
Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver - prostoalex
https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/31/ubers-transit-offering-just-went-live-in-denver/
======
benatkin
This means opening Google Maps less, and opening the Uber app more. The
ability of Google Maps to show an estimated Uber price and provide a link to
the Uber app is nice for Uber but it's better for Uber to have users opening
their own app than to have a tiny feature in another company's app.

They might be providing walking directions in the future, I think. And once
it's a fully-fledged map app, having it track your location outside of the
ride has the same justification as Google.

Wow, I hadn't noticed but they got rid of that feature. Perhaps they'll
reinstate it at some point. [https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/29/16219542/uber-
location-tr...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/29/16219542/uber-location-
tracking-app-ios-android-privacy)

~~~
bradleyjg
> This means opening Google Maps less, and opening the Uber app more.

I have both installed on my phone. What possible reason could I have for
picking the uber one to open up if I'm looking to take public transportation?
Is it better in any way whatsoever?

~~~
roel_v
The goal is to let the Uber app do (or at least suggest) the mode choice for
you. So instead of thinking 'hmm, I'll use PT, now I need to open app XYZ',
you could be 'I want to go from point A to point B. Let me open the Uber app
to check my options.' And those options would include the travel times and
costs of all available modes.

Basically, the goal is to have one 'transport' app, and that would be the Uber
app. Removing mental overhead - never having to think about what app you want
to open (I realize how ridiculous it sounds to call that 'mental overhead',
but let's just pretend that any non-zero cost is equal and an inefficiency).

Of course this could only happen if the Uber app has all functionality the
Google Maps app has, and every bit as good, and also all functionality of all
local public transport apps (like, it would have to have up to date
information on the exact current location and time of the trains on the route
you're looking at, as some PT apps do). This is a huge, dare I say it
impossible task. But still, baby steps and all.

~~~
erklik
> Of course this could only happen if the Uber app has all functionality the
> Google Maps app has, and every bit as good,

Something that I have found is Uber doesn't seem to be as good as Google Maps
doing routing between two people. Google has better traffic management and
having routes that are shorter and faster. Uber seems to sometimes take a much
longer route. Anecdote, of course but yeah, IMO, they have a long while to go
yet.

~~~
Tempest1981
So the Uber drivers will, in turn, be using Google maps. Or Waze.

------
o10449366
I would love to see this come to more cities. I live in a major north American
city where public transportation is run by the local government. They have an
official transportation app, but it's a buggy mess that's just a wrapper for
the phone browser. It features "real time" (their words) route tracking, but
as I quickly found out, the busses that move along the map aren't actually
representative of the real busses and their locations (e.g. GPS tracking).
Instead, their location and arrival estimates are based entirely on where they
_should_ be at that time under ideal conditions, making them entirely useless
at rush hour and in inclimate weather conditions (which is precisely when
people rely on them the most).

As a result, catching the bus is a complete guessing game every day. There are
three possible outcomes:

1) The bus arrives 5-10 minutes early and doesn't wait around, so you have to
get to your stop at least 15 minutes early.

2) The bus is late (the typical scenario), so you spend 15-60+ minutes
convincing yourself you aren't crazy and the bus didn't pass before your eyes
while wondering how long you can continue standing outside before getting
frostbite.

3) You spend 15-30 minutes standing around in scenario (2) above before
getting an "alert" from the app that your route has been cancelled. These late
alerts ensure that even if you manage to find a different route to take you to
your destination, you'll have to repeat the guessing game above and you'll
definitely be late.

Uber and Lyft have numerous problems still, but as far as I'm concerned their
disruption of the transportation industry has been long overdue. My local
government refuses to expose the transportation API, so even if there was a
motivated individual who wanted to make a better app they wouldn't have access
to the information they needed. I can't wait for more competition in this
space.

~~~
Traster
I don't know why, but this bad practice seems to be in place in so many
places. Live tracking seems to be almost uniformly code for Timetable tracking
in public transit. In the UK I can stand and watch the live information for
the train departing from Waterloo - it'll say the train is on-time for leaving
at 5:30. I can go into their own app, identify the physical train that is
going to terminate at waterloo and become my train and find out that it left
the last station 20 minutes late. Clearly the system is driven by timetables
which are then modified by manual entries rather than some actual underlying
representation of the trains (which clearly must exist for them to be able to
manage their fleet of trains).

~~~
martinald
? UK Network Rail APIs are the probably the best I've seen. There is ~10,000
real time monitoring sensors on the network. Check out realtimetrains.co.uk
for example, which is driven by the STOMP feed from NR (which sends thousands
of requests per second on real time location and status of each and every
train in the UK).

