> Sunday night, I flew into LAX from San Francisco and boarded a shuttle to the airport’s newish pickup spot for ground transportation just east of Terminal 1. I found myself standing amid an unhappy crowd of restless travelers who had been waiting as long as 30 minutes to be picked up by their Lyft drivers.
Isn't this because most cities have ridiculous rules that disadvantage Uber drivers while cabs are allowed to park out in front? They have no convenient very short term parking, instead they're sometimes made to wait on the side of the highway, which makes the ride more expensive. They also charge fees. LAX charges $4 per ride [0]
Isn't the fact that people use Uber proof that they provide some value? I think the point is to have an alternative to cabs that are highly variable as per the author's own admission.
Just to be clear, it's not pandering to taxis to do this. It's basically required.
Taxis are first in, first out. Someone leaves the airport and gets in the first available car.
Uber is like the bubble sort of queuing theory. It's random in, random out. A driver and a passenger are matched with no regard to the queue, then, if not specially managed, the driver occupies a spot until that passenger gets there. If anyone calls a car too early or is at the wrong place, they've just congested the system pretty badly. Total waiting time slows down.
I don't think that's true; Uber has a queue system for airports also where drivers are assigned a rider in the order they arrived at the airport. The issue is that the drivers in the queue are forced to wait somewhere far away, and can only drive to the pickup spot after they are assigned a ride.
So there are a few issues if you think about it. First, airports are large and people will order rides from all different parts of the terminal. Putting drivers at various points inside the terminal(s) complicates assignment.
Second, you can't...go up to a rideshare driver and hire them (as a ride share driver). You have to use the app. So having them physically available, though potentially decreasing some wait times, doesn't help most people who hire them. Taxis, on the other hand, you can just walk up to and hire. So having fixed locations for taxis scattered around the terminal makes more sense with the model.
Third, you have a priority ordering problem. Rideshare drivers are given rides in the order they arrived at the airport, but the location of their passengers varies. It's possible someone orders while they are walking through the terminal or when they already have their bags. This also relates to the large size of airports (as mentioned above). Taxis, on the other hand, are hired at the physical taxi and can leave immediately.
I think ridesharing companies could fix all of these problems by creating a 'taxi' mode in their apps where people could walk up to a set of waiting drivers and grab one, but they haven't done so.
Most airport roads predate Uber and often aren't physically designed to accommodate for the sorts of traffic volume they see after 20+ years in operation, so airports come up with all sorts of rules and compromises to try to avoid congestion problems at terminal doors. Some setup specialized waiting areas for Uber further out in the parking lot area, some have queueing systems, some just treat Uber as family pickups, some have dedicated Uber lanes, some share lanes with taxis, some are just completely dysfunctional and the driver just has to drive back around to avoid blocking traffic if they're there too early or it's too busy. It really depends on the airport.
> I think ridesharing companies could fix all of these problems by creating a 'taxi' mode
Uber actually offers this already in some places. Here in SF, I have the option of calling an actual taxi from the app, and I linked in another comment to a page about Uber's further interest in hailables. IIRC it also supports cash walk-ins in India, and it acquired Autocab in UK.
You're right that Uber & Lyft aren't the same as taxis at the airport (where cars and people both queue up and are matched FIFO).
They're the same as personal pickups, one car looking for one specific person.
There's no doubt it's an inefficient system. But it's bizarre that there are hundreds of meters of dedicated curb space for personal car pickups, but all of a sudden when rideshare companies came in the airports are pretending it's some huge inconvenience to the system and forcing them to meet up in the back of the parking garage a mile away.
Most airports I have been to in United States have a "cell phone waiting lot" where you're allowed to remain with your vehicle (if you leave a vehicle unattended, you'll get ticketed or towed). This originally cut down on people picking up their friends from arrivals just circling the airport while waiting, but they're pretty commonly used by taxi services nowadays.
Certainly Uber and Lyft provide value, but I personally have seen that value plummet in markets where the rides aren't subsidized by VC money.
I've been riding Uber since it was black only and done over text messages (pre-app). The prices now are insane comparatively. I got a car instead and it's cheaper to make my payment, garage it, and insure it than take even UberX everywhere I need to go.
In many cases, Uber is in the same ballpark as taxis these days. It still tends to be cheaper but I have definitely seen cases where it's about the same. Which was fairly obviously where things were going to end up as VC subsidies petered out.
And, yes, for most people--especially outside of city centers--owning a car is going to be cheaper than hiring a ride to go everywhere.
LAX also has the unfortunate problem of being terribly designed. The one way U-ring that goes around the terminals is to narrow for the volume of traffic with plenty of bottlenecks all around. Even with the rideshares removed, getting to the international terminal (at the apex of the U) from the start takes a good 15 - 20 minutes on a busy day just from people dropping off friends and family. It’s a complete boondoggle.
Also (at least locally) there is a big shortage of people actually driving for Uber/Lyft. The few recent times I've been able to get a driver they've all told me the same story--they'd rather be delivering for Uber Eats than driving for Uber. Apparently the money/work equation is better PLUS they get tips.
In LA it’s the worst of all worlds, taxis can’t come to the terminal anymore either. Unless you’re getting picked up by friends, you will be taking a bus to that parking lot and waiting.
John Wayne Airport sucks. Terrible transit access, and Lyft has been flakier in that area than hiking through the parkag garage then over a few blocks to get to a bus stop.
Flying into San Diego is a much better experience in comparison.
People use single-use unrecycleable plastic, unhealthy food and capsule coffee machines, all are unnessesary, net negative to society but enable lazyness and are a great business.
That's the point, that's why I don't go around commenting "he used soap too!", but somehow "But they offer value!" is a valid contribution to debate? Not just valid, but prevalent throughout HN?
LAX changed how ride sharing services worked in the late 2019, with a new program called LAXit.
It was HORRIBLE. A total shitshow. As someone who travelled a few times a months, it added 30-60 minutes to the time it took me to get home.
There's several articles written about how terrible it was. The only thing that saved them, ironically, was COIVD & the collapse of travel. When it comes back it's going to be a disaster all over again.
