Rideshare services - Uber, Lyft, Hailo, etc.

How was your stay at Bobby's Sky-Line Mo-Tell?

sshhhhhhhhhh

(it was a no-tell mo-tell)

My feeling about substituting tech for human systems is that when ppl imagine how great a technological solution is going to be, they envision it working in the ideal way. In reality it will only be ideal for the rich or those for whom the cost of the service isn't a barrier to its use--anyone who cares about price or uses a lower price point-oriented version of the system will get a sub-ideal user experience. And when you do have the inevitable issues with it, its inconsistencies and inefficiencies, the fact that there's no human relationship or human intervention will mean you have no recourse at all to mitigate the quality of the experience.

Like, it's not nec choosing a uniformly smooth tech experience over an inconsistent human one.

Right, and the benefit of a city-granted monopoly is the power to regulate those experiences even for people who can't afford the "premium" services, although, to be fair, there's already a black market in cab service and a lot of people with less money are already using the black market cabs and already have less recourse.

There is human interaction, though. You don't get in a car/cab you ordered through this ap and sit silently behind a partition while your personal driving servant silently drives you to your destination. You have to confirm this is actually your ride and not somebody who's hanging out in front of your building in the same kind of car, tell the person where you're going, and make as much small talk as you are inclined to make. And I've ridden in glorious silence in licensed taxis, too.

The inconsistency of human interaction comes when you try to order a cab through the company's dispatch service, and the problem there is not having to talk to somebody on the phone. It's getting the actual taxi to come pick you up.

I don't care how I communicate with a service. I just want to know that I can get a ride in a reasonable amount of time and that my call won't be mysteriously cancelled. In that respect, Uber (and the much missed Hailo) has the benefit of me being able to see the GPS of where the driver is, so I guess to that extent I prefer an app, but that's not about what I can avoid (contact) but about what I get (a decent idea of when my ride is coming).

xp Oh yeah I don't mean necessarily NOW but in terms of seeing this as an step toward an even less human, more automated experience, whatever that might look like. Also inspired by watching a rich person hail an Uber car twice in a few hours with no concern whatsoever for any possible surcharge.

Also from seeing someone I know repeatedly posting on fb about the difficulty of working late and getting a yellow cab in Manhattan to pick her up to get home from work at like 10pm (lol marketing art direction) bc she's Black and taxis won't stop for her at night. And she could call an Uber car but she'd have to be willing to pay more just to mitigate the negative effect of racism, and how that's only available to the moneyed. I mean, nothing new here, just seeing it again in a new context.

That's interesting because I was just thinking about how Lyft and Uber are cheaper than licensed cabs in Chicago (UberX is significantly cheaper if you aren't stuck with surge pricing), so you end up with a situation where the consumer protections of licensed taxis are only available to people who can afford it.

Just to get my bias out there, I welcome with open arms the day cars drive themselves and I can use my smart phone to call up my personal autodriving pod to take me to my destination. But that's not about avoiding people (I like people and I work from home so when I do get around people I tend to TALK TO THEM A LOT ABOUT THINGS plus also I love talking to cab drivers (see: fascination about taxi regulations). That's about me generally hating cars and a constant low-level anxiety about being run over by one.

I've been wondering whether Uber's prices will eventually rise if they manage to take over a big enough chunk of the taxi market. Seems like they strategically lowered their prices recently to gain market penetration. Don't know whether they're highly profitable at current rates or not.

You know what's annoying? When a taxi asks if you wanna take the FDR

io did you ever read Rainbow's End by Verner Vinge? There are autodriving egg pod cars in that and it's supposed to read as dystopian but I was like "YES BRING IT ON."

xp My guess is that they will definitely rise and drivers will not get a commensurate bump in income. I wouldn't put it past Uber to be playing a really rotten bait and switch long game with their pricing and what their drivers earn.

I'm all for avoiding human interaction in cabs. Most of the time, I'd prefer my cab driver to say the bare minimum to me, but some just won't shut up. Bring on robot drivers.

