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Comment by onlyrealcuzzo | Hacker News Reader

> If the problem is efficiently moving people around in a city; well to be honest I find this premise a bit ridiculous. Call me a European, but I find the idea that moving 1-2 people in private vehicles on roads being superior than public transit -preferably on rail- simply absurd.

Much of the US like Huston and Miami is extremely lacking in public transit, and will likely never build the infrastructure.

> Ride-hailing workers were already often working for less than minimum wage.

~50% of your fare goes to the driver.

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> Much of the US like Huston and Miami is extremely lacking in public transit, and will likely never build the infrastructure.

I am not trying to be a contrarian here, but I fail to see how that is an answer. I feel like what you say boils down to "since we are not solving the problem at hand in a good way, we decided to solve it in a worse way".

> ~50% of your fare goes to the driver.

Yet these ride-hailing companies who receive whatever is remaining after the meager pay of the rider and other costs only recently started to make actual profits. And even though it feels like the prices for customers increased a lot over the years, these companies are not exactly printing money.

> since we are not solving the problem at hand in a good way, we decided to solve it in a worse way

It's a different "we". Rephrased:

since Houston's government is not solving the problem at hand in a good way, Waymo decided to solve it in a worse way

Forget Houston. Half this country is suburban-to-rural with development patterns that are profoundly ill-suited to mass transit. Yet, all of those areas have a fantastic road system already fully built out. Provide cheap rideshares (by removing most of the labor cost, which are the vast majority of the per-ride costs) and you've solved the previously unsolvable problem of moving Americans from point A to point B without each person needing to own and pilot a car.

Huston is in fact building transit. They have a large spread out city which makes it a hard problem, but if you carefully choose where you look you will find people living there who don't have a car and just rely on transit and don't notice any loss of lifestyle.

Houston is adding bus routes, and even those are hotly contested in city hall. The city tried to expand the very limited light rail we have but the vote for that failed.

We live in a super walkable part of Houston and still need cars to go to many places outside of (and even within) the Inner Loop. A 10-min journey in a car takes 45+ mins by bus, and that's assuming peak schedules and buses that arrive on time.

I actually tried to do the no-car thing for a few weeks. It definitely impacted my lifestyle for the worst. The gym I go to is 10 mins away by car. It's a 45 minute journey by bus.

I needed to walk 15 minutes to the nearest bus stop (despite being next to two well-trafficked cross streets). When the bus finally arrived, I needed to pay with cash because METRO didn't have Apple Pay set up at the time (early 2024) and while you could use the Q Ticketing app, it doesn't have a Watch app and I didn't bring my phone.

The bus didn't show on two occasions. The next buses were 45 minutes away.

All of this is, again, in the most walkable, public transit covered part of Houston.

I also lived in NYC for a long time. There, getting anywhere was a 10 min walk to a train station, swiping you MetroCard (Apple Pay these days), taking the train and walking a bit to your destination. The only places that were inconvenient to get to by train alone were deep in Queens, Brooklyn or the Bronx; for those, you'd take the bus, which usually ran every 10 mins.

I didn't say many were no car. Jus that it isn't as bad as the reputation by a bit. Your experience proves that I think

*50% of your fare goes to the driver, as well as paying for fuel, vehicle maintenance and depreciation, insurance, etc.

Without a driver those other costs don’t go away.

It's ~75% going to the driver if you count the driver's expenses as money that goes to the driver: https://www.hyrecar.com/blog/how-much-does-uber-take-from-dr...

Not to mention tips. I feel an obligation to tip drivers, in part because I know the economics of their job is rough. I don't tip robots.

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