Yeah the experience in each airport varies. Some have a lot near by where drivers can sit and wait in a queue for passengers and some just say good luck but dont you dare sit in the loading zone.
If you are traveling to a new city/airport you never really know what you are going to get. Regardless waiting is normally better than getting into a taxi that will change you an unknown amount.
What is more convenient about Uber/Lyft than a traditional taxi? I use my smartphone to get a taxi, even without having to install a specific app or to create more accounts. It is an honest question; for context, I live in Europe in a place where the courts ruled Uber and Lyft are yet another taxi service and therefore should abide the same laws.
Exactly, the taxis monopolies are the only reason Uber/Lyft are less convenient than they could be.
There are legitimate concerns with Uber/Lyft putting more cars on the road, but I think that would flip once autonomous driving becomes viable. Then network capacity planning rules can be used to reduce total number of cars.
Uber and Lyft are the best examples of the VC cycle:
Disruptor comes along to stagnant industry. Pumps cash into growth, discounts get many people on board, crap service is made up for with liberal refunding by customer service. Push for profitability hits discounts, acquisition slows because it's no longer cheaper than the thing it was disrupting before, customer service stop refunding things and customers leave because they realise the service has pretty bad flaws. Incumbents have finally met the new table-stakes features to compete, disruptor isn't significantly better.
See also: takeaway deliveries, meal kits, buying books online, and pretty much anything else.
These cycles always look like they're going to be a 100% improvement, but always end up being a 10% improvement once everything settles down.
Sorry, but Uber is a 100% improvement service improvement over cabs in many areas.
I lived in Chicago for six years and not one single cab I took during the whole six years would accept a credit card, despite being obligated to do so. If I didn't have cash I was told that we could drive to an ATM or I could get out.
Not to mention that the drivers almost invariably talked on the phone the entire time. And while not the norm, I had half a dozen confrontations with cab drivers who were obviously trying to scam me with "broken meters" or obviously roundabout routes.
I haven't had a single bad experience with an uber or lyft. Most are unremarkable, which is fine. So 100% of my cab experiences in Chicago were bad and 100% of my uber/lfyt experiences have been fine or better.
Of course not everywhere is Chicago (though US cab companies generally seem to have miserable service). Tokyo taxis have world class service, and it is perhaps not a coincidence that Uber has only a tiny presence there.
> Tokyo taxis have world class service, and it is perhaps not a coincidence that Uber has only a tiny presence there
Funny you mention this. I actually had a bad taxi experience in Japan of all places: asked the hotel to call for one multiple times, 40 minutes later it never showed up, so I requested an Uber, and got a car in 5 minutes (this was in Kyoto, though, not Tokyo)
Can't agree more. Lately I've been taking taxis from the airport, since it's usually more convenient to just wait in line at the taxi stand than to play roulette with the apps. And oftentimes cheaper. But the last time I took a taxi the damn card reader didn't work and the driver made me feel like a criminal, and I had to download some app to pay via Apple Pay.
Their card reader probably worked fine. My theory is the cab driver prefers to use their own payment methods because they are “off the record” and they probably turn into cash in the drivers pocket much faster than using the one provided by the cab service.
> crap service is made up for with liberal refunding
Uber has crap service? I was under the impression the whole point of Uber becoming so ubiquitous as to become a verb was that you could actually get service at all in a timely fashion whereas cabs had a terrible reputation.
IMHO, if you're only looking at rides, you've got your consumer hat on and I think you're missing the big picture. Uber is still not done trying to eat the world so to speak. The food delivery vertical is one of its most well known growth markets, but it also has eyes on the actual hailable taxi market[0], buses/high capacity vehicles[1], deliveries/logistics market (uber direct[2], uber freight[3]), it's building up loyalty program strategies a la costco/amazon prime/visa (uber pass[4]), etc. Basically, anything that remotely involves wheels is game for Uber.
This thirst is what I think characterizes unicorns: Google started as a one trick pony with search, and now has maps, docs, android, GCP, Waymo and a million other things. Amazon was a just a book store and now it's basically synonymous with online shopping and cloud infrastructure services.
> Uber has crap service? I was under the impression the whole point of Uber becoming so ubiquitous as to become a verb was that you could actually get service at all in a timely fashion whereas cabs had a terrible reputation.
How quickly we forget. When I did traveling-consulting for a year and a half — a mistake — I heard horror stories from the quite recent past: for instance, the New York taxi driver who clearly wasn't supposed to be the one driving the cab and thus refused to take a credit card payment (as mandated by law) with the (working) credit card machine. Instead he demanded cash, and drove my colleague to an ATM against his will holding his luggage hostage. And the one time I took an actual taxicab home from LaGuardia — hoping to save the hassle of a pickup in the cold — my driver got pulled over for running a red light.
Yeah, Uber and Lyft are both sketch as heck, but they've got nothing on the world's taxis.
And that's compared to Taxis in the USA... anyone who has used a Taxi here in Mexico know how shady, unclean and terribly maintained they are. There are cars whose back seat is teared down and the foam is going out. Cars literally without seatbelts. Taxi drivers often REFUSE to use the Taxi meter and charge you whatever the heck they want (I had a taxi driver turn off the meter just when we were about to arrive to a destination).
Freaking Taxis are mafias, and the people that drive them are part of it. I consider them part of the problem, specially now that there is an alternative.
Uber, Didi and others may be a lot of things (over here I feel they became more expensive), but bad service they definitely don't have.
Uber also engage in mafioso tactics, I am sure all here can agree on this. The difference is where the impact is felt. It's great that for now, Uber can ensure a higher-class experience than what was available to most previously. However, the luster is already quickly coming off of Uber & co.
Have you recently had to supply Uber with your photo for "mask proof," before requesting service? Are you comfortable with all the grotesque data mining they're doing with that in the name of "health & safety?" Have you read about Uber's horrific data mining practices, privacy violations, and generally bad-faith actions they've undertaken against individuals and drivers?
In places like Mexico especially, these sorts of things should concern you immensely. Perhaps it's still worth it for you - however, perhaps it's worth considering the lifestyle you and other Uber users live, and considering whether living in densely populated & corrupt major metropolises is actually a good economic decision in the long-term. Without these horrific starting conditions, the point of Uber's existence in the first place is highly suspect.
