12 ms·

The Uber endgame: privatized public transit

102 points by enkiv2 11y ago

omonra 11y ago
I got to the " Uber’s re-direction of the political will of its base was its total victory over Mayor Bill De Blasio’s hapless and deeply stupid campaign to limit the company’s growth in New York City—some of the final blows coming from celebrities (and even some business journalists!) tweeting messages written by Uber on its behalf. Would it be crazy to wonder what would happen if those same people mounted a similarly forceful campaign to get Governor Cuomo to clean out and fully fund the MTA to, say, make the L train less terrible?" Did the writer think for 5 seconds about this? Is the political will (or rather actual monies required) to spend 15 billion [1] on the MTA shortfall the same as not prohibiting a company from operating a tax service? [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/23/us-usa-newyork-mta-idUSKCN0HI29720140923 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/23/us-usa-newyork-mta...
- orblivion 11y ago
  Well, just to throw in this consideration, how much is Uber going to cost the MTA?
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Aren't tickets subsidized? At least around here, every time the workers strike the company's balance sheet gets a boost.
    - fredkbloggs 11y ago
      Farebox recovery is somewhere in the 30% range, maybe a little less. That means somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of the cost of operating Muni is a direct subsidy from the taxpayers, or that in order to eliminate the subsidy, tickets would have to cost about $8 (without loss of ridership). Most of that cost is due to the extremely labor-friendly CBA that's in place, but equipment maintenance and the negative effects of past deferred maintenance are significant contributors as well. It's likely that NYC's MTA is similar.
- bradleyjg 11y ago
  It would be far, far more useful for the current group of politicians to fix the conditions that cause the MTA to be the single least efficient entity on the planet when it comes to rail construction[1], than it would be for them to rustle up another 15 billion dollars for today's project de jure. [1] https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-rail-construction-costs/ https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-r...
- 6d0debc071 11y ago
  >Is the political will (or rather actual monies required) to spend 15 billion [1] on the MTA shortfall the same as not prohibiting a company from operating a tax service? It's not required that the two costs be identical for the writer's question to make sense. It's known that the Uber investment >||= the necessary criteria, but it's not known by how much. Maybe it was just about enough, or maybe it exceeded it by miles.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - omonra 11y ago
    The supposition that Uber spent 15bio to lobby NYC to let it operate in the city is nonsensical. Nevermind the alternative that it's not Uber's business to spend money on fixing the L train.
    - 6d0debc071 11y ago
      > The supposition that Uber spent 15bio to lobby NYC to let it operate in the city is nonsensical. The question was what the effect of directing that sort of campaign towards urging improvements to the rail infrastructure would be, not what the cost of the rail infrastructure would be. They're related because the more expensive something is the less progress you're likely to make on it if you choose to approach it without looking at things like efficiency and labour improvements, but they're a long way away from being anywhere near the same thing.
      - omonra 11y ago
        Yes - and the answer to the question "what would happen if those same people mounted a similarly forceful campaign to get Governor Cuomo to clean out and fully fund the MTA" is no effect. That's why his point is stupid - because that energy directed at funding the MTA would be a waste. It's like saying "instead of using your a/c to cool your apartment, did you consider putting it outside so that we could cool down the whole city block instead of just your private little space?"
amyjess 11y ago
Given how shitty public transit is here (and has been for decades) and how good Lyft is, this is an endgame I welcome. Ever since I started using Lyft, I stopped taking the local public transit (except on certain special routes, like going straight downtown when I'm near a train station) because it's better.
hiou 11y ago
> It is telling though that Constine notes that one of Uber’s Smart Routes runs “up Fillmore St. from Haight St. to Bay St. in the Marina, which the Bay Area’s BART service doesn’t cover,” when the route is directly covered by the SF MUNI 22 bus, which runs every eight minutes according to Google Maps again: > every eight minutes and only costs $2.25 If only we could remove the stigma an bigotry associated with riding the bus, so many issues with public transit would be cured.
- umanwizard 11y ago
  I think this stigma and bigotry is an SF Bay Area thing. Or at any rate, I have never seen it here in Seattle. Plenty of well-off Amazon employees on the bus every morning. I wonder if it has to do with the Bay Area being so spread out and car-centric, that only quite lower-class people don't have cars. Just a hypothesis from an outsider.
  - PaulHoule 11y ago
    This stigma is why General Motors invented the school bus. Whatever you are driven around in as a kid you will hate when you grow up. The bad smells, bullying, getting puked on and feeling of being an effect rather than a cause that you get from riding the school bus will translate to you hating busses as an adult and wanting to get your own private car just as soon as you can. Nobody ever talks about Generation X, but one thing about us is that we grew up in minivans so that the thought of driving a minivan is like putting your hand in a toilet.
