Rideshare services - Uber, Lyft, Hailo, etc.

also

Uber drivers in New York form labor association

May 1 Uber drivers in New York state have formed an association to strengthen their hand in dealing with the ride-sharing service, labor leaders said on Sunday, days after the company agreed to a $100 million settlement with drivers in two other states.

More than 1,000 Uber drivers signed membership cards with the association, known as the Amalgamated Local of Livery Employees in Solidarity, or Alles, the association said in a statement.

http://www.reuters.com/article/new-york-uber-idUSL2N17Y0H7

wow best name ever?

otm

iswtdt

lol that's great

we were in denver this last week and as an experiment in trying to conserve funds (and also bc rampant intoxication) i didn't rent a car and we ubered everywhere. i have to do final maths but i'm like 90% sure we saved a good amount of money not renting a car. they introduced this car pool feature which brought cost of transport down even further and since we weren't going on any long trips out of the city (longest 30 min to and from the airport) it was all v convenient. there was always a car within 5-7 minutes to pickup and all drivers were super friendly. on one hand i can't help but be aware of the lengthy critiques being drawn up of uber and the share economy in general and while i don't see my participation / use of the service as somehow validating every negative element i could not help but wonder about the ethical implications. otoh it's a better experience in every way than conventional taxi services so idk. is it impossible to deliver the better prices and the amazing services (w/ the app, the ratings, the carpooling) w/out taking better care of the employees?

I think I'm going to wait until at least one kid is out of a car seat before I try that.

FWIW I tried to uber pool from the San Diego airport to downtown when I was there for work and it did not work well - I waited 20 mins for the guy to find another rider and finally gave up.

none of our drivers waited longer than 2 minutes before giving up on a pickup

Friend who drove for Uber and Lyft in Austin has been throwing a fit about the vote they had on rideshares and now the city putting up laws for short-term rentals (Airbnb). I don't like local taxi companies and the way they've bought off local government on the cheap but Silicon Valley libertarians are just going to have to accept that there will be some regulation and that their hostility to workers (and in Airbnb's case, other property owners) isn't going to win over young liberals when push comes to shove on this stuff.

https://twitter.com/groditi/status/732417874627678210

from that link -
http://pbs.twimg.com/media/CioSEDKUUAMVsSa.jpg
http://pbs.twimg.com/media/CioSEDEVAAAcT7H.jpg

that's terrible.

Holy fuck, how is that legal?

Nuke Silicon Valley from orbit.

Don't they have all kinds of fishy financing arrangements for vehicle purchases too? Fuck Uber.

DC, you know we're still in the country where the chair of the DNC is stumping for payday loan establishments, right?

ppl love to support predatory lending and pretend they're giving someone a foot up

sure, but the employer itself providing the payday loans really is basically indenture and not too far removed from sharecropping.

This strikes me as a novel means of exploitation, yes -- the combination of this non-employment-employment structure with all these horrible financing schemes, where you also have the automatic deductions from your earnings.

most definitely, predatory employment terms are marginally worse than predatory lending, but it's all predatory and exploitative of the people least likely to get out of financial duress

although it all sounds a bit like being in hock to the company store

but you don't even have to own a company store and all that involves! and the predatory lending rights are sold to another company, so uber or whoever probably gets a cut of the lending interest

Or maybe just an origination fee, even. Cash on the table, no worry about future inability to pay.

I mean if they act anything like other subprime originators, they probably get paid up front and wash their hands of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT08yzbC-s8&feature=share

This was cute.

Uber has simply stopped working for me. The app gives a driver an inaccurate pick-up point. One driver told me this has to do with the latest Google Maps update (I highly doubt Uber's business model is predicated on Google Maps) which now places you at the nearest fixed address rather than precise geographic coordinates. Anyway this has been the case the last 4-5 times I've tried Uber. So gotta try Lyft I reckon. Anyone else experiencing this?

