
Show HN: Ulaxi calculates whether UberX, Lyft, or Taxi is best for your trip - xivzgrev
http://stenographer-arithmetic-82316.bitballoon.com/
======
peterwwillis
Some things I find interesting after accidentally mapping from my work to SF:

    
    
      Your trip is 2812.3 miles and will take 2455.1 minutes.
    

1.7 days? I found it hard to believe it would only take two days to drive the
width of the country, but other maps/sources show the same time, minus breaks
of course.

    
    
      Uber rate: $4957.94
      Lyft rate: $6328.86
      Taxi rate: $9087.01
    

For 21 miles per gallon using premium (my car; ugh), the cost of a one-way
trip driving yourself is $561. If ownership cost of the vehicles is assumed
the same, the hourly rate for your driver is almost $108/hour (though i'm sure
there's some taxi-specific costs i'm missing).

It really makes a striking case for how inefficient hired transit can be. But
the above are transit options for a single passenger that can happen at any
time or schedule. What about mass-transit options?

A Greyhound bus ticket from Baltimore to SF is only $244 and two days, 15
hours. There are five transfers.

An Amtrak train ticket from Baltimore to SF is only $318, and three days, 5
hours. There are three transfers.

And a one-way Delta flight from BWI to SFO is $171, and 10 hours 49 minutes.
There is one transfer.

~~~
a-priori
The IRS calculates that the cost per mile to operate a car in 2014 is, on
average, $0.56 per mile. This factors in the fixed (amortized cost to buy a
car) and variable (gas, maintenance) costs.

Based on that, the cost to drive 2812.3 miles one way is actually $1574.89.

[http://www.irs.gov/2014-Standard-Mileage-Rates-for-
Business,...](http://www.irs.gov/2014-Standard-Mileage-Rates-for-
Business,-Medical-and-Moving-Announced)

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xivzgrev
Got a new URL up! I can't change the URL in the original posting :(.

[http://stenographer-arithmetic-82316.bitballoon.com/](http://stenographer-
arithmetic-82316.bitballoon.com/)

~~~
dang
Thanks. We changed it.

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xivzgrev
This is my first program in a decade - programmed a bunch in high school but
fell away in college / post college.

Eager for feedback on UX & code structure :).

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nlh
Thanks for sharing -- happy to offer some "instant feedback":

* Alert windows are jarring. My first instinct when I saw it was "ok, thanks for telling me who to take, but why are you telling me this in a vacuum?" \-- and THEN I saw that you give a comparison. I'd skip the alert window entirely -- just show the list and at the top (or highlight, etc.) show the winner.

* It would be SUPER cool if you could calculate whether Surge Pricing / Happy Hour is in effect so the user doesn't have to manually make the choice in the drop-down. No idea if that's possible but the less work you have to make the user do, the better.

I'll keep playing around and edit with more thoughts...

~~~
xivzgrev
Thanks for feedback! It's pretty clear people don't like the alert window, so
I'll remove that.

What I liked about the alert window is that it displayed results, on same page
without needing to scroll, on a mobile device.

Would you be OK with scrolling down to the see the results?

Re: your second idea, that's definitely come up a lot. They don't have API so
it requires a hack around. Are there phone apps out there that read the status
from another app? I'm not really thinking of any at moment, but maybe if an
app could use the phone to open another app and then read from the screen,
that could work...

~~~
jacalata
Uber has a mobile website - you could either scrape the site (probably much
easier than trying to scrape an app) or capture the traffic and build your own
kind of API. There's a service called gargl that says they do that kind of
thing, although I haven't got around to looking at them yet.

~~~
xivzgrev
Hm interesting! I had not heard of gargl - may check it out. This is a hard
feature to implement without their permission. There is a benefit to Uber /
Lyft, if there was a direct link to their apps.

Stack overflow q said exactly same thing -
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11878609/is-it-
possible-t...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11878609/is-it-possible-to-
scrape-from-a-mobile-app-in-real-time)

------
atom-morgan
Great work. It does exactly what it says it does and helped me validate the
choice I made a few weeks ago. I picked Uber and according to your app, it's
the cheapest option for that route. Going forward, I'll probably use this. As
for feedback.

First, I'd kill the alert message. You show the pricing by company anyways.
Maybe highlight the cheapest option but I wouldn't use an alert window for it.

Second, I'd make changes to the background image. There's nothing wrong with
the image at all, it's just that a tiled background like that seems a little
dated to me.

Anything more than this feedback and I'd feel like I'm completely changing
your design, not helping to improve it.

