
With Lyft Line, Passengers Can Split Fares for Shared Rides - cstigler
http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/06/lyft-line/
======
ladon86
Lyft already has the full implementation in their app. Uber has a beta sign up
list and a blog post. Occam's razor says that Uber got wind of this launch and
quickly wrote up a blog post announcing the same thing in order to spear it.

~~~
malandrew
Considering that Uber is going open beta on the 15th per their blog
announcement (11 days away), I would imagine that there is more there than
just a blog post.

~~~
Igglyboo
Or maybe thats the minimum amount of time they need for the service to
function and they're planning on working out the kinks later.

~~~
mynameisvlad
According to the blog post, they're in closed beta _right now_ , so clearly
the service functions. I can't talk about the kinks, since I'm not in the
beta, but it's out there.

~~~
boomzilla
But how do you know it's out there if you haven't seen it? Anyone from the HN
crowd has seen this closed beta feature?

~~~
bps4484
I upvoted but want even more attention to this question to see if anyone has
actually seen the feature. HN? Bueller? Has anyone seen this feature?

------
evv
Everybody is talking about Uber's announcement, but Sidecar is also apparently
experimenting with the same thing:

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/29/sidecar-shareable-
rides/](http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/29/sidecar-shareable-rides/)

There are also many ways to grow the product: for example, I know that Uber
will be getting into local package delivery before too long. It looks like
Lyft/Sidecar/Hitch/Flywheel are keeping them on their toes in the meantime.

One thing is certain: there is cutthroat competition in this industry that
will only benefit the consumers.

~~~
technotony
They already do package delivery with UberX... you just call the allocated
driver and ask them if they are ok to deliver it. We do this all the time.

------
matthewowen
Something I find interesting about this is that it weakens the notion of the
app being a relatively pure marketplace connecting a driver to a rider. The
more that these features emerge, the more complex the relationships, and the
more prominent the role of Lyft/Uber/Sidecar as more than a "mere" broker.

I wonder how much we're going to see things go full circle, and have a more
employee-like relationship between drivers and these services (see also the
"guaranteed wage" that these services have been offering to some drivers at
peak hours).

------
dkrich
This is an awesome idea, but I wonder why it is debuting solely in San
Francisco. Not that it doesn't make sense there (I'm not familiar with the
city), but cities with Airports that are greater than 20 miles or so from
dense urban areas (D.C., Atlanta, Dallas, etc.) seems like a huge market for
this and a natural fit.

Shorter distance rides aren't worth the hassle, and airport rides are a
constant pain in the ass and a nearly 24/7 market.

~~~
domdip
Airports involve a ton of extra regulatory hassle.

~~~
jessriedel
Could you expand on this? What are the biggest restrictions?

~~~
arjunnarayan
Airports are private property of the airport company, and they typically have
separate restrictions for taxis. For example, LAX charges $4 per taxi [1].
Since rideshare companies are often operating under the legal fiction that
they are not taxis, they don't want to sign a deal with the airports that
treats them as taxis. But the airports don't want them not paying fees. So in
this limbo they are not allowed to pick up airport passengers. But they can,
and often do drop off passengers at the airport since airports don't usually
restrict passenger dropoffs.

Airports make a lot of money off of use-fees like this. This is why, for
example, rental cars are often much more expensive if picked up at the airport
(SeaTac is a particularly painful example), as the rental car companies pay a
hefty premium to be on site. At some airports, like JFK, there are some rental
car companies that pick you up by shuttle and take you off-site (but it's a
total pain and I recommend you do not do this due to the sheer hassle).

[1] [http://www.dailybreeze.com/business/20131013/ride-sharing-
co...](http://www.dailybreeze.com/business/20131013/ride-sharing-companies-
dodge-restrictions-at-airports)

------
3Pi
Working in the vehicle routing industry, this is something that I has passed
through my mind on more than one occasion. I'm quite pleased to see it
implemented - I definitely did not have the means.

In my mind, this sort of product is a great stepping stone towards the
reduction in personal cars - it's starting to bring the cost of travelling
down by sharing, hopefully by enough to make it accessible to less well-off
people. I certainly couldn't afford a taxi to work every day. If this sort of
service really takes off, it will hopefully also reduce the number of cars on
the road, reducing congestion.

The obvious next step for this sort of service is to use self-driving cars,
reducing the cost even further as there are no drivers to pay.

It is obviously an idea whose time has come, and I'm glad!

