
Uber's predatory pricing is undermining public transit and density - erispoe
http://humantransit.org/2016/12/sounding-the-alarm-about-ubers-impacts-on-transit.html
======
wmil
The bigger issue is that city planners building public transit systems don't
have the same interests as commuters. Inevitably they want to use public
transit as an instrument for various social policies.

Commuters just want to get to work reliably and they'd like a seat. And they'd
like to have a minimum of screening so that they don't have to deal with
people with severe mental issues on the way to work.

In Toronto they've gone as far as launching a crowdfunded bus route, which the
city had an icy response too. It had to shut down because of legal
uncertainties.

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/crowd-funded-bus-
takes...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/crowd-funded-bus-takes-a-run-
at-transit-starved-liberty-village-1.2771419)
[http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/sorry-toronto-commuters-liberty-
vi...](http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/sorry-toronto-commuters-liberty-village-bus-
will-not-be-back-on-the-road-1.2192794)

So I think the big problem with transit is that people in city gov refuse to
recognise that commuters desires are perfectly reasonable. If the city won't
provide them options then they should at least make sure there aren't legal
issues with private providers.

~~~
blintz
> Inevitably they want to use public transit as an instrument for various
> social policies.

Yes, "social policies" like transit that's accessible to the disabled,
elderly, and poor. Would you prefer planning that tells those people to stay
at home where we can pretend they don't exist?

> "minimum of screening so that they don't have to deal with people with
> severe mental issues"

What kind of "screening process" do you want? What's your test?

> people in city gov refuse to recognize that commuters desires are perfectly
> reasonable

Sure, maybe you can twist your desire for fewer people with "mental issues" to
be 'reasonable', but your disgust for them doesn't make good policy. It's not
impossible to build transit for everyone; for both commuters, and for the
poor, disabled or elderly. As long as people like you can stand to be on the
bus with people who are different than you.

~~~
briandear
I don't want to ride public transport with crazy people or people that want to
beg me for money or even just people that have bad hygiene or talk loudly or
listen to music without headphones. Why is that unreasonable? Oh and I'd also
not be waiting in the hot sun or the freezing cold for a bus that may or may
not arrive on time. Then, I get to take a tour of the city while the bus stops
every two minutes rather than going directly to where I need to go.

Ever been from Newark Airport to midtown Manhattan? You have to take a shuttle
"train" to the PATH or NY Transit, then ride that into the City, then walk a
dozen blocks or wait on a crosstown bus and then another bus.

Public transit has its use, but I generally hate it except in rare situations
like Zurich or Berlin.

As far as the disabled and elderly, interesting you mention that! How many
subway stations in NYC are wheelchair accessible -- how many of those actually
have functioning elevators? Of those, how many of those elevators don't smell
like a homeless urinal? Very, very few stations in NYC are accessible and all
of them are dirty.