~~~
xivzgrev
Thanks for feedback! It's pretty clear people don't like the alert window, so
I'll remove that.

What I liked about the alert window is that it displayed results, on same page
without needing to scroll, on a mobile device. Is there a way I could
hide/unhide dev elements to make the inputs disappear and results appear in
their place? Or what were you imagining?

I agree tiled is dated - I wanted to launch something rather quickly so this
feedback is great to help prioritize what tweaks to make.

~~~
atom-morgan
Absolutely. You may end up doing something else but you could definitely
hide/unhide an element to show your results. Check this out as an example:
[http://jsfiddle.net/atommorgan/8Fjsq/](http://jsfiddle.net/atommorgan/8Fjsq/)

~~~
xivzgrev
Exactly what I imagined - thanks for the link!

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sguha
Are you taking into account the new Lyft pricing from last week?
[http://www.lyft.me/help?article=1263247](http://www.lyft.me/help?article=1263247).
Comparing it to the UberX rates [https://www.uber.com/cities/san-
francisco](https://www.uber.com/cities/san-francisco), it seems like Lyft
should be always $0.50 more (when there is no happy hour/surge), unless I'm
missing something.

~~~
sguha
I realized I could just look at the JS and I can answer my own question...so
yes your Lyft rates need updating :). Cost per minute is now 0.3 and cost per
mile is 1.5

[http://www.lyft.me/help?article=1263247](http://www.lyft.me/help?article=1263247)

~~~
xivzgrev
Wow that was a huge drop on the mileage side. No I was not aware of that - I
began coding this last week of March so missed this update. Thanks!

~~~
sguha
Looks like Uber adds $1 to all rides now if you want to update your fare
calculations [http://blog.uber.com/saferides](http://blog.uber.com/saferides)

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hert
Are the rates displayed invalid when routing outside of the San Francisco
area? I see the callout, but it still seems to work..

~~~
gkoberger
Each city has different prices and availability. I assume this will work for
anywhere, but will use SF prices.

~~~
xivzgrev
That's exactly right - works anywhere Google Maps directions works, but just
applies SF rates.

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sfkaos
I was wishing for something like this just this weekend. I do my own search
through each of the apps every time I look for a ride. You should think about
turning this into an app.

~~~
xivzgrev
Thanks for the feedback, and glad to hear you'd like to use it!

I like the idea of turning into an app. That has its own learning curve, so I
did web app to test idea first.

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geuis
The pricing isn't quite accurate. During non peak times, its approximately
$9.50 using Uber from home to my office. The pricing was showing about $7.50.

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matiasb
CPU Limit Reached

You are seeing this page because website has reached CPU usage limit of the
server, and it was temporarily disabled.

~~~
xivzgrev
Dang! Well now I know the limits of that free service, which apparently is not
that much.

I'd be willing to pay for a more stable host - do you have any
recommendations?

~~~
miles_matthias
Is it a static site? Then bitballoon.

Dynamic? Heroku, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, DigitalOcean, AWS EC2, etc.

~~~
xivzgrev
Thanks for the tip!

Got the site on an alternative server. Not the prettiest url but does work!

[http://stenographer-arithmetic-82316.bitballoon.com/](http://stenographer-
arithmetic-82316.bitballoon.com/)

~~~
bobfunk
BitBalloon founder here, cool site!

You can change the URL to something nicer from the UI - just click "Edit Name"
and pick something like ulaxi.bitballoon.com :)

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egonschiele
I've taken a car home from work multiple times. These prices are accurate.
Good work!

~~~
xivzgrev
Thanks - glad to hear!

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rememberlenny
Server error.

~~~
xivzgrev
Alright got the site on an alternative server. Not the prettiest url but does
work!

[http://stenographer-arithmetic-82316.bitballoon.com/](http://stenographer-
arithmetic-82316.bitballoon.com/)