Uber's advantage was the ease of using the app to find a ride, but in many places local cab companies got their own app to match the competition. In many cities there are lots of times where Uber's availability and pricing algorithms mean it is quicker & cheaper to use a local cab company instead. I moved out of London a few years ago but had already stopped using Uber as other companies were much better.
Food delivery is very low margin and companies have realised there is pretty much no money to be made here as an expensive middle man. So in many cities food delivery companies are creating their own food preparation businesses to try to make profit that way. Most of these markets are low margin and providing wheels alone isn't enough to pay for an expensive multi-national.
At least in my city, the taxi service had an "app" which theoretically allowed you to book a cab, but in reality, it was a crapshoot whether they would show up. It just put in a request to the dispatch but if nobody ever came to pick me up, calling the number just got me the same unhelpful dispatch.
This doesn't even get into the constant scams I would run across. Usually it was just drivers not running a meter and then charging some ridiculous price at the end of the ride. I don't care if you want the fare "off the book" so you can pocket the whole thing. Hustle your employer all you want, but don't hustle me.
I got into the habit of asking them to run the meter every time they started to drive off without starting it. If they still insisted that it was broken, I'd ask how much they wanted to charge me. If it was reasonable, I would accept. If it was stupid, I'd get out.
For all the complaints about Uber/Lyft, as a passenger, they are much more reliable and I know roughly what to expect every time.
I mean, many small towns have local food joints, but people driving by the highway will still stop at the McDonalds. I think Uber is kinda the McDonalds of transportation; travelers pretty much never want to bother finding out what the local taxi company is called nor they want to take risks with possibly unreliable/sketchy service.
I think Uber Eats' marketing of "we're not the jealous type" kinda expresses it well: there are use cases where Uber is undoubtedly superior (convenient ride summoning), and for other cases where cabs fit the use case, it's often a low-stakes choice, such that things like branding and reputation might trump other qualitative metrics such as price.
And for what it's worth, in many markets, Uber offers a bunch of price-oriented services that taxis simply aren't able to: the pool service was the most well known offering in the US, but in Brazil for example, it also serves "I need a ride NOW, and willing to pay premium, take my money" (the Prioridade service) and "I'm very price sensitive and willing to ride a motorcycle to save a few bucks" (the Moto service).
> Food delivery is very low margin and companies have realised there is pretty much no money to be made here as an expensive middle man
Somebody should probably tell that to the millions of public market investors who have bought into these public companies worth tens of billions of dollars.
That's a whole other discussion. Having a good stock price does not equate to profitability. Vast amounts of money are pumped into loss making companies in the hope of future returns, either when other people pump money in to raise the price, or a profit is eventually returned. Uber has yet to post a profitable quarter, let alone year. Doordash has had one quarter in the black. This is during a pandemic, when use of these services has skyrocketed.
By some analysis, food delivery companies have a potential margin of about 2% from delivery alone. Which is why these companies are trying to find other ways to take in more per order and hopefully one day make a profit.
>Uber is amazing and I’m glad they pushed through all of the regulatory bullshit to defeat cabs.
Remember, effectively you have said law breaking is acceptable. In this case, it may be partly even true, but once this catches on, anarchy, literally one step away.
How is anarchy one step away? Vs hundreds of steps away? Nearly every one breaks the law in small or bigger ways some of the time. There’s some studies that have shown more well off people cheat/break the law and justify it more often.
Anecdotes are not data etc, but my daughter attended a friend's birthday party recently and the friend's dad told me he had been out of work due to covid so started doing Uber and was bringing in $3k/week and had managed to pay off a ton of debt thanks to that (this convo happened in SF last week). Needless to say, I was extremely surprised, as the media generally gives the impression that driver earnings are crap.
I'll buy that your friend may have made $3k a week doing Uber but he's either working an unsustainable number of hours behind the wheel or taking advantage of surge pricing that will work itself out in time. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if he's not quite as insured as he thinks he is and certainly isn't taking into account his costs to provide the service.
He may very well be grossing $3k a week but he's not actually earning that much.
While I didn't want to pry into the exact unit economics, being in a children's party and all, he did say he worked ~10 hours a day. But also he was very proud to share that he had paid off over 16k of debt despite the high CoL for a family of 4 in SF, which leads me to be believe that the actual take home amount wasn't exactly chump change.
Depends on your needs. Good luck getting uber to the airport at 5am. I had no luck reserving a car in advance neither.
In this case, licensed minicab met my needs and I don't even bother getting uber to airport anymore. Hailing a taxi is out of question.
Edit: I forgot how many times an uber driver was on the way and then cancelled the order. Or oftentimes they just refuse to go to the centre because of the congestion charge so you get out of the car, request a new car and hope for the best.
Yes, uber provides crappy service. Crappy because it's like a russian roulette - even if you are in the car you don't know if you will be taken to your destination.
Before Uber came to the city I was in at the time, you could not reserve a car. You could call one of the two cab companies and they would tell you that they were going to do it, but it was a coin flip whether that car showed up.
Anecdote and all, but I felt the same way. Hired a car service to pick me up at 6am. Morning of, at 6am, car hasn’t arrived. Dispatcher blames “mechanical difficulty”. Yeah right. Called the Lyft while on the phone with them. It arrived on time 10 minutes later, thankfully still made my flight.
I don’t live in an urban area but do live about 15 minutes from the airport in suburbia.
Yes Uber and Lyft are terribly unreliable for early morning trips outside the densest urban areas. The advance reservation features don't actually guarantee any car availability.
For taxis, depends where you are and what other taxis you were booking. Compared to a London Black Cab, much better, compared to a licenced minicab, about the same but via an app instead of a phone call.
For Uber Eats though, I've had them claim that there is no expectation of food arriving hot. First few times I had delivery problems I got full refunds and the reputation was always "give it a go, worst case you can get a refund anyway". Now it's hard to even get in touch with support let alone get them to acknowledge an order issue, and refunds are almost unheard of.