Public transport would be great if I didn't have to share it with the public.

~~~
jmknoll
Have you spent much time in Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, or
Taipei? In all of these cities, public transit doesn't just "have its uses,"
its the primary way of getting around the city for the vast majority of
residents. This isn't about social policy. These cities span the entire range
of social policies.

All it takes is a government dedicated to building a comprehensive,
functional, and intelligently designed transit system. There are still crazy
people on the subway in Shanghai. But because its the best way to get around
the city, everyone takes the subway. So maybe you see a beggar or a homeless
person every couple of days, much like you would when you're out walking
around.

The problem we get in most American cities is that the transit systems are
terrible, so anyone who can afford to drive takes their car, and transit
systems end up existing only for people who don't have any other options.

So you decide to take the bus one day, and everyone else on the bus is either
homeless or crazy, and the bus has to take some ridiculous route to pick up
enough people to justify its continued existence. So you never take the bus
again, because it was unpleasant and wasted your time. Now we've gotten into a
vicious cycle where the awfulness of the system ensures that it will continue
to get ever worse.

This was a long rant, but what I'm trying to say is that public transit isn't
inevitably broken, as many of the world's most successful cities demonstrate.
It just can't be half-assed, and it feels like we've half-assed it in most of
the US.

------
Fricken
This comment was posted yesterday in /r/urbanplanning:

As a transportation / transit planner, there are an awful lot of suburban
transit routes that are simply there due to politics instead of actual use. An
example is one route I had done a bunch of work on that essentially showed the
existing 5 riders a day would be better served at a cheaper rate by
municipally subsidized taxis than by a gas guzzling, inflexible, union driven,
public transit bus. The financials made sense, the data made sense to support
a change. It was about to get changed until a politician came in and
essentially canned everything because he didn't want his ward to not have a
transit route because he would look bad.

I firmly believe these gaps can and should be filled by alternative modes of
transport, and I wouldn't necessarily look at this as a bad thing. Transport
is a wildly flexible area that is constantly evolving .

As for the costs going up for Uber, I don't really think those concerns are
founded in anything other than speculation. His same logic about economies of
scale would surely translate into it filling in that cost gap between
providing the service and being revenue profitable. The truth is that every
dollar invested in transit in the suburbs is nowhere near the same as every
dollar invested in transit in urban areas. This article, I don't believe, made
a real case for showing that the cost of providing transit would be cheaper,
even in a future scenario, than having Ride hailing services filling in the
gaps. The advantage of allowing Uber / taxis to fill first / last mile trips
is that operating the line scales relatively well for scenarios where this
type of service makes sense. There's a breakpoint where this cost of operation
justifies switching over to providing a transit solution. But this allows
agencies to build up demand before investing the capital and assuming some of
the other maintenance costs such as bus stops, scheduling time, etc

[https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/5ijfa9/citie...](https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/5ijfa9/cities_are_cutting_public_transportation_because/db8qk5u)

------
cperciva
This article makes some interesting assertions, but does very little to back
them up with facts. Yes, in sparsely populated areas the availability of Uber
often justifies cutting back on bus services -- but Uber is far superior to a
once-an-hour bus service anyway. In some cases even allows for an _increase_
in public transit usage, by handling the "last mile" (where individual
vehicles are a good solution) and delivering people conveniently to and from
train stations (whereupon they can switch to what public transit does
efficiently -- moving a large number of people at once).

~~~
lefstathiou
I didn't think about this until you mentioned it but I definitely take
commuter rails more frequently as a result of knowing there will be an Uber in
the neighborhood to get me through the last mile. I do this at the expense of
renting a car and for whatever reason, using the local taxi service that
undoubtedly existed all the while never occurs to me (I've ridden enough
sh1tty local cabs to never do it willingly).

~~~
ghaff
I hear this a lot and it seems odd to me. I have literally _never_ taken an
Uber (which I admittedly don't use a lot when traveling) when I haven't been
fully aware of and prepared to take a taxi as an alternative. When I have
taken an Uber I just decided it would be cheaper/easier/etc. but, if an Uber
weren't an option, I would certainly just take a taxi.

~~~
ohwello
Taxis suck in a lot of places. It takes then forever to show up when you call,
if they show up at all. Very inconvenient for eg. making your way to the
commuter rail station in the suburbs.

------
mdasen
In my city, rents have skyrocketed near transit stops since it's so essential.
When you're a 20-25min walk from a transit stop, prices are a lot cheaper, but
you become hard to get to and hard to get to work. New transit isn't really an
option because of density and cost (the cost to build per rider is
astronomical). But the city is also dead set against increasing the density
near transit stops to decrease rent/buy prices (and increase transit ridership
due to it being convenient).

Public transit in many cities creates hot-spots in the real estate market that
isn't good public policy either.

Of course, the article is right that people shifting into less dense transit
will have bad environmental and congestion problems.

But I don't think that traditional public transit will be the way of the
future. Rather, I think that self-driving, reasonably high-density vehicles
will be the future. Imagine a nice bus that seats 15-20 picking people up
along an ad-hoc route in the morning determined as riders hail the bus and are
instructed to an ad-hoc stop within a block and dropping them off within a
block of their destination. That's a lot more convenient than most public
transit systems where you have to travel to stops, maybe change lines, not
getting exactly where you want to go, etc. It could also cut down on vehicle
miles travelled by creating optimized routes.

If Uber Pool can do what bus service can do for barely more money, a self-
driving bus will be _way_ better than a standard public transit experience and
as efficient or more efficient environmentally.