Surprise: Uber's lawyers are scum too!

http://www.sdnyblog.com/judge-rakoff-authorizes-discovery-from-uber-counsel-to-probe-potentially-improper-investigation-of-adversary-and-opposing-counsel/

A memorandum order released today reveals that, in an antitrust case against Uber’s CEO (covered here), Judge Rakoff became concerned over improper investigative techniques that Uber (or its agents) employed. Specifically, Uber hired an firm called Ergo to investigate the plaintiff and plaintiff’s counsel, and, in doing so, Ergo’s investigator allegedly made various misrepresentations to gain information, such as claiming that he was a reporter writing a profile of plaintiff’s counsel.

So gotta try Lyft I reckon. Anyone else experiencing this?

I've had this problem sometimes with Lyft, too. Just the nature of the beast, I think.

Pooling with people late at night can be a good way to meet strangers, for better or worse. Last night two drunk women and I shared a car and they grilled me on my job for a half hour. No escape...

Imagine if you were pooling with some kids coming home from the bar with their parents!

http://i.imgur.com/GTS6u8O.jpg

so this happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oih1Yf7l-c0

https://twitter.com/UberUK/status/753881231662645248

http://gothamist.com/2016/07/27/in_soviet_russia_taxi_meters_you.php

loool

Uber's bleeding money

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-loses-at-least-1-2-billion-in-first-half-of-2016

I have to say, while I think the advent of app technology for cab/ride hailing is a good development, and I like the fact that they have kid carseats, I hate p much everything else about this company and hope it dies before it can hatch its plan to kill public transit with self-driving cars.

Have been hearing about Juno in the ''they're a less evil Uber'' vein - anyone know anything?

i explained to my 10-year-old how companies like this, propped up by venture capital, can lose money for a long time until they're able to outlast their competitors and take over the market, and he was like "that's mean daddy" and i couldn't really disagree

xp i thought lyft was the less evil uber! that's what i use

afaik lyft is pretty much floating their business as the alt-uber right now and have been not so steathily looking for a buyer

I've been thinking about just using the Taxi-approved app instead (Gett?), except that I do sometimes need the child seat. But I probably only take like 2-3 Ubers a year with the family, plus a couple more for work. For work I think I'm going to shift my business away from them.

Does Lyft really have better practices though? Do they compensate drivers better and do less to rope them into bad financing arrangements?

I didn't dig into it too deeply but I saw an article about my city floating the idea of subsidizing low income residents with bus credit and/or uber credit. afaik the bus system is utilized but expanding routes and doing off-hours transport isn't in the cards for lack of riders but there's enough of a lack of transport among those who most need it, they'd consider offering credit for people to use uber

I have heard that Juno actually *does* treat its drivers better, but they're also pretty small right now right? Maybe I'll download the app just to see if there are drivers available.

what I'm thinking is that the demand for an uber-like business is out there, but they're still looking for the money in the wrong place and falling down on the job when it comes to finding allies in the groups that organize city transportation

i have been told by drivers (who seem to always use both) that lyft is better. i mean "better" may not mean good. Lyft doesn't do financing for drivers the way Uber does. (They have a rental program joint with GM, whether that's a scam I don't know.)

Hmm, Juno has 25% off rides here now, fare estimates are actually much cheaper than Uber. Gonna use this next time.

I think I remember hearing that, unlike Uber, they don't reduce driver's rates when they do promotional pricing.

I guess in a place where everyone drives alone everywhere, an army of self-driving cars that do pools would be a sort of improvement. In NYC it would just make things 10x worse, although I can't imagine people abandoning the subway unless Uber is like really successful at lobbying to defund the MTA.

NYC worldview of mass transit or even trivially moving people around is not the context to view Uber or any of the other services.

my city floating the idea of subsidizing low income residents with bus credit and/or uber credit

i feel silly even saying this but the uber version of this is, like, man what a classic case of neoliberalism finding a new social guarantee to lop off of the state's obligations to provide a service, replaced with the promise that you can become a consumer of a service whose actual provision is nobody's obligation. it also seems mathematically insane - how much does a bus ticket cost versus an uber ride?