Regarding your point on outbound trains, often if a train is running late
inbound they will have another one take over the duties, so trying to identify
it isn't a perfect system for predicting.

~~~
IanCal
The background data may be great, but I regularly experience standing at a
station telling me the train is on time when it is already late (after the
point the train should have left).

------
deanCommie
When I heard Uber was getting into Transit I imagined something more
disruptive than just aggregation of different transportation types.

Consider: Public bus systems are constrained to fixed schedules and stops for
obvious reasons. Neither apply in a Mobile App.

Uber could sign up drivers who own mini-vans or large buses, and dynamically
generate "bus routes" using on key waypoints, and both ongoing and forecasted
demand (based on historical data).

As a consumer, the experience is still 1) Pick a destination

2) Go to the spot where Uber asks you to go (Which already happens in places
like Airports, or if you use Uber Pool which asks you to move a little closer
to the route to decrease driving time

3) Get in the uber

4) Get off at a spot when the app/driver tells you which isn't exactly at your
destination but close

All for a much much lower price

Meanwhile, as a driver, the experience is: 1) Follow the Uber app's navigation
that tells you where your next 'Stop' is. 2) Drive around in a circle that
changes throughout the day.

It's a hard problem to solve and get perfect but it would actually justify
improving an existing public service.

~~~
uber-employee
Uber is already doing buses in LatAm and MENA. Most North American cities
(except NYC really) just don’t have the density to make the unit economics
work for a marketplace with buses. Also, Express POOL (shared ride with
walking in order to make the trip more efficient) is already dirt cheap.

------
zhoujianfu
I assume they (and/or lyft and google maps) will eventually do what google
maps should already have in my opinion, a final option next to
car/walking/bike/transit/taxi: "multi-modal".

A lot of times the fastest way to get somewhere in LA is actually: walk to a
scooter, scoot to the train, train to the closest stop, then uber to your
final destination.

But that isn't shown automatically and it's a lot of work to calculate it
yourself.

~~~
kcorbitt
I use Citymapper for this; have for years
([https://citymapper.com/](https://citymapper.com/)). It does exactly what
you're asking for. I too am surprised that Google hasn't eaten their lunch by
baking this into Google Maps.

~~~
zhoujianfu
Oh, I hadn’t seen that! But hmm, it doesn’t seem to have jump bikes/scooters,
Lyft scooters, bird, or lime in the scooters section, and again there’s no
multi-mode.. it just shows walking/biking/Uber/public transit but not a
combination of them. It does have a jet pack option which is nice and forward
thinking! :)

~~~
kcorbitt
I get multi-mode suggestions all the time, although the precise mix of options
it suggests does depend on the points you're looking to travel between.

Not sure about their scooter coverage though; I don't use it for that.

------
drivers99
/r/denver discussion:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/alsm56/uber_transit...](https://old.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/alsm56/uber_transit_just_went_live_in_denver/)

RTD already has their own app for buying tickets. Transit app (or google maps)
work well for planning trips. You can’t even actually buy a ticket yet on the
Uber app.

> Uber is aiming to increase efficiency, enhance the experience and increase
> equity and accessibility

What does that mean?

~~~
eeeeeeeeeeeee
I'm a Denver resident and use the train anytime I go to the airport (union
station -> DIA). It's probably the easiest fair they do, flat rate. The RTD
app is ATROCIOUS -- my first attempt I was double billed. Also, it's
functionally worse than a paper ticket because you have to constantly take
your phone out of your pocket and open up the RTD app to show the guard. With
a paper ticket, you can simply leave the ticket on your seat. I don't even
bother anymore, I simply use the physical kiosks at the station. I've never
had to wait for a machine, even during the holidays.

I'm sure RTD knows they cannot compete with Uber or any other large company on
app quality. So if RTD cannot even handle a simple one-way fair, it's no
wonder they're trying to partner with Uber to handle complex fairs that
combine walking, buses, trams, and trains.

Also, as others have said, Google Maps does some of this integration already,
but it sounds like Uber might be taking over the ticket purchasing part as
well? Which does sound nice.

~~~
Symbiote
> you have to constantly take your phone out of your pocket and open up the
> RTD app to show the guard

How often are you checked!?

I've only used a couple of trains in the USA, but in Europe it would be very
unusual to be checked more than once on any journey. Twice can happen on long
journeys if the guard changes.

Usually there's either no check, or only a check by machine like a ticket
gate.

------
max76
So, does this just tell you which public transit options you have available,
with plans for ticket purchasing in the future? I don't see why any city would
want to give uber a piece of their transit fare revenue. Google and Apple both
provide great information about navigating public transit as a funnel for new
users, and they do it as a free service.

------
nihonde
I know it’s tiresome to talk about how Japan lives in the future, but this
kind of thing (and more) has been available in Japan in apps like Yahoo!
Transit for years: [https://transit.yahoo.co.jp](https://transit.yahoo.co.jp)

------
andy_ppp
I would love them to add proper hacker routes where you can get from A to B
via the best route and include an Uber and traffic into the mix, optimising
for the shortest journey and ordering Uber’s automatically as I leave public
transport.

------
fzn
This website has lately been totally unusable, due to the dark-ux workflow at
"[https://guce.oath.com/collectConsent/partners/vendors"..](https://guce.oath.com/collectConsent/partners/vendors"..).
I hope they're conscious of the traffic they lose. There's no obvious way to
dismiss/slip through and be sure that consent has not been given to third-
party data collection. Just saying, not the first time I stumble on that
f*ckery. Schade!

------
mlthoughts2018
Seems like a data play. You’ll likely enable location in the Uber app, so now
they’ll get your location passively when you’re just searching public transit
routes.

Turn that around and resell the location data to other data aggregating
businesses. Or use it in-house to augment forecasting or pricing models.

Seems slimey to me. Public funds should be providing app access for this sort
of thing, with audits to demonstrate personal data is not collected.

Really wish it was more popular to lock down privacy options in phones to make
it so this sort of thing is not profitable for companies like this.