In fact, I think the self-driving future in cities will be determined by good
incentives. During peak periods, charge for congestion. Not broad-based
attacks on vehicles, but an incentive for people to commute in higher-density
vehicles where the charge can be spread among more people. It would be easy
for a city to incentive Uber, Lyft, and others to offer higher-density options
for commuters via congestion charging. Likewise, environmental incentives
could be offered to push customers and companies toward more economical
vehicles and routes. I think it's reasonable to assume that in a self-driving
future, companies like Lyft and Uber would want a lot of economical vehicles
like Priuses getting 50MPG in the city. For higher-density vehicles, 10% fuel
savings could push margins up a couple points - especially if environmental
fuel taxes are put on top of the price of fuel. Similarly, better routing can
lead to fewer miles travelled leading to savings.

For those that want the privacy of single-person travel, they can be charged
an appropriate amount to compensate society.

Uber can't do a lot of high-density vehicles currently because it relies on
vehicles owned by random people. But when self-driving vehicles truly become
mainstream, there's no reason Uber wouldn't want to expand into company-owned,
higher-density vehicles. They could run these at a fraction of the cost that
most public transit systems are running at. In lower density areas, maybe
medium-density vehicles and in even lower density areas, single-person rides
in small vehicles may remain common. When Uber can control its vehicle stock
with self-driving vehicles, there's a lot of options for them to optimize in
ways that will boost their profits while also helping the environment and
congestion.

Maybe you think Uber isn't interested in a low-rent, non-premium service. That
may be, but so many are interested in transit and it would be reasonably easy
for a competitor to put together such a service and undercut Uber on price for
so many riders. Uber would want to respond.

Ultimately, the article talks about bus routes doing 10 boardings per hour and
how that's more than an Uber will do. That's probably true, but an Uber-bus
would likely do more boardings due to better ad-hoc routes and more
convenience. In my city, fares only cover a quarter of bus operating costs
(never mind capital costs) and two-thirds of subway costs. Part of the problem
is that a lot of transit systems work off the principle that they need to
serve off-peak and lower utility uses in order to hit that critical mass that
would make them a good choice for users. Ad-hoc, self-driving routes could
relieve transit systems of their bigger loss-leaders using vehicles optimized
for those areas. Similarly, off-peak service that often sees low ridership and
loses money could be off-loaded. This is also an environmental win - subways
are environmentally friendly when there's a lot of riders, not when they're
mostly empty. A bus route that's losing over $10 per rider is bad for a public
transit system and also bad for the environment since the bus probably doesn't
have enough people on it to make it fuel efficient on a per-passenger basis.

I think there's a genuine opportunity to do a lot better than current public
transit with self-driving vehicles. Something that's a lot more
environmentally friendly and a lot more convenient.

------
gkop
My buddy lives in SoMa and works 1.7 miles away at Lyft HQ in China Basin. He
takes Muni to work because it's faster (despite being significantly less
direct). San Francisco is not even a dense city. It's frightening to me that
none of the comments here on this thread show any love for mass transit.

~~~
peterhunt
San Francisco is the second densest major city in the United States.

~~~
gkop
Cities in the US are less dense than cities elsewhere [0] because of the large
extent to which US cities are designed around cars [1] (including SF, which is
#104! Even our more dense cities aren't very dense relative to the world).

[0] [http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-
density-...](http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-
density-125.html)

[1]
[http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Environment/E_Casestudy/E_...](http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Environment/E_Casestudy/E_casestudy3.htm)

------
smokeyj
Sometimes I wonder where everyone's driving to. They're driving physical cars,
into a physical office, to work on _digital information_? Surely middle
management has a better way of keeping tabs on their minions.

Cities should give companies tax incentives to keep employees at home. Just
stay off the road. Live in a part of town where you can walk to get your
groceries and snacks. Incentivize mixed use developments instead of suburbia
hell.