~~~
boomzilla
I share your sentiment. On the other hand, the upper bound of the number of
car reduction is maybe 50% of the cars that would be there otherwise (assuming
we can replace most single car trips by 2-3 people trips). It's a huge
improvement, but the US really needs to work on public transport. Heck, why is
Caltrain not more efficient?

~~~
eru
If sharing works out pretty well, people will start using minibuses for it. So
we might see another reduction.

(In essence, that's like a municipal bus service, just with a much more
flexible schedule.)

~~~
jarek
Eventually you'll be able to get a shared "bus" in five minutes to take you to
most common destinations and at night you will be able to get a less-shared
"taxi" that will cost more since there aren't people to share your trip with
you.

We'll build the brave new tech world equivalent of a decent transportation
system.

~~~
eru
If that's the only way America is gonna get a decent transportation system, so
be it.

------
mattzito
Is this just a response to UberPool? Or vice-versa? It just seems curious to
me that within 48 hours the two biggest car-sharing providers launch the same
feature.

Or did they hear the other was working on it and rushed it out the door?

~~~
minimaxir
This isn't something you can "rush out the door." The logistics and QA
necessary for such a product take months _at minimum_.

Uber and Lyft most likely saw the exact same market opportunity at similar
times.

~~~
mattzito
Well, the cynic in me says that when something is in closed beta to a
nonspecific limited pool of individuals, it might not be as fully baked as a
blog post might suggest.

I'm not suggesting malice, of course, but perhaps Uber heard that Lyft was
planning to announce this, and rushed their own announcement ahead of time,
then delay the actual implementation until they're ready.

~~~
alasdair_
Completely agree. Microsoft used to do this thing all the time - it would hear
about a competitor offering a new feature then announce it was going to be
shipped as part of the next version of Windows, killing any interest in the
competitor. Then (inevitably) there were months/years of delays while they
actually built the thing.

The worst example was when OS/2 looked likely to gain a foothold in the PC
market and Microsoft claimed that the next windows would have essentially all
the OS/2 features (then delayed the next release for an eternity and shipped
without many of the core features). The goal was just to shut down a
competitor, not to actually announce a new feature.

~~~
mattzito
Oh, hey, listen, I'm not throwing stones. I've done similar things myself when
I had a press release opportunity timed with a trade show or a feature piece
or something - but the product wasn't yet ready to ship.

So you announce, say it's in early beta, or early access, or in "sneak
preview" mode and go from there.

------
twright
The video on the landing is well produced enough that it doesn't look like
they just rushed this out, maybe shoved it though.

> Cheaper than a breakfast burrito.

What kind of burritos are they eating!?

~~~
GuiA
Hipster San Francisco burritos :)

------
gkoberger
Interestingly, this was how Lyft started (as a company called Zimride). That
concept didn't take off and the Lyft one did, so they shuttered this a long
time ago. They've come full circle.

~~~
cnaut
Actually zimride got sold to enterprise. Maybe they needed to build out the
two-sides of the marketplace before being able to actually do "ride-sharing"

~~~
wcfields
When I moved from Portland, OR to Los Angeles, CA I sold the extra seat in the
Penseke truck on Zim Ride.

------
Shenglong
"Sub solen nihil novi este"

I've been backpacking around SE Asia for a few months now, and this sort of
system has been active on an ad hoc basis for years in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
There, it's expected that "red cars" (seemingly the only active taxis), will
pick up other passengers.

They'll stop for passengers flagging them down, and check location before
issuing a quote, if in fact they're on the way. While this made traveling
really cheap, there were times where a 10-minute trip stretched into over half
an hour. I'm interested to see whether these services will customize allowable
wait times to the individual, or whether all ride-sharers have roughly the
same tolerance for delays.

But, to say that any one company copied another in this case is a pretty
stupid argument to make. I asked myself this question the first time I rode
with Uber, and I'm sure many of you have as well. I would imagine that any
good PM would've thoroughly investigated it; it's pretty obvious.

------
ryderm
Wow, how do lyft and uber manage to launch the same thing at the same time?

~~~
bhouston
There are so many people working for each company, consulting for them,
advising them, and attending their investor pitches, that I suspect it is hard
to keep secrets. It is like that in any industry.

I've had someone attend an investment pitch who I'm pretty sure then told a
potential competitor exactly what I planned on doing. If this happens to my
company, which is pretty insignificant compared to Lyft and Uber, I bet it is
even worse for them.