  - hiou 11y ago
    Seattle is a fantastic counterpoint. Of all the cities I've seen, Seattle has managed to have excellent service and ridership using a primarily bus oriented public transit system. It's a great example of how the stigma of buses is one of the largest obstacles public transit in the US needs to overcome.
- habosa 11y ago
  I don't think people are taking Uber over the MUNI because of "stigma" or "bigotry". For sure there are some Uber users who are too good for public transportation, but I don't think that's a majority. The real reason not to take the MUNI is speed. The MUNI is really, really slow. First of all it's a bus in SF traffics so it's a natural disadvantage except where it has a preferred lane. Second, the MUNI stops way too frequently, which adds many minutes to travel time. Sometimes it stops at every block [0]. So a ride on the MUNI that would be about 40m will be 20m in an Uber because the Uber will stop only 1-2 times depending on how many people you're sharing the ride with. So the MUNI is $2.25 and the Uber will be about $6 (in my experience). If you add in the convenience of hailing the Uber with your phone and getting to track it with GPS, you can see why people with extra money would use this. However you should not take this as an endorsement, it's simply an explanation. I find it pathetic that the best SF can offer me to get from the north part of the city to downtown is a 45 minute jam-packed bus ride. It's only 3 miles! I'd love to see public transportation get more effective. Until then, I'll pretty much always ride my bike or take a Lyft Line. 0 - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/us/san-francisco-buses-are-slow-but-just-try-eliminating-a-stop.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/us/san-francisco-buses-are...
taigeair 11y ago
Jamaica has had this system for years. You stand next to the street and point if you want to go up or down, and you get a ride for $1. It's pretty cool. 7 people in one car at times.
- umanwizard 11y ago
  Lebanon has a similar thing. Stand by the highway, get in the next private bus/van that comes by, pay the driver $1-$2 when you get off at your destination. You can go anywhere in the country for $2; it's amazing.
omouse 11y ago
Uh no, the end game is autonomous logistics; getting someone or something from point A to point B. More automation is good, we're sorely lacking in automation. The real issue is distribution of profits. If the money gained stays at the top levels and doesn't move around much, you get stagnation and a poorer standard of living.
- adventured 11y ago
  If a small group of people gets rich off of Uber's solution (eg via stock), while everyone else gets to benefit from the drastic improvement in the taxi or transport system - it's everyone else that is getting the extreme majority of the benefit, as with nearly all similar scenarios. Larry Page and Sergey Brin have given me an extraordinary benefit to my life. I've maybe given them a few dollars over the years. It's clear who got the most out of that trade. They got $30 billion total (much of which will no doubt go to charity), the world got how much in benefit from what their search engine can do and how well it can do it? The same will plausibly be true with Uber in concept.
  - gress 11y ago
    You make it sound as though Larry and Sergey personally created all the content on the internet that you consume.
    - maxwelljoslyn 11y ago
      I think adventured was referring to the value created by Google search, in itself, being so good at what it does - and not to the actual contents of its results.
      - gress 11y ago
        And I am suggesting that the value created is much lower than the value captured.
Aqueous 11y ago
Uber isn't a ride-sharing service - it's a ride-hailing service. The only thing that makes people want to use Uber over a Yellow Cab is that with Uber I open an app, click "Request Uber," the app shows me where the cab is, gives an accurate time of their arrival, and gives me information about my driver. You want to compete with Uber? Those are fairly straight-forward features to add to existing cab-hailing apps. Uber's technological advantage can thus be nullified easily, leaving it only to compete on price. Plus, taxis have an advantage because of the heavier regulation around taxis making them (theoretically) safer. The sooner the world's cabs companies beef up their technology infrastructure the sooner this upheaval will stop. There will be no further privatization of public transport assuming the taxi companies realize this soon. Oh, and cab medallions are already privately owned.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  We have a cab firm in my city that pushes the technology (as well as offering incredible service compared to others) I'd use them over Uber even at a somewhat higher price purely because I trust them in terms of safety and vehicle maintenance more than I do Uber.
