How Uber and Lyft have exploited long waits, slow travel and poor service | Hacker News Reader

How Uber and Lyft have exploited long waits, slow travel and poor service

washingtonpost.com

44 pointsprostoalex25 comments

I can't speak for San Fransisco, but in London there is a clear difference in service between 'Black cab' regular taxi services and Uber taxis. The Uber drivers often have no idea how to get to where you want to go, and don't even have an idea of which direction to head, whereas black cab drivers have a great knowledge of the whole city. This may also be just my bad luck but I've been in Uber cabs where their driving practices have been 'questionable' at best. I feel like a lot of the drivers are new to Uber (fair enough), but perhaps even new to driving.

The huge difference in price leads me to use Uber semi-regularly, whereas before I would use a taxi almost never. That's an obvious benefit to me. However the old adage 'you get what you pay for' holds true in my opinion.

London is somewhat of a unique taxi market because of the driver knowledge required. The black cab tests are potentially the hardest in the world. In the US cities I've lived the drivers probably know the general area of where you're going, but probably don't know the final directions.

At this point, why care about directions from the driver. Uber has built in driver GPS to tell them where to go.

I wouldn't expect an Uber driver to know the final destinations to my home in the suburbs, but at least the general direction. Most of my Uber journeys are stationary for a couple of minutes while the driver works out the best way to go, rather than just heading off in the general direction and turning on the sat nav at a red light.

There is also knowledge that I'd expect a professional driver to have. I recall a journey I took once where the sat nav told the driver to go through a tunnel which I knew was closed. I told him to take the bridge instead to save a big waste of time.

My point is though, you do sacrifice quality for cost. I don't agree with this article that says they are cheaper and better.

I've never used Uber, but this seems easily solvable with code.

Why not have you put the destination address into the app while you're waiting, and as soon as you get in the car, the driver can just say "go", and the GPS will start?

I'm kind of surprised it doesn't already work that way.

It does work that way, but it's optional. You don't have to enter the address into the app before the driver shows up and it's therefore possible that a significant number of users don't do so. My experience is that it makes the trip extremely smooth to pre-enter the address.

It works exactly that way. Even in cases where you wait to tell the driver where you're going, it takes her only about 20 seconds to type the destination into their Uber app for directions, not the 'couple minutes' referenced above.

London is unique. They have to pass "The Knowledge" which gives them a great understanding of the cities layout and routes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_Kingdom

Can't stand Uber anymore. I want to sit down in a car, say a direction and get there. I don't want to be leaning over, looking where we're going, and answering the guys questions ever two seconds. I automatically 1 star any ride where I didn't simply get from A to B.

Not to mention I literally almost died twice because of severe driver incompetency.

I can't do it anymore, Uber drives are just absolutely horrible. People come from outside suburbs into the city and they get absolutely wrecked by vicious drivers and directions.

I've had three amazing experiences so far with Uber, the rest were god awful.

To be the voice of disagreement, Uber in London is absolutely fine if you put the destination in when you book the Uber. It'll then have the sat-nav which they require to navigate ready-to-go when you depart.

I don't mind them following sat-nav blindly at all - because it's good enough, and cheap enough for my London-navigating-by-proxy needs.

My friend lived until recently in Washington DC. She said she loved using Uber in Washington because taxis often didn't stop for her. Uber drivers don't seem to decline to pick her up, due to her skin tone. Or perhaps are not able to tell in advance.

Finally, this adult woman could easily get a ride at night.

Back from the days when Uber was not the 362.874kg gorilla, there was a nice write-up about how it made a difference in underserved neighborhoods.

> There’s no way to tell which will happen until it happens—and so, I rarely bother to try hailing a cab. Neither do my neighbors. And the paucity of potential fares in my part of town—a relatively low-income, low-density neighborhood—also makes it harder to get cabs back home from other neighborhoods. Technically, it’s illegal for D.C. cabdrivers to refuse a fare within the District, but then, technically, it’s also illegal to drive above the speed limit, jaywalk..

The cabdrivers have their own litany. They drive long hours for little money: the average cabdriver earns $27,060 a year, before expenses. They are at high risk for traffic accidents and, because they carry a lot of cash, for robbery. When drivers turn down fares to neighborhoods like mine, it’s not because they don’t want to miss a second of The Diane Rehm Show while they take my cash and make change. Those trips, where they probably won’t get a return fare, and must instead burn time and gas while the meter’s off, can mean the difference between profit and loss for the day; cabbies can’t afford too many of them.

What I’m describing is a classic market failure: people who are willing to do business together can’t make it happen. If taxis and passengers only knew how to find each other, and could strike deals that would appeal to both, everyone would be better off. Why can’t we fix this?

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/why-you-...

While aggregated services makes a difference, will it hold for future ? Like, if Uber figures out it is not cost effective to cater to certain areas and stops servicing them.

Uber is willing to adjust its pricing and has the infrastructure to do so in realtime. A taxi driver is rarely unwilling to go to these underserved neighbourhoods point blank - just unwilling to go for the standard NYC (or wherever) per-mile fare. Which is set down in law for good reason, but the result is a market failure.