Having worked from home the past year I can't understand how people put up
with cubicles. While I make more now, I'd be willing to take a big pay cut to
keep my sanity.

~~~
vmarsy
I think that even working on digital information, physical meetings can be
useful[1], but I agree, a company could minimize those meetings and encourage
working from home more often, however you claim that WFH equals to keeping
your sanity.

Don't you think social interaction important to maintain it? I feel that
working from home is a lonely activity, and that on the other hand, being at
the office and having lunch with co-workers or friends (even from completely
different teams) contributes a lot in keeping one's sanity.

Maybe a nice solution could be a hybrid: companies having mini corporate
coffee-shops around town, where employees could go and work remotely, but
still interact with other employees and cutting on commute time. That being
said, having a multitude of small locations is probably much more expensive
and difficult to manage than a big main campus.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13177611](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13177611)
\- see "Functions of a meeting"

~~~
smokeyj
Remote work allows me to rotate through several coffee shops and keep my
environment fresh. I get to take a nice walk there and back, and pop into my
favorite pastry shop on the way. Sometimes I workout during my lunch break. Or
even take a little power nap if I so desire.

I hate offices with an intense passion now. Not just offices, but office
culture as well - where seniority is gained by being the first in the parking
lot and last one out. I'm officially opting out of competing with these drones
and focusing on my quality of living. I encourage other developers to do the
same :)

------
megiddo
Three capitalist pigs were in a jail cell in the USSR. They were chatting,
when the subject of their incarceration came up.

The first said, "I charged less than the market, and found guilty of dumping."

The second says, "I charged more than the market and was accused of gouging."

The last responded, "I charged the same as everyone else, and was accused of
price fixing!"

~~~
TeMPOraL
Context matters. The first pig could be like Martin Shkreli, pricing
necessities beyond the reach of people who need them. The second could be like
Uber, being able to undercut the competition thanks to blatant disregard for
laws and good taste. And as for the third, take your pick from these role
models:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing#Examples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing#Examples).

~~~
witty_username
> The first pig could be like Martin Shkreli, pricing necessities beyond the
> reach of people who need them.

Source? Who was unable to buy the medicine? According to him IIRC about 60% of
the drug is given for 1$ or some nominal. Also, most people's insurance buys
it.

------
bubblesocks
Good for Uber. The public transit system where I live is a joke, and I'd love
to see them undermined into non-existence. When I can pay an Uber driver $12
to get me somewhere in 15 minutes, or pay $8 for the transit authority to get
me there in an hour, with only three transfers, each of which have a 5 to 15
minute wait out in the elements, that extra $4 starts looking like a pretty
good deal.

~~~
ar15saveslives
You're describing public transportation in Ottawa.

------
jdminhbg
Boy, if you think Uber is artificially subsidizing rides to a predatory
degree, just wait until you see the numbers on light rail.

~~~
automatwon
Are light rails subsidized by government? Or by VCs?

~~~
maverick_iceman
Is being subsidized by the government i.e. taxpayers better? After all VC
money comes from a bunch of rich guys, not the ordinary taxpayer.

~~~
automatwon
Yes. The role of government is to ensure people can afford basic necessities.
When government is competitive with private companies, it's to ensure prices
are affordable for people. Uber wants to eliminate competition alltogether. If
they become a monopoly, VCs win and consumers lose.

~~~
stale2002
But the end result is the same.

It doesn't matter who is doing the "price dumping" or what their motivations
are.

The effect on society is equally good or bad no matter who is doing the
dumping or price gouging.

~~~
smileysteve
The difference is the end game. VCs and Investors are expected to ultimately
want a profitable company, so after Uber kills competition (Lyft, Public
Transit) the price is expected to rise substantially. Public transit is
expected to not be profitable, ever and is expected to use the combination of
taxes and fees to operate not for profit.

~~~
kem
One thing that seems to get completely lost is that these arguments proceed as
if we're talking about public transit versus private transit in the abstract,
but that's not actually the conversation. What we're talking about is public
transits in a localities versus a _single_ corporation nationwide.

Replacing a conglomerate of public local services, beholden to voters,
providing essential infrastructure, with single national private monopoly
seems like such an obviously bad idea I don't understand how this conversation
is taking place.

Maybe we should be arguing in favor of how to make public transportation more
competitive in some way, or how to increase diversity of private options, but
the idea that we should just hand our national transportation infrastructure
over to Uber is just crazy.

Between this and arguments against net neutrality (when we should be forcing
more competition onto ISPs and increasing public ISP options), lately I feel
like Americans are living in some delusion about the role of the private
sector in society.