Edit: I had forgotten about all the issues with sexual assaults by Uber drivers. They tried to downplay the issues, but ended up having to implement a lot of controls to understand who was driving the cars, in some markets they now have to be licenced, it's all changed a lot since the beginning because of how the service was actively dangerous compared to incumbents who were typically much more tightly regulated.
The Uber experience is (or at least used to be before covid) way, way better than London minicabs used to be. Minicabs had no accountability and small fleet sizes - so at peak times they'd either turn up really late or not turn up at all, with no recourse.
I think they've forced everyone to change now - if they disappeared tomorrow another operator would fill the void. But when Uber first started operating it was a radically improved service.
My Uber eats orders were constantly missing items and they eventually stopped issuing me refunds when I kept submitting requests. I understand to a degree that some people will abuse an infinite refund policy but it sure left a bad taste in my mouth when my driver didn't actually deliver the order, just marked it as delivered and drove off, and my refund request was denied. That was my last order with them.
I submitted an order, it popped up "503 Service Unavailable -- Try again" in the app. I tried again and it went through.
Food showed up, was just finishing up and they showed up and delivered it a second time. Checked and the order had indeed double-submitted two seconds apart, and I was charged twice.
Obvious error. It would have been a superhuman feat to submit the order, readd all the items to a new order, and submit it in two seconds.
I contacted support and explained what happened and they refused the refund because they had delivered the order, so I had to pay for it. "Thanks for understanding." No amount of arguing that this was obviously an issue with their app got anything out of them besides food showed up, you pay for food, "thanks for understanding".
Upside is I went from wasting probably a hundred bucks a week on ordering food to actually getting off my ass and walking somewhere nearby and picking it up myself for half the price.
For future reference, I suggest contacting the bank in a situation like this. They're likely to refund a duplicate charge filed a few seconds after an initial charge.
Every food delivery service I've tried has been a nightmare. They don't check the food to make sure it's correct. It gets tossed around and mangled on the way.
I had one time where there was someone else's order delivered to me; literally their name was on the bag... the delivery person grabbed the wrong bag. Then I tried to get them to fix it before he drove away and he told me to call the restaurant. Trying to get refund from the delivery service was nigh impossible. I wound up calling the restaurant and the dealt with getting me a refund and the correct food.
I no longer use food delivery at all, unless it's provided directly by the restaurant. Otherwise, I go pick it up.
I’d say that depends on where you live but broadly I agree with you. That said, Uber launched in 2009. The iPhone was only two years old at that point. It feels like a big assumption to say that absolutely no existing car service would have realised the benefits of allowing booking via smartphone.
I don’t wonder about past vs present, I wonder about present vs a possible present where VC funding doesn’t flood the market and destroy competition.
A good comparison is perhaps restaurants. Seamless, Uber Eats and the rest swallowed up the online food ordering business. Slowly more and more restaurants let you order direct, some using startups like ChowNow that facilitate the transaction without dominating it. But it’s still an uphill climb.
Uber is basically the McDonald's of hired transportation. There are limitations, the experience definitely isn't premium, but its ultimately a fairly consistent purchasing experience that works most of the time.
Regular taxis? Sure, download this city specific app. Or one of the two city specific apps. Or call one of the local cab companies and find out you picked the one that doesn't consistently dispatch to your hotel so you end up waiting around with zero feedback. Or maybe you call and they show up in five minutes and its great.
It's ok though, not everything as to be optimised for convenience. Uber allowed us to do thing we didn't do in the past, and now these things seem natural, but we'd be just fine without them. Not every step is a step towards progress
Buying books online is a counterexample if anything. Books are a great product to sell online because they're relatively compact, there are a ton of them (way too many to have them all in a single physical bookstore), and two copies of the same new book are generally undifferentiated (unlike, say, produce). At least based on the way Bezos and other early insiders talk about it decades later, Amazon was never intended to be just a bookstore, but they were pretty intentional about starting with books.
It's more than a 100% improvement for me. I've taken thousands of rides, safely and easily, using a single app across countries and currencies without any major issue. It's also opened up travel in big cities and foreign regions that I wouldn't otherwise be able to do at all.
There's no alternative to this and it's incredibly valuable to many, even if you don't use it.
You mean you don't like a bunch of rich people throwing money away so you get a 10% improvement on some service?
I only have a problem with them trying to make it out on the IPO instead of making a profitable business. But this one can not go forever, or the public will wake-up, or the law enforcement will.
These percentages are all subjective, I'm just trying to illustrate a point.
I don't think it does mean a complete takeover. There are plenty of industries where being 10% cheaper doesn't mean you "win", and there are plenty where being 10% better doesn't either. In a world of perfect competition and perfect information it might, but it's well accepted that we do not live in that world.
It's an odd argument to make in the context of Uber/Lyft, which have indeed "won" by any reasonable definition, and handsomely rewarded it's investors (which should be victims in the overhype / under deliver scenario).
Amazon just sent us an actual paper catalog in the mail for clothing and gifts. Web shopping killed catalogs and now the biggest online store is sending me catalogs.
I think it’s an admission their site is an un-curated mess. but come on, are paper catalogs really the best solution Amazon came up with for their online store being cluttered, useless for product discovery, and overrun by poor quality products and fakes?
I sometimes feel like it is only me that suffers this - finding anything of quality on amazon is a pain. Unless I know the exact model number, chances are I'll be sold low quality stuff. I want some wine glasses, picture looks OK, reviews seem good - turn up - junk. I want to find a monitor - good luck! I want to find some light bulbs... Erm yeah, same.
Time was it was good as you knew it was cheaper than most places but that is generally totally not true now.
flew into jfk last week. Got in a taxi, driver didnt want to turn the meter on. Tried to tell me it was $80 instead of the $52 fixed rate + tolls etc. I managed to pay $65, but I had to pay in cash.
the same thing happened on the way back, except my hotel called the taxi, so then the taxi driver gave the bellman $10 and wanted me to give him the $10 he had to pay the bellman (which I did). He also wanted cash and didnt turn the meter on. I worry that if I insist they turn the meter on they would stop and kick me out of the taxi.
And yes Im out of practice. I used to negotiate that we use the meter and I can pay with a credit card before I even get in the taxi.
I have been uniformly cheated by taxi drivers everywhere in the world.
that alone would have me using rideshares even if it was a little more expensive.