- smacktoward 11y ago
  Ahem: http://gocurb.com/ http://gocurb.com/
jrockway 11y ago
Privatized public transportation seems to work in other countries. This particular plan sounds exactly like Hong Kong's minibuses. Also in other countries, private companies own competing rail networks, competing directly against the local government. (Tokyo is an example, compare Tokyo Metro and Toei. JR was once the government, but was privatized. Keio, Tobu, Seibu, Tokyu, etc. were always private companies.) Meanwhile, the government-funded model of public transportation seems to be failing in the US. The MTA spent billions of dollars buying new trains and resignalling entire lines to run trains every 1 minute 30 seconds. But didn't actually schedule service that frequently, resulting in trains that are un-boardable during rush hours. (In fact, unresignalled lines have higher levels of service. The Flushing line runs at 33 trains per hour. The upgraded Canarsie line only runs 26 tph.) Off-peak service is similarly abysmal, with trains running every 20 minutes as early as 11:00pm, that are often as packed as rush hour trains. They can't afford three more trains per hour to run them at 10 minute headways? With more people using public transportation than ever before, it's a sad time for the government to be unable to justify expanding service to meet the needs of the new commuters. But they are doing a great job of being inept, so it would be great to see the private sector come in and fix things. I don't care who I pay to get to work, I just want to get there quickly and hassle-free.
- Tiktaalik 11y ago
  It's important to recognize that public transit as a concept has major opponents in North America and cities are constantly having to fight to be able to build necessary infrastructure. Bafflingly expansion and funding of transit seems to need to go to referendums, where projects are frequently defeated (a yes vote in a referendum is very tough to achieve). In contrast other transportation infrastructure simply goes ahead as regular government spending. Ideological Anti-Tax, special interest groups have put huge amounts of money and effort into discrediting and defunding public transit and turning public opinion against expansion projects that would benefit everyone. The most recent example of this would be the Vancouver transit referendum, where the Canadian Taxpayers Federation seeded the idea that the transit runner Translink was a woefully inefficient organization even though in reality by almost any measure it's the best performing transit system on the west coast of NA. In the United states the Koch Brothers' Americans for Prosperity group has been pushing back against transit expansion and funding all across America. http://billmoyers.com/2014/10/03/koch-brothers-war-transit/ http://billmoyers.com/2014/10/03/koch-brothers-war-transit/
ilaksh 11y ago
Same as Amazon, Google, Github. Basically technology monopolies, or technopolies as I like to call them. They have become so powerful that they are the de facto government in certain areas. Thrn they get in bed with the government and its hard to say where one stops and the next begins. The endgame is for America to become the next China.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
zdw 11y ago
Imagine the dystopic future where Uber then colludes with the legal/prison complex, and can track everyone. Even if you don't use their services, their roving band of rfid/wifi/bluetooth sensing cars with cameras that read and recognize object like other cars, license plates, and other people in their environment will be observing everyone and everything, all the time. Every vehicle, a subpoena-able bundle of sensors. Watching. Personally, I find that even scarier than the mass destruction of public transit.
- masterleep 11y ago
  You find government owned transit better in this regard?
  - masklinn 11y ago
    It could hardly be worse, and there's the remote possibility of holding your government accountable.
    - bsbechtel 11y ago
      Huh? You hold Uber accountable by not using their service. That's much more accountability than being 1 of ~150million votes.
      - pavel_lishin 11y ago
        Apparently 8 million people use Uber. Being 1 of ~8 million isn't significantly better than being 1 of ~150 million, in terms of accountability. But it's a faulty argument, anyway. It's not a single citizen that holds a government accountable, it's the masses, and the media, etc.
        bsbechtel 11y ago
        Even if it is the masses and media that hold the government accountable, they can still be more effective by pointing their power towards Uber than a government. The media's effect on Nike's labor practices in the mid-90s comes to mind as an example.
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
So they've invented low-capacity, very expensive buses?
- justincormack 11y ago
  No, they had been invented in many places before eg the dolmuş in Turkey [1], or the pesero in Mexico [2]/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolmu%C5%9F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolmu%C5%9F [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesero
- batbomb 11y ago
  Lyft Line is a low-capacity, slightly more expensive bus.
- imgabe 11y ago
  More like on-demand buses that adjust their routes automatically according to where people need to go.
  - mvid 11y ago
    And filter the riders to not be obnoxious, violent, unhygienic, racist, etc. And have real, working location status updates. And are clean. And won't tell you they are coming even though they are at capacity. As you can tell, this bus analogy irks me.
    - maxwelljoslyn 11y ago
      Uber really only has two things in common with public transit: cars and buses both have wheels to go places, and the services are both paid. {1} On-demand vs. scheduled {2} The given number of cars in the field sets a harder upper limit on number of riders. With buses, it's basically always "pack more people onto the bus, no matter how crowded" (i.e. the bus is forced to approach closer to "theoretical" carrying capacity of vehicle's physical volume - compare this to how much Uber is used for single riders.) {3} Anti-"troll" filtering (I mentioned elsewhere that this works for the same reason it works on web forums - you eliminate the irresponsible elements.) {4} No routes with Uber: go where you want. Normally this flexibility costs you at the rate of a taxi. Etc.