~~~
stale2002
If the single national private monopoly is BETTER than the local public
service, then yes, it should be replaced.

And if that private monopoly ever stops being better, local organizers can
make their own competing service. Or just go back to the previous system.

------
sjwright
I can't speak for other people or other cities, but I'm in Sydney, Australia
and everyone I know who uses UberX doesn't use it because it's cheaper (though
it is) but rather because the quality of service is consistently much higher
than the traditional taxi.

The idea that Uber might be competing with bus or rail seems very surprising
and indicates that something must be seriously, seriously screwed with the
mass transit infrastructure in that city.

------
ohwello
Uber is roughly breaking even in the US:
[https://www.google.com/amp/www.breitbart.com/california/2016...](https://www.google.com/amp/www.breitbart.com/california/2016/08/26/uber-
losing-money-rate-2-4b-per-year/amp/?client=ms-android-verizon)

Anyone hoping Uber is going to run out of VC money and lose favor after being
forced to raise prices in cities where it is already popular is going to be
sorely disappointed. Uber is profitable in those cities. The more plausible
failure scenario is that it doesn't succeed in new markets and therefore ends
up being worth less than its current valuation.

------
dnautics
Maybe public transit officials are undermining public transit? In singapore,
one can get across the island for ~75c in a vehicle that is fast, clean,
efficient, and almost never delayed.

Maybe it’s time to quit discussing public transit officials and bureaucracies
as though they were improving the world in a permanent way, and as though they
will necessarily make cities better for everyone. We already know that’s
hasn't been true.

------
robotcookies
Writer claims "I am constantly told that Uber will make transit obsolete."

Who exactly are the people telling this writer that Uber will make transit
obsolete? I live in a city where public transportation is very popular and
have not once, ever heard this.

The reality is public transit use is surging in popularity. Public ridership
is up 39% since 1995 (you know, when most people did not have internet or
smartphones). Young people flock to cities with good public transit. And while
I've never once heard someone say "Uber will make public transit obsolete", I
have heard many people say they chose a city because it had good public
transit.

~~~
briandear
So people would move to a boring city with great public transit?

~~~
douche
If there are good jobs there, people will move to just about anywhere, transit
or no, _boring_ or not.

------
dpflan
Begin rambling brainstorm: I am curious about transport efficiency comparisons
of trains/rail versus automobiles versus buses. Public sectors can miss out on
interest in investment in infrastructure as Uber/ride-sharing is seen as an
acceptable substitute good for public transit. But once a private entity has
autonomous vehicles and even more efficient system, cities could tax the
private entities for use of their transit infrastructure, e.g. roads. Could
that mean then once private companies dominate the transportation market and
raises prices, that cities then have the final card to play to either allow a
company to be used in their city or not? Then they can create more efficient
public systems or subsidized ride-sharing? Sure, citizens may be upset if they
don't have Uber/riding sharing because of public sector decisions, but Uber
would be upset about not getting revenue.

I am just curious about others' thoughts about the big picture. Are cities
doomed to privatized transportation and further inequality creation?

~~~
maverick_iceman
Why privatized transportation would necessarily be a bad thing if it provides
fast, comfortable journeys at a reasonable price? Of course if you're
ideologically opposed to it then there's no point in discussing.

~~~
erispoe
It's not a question of private vs public. It's a question of space efficiency.
A single rail line can transport 20 times more than a freeway lane (i.e.
without street lights) Rail transit is vastly more space efficient than
individual vehicles, autonomous or not.

Japan has private rail transit for instance. Property rights in the US would
make it very difficult for a private operator to actually build rail transit.
Japan's private system also works because transit operators are also real
estate developers and can cash in on the land they serve.

~~~
closeparen
> A single rail line can transport 20 times more than a freeway lane

It can do that because its riders are forced into miserably packed standing
room.

Private vehicle transport can also be much denser if we give up such
requirements as "sitting" and "personal space." You could pack, like, 20
people into a Camry and it'd still be far more pleasant than BART between
5-10am or 4-9pm. Of course, some of them would be in the trunk and others tied
to the roof rack.