Uber next versh will probably allow you to specify your preferences to display to the driver i.e. No Talking, Stare Forward, Don't Look At Me Snorting Coke From A Vial I Keep In My Pocket

Athletic, demure, aggressive, sleazy

I've been wondering whether Uber's prices will eventually rise if they manage to take over a big enough chunk of the taxi market. Seems like they strategically lowered their prices recently to gain market penetration. Don't know whether they're highly profitable at current rates or not.

seems like they're making plenty of money, I would expect prices to go down rather than up tho. having a consistently cheaper competitor around would be a bad thing. also there's gonna be a race to the bottom w/ how much they pay drivers.

Uber next versh will probably allow you to specify your preferences to display to the driver i.e. No Talking, Stare Forward, Don't Look At Me Snorting Coke From A Vial I Keep In My Pocket

― 龜, Monday, November 24, 2014 12:01 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/q7wvew/nathan-for-you-independent-cab

here is my weird/lol story involving race and uber:

on a weeknight over the summer, i hailed an UberX while leaving a predominantly black nightclub on the near-south side of Chicago. (fyi Chicago is very segregated with the south side being predominately black and the north side predominately white).

once the driver picked me up and i told him my address (several miles north of downtown) he chuckled and told me that when he accepted my fare he was in the middle of trying to decide whether to call it a night and head home or to take one more rider for the evening.

he told me that when he saw my name and location pop up, he guessed that i was black and likely lived on the south side, where he himself lived. (my name is p uncommon, and usually one people associate with older black men.)

he was good-humored about how his gamble backfired, and i apologetically joked about how bad i felt having to make him drive so far north before he got to head home for the night.

also nb: deej was with me

"spotify premium users can now choose the soundtrack that plays during their rides" -- uber app update that came through just now

sarahell, what's your opinion about the types of insurance the drivers for these companies carry?

― 龜, Sunday, November 23, 2014 5:27 PM (Yesterday)

based on what gr80 posted about the companies' policies -- those look like the standard business auto levels of coverage required by the City of SF for government contractors -- which is good. It does look like (from the Uber page linked) that they have not always had adequate insurance, but are in the constant process of improving it based on regulatory issues and incidents.

w/r/t Spotify in cabs my mind went to this scene from The Comedian

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IERGKjwBAHg

uber was expensive(ish) in London this summer but the two drivers I had were super nice and helpful. also I'm not sure why everyone wants to come to taxi drivers defenses. they are run by crappy cartels with weird city lockup contracts and bullshit and are no better than anything else. they're not some prized public institution (in SF anyway).

yeah for all the safety and regulation talk regulated yellow cabs are crashing into buildings and plowing down people every day in ny

and obv you're taking your life in your hands anytime you get in any car, taxi, uber, etc. I ride casual carpool every morning and I know loads of people who are surprised I haven't been beheaded or kidnapped or something.

Also from seeing someone I know repeatedly posting on fb about the difficulty of working late and getting a yellow cab in Manhattan to pick her up to get home from work at like 10pm (lol marketing art direction) bc she's Black and taxis won't stop for her at night. And she could call an Uber car but she'd have to be willing to pay more just to mitigate the negative effect of racism, and how that's only available to the moneyed. I mean, nothing new here, just seeing it again in a new context.

― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Monday, November 24, 2014 12:49 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/10/21/357645869/apps-makes-googly-eyes-at-riders-tired-of-being-snubbed-by-cabbies

This pretty much sums up the #1 policy problem with Uber-type services imo:

In fact, it's traditional taxis that are now claiming discrimination — that they're being treated unfairly because they can't compete with services like Uber and Lyft, which aren't subject to the same government regulations and can thus charge riders less.