GuiA 11y ago
The problem is that current technology is making this new model for mass transit realistic. When everyone has a cellphone, and we can have tons of sensors on vehicles that communicate in real time (and might eventually be self driving), the old model for transit (fixed routes, pickups at fixed times, etc.) doesn't make sense anymore. Many socially disadvantaged people would especially benefit from such a modern form of public transportation: if a single mom working a minimum wage job can go to her workplace in 20 minutes rather than 1h30 for the same price, her quality of life would dramatically improve. If you subscribe to the view that the government should provide a set of basic services to all of its population (eg basic food, shelter, education, healthcare, transportation), then what should really happen is that the local public transportation agencies (SFMTA, NYMTA, etc.) should be the ones experimenting with new models and offering incrementally better services to citizens as technology evolves. But that's not how it works, because these agencies are bloated, ineffective, and the complete opposite of innovative. In countries where public transportation is in a better shape (e.g. a lot of western european countries) and the government is more left leaning (ie has no qualms making Uber illegal), services like Uber are a bit slower to reach the mass they are in the US, but it's still going to happen in the long term. We can't have it both ways. Either we go full capitalist, and in this case privatized public transit the Uber way seems inevitable in the long term, creating a 2 tiered public transit system: one privatized that works really well for the higher social classes, and the regular public transit system that will further languish and deteriorate as only poorer people use it (an outcome which I personally hate and find absolutely dystopian). Or we need to figure out a way for local governments to provide those basic services to their citizens, growing and changing them as the technology matures. That's much more appealing, but I'm not quite sure how to get there in a way that benefits all citizens equally.
- hiou 11y ago
  > But that's not how it works, because these agencies are bloated, ineffective, and the complete opposite of innovative That's quite a blanket statement that sounds a whole lot like ideology. Data seems to point to a high usage in several cities[1] and usage continues to grow over time. If this was such a horrific service as you describe, I think we would see little to no ridership. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_high_transit_ridership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_high_... Please be a bit more pragmatic about actions that will effect around 100 million people.
Chevalier 11y ago
Oh for christ's sake. I am a major proponent of public transit and walkable cities. Anyone who shares my support should be cheering wildly at Uber's expansion. Uber is the greatest, and perhaps the only, threat that we've ever had to American car ownership. With Uber, those occasional necessary car trips can be contracted out cheaply and easily. When you aren't FORCED to own a car to survive, many people simply won't buy one. The fewer people that own cars, the more heavily transit and bicycles will be used for daily trips. Ride-sharing is perhaps the most important blow ever struck against American car dependency.
- jhspaybar 11y ago
  To this point, I am a car guy, I was a car salesman for many years, and always had a nice car. A few years ago when I moved to Seattle, I decided to take a chance on public transit and Uber and decided to only have a single car for my family of four. It worked out! I actually can't stand to even drive anymore, and when my wife and I go out we try to avoid driving ourselves whenever possible. We still need the vehicle for long trips and for things like going to home depot, but it gets driven far less. I've also found myself taking the bus to destinations I normally wouldn't because the bus stop is a few miles from where I want to be, knowing that when I arrive I can get an Uber for the last little leg of the trip.
dajohnson89 11y ago
With very few exceptions, public transit in America sucks. In the cases where public transit is run by a private company (usually contracted out by the local government), it is much better. I for one welcome private involvement.
- dangerlibrary 11y ago
  [Citation needed]
  - kaonashi 11y ago
    I think OP lives in a post-war town and is extrapolating anecdata.
    - dajohnson89 11y ago
      Baltimore ;-)
- locahost 11y ago
  Thirty years ago my small hometown had bus service to the closest big cities. Three private companies supplied round trips from one downtown to another several times a day. Now there is only a shuttle, which costs twice as much, runs only three times daily, and doesn't go anywhere but the airport. If you are car-free in this town, whether by choice, poverty, or disability, you're going nowhere unless you have friends to drive you. So I was excited about what Uber or Lyft could do for the rural car-free...until I remembered how the private bus companies left us high and dry. What's to keep Uber from doing the same?