~~~
max76
The cities could actually charge for access to an api with this data. It would
be a new revenue stream for transportation departments and allow for front end
viewing to be open to the free market. I'd gladly pay for an app that
consisted of OSM with a transit data layer and a strict privacy policy.

I'd be okay requesting the entire map of a region from the front end service
to cache and doing the computation with geolocation on my local device.

~~~
jlarocco
Denver RTD already does this: [http://www.rtd-
denver.com/Developer.shtml](http://www.rtd-denver.com/Developer.shtml)

And they have an app for checking bus locations and buying tickets, and it's
free.

I think the API is great for enabling integrations, but I really hope they
keep their existing apps. There's no reason end users shouldn't be able to get
the data directly from RTD, and they definitely shouldn't be forced into using
a sleazy company like Uber.

------
duxup
I'm worried about tying public transpiration to companies that aren't / don't
know if they're at all profitable.

~~~
shereadsthenews
You should be much more concerned about tying transportation to a company that
_is_ profitable. The point of public transportation is to provide an external
benefit. Uber will just interpose itself and extract rents.

~~~
duxup
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying / the benefit of using a company
that is not profitable...

~~~
albedoa
There is no mention of such a benefit in the comment you are replying to. The
point is that the qualifiers you applied in your original comment should be
less worrisome than their opposites, which is not to say that they shouldn't
be worrisome.

~~~
duxup
Why would they be less worrisome?

~~~
albedoa
Because those companies would be in less of a position to have the effects
described in the original reply. I would like to help you more, but I don’t
know what is confusing.

------
gumby
If shorter rides are a better deal ($/km) for Uber and the drivers I can see a
win in using uber to/from transit stations, especially as in the USA train
stations and the like tend to be built _away_ from where people actually want
to be. And transit lines in the USA interconnect poorly (the Bay Area is an
extreme example but not the only case).

For example using Uber from my house to Caltrain and from the SF Caltrain to
my friend's house would be a convenient single booking.

OTOH I am not sure it's true that short trips are more profitable (for Uber
_or_ drivers) in which case this is presumably a PR effort.

------
foobandit
This would be very useful if they could automatically solve the "last mile"
problem for transit. For example, if I can make a single order from home to
work, involving both Uber for the short distance from home to the train, and
then a train ticket to work, then this could add some value.

------
lazybreather
Out of context. Why can't I read techcrunch articles on HN app? They load for
the first few seconds and disappear. My Firefox app has ublock origin. Does
that effect viewing on HN app as well?

------
mattsfrey
Uber has a very large investment in mapping technology and would surely like
to expand its applicability, this could very well be the first push to start
competing with google maps.

------
dlbucci
I thought this would be useful for purchasing tickets, since I don't always
have exact change when I don't have a pass, but that's not available yet...

------
simplecomplex
Getting into the Municipal ticketing racket won't dig Uber out of their
massive money pit.

~~~
googlemike
What do you mean "Municipal ticketing racket"? Did you read the article?

~~~
simplecomplex
Yeah. You don't think that's a goal? Uber desperately needs to show additional
revenue streams as the (un)reality of self-driving cars and food delivery sets
in. Muni tickets is big business. Look at Cubic Transportation Systems.

> Initially, the ability to purchase tickets via the Uber app won’t be
> available, but it’s on the horizon. The in-app ticketing portion, in
> partnership with Masabi, will be available in the coming weeks, Reich said.

~~~
googlemike
This seems far less like a revenue stream and far more of a way to get people
to use Google Maps less. I am sure they have data showing that very many Uber
trips in most major American cities starts with a comparison against local
public transit.

------
chrischen
How is this better than having something like a clipper card (nfc transit
card)?

------
ape4
Slightly off topic. I took a Uber ride recently that took the worse route. It
went thru many small streets that were full of snow. Cars could not pass each
other. They had to slow down for safely. Maybe its a good shortcut in the
summer.

------
Angostura
I think I’ll continue to use the excellent Citymapper

------
baby
Oh my, this is would be a game changer for the US!

------
lawrenceyan
It's like Google Maps but perhaps slightly inferior in quality. Smart, I like
the way Uber thinks. They should add Apple Maps integration next in order to
improve their overall map fidelity.

