Comment by jordanpg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jordanpg | Hacker News Reader

> in UberX, the company’s lower-priced service, introduced here last spring, can cost as little as $4, while parking lots charge $5 for 15 minutes

This is absolutely false. Parking in downtown LA is much cheaper than this. Closer to $5 a night, maybe a little more on the weekends. Sometimes you can even find street parking within a few blocks of this vaunted Ace hotel that the author is so infatuated with. Parking isn't a problem on this side of town.

Moreover, Uber makes no dent on the fundamental problem in LA, which is that the distances are so great.

It is shameful that the article doesn't even mention the real good news in LA transportation which is that the Expo Line now stretches from downtown to Culver City, and will go all the way to Santa Monica in 2015. LA residents also voted to install a streetcar in the downtown area, although that's a few years off.

Totally agree with the comment about this being a "submarine article". More Uber cheerleading.

What I find more interesting is that parking SHOULD cost more than it does, and if it did, Uber would win the cost-value comparison hands-down.

Americans subsidize parking by imposing fees on developers who don't include "enough" of it, and by reserving large portions of cities' streets for car storage. Multi-billion dollar highways enable sprawl and cheaper commercial parking lots. Driving & parking personal vehicles is incredibly wasteful from a broad economic perspective (but it was the correct path -- a necessary evil in the absence of density to enable effective mass transit).

Even with the government subsidies, Uber is an economically competitive alternative to driving & parking personal vehicles. That's the amazing part. Public policy favors the incumbent behavior, yet "ride-sharing" has still been able to expose market inefficiencies. Imagine if we killed all the parking subsidies, or better yet: used economic incentives to discourage driving & parking personal vehicles, and encourage the behavior that had a lower total cost.

I believe the future of personal transportation is computer-driven computer-dispatched vehicles, a game Uber and Google are leading. We can't get there soon enough.

> What I find more interesting is that parking SHOULD cost more than it does

No, not really. This is a sentiment that I see a lot in San Francisco and NYC, where it makes a lot of sense, but if you've ever driven in LA, you'd quickly realize that it doesn't really apply there because the LA met area is extremely broad, not dense.

In the bay area, you might spend 45 minutes driving from Palo Alto to San Francisco, and then another 30 minutes - an hour driving in circles looking for parking, depending on the time/day.

In LA you have the opposite problem. Traffic gets so bad that it's not uncommon to spend 1-3 hours driving across town on a weekend evening. But once you make it to wherever you're going, you can usually find parking in under 15 minutes.

Completely agree. The article mentions how shitty it can be going from the West side to Silver Lake, possibly 3 hours with traffic. How would an uber make this any better? I guess you can spend those hours in the backseat instead of at the wheel, but that still a shitty waste of time and nothing like the lifestyle in New York as the quote claims.

In my experience – I commuted from Silverlake to West Side for almost two years and have sat in three hour traffic – being chauffeured is _dramatically_ better. It kind of goes:

driving yourself < driving with a companion < being chauffeured

Driving requires constant focus, especially in stop-and-go traffic, and it can be downright exhausting. Driving with a friend makes it a little better, but you're still 'in it together' and it can still be exhausting. Sitting in the backseat while someone drives you, while maybe not that best use of your time, allows you to shut off your active brain and focus on something else: reading, napping, working on a laptop, etc.

The truth is that talking on the phone, podcasts, audio books -- these didn't really make my commute more bearable in the long run; and my theory is that you're not really able to shut off your focus on the road. That focus is what's exhausting.

Those rail lines are great progress, but let's face it -- they still require a schlep to get to your final destination: party in the hills, bbq in malibu, office miles away from the closest rail line...

Taxis have historically sucked in Los Angeles. Drinking and driving is a huge problem. Submarine article or not, a disruption of LA's cab business is a welcome change.

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