~~~
wwweston
Leaks are a reasonable explanation, but it's probably worth remembering
they're not the only one. When you've got reasonably smart people working on
solving problems and developing products/services in the same space, a certain
amount of convergence is going to be natural.

I don't work for either and this is one of several ideas I considered while
thinking about that space, and everybody here has probably had the experience
of watching a startup build something around an idea they had but never really
shared.

------
jonmc12
I've been using Hitch the last month or so, and Sidecar has had the
functionality for some time as well. Its cool to see Lyft and Uber offering
the service.

IMO, a big win for consumers, because offering more service-level options, and
driving down pricing. With Hitch, it usually costs me $9 for what costs $16-22
on UberX, Lyft or Sidecar. Thats a nice savings, even if it takes me 10min
more to get home. I could really see mass adoption coming from the service who
nails this and provides the option that is better than Muni, but cheaper than
individual car service.

Another aspect of this service I wasn't ready for was that the social dynamic
can completely change the ride-sharing experience. Its different when you are
just chatting with a driver, vs a 3rd or 4th stranger jumping in the car. It
will be interesting to see how others react and expectations evolve as it
becomes mainstream.

~~~
eru
We had this in Germany for ages. See mitfahrgelegenheit.de

~~~
brackin
All of these marketplaces exist in the US and Europe but Lyft Line is
different. It's on demand, you get into a car that you just requested on your
phone and it designs a route to pick up other passengers on the way, it may
only be 10 minutes each. No pre-booking or planning required, the software
does everything in real time.

------
pinkyand
Theoretically, since UBER support 6-passenger vans(UBERXL), they could offer
almost half the price of lyft, on the right rides.

Assuming people accept this, van availability would be a critical component of
the competition in this field.

~~~
gkop
Lyft has "Plus" which as far as I can tell is very similar -
[http://get.lyft.com/plus/](http://get.lyft.com/plus/) (both services are mid-
sized SUV's, not vans, and claim to seat 6)

~~~
bignaj
Lyft Plus is more or less a novelty and doesn't match UberXL in terms of
availability. In Seattle you can get an UberXL very easily while Lyft Plus is
nowhere to be found.

~~~
argonaut
I wouldn't base anything off one geographic area. I just checked in SF, and
Lyft Plus has 4 drivers in my area (SOMA), whereas Uber XL only had 3.

~~~
bignaj
I could say the same to you! SF is not representative of Lyft's service in the
rest of the US at all, being the location of the headquarters. Same for Uber
in SF.

------
pastalex
Bandwagon, based in NY, has been doing this kind of ridesharing. They pointed
out that Uber/Lyft's 'ridesharing' model wasn't really ridesharing (now it
kinda is). See
[https://medium.com/@HiBandwagon](https://medium.com/@HiBandwagon)

and they work on taxi lines at airports, events:
[http://blog.bandwagon.io/post/92569728340/meet-the-hop-
lane-...](http://blog.bandwagon.io/post/92569728340/meet-the-hop-lane-
upgrading-the-taxi-line-by-sharing)

------
surrealize
It wasn't clear if uber was going to start asking about destinations for
uberpool. But lyft specifically mentions that; it seems necessary to do good
matching. And the extra effort seems minimal.

------
kristint
But this was Lyft vision a LONG time ago- they started as a carpool app called
Zimride, which didn't take off as quickly without mobile in the state it is
today.

------
gordon_freeman
Does this mean You can split the fare with your friends (people you know) or
even with complete strangers who want to share the same route as yours? Both
features need different approaches and I guess the later one will drag down
cost of transpiration much lower.

~~~
silencio
Uber already had an ability to split fares with people you know, assuming
there's only one pickup for all of you. I don't think Lyft had that.

These new announcements are about splitting with strangers, matched on their
end. It's much more interesting than fare split with friends.

------
fivethree
How could they roll out this marvelous new idea so quickly. Uber was genius to
think of this radical concept, "splitting a cab," there is no way Lyft could
come up with it so quickly on their own.

------
sgustard
Honest question. When I read a sentence like this: "the guys at Lyft got to
talking with the guys at Rover and they decided to work together instead."

Does "guys" imply the teams are all male? Is that relevant, or just reflect
the casual sexism of the Valley? Or is "guys" a truly universal term and this
just reflects an excessively lazy/casual writing style for a supposed news
outlet?