~~~
erispoe
Sitting might be a requirement for you, and it's fine, but should also be
willing to pay the price for it, i.e. live in a suburb that can accommodate
your preferences. You cannot live in a dense city rich in amenities and expect
to be sitting all the time, it just doesn't work geometrically. In many cities
(granted, not San Francisco), people happily stand in public transit for the
dozens of minutes they have to spend there, and have satisfied with their
experience. Go to Zürich for instance, you'll see bankers riding the S-Bahn
when they could afford a car.

~~~
closeparen
>t just doesn't work geometrically

Yes it does! I UberPool to work quite a bit, and have not poofed out of
existence by participating in a geometric contradiction. You are claiming that
we should ban something that currently works; "it doesn't work" is nonsensical
as a supporting argument.

>people happily stand in public transit for the dozens of minutes they have to
spend there, and have satisfied with their experience.

In many places, people happily go without basic medical care, electricity, or
indoor plumbing. All of these things are terribly expensive and somewhat
environmentally damaging, people who lack them are still happy, so... let's
ban electricity?

~~~
dbdr
I think the idea is that it only works if few enough people use it. It is
(geometrically) impossible for most people to travel by car in cities.

------
Alex3917
> Even pro-transit politicians and officials have begun to see ride-hailing
> services as an acceptable substitute for public transit. As a result, cities
> across the country are making important decisions about transportation that
> treat 10-year-old companies as fixed variables for the decades to come.

The 2nd avenue subway is going to take tens of billions of dollars and several
decades to complete. Why shouldn't the possibility of self-driving cars be
taken into account when making these sorts of billion-dollar multi-decade
planning decisions?

------
smsm42
I call bullshit on the premise that Uber is undermining public transit. A lot
of places have had crappy public transit and crappy taxi service long before
Uber showed up. A lot of places will continue to have it. Blaming it on Uber
because it's there is lazy and unfair.

> But much of the confusion arises because people sincerely don’t understand
> how narrow the range of opportunities is for ride-sourcing to improve on
> fixed route transit’s efficiency.

As if I cared about improving abstract "efficiency". I care about being able
to get a ride within 5 minutes at any point in the city. Whether or not that
improves some abstract metric invented for completely other reasons carries no
importance to me.

> We know Uber is unprofitable, which means its prices are unsustainable.

No it actually doesn't mean that. Profitability has other dimensions than
consumer prices, such as investments, capital costs, etc.

> Uber’s behavior often looks like an intentional effort to undermine
> competitors and thus reduce customer choice

I haven't seen any behavior aimed to reduce customer choice. The only people
trying to reduce the customer choice are those inventing reasons to ban Uber
(and similar service), often at explicit prompting and for direct benefit of
incumbent stakeholders.

> no doubting the value of these companies in the lives of fortunate people
> who can afford to use their services routinely

Oh, those fatcats that can afford to shell out whole $9 for a ride! Who cares
about those, they probably each own a park of helicopters anyway.

> and many welcome regulation precisely to plug that gap.

Which regulation, to do what? No mention of it. Why bother? Of course
regulation is good and no regulation is bad. Terrible article, full of FUD and
calls to "do something", without bothering to outline what and for what
purpose.

------
iterrogo
For those comparing the cost of public transit to Uber don't forget to keep in
mind that Uber is also subsidized by the government. They are not paying 100%
of the cost of the roads and other infrastructure they use.

~~~
briandear
Nope. Gasoline taxes pay for roads. Vehicle registration taxes pay for even
more services from the government. Income taxes on earnings pays for some
things as well.

However city buses are tax subsidized. Why not boost the fare to actually
cover the costs? Cities buses are driving on subsidized roads -- their fuel,
vehicles, maintenance and marketing is tax subsidized. They even have special
lanes built just for them -- paid for involuntary by people who are opposed to
such things. Uber is paid for entirely by those that chose to pay for it,
which is how it should be.

Why should I pay for city buses I won't ride? Why shouldn't the people riding
the bus pay for it?