You forgot to mention peak-hype, when the original investors sell their shares and laugh their way to the bank, while the subsequent buyers are left with a company of questionable value.
Disagree on at least two of these claims. They definitely save time and money. The only way someone can claim they don't is if they've never actually had to travel and use taxis. Taxis are horrible, pretty much universally. The drivers will do everything possible to cheat you, the experience is shit, and availability is basically only good at the airport, downtown in that city, and nowhere else.
An Uber (I don't really use Lyft since it's basically non-existent outside the US and pre-pandemic I traveled internationally a lot) will meet me wherever I happen to be regardless of where it is in the city, at whatever time I need a ride regardless of hour, pick me up, and take me to my destination via the quickest route determined by a GPS app, for a predetermined non-negotiable price, automatically charged to my credit card or business account without needing to reveal anything or expose any money to a stranger, and without me needing to deal with foreign exchange rates.
A taxi does literally none of these things. The only similarity between a taxi and an Uber is that they both are a stranger driving me somewhere in a car. After that, an Uber is a better experience that saves me both time and money every step of the way, while being massively more consistent and reliable. Taxis suck, and there is effectively no way to make them better without essentially cloning what Uber does, which gets us right back where we're at.
I'm seeing this more and more these days, and I'm not sure the cause, but a lot of articles in "reputable" newspapers making bold claims that nobody who has had even an inkling of experience with the subject matter would make with a straight face. Uber has many issues, I will grant, but to claim it isn't a better experience in every facet than a taxi isn't just stupid, it's dishonest.
IMHO, the author is mostly reacting negatively to the price impact of two compounding issues that Uber/Lyft faced last year: the first is the out-of-whack supply/demand balance due to covid causing the current low supply of drivers (and a consequent increase in prices due to renewed demand), and the second is fallout of AB5/Prop22 (which netted an increased pay floor, which translated to higher prices in CA). A third factor is the companies' push towards profitability after their IPOs, which also undoubtedly makes a dent in the price calculations.
The "planet" angle is IMHO grasping at straws to set a specific tone for the narrative, because frankly who thinks about that when taking a cab? If this wasn't just lip service and carbon emission/congestion actually mattered to her, there's public transit from LAX!
I wrote in a comment downthread about an anecdote of a guy that had lost his job due to covid and had found an income safety net w/ Uber. You could argue that he contributes to carbon emissions/congestion by driving, but what exactly is the writer expecting the alternative to be? Sitting at home receiving free stimulus cheques? Working at McDonalds flipping infamously high CO2 producing beef patties? Working as... a cab driver for a cheaper fare for her exact use case, but still incurring roughly the same role in carbon footprint and congestion overall?
Trying to twist "I want to have my cake (nice Uber experience) and eat it too (for cheap)" into "think of the environment" just seems like virtue signaling IMHO. She just saw two services that were functionally equivalent for her needs at different prices and took the cheaper one. Most of us would've probably done the same. This is a non-story.
I don't think Uber can ever be eco-friendly, because my American-centric point of view is that anything which makes long-distance travel situations easier encourages long distance travel by lowering the barrier and the carbon footprint of long distance travel is inherently atrocious.
I, like almost all Americans, own a personal vehicle, so the only time I would use Uber is if I'm traveling a long distance. The carbon footprint of my Uber is a tiny tiny tiny fraction of the carbon footprint of my trip. I do things like buy carbon offsets with my plane ticket to try to balance this out, but I am not ignorant of the environmental impact of international travel.
That is fair, you are probably right. But the author is not making the claims, she is responding to claims made by Uber in the past.
Specifically:
>In 2015, Uber founder Travis Kalanick gave a TED talk in which he vowed the new rideshare business model would get “more people into fewer cars,” dramatically reduce air pollution and, as he put it, “reclaim our cities today.”
This is highly dependent on where you are. I had similar experience with ride sharing apps of drivers straight up scamming me driving around.
Uber are concentrated on where it's popular. Good luck finding one if you are in the suburbs, you'll get infinite cancelations and wait forever, where in my experience taxis will never cancel once confirmed and usually confirm wherever you are.
A Lyft or Uber car can be hailed by an app, to the exact place I'm at.
A city taxi would scan the most lucrative areas, and my never show up where it's convenient for me to be picked up.
I don't understand how this drastic difference goes unnoticed. The fare is not the only factor; availability, convenience, and control are no less important.
You see this in NYC. Yellow cabs are fairly easy to find in Manhattan (below 96th Street anyway) but you'll never see them in many areas of the city.
The medallion system was invented to stop too many taxis appearing such that drivers couldn't earn an income. There are a ton of problems with this system and then the city decided to protect the "assets" (taxi medallions). Often ordinary people had bought these.
Anyway, to combat this Manhattan-only problem, they invented the green cabs. These were much cheaper (medallion-wise) but couldn't pick people up off the street in Manhattan (below 96th).
The result? Green cab drivers just picked new high-traffic areas and didn't want to take people to Manhattan. Why? Because once dropping someone off they couldn't pick someone up so they'd have to lose time and money driving out of the area.
And on top of all this it used to be impossible to get a cab at all around shift change times (3-4pm was the bad one). They had to invent solutions for this (eg taxis stationed at certain areas like hotels so you could still get to the airport).
And even if you get a cab you then have to communicate where you're going. The number of times I've had a driver mis-hear street numbers (eg 14th vs 40th) is astounding.
While in the cab you're subjected to a loop of advertising (because, hey, more revenue). You can mute it but it's an added annoyance.
After all that you then have to pay and for some reason cabs seem to be a common source of having your credit card skimmed (anecdotally; I have no proof of this).
Uber/Lyft take away all the friction of finding a cab, telling it where to go and paying. The reputation system does a decent (but obviously not perfect) job of curbing the worst actors (drivers and riders).
How anyone could think this doesn't have value is beyond me.
Cost structure wise there's no $1 million medallion to pay for built into the Uber price. The price is still below cost but that gap seems to be narrowing.
> Uber/Lyft take away all the friction of finding a cab, telling it where to go and paying. The reputation system does a decent (but obviously not perfect) job of curbing the worst actors (drivers and riders).