Uber has the capability to just charge 2x the price if you want a ride to a bad neighbourhood, and I'd expect to see them doing that sooner or later. It's clearly worse than what's theoretically legally required (equal service to everyone, cab driver must take you anywhere within the city limits), and it's worse than what you get with the regulated service where I live (in Europe). But it sounds like it might be better than what getting a taxi in the US is like in practice.

Seems like Uber is really solving racism problem with catching taxis: https://medium.com/matter/ubering-while-black-146db581b9db

I've had the same experience in Seattle. To the point where a couple times I had to ask my roommate to flag down a cab for me. With apps like Uber, Lyft etc I have not had the same issue.

In Israel, we don't (yet) have Uber, but we do have GetTaxi, a similar service.

I have become addicted. It's convenient, simple, gives me a GPS indication of where the taxi is, and lets me use a credit card.

The fact that I know where the taxi is, what car to look for, and can easily complain if there is a problem (not that there really has been) makes it irresistible for me. Every time I have used it, I have been quite pleased, even when I was unhappy with the ride -- it allowed me to give the driver a low score.

I don't think that these services are a replacement for public transportation. But they are a very efficient and even addictive replacement for traditional taxi companies, which are going to have to catch up somehow.

The article quoted the researchers saying that many of the trips taken on Uber/Lyft would never have been done at all, had it not been for the service. Or it would have taken much longer via public transportation. Sounds to me like the public transportation routes need to be updated -- or that we're talking about outliers whose travel needs will never be adequately handled by mass transit.

I'm just fine, by the way, with having taxi regulations be enforced for these new sorts of services. I don't want to have companies completely unregulated when it comes to driver backgrounds, safety, licensing, and so forth. But I also think that the regulations will need to change in order to accommodate these new services, so that they'll continue to benefit consumers more than plain ol' taxis do now.

Sounds a lot like Hailo, which is basically a godsend in Ireland

What happens when traditional taxis support their own apps? Is this somehow not possible or not going to happen?

App enabled ride services are good but why can't the taxis replicate it?

Taxi services are a classic case of monopoly through regulation. The canonical example is the medallion in NYC (and other places). These medallions are required to legally provide a traditional taxi service. They can cost $1M[0] (or can be leased for $1000s/month). The supply of taxis is limited by the restrictions on medallions - already leading to a movement along the demand curve to a point above market-clearing equilibrium (higher cost, lower quantity of transactions). In addition to the decreased supply, there is also a huge fixed cost in the medallion, which forces fares higher still.

The primary benefit of Uber, in my mind is that it allows for the elimination of this deadweight loss, and allows taxi-service to be provided on the margin (someone who might provide trips only to and from work on UberX/similar) - maximizing the number of mutually beneficial transactions that occur while minimizing transaction costs. Focusing on the fact that it is an app is a red herring.

[0]http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/10/21/why-taxi-me...

It is, except taxis don't want to do things like rate their drivers.

"or is it due to the fact that they’re exempt from taxi regulations?"

Because of this Lyft and Uber have had to proactively approach the problem of dealing with safety and the like by creating an internal review system for the drivers. This is one of the major innovations in the system.

The other major innovation is the one-to-one-ness of the driver-passenger pairing. Before, taxis would be allowed to pick up a passenger on the way to their dispatch and effectively cancel the ride, (without communicating it to the passenger) which would then result in passengers calling more than one taxi to ensure the arrival of at least one, which would make taxis even less inclined to try to get a dispatch... Death spiral.

I don't know if flywheel requires taxis to be rated or locked in, if those conditions are the case, then it will be a fairly effective alternative competing largely on price.

The article shows that a dispatched taxi is still much slower than Uber/Lyft. Whether that taxi is dispatched by phone or app doesn't seem like it would affect things much. I think the heart of the problem is that if a taxi ignores a dispatch and gets a street hail instead, there's very little consequence except for inconveniencing the customer who called in.

I live in Lexington, Kentucky so there is a chance these findings don't match up with Lexington however from my personal experience I can say that this rings very true. Putting aside ease of use (both for hailing and paying) of Uber/Lyft over traditional taxis just the fact that I know Uber/Lyft will show up and show up fast is huge. I don't think I've ever waited more than 10 minutes for a Uber/Lyft whereas taxis have been all over the place, some have shown up on time but the vast majority take forever. That coupled with being able to track where they are make Uber/Lyft the clear winner in my book. I just request a ride when I'm 5-10 away from being ready and I can watch their progress and walk out as they pull up. No taxi experience has come close.

Is there another difference on that uber et al know how the rider is, whereas for taxis there is no relationship with the passenger.

I ask this because I've had unpleasant experiences with taxis that lead me to believe that taxi drivers have a very poor opinion of their passengers, particularly late at night.

Are drunken late night Uber riders better behaved?

In Uber, both drivers and riders have ratings. Drivers can turn down a hail if the rider's rating is low enough.

Just getting and keeping a ride-sharing account is a first-cut filters of passenger. It means you have a verified name and ready electronic money. And you'll lose your accoutn the first time you do something really stupid. Ratings are just frosting.

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