times, batches deliveries, plans better routes, etc. can provide drivers better income per-minute/mile compared to competitors.
For the record I have been stranded, messing around with drivers accepting then rejecting fares and then given up and taken either a street hail taxi or another app. I have even gulped down the fee for cancelling on a driver who drove off in the other direction for 20 minutes.