Rideshare services - Uber, Lyft, Hailo, etc.

^ the future of western cities.

Guy who had clearly hotboxed his car before picking me up

feel like there might be a startup idea here

http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/03/are-taxis-safer-than-uber/386668/

http://openstreetcab.com/
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/535886/data-mining-reveals-when-a-yellow-taxi-is-cheaper-than-uber/

despite what uber says, uberx is easily proven to more expensive than yellow cabs for rides < $35, which is the vast, vast majority of taxi rides

I've been using Zipcar, which has been totally perfect for my purposes, and I've never had any problems. The city where I live has them parked all over town, and there are 3 or 4 at the train station that is a 5 minute walk from home. It's pretty sweet and you can get a car on a moment's notice for $10/hr with unlimited gas.

Fuck an uber, I would go with taxis all the way.

p sure that in chicago an uber ride will almost always run cheaper than a taxi

Absent surge pricing, yeah it's cheaper. Which is saying something since we have super cheap cab fares here, too.

I was in Dallas a few weeks ago and all my rides were like $3, 4

nyc costing a lot schocker

what a bunch of assholes

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/04/02/uber_leaves_san_antonio_to_protest_regulations_it_wasn_t_an_empty_threat.html?wpsrc=fol_fb

City of Madison just voted to legalize Uber as long as it carries insurance at the same level as taxi companies, guarantees rides 24/7, and doesn't surge-price; in other words, if they operate under essentially the same constraints taxis do. Uber says it can't do business under those circumstances though I haven't heard them directly say they'll stop operating in town. Taxis here are pretty good so I think there won't be the same level of outcry.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/06/17/uber_drivers_ruled_employees_by_california_labor_commission.html

lol

Really interesting. I wonder how it will go on appeal.

https://medium.com/@cassiemarketos/dear-uber-bbb174aadc78

starting to wonder if Courtney's ever been to France before:
http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Courtney-Love-Attacked-in-Paris-by-Mob-of-Taxi-6348842.php

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-06-23/this-is-how-uber-takes-over-a-city

Courtney Love's comments are being widely publicized in France; I gather she doesn't know that negatively comparing places to Baghdad is something racists here do.

gov today says it's going to enforce the law against uberpop; not sure how that's going to work but

if you use uber you are an advocate/a lobbyist/collaborator ?

lol u mistyped a question mark at the end

controversial opinion: surge pricing is good

in cities and areas where transportation is available and private transportation is purely a luxury, I could see that it would be viable

as it is, uber is displacing transportation with controlled rates in areas that lack good public transportation, meaning people who really need a ride (and are able to wait a little while) will still have to pay much more

that and the fact that uber takes the lion's share of surge pricing dollars

if you cross a picket line you're a scab.

can't argue that

people who really need a ride (and are able to wait a little while) will still have to pay much more

vs people who really need a while and can't wait and are willing to pay a lil more for it to come

waiting an hour for a cab on NYE or after big free outdoor concert where even public transit is stuffed is bad, so many ppl would pay more to gtfo & more drivers would show up

that and the fact that uber takes the lion's share of surge pricing dollars

they have to give something to incentivize more drivers to actually show up though

how uber splits up the ca$h is a separate issue though

the surge price downside is if I'm not in that neighborhood and break my arm. now not only do I wait much longer, I pay significantly more to get to the hospital because a bunch of assholes went to a giant concert

the incentive they give is... business
if they have the majority of the taxi-like vehicle traffic in their system, then the times when people use your service instead of uber is limited to surge periods when you would have been busy anyway

the incentive they give is... business

no that's the incentive under fixed rates

i don't see why broken arm dude is better off in a fixed rate system. what if he lives somewhere it wasn't worth it for fixed ride cabs to go?

like let's be real, on-demand automobile transportation in a large urban area is ideally a luxury or used for special cases of need. the reality is that public transportation is not there, and in mid-sized cities (or ones that are large but with shitty public transport) uber is succeeding in expanding the user base but has a number of regressive practices that screw over some drivers and passengers who need basic on-demand transportation

Uber's been a huge story in Toronto the past month or two. I never use cabs, so I haven't been following closely.

xp that's the problem with private taxi systems in general. some places have regulations in place guaranteeing you will get a ride eventually, but uber's trying to work around that, too

I get that more cars showing up when a huge event ends is definitely an opportunity to charge more money for prioritized service, but other than the increased price part, don't taxis tend to swarm around those events anyway, since it's an easy source of guaranteed fares?

most taxis working during a surge would go to the surge, the rest would go scoop up fares elsewhere. the problem isn't cabs being directed to surge areas, the problem is not enough cabs during the surge, which pricing fixes by giving drivers who wouldn't have gone out incentive to do so

people were pissed cause they raised prices during a power outage in affected nabes. I get the knee jerk moral disgust, but the effect is more cabs for ppl who need to gtfo of the power outage

*people in Toronto were pissed

http://i2.wp.com/thelibertarianliquidationist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Mises-thumbs-up.png?resize=1800%2C1947?w=580

i don't think there's anything austrian about this argument?

nobody seems to mind surge pricing for airlines, hotels, etc etc basically everything. in the long term more cabs and market pricing is gonna make cab rides more affordable and accessible, surge pricing once in a while doesn't change that. it was almost impossible to hail a legal cab and take it to a poor / far out part of the nation's biggest cab city until recently and nobody seemed to care.

uber is a terrible company for totally different reasons.

what are they?

it flaunts the law openly which gives it an advantage over anybody playing fair and had the venture money to get away with it, pretty clearly aims to be a monopoly, brags about how well paid its drivers are when they'll pretty obv have their wages driven down to oblivion eventually, gets its way via lobbyists / behind closed doors

oh, lyfe

agree wth the breaking the law/lobbyists stuff being shitty. but i'm not so sure about wages & monopoly. i mean, i'm sure they aspire to be a monopoly (don't we all) but will they? are taxis a natural monopoly? there's still competition among taxi companies, right? why would rideshare apps be any different then? i guess downloading two apps onto your phone is a bit more of a pain in the ass than saving 2 separate taxi company numbers

it flaunts the law openly which gives it an advantage over anybody playing fair and had the venture money to get away with it, pretty clearly aims to be a monopoly, brags about how well paid its drivers are when they'll pretty obv have their wages driven down to oblivion eventually, gets its way via lobbyists / behind closed doors

this is like, all interweb companies since the 90s

uber's insane valuation shows that a lot of people think that it's more than just a company that eats the taxi industry - like if that's all that happens in the end then yeah it will have to compete on price. if it ends up serving as the technology for a deeper transportation network then it might actually end up w/ a pretty scary monopoly.

yea but then we can just anti trust it

more like goober

I stand with iatee