~~~
ufo
Gasoline taxes do not currently cover highway maintenance costs:
[http://taxfoundation.org/article/gasoline-taxes-and-tolls-
pa...](http://taxfoundation.org/article/gasoline-taxes-and-tolls-pay-only-
third-state-local-road-spending)

As for buses, it is a good thing if they are cheaper than cars. Encouraging
public transport use is good for the environment, for people who cannot afford
to own a car and also reduces congestion in the streets.

By your argument we should also have a sizeable congestion tax for driving a
car during peak hours as well as a substantially larger gas tax.

------
nameisu
ube is undercutting everyone now and when traditional transport systems become
bankrupt they will keep increase prices

~~~
caconym_
Don't forget that they're going to save a lot of money as soon as they can cut
all those expensive human drivers out of the loop.

------
ChuckMcM
Interesting thesis (that city planners will reallocate tax dollars assuming
Uber and other ride sharing services will pick up the slack) but I don't know
if I buy it.

I'm fascinated by the various company buses in the Bay Area. If you look at
the passengers they carry they take a significant number of cars off the road.
And even though they are economically inefficient (every company has their own
set of fixed costs) there is no effort to create a public/private partnership
that would meet the needs of companies and urban planners with less cost.

------
jackvalentine
I was talking about this with a friend last night. We (Australia) get annoyed
when the Italians dump a bunch of below-cost tomatoes on to the market and
slap them with penalties but don't seem to give a damn when Silicon Valley
dumps a bunch of below-cost taxis on to that market.

~~~
douche
If your tomatos were expensive, dirty, and three-quarters rotten, and the
Italians start selling better, cheaper tomatos, are you going to be upset, or
rejoice?

Depends on whether you are invested in providing terrible, expensive, mostly
rotten tomatos.

~~~
jackvalentine
Taking the long term view though (and referring back to this article) we would
rejoice initially, then realise our folly as the cheap tomatos destroy local
industry and alternatives only to inevitably have to put up their prices.

------
cmurf
What happens if a city decides to buy, or even build, their own autonomous
vehicular fleet as a replacement for aging public transit? And isn't this
inevitable anyway?

------
pbreit
Actual headline: "Sounding the Alarm about Uber’s Impacts on Transit, and on
Cities"

Current HN headline: "Uber's predatory pricing is undermining public transit
and density"

The article barely mentions predatory pricing.

It also pins much on whether or not Uber is profitable, citing conflicting
reports. But at 30% take rates it's pretty easy to see that it would be quite
profitable on a gross margin basis.

------
briandear
Public transit isn't profitable either. It's heavily subsidized by the
taxpayer, so the author's logic isn't intellectually honest. Look at Amtrak as
a good example. Or the MTA in New York.

Uber is subsidized by private investors, public transport is subsidized by
everyone -- whether they want, need or use it or not.

~~~
makomk
No, the author's logic is good - the investors will expect to make that money
back through a future monopoly, and proposals for replacing public transport
with Uber often also include similar taxpayer subsides on top too.

~~~
maverick_iceman
You have antitrust laws to deal with any monopoly.

------
mgalka
Seems weird to question Uber's sustainabiliy based on it's costs being too
high. If it stopped investing in growth, I'm not rven sure it would have any
costs. It's just a routing app that earns a cut from the drivers.

~~~
makomk
Of course it would have costs. It'd have the cost of IT and management,
software maintenance, PR, support and of course drivers and vehicles. One of
the fundamental problems of Uber is that they cannot be cost-competitive
either on the driver and vehicle side or on the corporate side because they're
less efficient than their competitors at both:
[http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/12/can-uber-ever-
deliver...](http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/12/can-uber-ever-deliver-part-
two-understanding-ubers-uncompetitive-costs.html)

------
ryan_j_naughton
The unsustainable pricing point overlooks how driverless vehicles will drive
the cost of door to door transit to almost 0 (especially as cars go electric
and solar brings extremely cheap power).

While it will bring many ills (e.g. increased obesity due to cheap door to
door transit, more spread out cities), let's not delude ourselves with this
article's misguided rhetoric -- mass transit will be more affordable and
accessible than ever in history to the masses.

This article aims to treat the car sharing as ceteris paribus (all else equal)
when in the current state of exponential change, it is anything but.

~~~
azakai
Possibly, but fully driverless cars in urban areas are likely decades away
(unlike driverless trucks or driving assisting cars, which will arrive
sooner).

And electric is good, but there are some issues that will take more time to
sort out, like charge times.

It's true improvements will arrive, but they add another set of uncertainties
for urban planners.