"You don't give advantages to one industry and oppress, take other people's livelihoods or jobs by regulating them and deregulating their competitors," Hailu Asrhu, a 30-year veteran of the cab industry, told The Huffington Post. "We're not at a position for competition. Competition has to play a fair game," Asrhu added. "I want regulation or deregulation for everybody — equality and equally for everyone."

It's very much like the charter school movement, or what happened with deregulation of the telecoms, where instead of outright dismantling a public-sanctioned monopoly, they give private players unfair advantages and erode the public-sanctioned monopoly.

http://www.autostraddle.com/why-lyft-and-uber-endanger-both-passengers-and-drivers-a-former-lyft-driver-speaks-out-261279/

The stuff about drivers not being able to cancel rides without penalty is troubling.

argh, friend now works for uber, keeps approvingly posting uber propaganda, started to gently argue with him in one thread but it's obviously pointless, not like he's going to hear me out while fully bought in. Just posted this:

http://blog.uber.com/ride-ahead

with this as the pull-quote

"In 2015 alone, Uber will generate over 1mm jobs in cities around the world and with that millions of people may decide that they no longer need to own a car because using Uber will be cheaper than owning one. Parking could become less strained in our biggest cities, and city congestion may actually start to ease due to uberPOOL’s expansion and success."

"You don't give advantages to one industry and oppress, take other people's livelihoods or jobs by regulating them and deregulating their competitors," Hailu Asrhu, a 30-year veteran of the cab industry, told The Huffington Post. "We're not at a position for competition. Competition has to play a fair game," Asrhu added. "I want regulation or deregulation for everybody — equality and equally for everyone."

but you're not going to get the taxi industry to actually support this kind of deregulation, at least not anywhere w/ medallion systems.

you should send your friend that uber ceo's quote about self-driving cars xp

The congestion part is particularly lulzy -- we're going to alleviate road congestion...by providing a service that drives people around in cars!

eh it's not totally nonsensical, in a world where people actually give up their personal vehicle they're likely to make fewer trips overall

In NYC it seems like people only own cars if they (1) need them on a regular basis, (2) go out of town a lot or (3) have money to burn. None of these seem likely to change with Uber, maybe it's different in other cities. Like my wife drives to her job because where we live to her job takes a ridiculous amount of time by subway, and she's not going to save money if we give up the car and she Ubers it to work every day.

upper middle class people who live in dense-for-america-but-shitty-transit areas could give up their cars. so like, it's not absurd to suggest that it could happen in the bay area, dc, even LA.

http://gawker.com/uber-turned-on-surge-pricing-for-people-fleeing-sydney-1671193132

What what raging buttholes

"fares have increased" kind of makes me think it is an automatic thing and they don't have people tweaking stuff, meaning in dire situations fares will be really high and only the rich will make it out alive once uber takes over the whole ride industry

Did you even read the article

article sucks balls on most levels

yeah? the cited tweet saying that it was intentional is this one, which has the phrasing I mentioned:
https://twitter.com/Uber_Sydney/status/544319760809222144

I think Uber is managed by malicious libertarian motherfuckers, but I also think they would be lazy enough to program surge pricing into the system without having an override mechanism, because they think surge pricing is always appropriate

it sounds like that's almost definitely what happened, but I agree with your assessment of the company

I think Uber is managed by malicious libertarian motherfuckers, but I also think they would be lazy enough to program surge pricing into the system without having an override mechanism, because they think surge pricing is always appropriate

You say this like being malicious libertarian motherfuckers didn't lead to automatic surge pricing without an override mechanism.

oh, no, they are lazy malicious libertarian motherfuckers

You know they then backed down and offered free rides out of the CBD after the backlash, right.

yes, that also was a headline

http://thepointsguy.com/2014/12/insider-series-what-uber-drivers-know-about-passengers/

Found this article weird and unsettling

http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/Uber-driver-accused-in-sexual-assault-due-in-court-5977119.php

So far I'm unsettled by this bit of nonsense: "Just like a good marriage, both an Uber driver and a client have access to their own halves of the Uber app."