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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

> I know everyone thinks this is a bus

It's not a bus. It's an ordinary Uber driver with their own car, with multiple customers and a different, confusing pricing scheme. It's not Uber buying and operating their own fleet of branded vans, like SuperShuttle.[1]

How does the driver get paid? If it's a regular route, with regular times, it ought to be a regular job paid by the hour, regardless of whether the vehicle is empty or full. But that wouldn't be Uber's gig slavery system.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2020/12/30/rip-supe...

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Is squeezing into the 7th seat in the trunk of an Uber-XL SUV worth the faux-instantaneous nature of this product?

Get the Transit app folks [1], great GPS tracking of the right bus for you, advocate for an efficient well-funded bus/train service in your city and a municipal DOT that doesn't have to host 5 community meetings for every small change in routes.

[1]: https://transitapp.com

P.S: I'm an Uber One member, it certainly has its place in a car-less life. But this ain't it Chief.

I think the real remarkable part of all this is how bad city buses are. Everyone knows about them, we’ve all been forced to take one, but cities are so consistently bad at managing them it’s not an option for most people, even if they live near a stop.

It's a problem that intersects with the national issues related to... under-served and poorly integrated people in the population.

National policy needs to do much better on an array of issues that contribute to 'poor public transit experiences'.

Issues like "mentally unbalanced passengers", inebriated, smelly (includes smokers!), overcrowded busses. I know they are rigged for standing room, but that should NOT be the expectation for a ride longer than 10 min outside of extreme crunches like sports games overflow!

Aside from running the correct busses to the places people need to get from and to:

I want the modern version of Star Trek utopia.

* American Dream (home ownership, vaguely near the jobs / family) within reach.

* Jobs that are a good match for worker's skills / family time needs.

* 'Child Care Assistance' - more than just schools, facilities that can help take care of children while parents work, are unexpectedly sick, etc. Daycare+++

* 'Employment Assistance' - connect workers with the best jobs that want them

* Diversion programs to help people with 'issues' that prevent access to jobs overcome VARIOUS issues such as: lack of stable food, lack of stable housing, supplies to keep clean and healthy.

* Recognizing people that aren't helped by current medical technology and social programs and assisting them with possibly contributing in unconventional ways, or simply being taken care of properly if they are cursed very beyond medical help.

Every last bit of that is more than just fixing a transit system.

Society as a whole system needs an approach that remedies and modifies the entire problem from all angles. Including the ones that change where people need to go for jobs and housing.

I want the modern version of Star Trek utopia

Everyone wants this. No one knows how to make it happen. Heck, even the TV writers stopped believing in it and they still had access to replicators and transporters for their storytelling.

Compared to Medieval times we might as well be living in a Star Trek "utopia" already. Look at all the technology in a modern apartment: modern insulation and soundproof construction, modern windows, electric lighting, indoor plumbing, stove, air fryer, microwave, laundry pair, computers, phones, TVs, the internet (with unlimited media to consume)...

What we don't have: equality. Medieval peasants can definitely relate to that. Our lords have different titles than theirs and ours have the police instead of their own soldiers. Otherwise, not much has changed. Turns out that human nature doesn't disappear just because we have more resources. People aren't going to give away their own wealth just to lift up their neighbours.

No, not everyone wants this. Plenty of people, maybe even most people, want to be better off than someone.

The show Star Trek TNG has a great example it! Captain Picard is better than most people in his world. He also owns a luxurious wine estate in the French countryside. The floor in that society has been raised, absolutely, but there is no ceiling!

That he inherited no less.

Picard came from old money.

Yea, I was gonna say! For every one of OP’s bullet points, there exists a somewhat powerful political force bitterly fighting against it. We can’t have nice things because people in politics really, really don’t want us to have nice things.

It's both true and particularly illogical!

"" * 'Employment Assistance' - connect workers with the best jobs that want them ""

^^^ Would someone like to end welfare ('unemployement insurance')? How about just connecting people with useful work! The New Deal was one of the best social welfare programs the US _ever_ did and politicians are allergic to it.

Much of Scandinavia has that now.

Orrrr, you can just enforce fare evasion (passively) and mostly solve this problem and solve the other societal problems separately. It’s been tried and it works [1]. I really don’t like everthing bagelling all problems.

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/bart-fare-gates-...

> It's a problem that intersects with the national issues related to... under-served and poorly integrated people in the population.

Every other service seems to manage this problem and operate in diverse communities, regardless of city, state, or national governance. It's specifically city services that fail in this regard, which is incredible, because they're also the only organization which could do something about it. Walmart has no authority to regulate anything, yet they bring low prices to everyone within a convenient distance of almost all Americans.

It really is impressive at how terrible they manage to make the time/location coverage. My most recent trip I took because I was bored and thought it would be novel to see if my city's buses have improved is a 10 minute drive by car. Bus stop is right by the start and end. And they get for free the wait time until the first bus. It took two hours and three buses to get me to my destination. I was the only rider on every leg so it was actually pretty novel to get a private bus.

Maybe pointing out the obvious but I'd rephrase that to "how bad US city buses are". And I believe it's not only a matter of regulations, but following a whole culture who in general is not exactly in favor of doing anything in collective - or putting the "public" in "public transport". So nice discussion, but to make it happen sustainably, it will take much more than some council meetings.

They're cheap, if spending an extra two hours a day on the bus is cheap.

If you look at it through the lense of buses need to work well enough that poor people can get to work but not so well that they can be easily roaming the city it starts to make more sense.

I just want to point out that your criticism is not disagreeing with the parent post. You can both be right — this can be better than a bus, and uber can be illegally claiming workers as contractors.

Cramming multiple unrelated people who are going a similar way into a regular uber vehicle sounds like uber pool, which has existed for a long time (unless they stopped it, and this is the reintroduction?).

> How does the driver get paid?

Ideally these routes wouldn’t need a driver for long. Waymo could offer this, for example. They don’t because they need not compete on price.

More practically: in many states where this has been announced, Uber drivers get a minimum wage.

In CA they do, what other states?

In response to those laws, Uber has taken even more money from drivers.

The last number I heard was that drivers only get 53% of cash per ride.

Don’t misunderstand me, Uber is a cancer that needs to die and I am about to be at the point where I make a platform that will do just that.

My point is that those laws aren’t helping. More needs to be done.

Unless the Uber driver gets to determine the route, stops, and schedule, and preferably price. Then they are, in my opioniin, more than enough of a freelancer. But I have no odea how this product works in actuality.

Is it all that confusing? It's UberX, with a steep discount if you get a ride along a fixed route/schedule.

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