Except for all the drivers who cancel on you, all the trips that it refuses to find a driver for, the drivers who go the wrong way and don't speak English... oh and while they're at it, not only do they screw over the customer, but they also screw over the driver.
The value to Uber is that it broke the taxi monopoly. Especially in second tier cities where calling a taxi meant that they might show up...eventually. This enables people to go out without a car - making more locations accessible and (maybe one of the largest benefits...) discouraging drunk driving. Environmental benefits are...highly overstated...but you can say the same thing for pretty much any innovation outside of the energy industry.
the article mentioned Uber and Lyfts' effect on the taxi monopoly near the end:
"On Sunday, I decided to forego the long wait for a Lyft and the absurdly high congestion pricing. I hopped into a cab and was home in 15 minutes. The tab: $34.69.
The driver asked me for cash, of course.
But when I brandished my credit card, he did not utter a peep of protest. Maybe — just maybe — I have Uber and Lyft to thank for that."
> In 2015, Uber founder Travis Kalanick gave a TED talk in which he vowed the new rideshare business model would get “more people into fewer cars,” dramatically reduce air pollution and, as he put it, “reclaim our cities today.”
At the risk of sounding too skeptical but these are the kind of quotes dreamed up by the marketing department. The kind of quotes that have no connection to the actual mission of a company. There is probably no KPI anywhere to be found within Uber that says: "Traffic reduced %".
Even worse these quotes are often all based on "gut feeling" and "well sounds logical" kind of emotions with no factual basis whatsoever. Which probably isn't a surprise since it's marketings task to handle emotion.
Uber was easily the single biggest improvement to my quality of life over the last 10 or so years. No, it didn't usher in a utopia of traffic free cities. But it made my large city accessible in ways that it was never before. Especially for a 20 something that wanted to go out on the weekends.
Yes. Uber has radically changed my enjoyment of big cities and traveling. Now whether I step off the plane in London/Chicago/Barcelona I open up Uber, throw in an address and away I go. No bs trying to figure out the local transport tangle or crazy language struggles.
Do all these cities have apps for their local transportation models? Of course! As a weekend visitor (or work traveler) do I have it? Of course not! I just want to go places and not fight with the mode of transportation. I don't give a fig whether its a bus/train/cab/pedal cart I just want to go to the places I want to go without fighting with transport.
It varies a bit depending upon where you're going and when but I agree in general. Pre-pandemic, I visited London a lot and rarely took a cab/Uber. To be honest, that's true of most cities I traveled to if there was a decent transit system. Probably mostly to and from airports but, even in that case, there's often a good transit option and I usually travel light.
This. While maybe not the 'single biggest improvement', as a single woman who likes to travel in the city, cabs feel about as safe as buying drugs off a street dealer. Actually, I've often felt safer buying drugs in my 20's then I did getting in a cab as a woman.
Even without them coming on to you when you're trusting them to take you home at 2am, you'll always end up with them pretending to be confused or surprised that - yes - you want to use debit, and then them pretending the machine is broken until it somehow isn't... (I'm assuming they do this so they can pocket the money or do some sort of tax fraud?)
Cabs represented a combination of the worst service and experience I have not really seen in any other industry - say what you want about them - but Uber has a kind of accountability that cabs never have.
I hope cabs as they were just die. Good riddance. I'm so tired of the harassment.
I agree with this and it's why the Uber/Lyft vs The World debate is a tricky one. They really did change how millions of people travel/commute.
But then the problem is: Deregulated taxi industry with smartphones, GPS, and an app can accomplish much of the same thing. So it's hard to argue these two specific companies should still be losing money and valued highly.
Uber and Lyft as entities are not required for this change in transportation to continue because the tech and software has become increasingly commoditized. But they did kickstart the change. Both of those things can be true.
The real benefit is that it gets people out of owning a car. The less people with cars, the more sensible decisions will be made. How many poor citymaking decisions are because of 'parking'? It is probably the number one concern of every NIMBY on the planet. If nobody cares about parking because they Uber, that is a good thing.
The assumption (or resignation?) that marketing language and tricks are somehow normal, immutable, and a fundamental part of life is wrong, especially to the extent we experience it today.
> I swore off taxis years ago after I realized that every time I walked out of an LAX terminal toward the taxi line, my neck and shoulders began to tense. I was bracing for a fight.
Same thing with the "Grab" app in Asia, its just not worth fighting the cab drivers in Manila or Bangkok, when you can get a Grab driver they will give you zero drama but the cab drivers in those cities will haggle you, not use the meters, try to get you to go to some tourist trap, etc. Its not like that across those entire countries (Davao City notably has absolutely amazing taxi drivers) but the big cities are terrible.
South Korea, Japan, and Singapore have such amazing public transpiration options there's little need for taxis most of the time (though its worth noting that when I have used them I had zero issues in those countries, even in Seoul and Tokyo.)
The promise of sharing rides using an app was a great one. I could just pick someone up heading for a place near my work and make $3.
When people used it for employment, not sharing their ride but operating like a cab driver, uber leaned in and the stage was set for the clashes and class action that results in regulation, price increases, etc.
If they had stayed niche and stayed smallish, ride sharing could have accomplished what it was supposed to. Greed is powerful, and drivers saw no need to limit to just sharing a trip to the mall, and uber saw no reason to prevent people from using their platform for it.
None of the "ride sharing" services were ever meant as anything other than a taxi service. Ride sharing was solely an excuse to evade the law and if you can't see that then you aren't looking.
The term “ride sharing” feels like an Orwellian anachronism as applied to current Uber/Lyft. Matching people who had to go from approximately the same place to approximately the same place had a lot of promise both to expand mobility, but also to address some “bowling alone” problems.
Still, the fact that most cars sit idle IIRC > 95% of the time seems like there should be some genuine opportunity frontier. I think the dream was always to get to a point where autonomous driving and somewhat centralized route optimization could generate real efficiencies. But the Uber/Lyft needed to get people out of their own cars en masse for that to work. Autonomous driving didn’t appear at the right time for everything to work out, I think.