~~~
stale2002
It is not decades. It is 4 years.

Every self driving car company is aiming for 2020 for mass consumer release.

------
devereaux
If you like to be so generous and open hearted, and genuinely believe that
most people are just like you, why exactly would you oppose crowfunded
services?

Because I think it put in plain sight that no, most people do not want that. I
for one do not want to ride next to people who can physically harm me. I would
love a "club" model for public transportation where members who don't play
nice could be excluded from this club, and which would only use members money
instead of subsidies.

TLDR: do what you want with your money, I'll do what I want with mine. We will
belong to different clubs providing different public transportation. Just
don't force me to join your club by forbidding mine.

(edit: downvote is not for indicating disapproval in case I hurt your feelz.
If you believe I am wrong, please explain how and why)

~~~
dang
Please don't go on about downvotes. This site has multiple rules against that
([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)),
and it takes discussions off topic (as per the replies below).

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13198727](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13198727)
and marked it off-topic.

------
wheelerwj
> have potentially unsafe run ins with the mentally ill.

while i understand your point, it's not really fair. you can have potentially
unsafe run-ins with the mentally sane just as easily. you can also have
potentially unsafe run-ins with the mentally ill while in a Lyft or Uber.

You are trying to say thay you want a quiet, peaceful, possibly even restful
commute because you want to be focused at work. But that's not what you are
actually typing.

~~~
Spooky23
You can also get attacked by a pack of rabid dogs. It's just less likely.

"Mentally ill" is a deflection that waters down the statistics. People with a
combination of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and substance abuse problems
are more likely -- I believe 5-7x more to engage in violent behavior.

I worked in a central business district (not SFO) in a large office building
where I'm personally aware of at least a dozen muggings and a half dozen
attempted rapes by homeless people who turned out to be suffering from that
combo. The company hired valets and provided escorts to employees, particular
female employees to parking and mass transit. Eventually a change in local
administration brought a police crackdown that resoled the problem.

That's not to say that all homeless people or people struggling with various
maladies are all bad. But they do present a higher risk, and it's not
unreasonable for people to want to keep a wide berth.

~~~
Fricken
I'm able bodied, but like you and many other commenters here, I'm also a
coward. I don't buy this 'home of the brave' crap, and like you I agree that
cowardice is reasonable, and having more cowards makes us better as a society
and a nation.

It's good that there are lots of elderly, disabled, and single mothers who
have no option but to use public transit. It makes me feel good inside that if
something ever goes wrong, I can run away faster than all of them. Not that I
would ever use public transit. I like that America has a system for me, and a
separate system for everything that I'm afraid of. It's what our grandfathers
fought and died for.

~~~
Spooky23
Until two years ago, I rode the city bus every day and honestly preferred it.

Personally, I don't see it as "us vs. them". But I don't think that true
advocacy is creating situations where otherwise reasonable people feel that
way.

------
gigatexal
Lol @ predatory pricing. Surge pricing works in the same way that efficient
markets do. When the road conditions are crazy and there's an imbalance in the
number of drivers and the number of riders seeking drivers the price shoots
up. The higher prices incentivize drivers to take the risk for the reward
(compensation). This is simple economics.

~~~
swyman
You didn't even read the article. The predatory pricing they're talking about
is running competition out of business by selling below cost until they have a
monopoly.

~~~
gigatexal
Kroger is doing this too. To stay relevant and increase marketshare they're
selling organic produce at a loss. Let's villify them too.

~~~
int_19h
Yes, let's! Dumping to undermine competitors is one of the oldest tricks in
the book, and it's always dirty - there's no way the company is going to
sustain such prices long term, and they'll want to recoup losses, so once
competitors are driven out, the prices inevitably end up being higher than
what those competitors offered before.

------
stale2002
It is no surprise to me that big government hates competition.

~~~
kjbflsudfb
Are municipalities considered "big government"?

~~~
douche
Cities like New York, LA, Boston, DC, SF have bigger governments than many
states, and even larger than some countries.