~~~
tolas
Right or wrong, I've asked many female friends if they mind the term "guys" as
a general reference to a group of people, and none of them mind it. Your
milage may vary, but I think it's considered a general term.

~~~
jacalata
It's a general term in social groups when I am not worried that someone
actually forgot there were any women in the group of us going out that night.
It's a trickier term that seems in my experience to correlate well with "there
are no women here" or "I forgot there are any women here" when used at work,
and so it is a slight negative indicator in professional language.

------
sbisker
Has anyone tried this yet? How was it?

~~~
nlh
Used it today. Sadly, not much to report -- my driver was as curious as I was
("Looks cool!") but we didn't get routed to anyone along the way, so I just
had a normal Lyft experience (but free).

Driver brought up a great point though -- there doesn't seem to be support for
specifying how many people you've got to travel (or is it designed just for a
single person?). He said he could foresee stopping to pickup a second
passenger only to find out there were 4 people in the group (and not enough
space.)

~~~
sbisker
It's not very usable, but there's a drop down to specify whether you have one
or two people in your party. Their website (and possible the product, I
forget) suggests that if you have more than 2 people in your party, that you
kindly request a normal Lyft.

------
zaidf
I wish Lyft would drop the mustache for the balloon in all their branding!

------
vishalzone2002
i like lyft much better but I wonder why are not evaluated like uber is from
investor's perspective

~~~
cblock811
Uber is more established and Lyft has been the energetic 'new kid on the
block.' Maybe it's because they are perceived as another startup and Uber is
not? If they sustain their growth or at least keep strong market share in
their locations they won't have that issue. I would give it another year
though.

------
wclax04
Little late to the party, ey?

------
dang
Two posts on this came up at the same time. We've buried the other one
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8143303](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8143303))
as a dupe because this one has the active discussion. But we'll change the URL
(from [https://www.lyft.com/line](https://www.lyft.com/line)) because the
Techcrunch article provides a lot of background info. Happy to change it back
if people prefer.

~~~
alain94040
It may be time for HN to add a feature that TechMeme already offers: combine
multiple links that cover the same story under one thread. I'm sure the smart
people at HN have already considered it.

For instance, yesterday's news of Apple's Sep 9 launch date was shown on
TechMeme as one item, with about 100 sub-links from every possible
publication. They even get the primary source right most of the time, which is
great.

~~~
dang
We've been considering it. But the UI would have to be unobtrusive.

------
jdprgm
Now that's some impressive response time.

------
k-mcgrady
Very cool idea. Not too sure it's something I'd feel comfortable using but the
savings would make it very tempting.

~~~
k-mcgrady
Why the down votes here? Strange considering I was complimentary about the
service. Maybe my "Not too sure it's something I'd feel comfortable using" was
misunderstood (in which case - comment when you down vote). I meant that
sharing a taxi with strangers doesn't personally appeal to me.

~~~
eru
Don't worry too much about downvotes, especially early downvotes. (And don't
feel compelled to compliment something to get upvotes.)

I wonder what the impact will be on prices for non-shared rides. (This feature
will make taxis more `productive' in the economic sense. Productivity
improvements can have all kinds of impact. Especially since supply and demand
are elastic.)

------
selectout
I understand that this is something that Lyft has obviously been working on
for quite awhile and put plenty of resources and thought into, but for some
reason I still have a sour taste when they launch this just the day after
Uber.

I'm really curious if this was rushed out as a response to Uber or if this
specific date/time range was always perceived as the launch time.

~~~
krschultz
Seems like Uber rushed out their vaporware announcement of UberPool to steal
Lyft's thunder of launching a concrete feature. The fact that people are now
giving Lyft a hard time shows the value of PR.

~~~
mynameisvlad
Really, vaporware? Considering they've launched it in private beta already and
have said they plan to expand it greatly in 9 days, I'm going to say that it's
most definitely not vaporware.

~~~
DINKDINK
Lyft has the product to market first. Any consumer can now use their feature.
Sniping a PR release using a beta isn't the same thing as delivering a
production-ready feature. Until you have a usable product in your hand, you
have promises, not features.

~~~
cwyers
Well, any consumer in San Francisco with an iPhone.