Lyft saves me plenty of time so I'm not sure I can agree here. The alternative would be relying on regular cabs or the public infrastructure here in NY which has on multiple occasions proven to be less reliable for me. I'll gladly pay a little extra to not arrive at my location 40minutes to an hour late because of a service disruption in the subway. If we actually took all the money invested in transportation in the city and made things better, instead of I assume pocketing it, maybe I would have different thoughts, but for now these services make my life significantly easier.
I've always found the cases where people like Uber/Lyft to be a bit absurd. I live just outside Chicago. In the city, there were (and still are) abundant taxis. It's a simple matter to hail a cab from most parts of the city (when I lived in the city proper, I would occasionally cab to work instead of take the bus if I was running late, or use one to get home from band practice and it was my usual mode of transport for dates since I didn't have a car) and the people who will go into an app to schedule an Uber or Lyft always seem absurd because they could be into a taxi in no time just by going to the corner and raising their hand. In the suburbs, it makes more sense because taxi service here is a much worse,¹ but I don't see a single defender of ride shares in the current threads talking about a suburban experience.
The taxi driver/credit card thing varies on city, by the way. L.A. taxi drivers are always grumpy about taking credit cards. Chicago taxi drivers have no problem with it (I think because they've discovered that they tend to get better tips with credit cards than they do with cash which makes up for the processing fees. Fast food places discovered something similar where accepting credit cards increased their average order price enough to make up for the loss in net revenue from CC fees).
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1. This, admittedly is the case in some cities as well. Los Angeles (used to? I remember there was a proposal to change this but I don't know if it passed) banned cabs from picking up passengers who hailed them from a corner and that's the case with the suburban taxis in the Chicago area as well—they can only pick up dispatch rides, except at the airport.
To some degree you’re making the case for Uber. The fact that you as the consumer can be completely oblivious to local cab driver idiosyncrasies is part of the appeal, as is the completely frictionless payment experience.
Ok, cabs work fine in Chicago. If I get off a plane in city Foo, I have no idea what I’m going to get from a cab. I know what I’m getting from an Uber.
There’s also some tacit acknowledgement in your comment that in many places local cabs are decidedly not fine. The last traditional cab I took in the SF bay drove 90 mph and charged me twice as much as an Uber. Why would I go back?
I live two blocks off Michigan by the Hancock. I can look out my window and see the cars on Michigan. There are exactly zero taxis right now, 9AM Thursday morning. I have no clue what you're talking about when you say you can hail a cab.
I suspect they’re working off outdated information. Taxi hailing has gotten _massively_ worse for me over the past 5-10 years. It used to be I could walk out in Streeterville any time of day (when it’s not raining) and get a cab in under 5 minutes, lately it’s been difficult to get one at all.
I still tend to avoid Uber/lyft in that area since I’ve had too many bad experiences with drivers over there, but that seems to be what everyone does these days.
On the other hand, I lived in San Francisco for 12+ years before taking Lyft or Uber, and they were an enormous improvement. Not coincidentally that's where both companies started :)
Is this a serious thesis? The point is the average car owner can make some money off an existing asset (instead of having to buy a medallion), and the average person needing a ride has more options to choose from. Cab infrastructure simply does not exist at a reasonable scale in most cities. Money, Time and The Planet basically do not come into the equation when the alternative is getting stuck at the airport.
Airport to downtown is probably the primary use case where taxis actually work pretty well most of the time. I still use them in that case much of the time because assuming no massive line just getting into a cab to my hotel is easier than screwing around with an app.
Hmm where I am Uber and taxis are interchangeable. Except when it's a high demand time (event or something) when you're more likely to get an Uber because of the demand surcharge.
Best feature of Uber vs traditional taxi is you don't need to tell the Uber driver where to find you.
I suppose the post is actually complaining about airport rules.
I recently moved to NYC and the taxis have been a godsend--though (somewhat comically) the drivers are aware they're operating a lower-cost business.
My friend recently got in a taxi and the cabbie immediately asked how much she thought the fare would be. She said "I'm not sure, maybe $15?"
The Cabbie turned off the fare meter and said, sure, $15 it is.
The reality is that uber and lyft are just not actually competitive in NYC. And rather than wait around for a lyft coming from god knows where, through manhattan traffic, it really is easier to just walk outside and stick your hand up. It can be much, MUCH cheaper, too. When I was in SF, Lyft wanted $72 to go from SOMA to Lower Haight--not what I would consider acceptable.
> The reality is that uber and lyft are just not actually competitive in Manhattan < 90st if you need to go to Manhattan/Brooklyn.
In most of New York taxis are nowhere to be found and they often refuse to leave Manhattan/Brownstone Brooklyn. Another big thing is that it's not big deal to walk to Ave to flag a taxi if you are young, healthy and it's not pouring rain (there are no taxis on streets) but imaging if you have limited mobility or have to carry heavy bags. Uber/Lyft is godsend in those cases.
If either of those cases, you could always, you know, pick up the phone and call.
But agreed. I think in ¬Dense Manhattan, Uber and Lyft have been a nice improvement service-wise, at least as far as a guarantee you know a ride is coming, and no hassles about payment and/or source/destination.
Your friend was stolen from. The cabbie isn't running the meter because they know the price was going to be less than $15. It also means they won't take a credit card for that ride, because the ride was illegal and it requires the meter to supply the price.
It's funny to me that you see this anecdote as something that reflects well on the taxi industry in NYC.
I don't think it reflects well, I'm merely pointing out that taxis are cheaper than ubers and lyfts, and they know it.
In fact, I frequently offer taxis flat-rate to a destination if its busy and uber/lyft are at capacity. It's can be a nice feature about taxis, though agreed my friend was taken advantage of in this scenario.
Taxis are usually not cheaper than ubers and lyfts. In very specific situations they may be cheaper, but on the whole they're not.
What you're describing isn't a feature of taxis. It's illegal, unless the city has determined that a flat rate must be used (like to/from the airport). This actually is a feature of uber/lyft, though. They show you a flat rate up-front, prior to calling a ride.
Wow, taxi drivers in LA are assholes. I've taken taxis in many Brazilian cities, and, while they're certainly not as nice as Uber drivers, they're not even remotely as bad as the ones in the article.
One thing about this article: their argument that it doesn't save time or money is taken from a very specific use case in which it doesn't save time or money: traveling from LAX to the author's house in Venice. As noted elsewhere in the thread, this is true because of specific usage and pricing restrictions at LAX, which are not true in most other cases.
Calling a cab to pick you up at your home and take you somewhere else in the city would be a more common use case to compare to, but likely would not support the author's claims, which is probably why they don't mention it.
The pollution claim may be more valid: I have no thoughts on that other than the speculation that, if rideshare vehicles are spending 40% of their time driving without passengers, I bet they're returning to places where they're expecting to get more lucrative calls. This seems like something Uber and Lyft could somewhat mitigate with their pricing or compensation structure, if they wanted to. So, a problem for sure, but not one that's inherent to ridesharing.
I also wonder why taxis wouldn't have the same problems. I recall reading that buses drive without passengers about 25% of the time, so it's not like this phenomenon is unique to rideshare. Based on common sense and observation, I would assume taxis are deadheading about as much as Lyft and Uber, but can find no citation for it.
Lastly, the fact that this article has links to supporting resources, but those links are disguised to look like unstyled body text, is really frustrating.
As noted elsewhere in the thread, it's actually true in general, and has been for years. Taxis adjusted their business to compete with ride-sharing, and ride-sharing adjusted their business to stop hemorrhaging money a LONG time ago.
Uber and Lyft are private companies. They have to constantly improve their service, and if they aren't providing value to their customers, they can ultimately fail. They also have tons of headwinds from regulations and hatred from politicians / journalists.
You know what I don't have a choice on? My tax dollars that pay for inefficient, unprofitable, and terrible service from public transportation.
Without the market test of profitable / unprofitable, politicians keep shoveling dollars at boondoggles that don't make any sense. I like Uber and Lyft because they respond to the needs of their customers. Government transportation is - at best - decent. It never blows you away, and is usually behind schedule, dirty, broken, and full of employees who don't care.
Public services should not have the goal of being profitable. That's how you get negative feedback loops of bad service and declining utilization.
Public transportation does not have to be terrible, by the way. Many cities have great public transit - Montreal and Hong Kong are ones I've personally experienced that had great public transit systems. But I get the sense that a lot of US cities treat public transit as a parasitic entity taking up space and leeching money. When providing public transit is not a priority it's not surprising that it becomes compromised in ways that ruin its utility.
> Washington DC spent hundreds of millions of dollars on brand new subway cars that were supposed last 40 years, now they all need to be replaced after 3 years.
By the way, isn't this the fault of the (presumably private) contractor that built the things? It's not like a bunch of bureaucrats built these things with their welding rigs and wrenches. Until there are meaningful penalties for these kinds of fuckups by the private sector, why wouldn't they treat public projects as free money? It's what the profit motive dictates.
Your link doesn't say that. They were all taken offline, but the issue is with the wheel assembly, not the entire car, and it seems likely to me that only a portion of those will have to be replaced.
I've been living in Tokyo for about a year and a half, and I've been in a car maybe 4 times since then. Public transportation is incredible, when done right.
When I lived in NYC, I rarely used cabs, lyft or uber.
The reason it isn't done right in most of the US is because people think it needs to make a profit. That leads to it being underfunded, which means it doesn't run often enough, and doesn't have enough coverage, which leads to lower ridership, which leads to people like you complaining that we're wasting so much money on terrible service.
Interesting thesis!
Maybe constrained to US though. I really appreciate public transportation in Lyon and Paris, and never felt any need to own a car.
You shouldn't generalize your particular experience to "public transportation"
EDIT: okey lets be fair, a little less for Paris, because of constant strikes last years.
Every city subsidizes cars with billions of dollars of free parking. It is perhaps the largest expense of our government. All we get for that is road rage and traffic deaths.
The business model never made sense except in the way it played out - the taxi industry getting hammered and uber and lyft eventually jacking up the prices. Worse, the model is always going to be more expensive because every driver is on their own. It's a lot more expensive to buy and maintain a car if you're one person than it is if you do it for hundreds of cars.
The tech was good since it works well at scale. The better way would've been to rent the tech to actual taxis around the world so that you have one app a user can use. But it was a lot more lucrative to sell the pipe dream that we're not a cab because we have an app, or that we improve congestion.
I always enjoy an article that starts by insulting my intelligence - especially if it can do it right in the headline. I enjoy it so much that I won't even bother to read it.
How do you know the author is insulting your intelligence and not just lacking in intelligence themself? I find the latter explanation more likely for this idiotic article.
Uber is global. No matter which city you travel to, customer support and the overall experience will be quite similar. You can always pay for your Uber electronically through the app. Good luck finding a taxi that will accept your credit card in whatever city you happen to be in.
You mean when Uber launched in San Francisco and was trying to bootstrap? Well, back then getting a taxi was difficult and unreliable. You could call ahead the day before for a 6am taxi to take you to the airport and have like a 30% chance that a taxi would actually show up. There was also no information passed to you as 6am got closer whether or not your taxi would actually be arriving, or at what time.
Uber provided reliable service, continuous stream of realtime updates, and an easy-to-use UI
Totally not my experience in Europe. We had reliable taxis back then as well. Uber looks and quacks like a taxi, I get that it is in their game to differentiate themselves and try not to be called a taxi or get treated as a taxi, but they are a taxi company at the end of the day.
In India, Uber (and Ola, Lyft isn't available here) certainly save money and time. I know lots of young people who haven't gotten cars because Uber/Ola is the default. I have a car but often used to take one of those when going to places where parking could be an issue. They eliminate haggling with cabbies, cabbies taking roundabout routes and are far safer for women compared to traditional rickshaws or cabs.
Isn't this because most cities have ridiculous rules that disadvantage Uber drivers while cabs are allowed to park out in front? They have no convenient very short term parking, instead they're sometimes made to wait on the side of the highway, which makes the ride more expensive. They also charge fees. LAX charges $4 per ride [0]
Isn't the fact that people use Uber proof that they provide some value? I think the point is to have an alternative to cabs that are highly variable as per the author's own admission.
[0] https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-airport-uber-parking-...