jerf 11y ago
Take ideology off the hook for a moment, and if you are a supporter of lots of government support for mass transit, ask yourself, do you really want government agencies to engage in extremely, extremely speculative development [1] of millions of dollar's worth of software, radical new ways of organizing mass transit, and experimenting with a brand new way of providing services that have never been seriously tried before, and by all rational measures, at the outset of the project the most likely outcome can only rationally be considered failure? Honestly, if this wasn't an ideologically-loaded "private industry vs. government" issue and we were all wearing our rational thought hats instead of our politics hats, we would vigorously condemn any mass transit authority that prioritized such a risky venture at the risk of dropping actual services to poor people! That's not their job. This isn't a private vs. public story. Let the private industry prove out the model at their own risk and their own expense. Let them recoup the expense and pocket some profit for the risk at the expense of those who can afford the service. (The poor are not actually hurt by not having access to Uber, anymore than they were hurt by not having access to it 10 years ago.) Let the government come in behind and work on providing services based on the risks taken and the lessons learned. Perhaps even by contracting out to Uber, or perhaps more likely, a yet-to-be-founded mass-transit-focused competitor, when the model has been derisked enough that the poor aren't at high risk of being boned by the vagueries and vissitudes of Silicon Valley unicorns. This would hold true even if all the city governments were models of efficiency, and all had highly trained and skillful staffs of programmers on staff who could easily write all this code. But come now, even you promoters of government, let's all be honest with each other, this is not the case. And, again, that's not least because it would be unacceptable for a mass transit authority to hire all that talent when it should be using money to provide service. Government can't be good at everything, because there are something things that it can only be good at at the expense of other things it is supposed to be doing instead. Wildly risky experimentation certainly sounds like a good candidate for that category to me. [1]: By contrast, to be clear, I am fully behind incremental advancement, exploration, and development by governments. It routinely happens and it should. But in general, it is not their job to do moon shots with social programs. (Note the "moon shot" and "the bomb" and all the other really experimental stuff that you might want to name are not social programs. A line of military research coming up dry does not directly harm the poor. (Especially under progressive taxation where "the poor" pay either very little or negative taxes in the US, so you can't even really complain about their tax load.))
rayiner 11y ago
There is theoretically a public bus in Wilmington for $1 that makes a frequent trip past where my wife works (in the heart of the CBD) to the Amtrak station (about a mile and change away). Except it's never on time (in a small city with no traffic to speak of), and drivers decide to just randomly end their trips early and stop picking up passengers. Now that Uber is available in Wilmington, my wife has started using it heavily. That's great for her, not so great for all the low income people who actually need to use the service. And ultimately it's not Uber's fault that they're offering an alternative to the dysfunctional public transit system. The municipal government is supposed to be the ones offering poor people a safe and convenient alternative to walking through downtown Wilmington at night, and they fail at their job miserably.
tvanantwerp 11y ago
I live in DC. Our public transit is regularly late or broken, and is on fire often enough that people feel the need to check before their morning commute [1]. If the future of public transit is Uber, then I can't wait. [1] http://www.ismetroonfire.com/ http://www.ismetroonfire.com/
hoopd 11y ago
The price vs. users graph[0] is hopelessly wrong, dangerously wrong even. So wrong I can't take anything the author says about economics or markets seriously at all. I think they're trying to make the argument that Uber will achieve economies of scale but that would be cost vs. users, not price. Price and cost are different things. The graph also implicitly makes the assumption that there are an infinite number of users and Uber has competitors. In reality as the number of users increases Uber looks more and more like a monopoly and the price approaches whatever maximizes Uber's profits as opposed to "free". The bigger Uber gets the more they become the government they're fighting against. In a healthy free market price will approach marginal cost, but Uber isn't fighting for a healthy free market. It's the last thing they want. > While zero car ownership will undoubtedly and unremittingly be a net social good—can’t wait until driving is something one does for fun, ban cars! Can't tell if the author is for or against regulation. [0] - http://cdn.theawl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/price.jpg http://cdn.theawl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/price.jpg
placeybordeaux 11y ago
This sounds a bit like a scare piece given that dollar vans [1] already exist, they just aren't smart phone enabled. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_van https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_van
ThomPete 11y ago
Honestly that sounds more like spin than anything. They are working on self driving cars which is going to be a much more profitable business than privatizes public transit. I believe this is probably more likely to be an attempt to change public perception.
mc32 11y ago
For me the main problem with infrastructure heavy mass transit, which the author seems to prefer, is that the horizons are in multiple decades. I've forever been frustrated by mass transit going not where they are needed. In addition, in the SF south bay, mass transit infrastructure suffers from a chicken and egg problem. Density isn't high enough to support transit, so it would be unwise to waste tax revenue in elephants, but without the build-up, the environ for mass transit isn't stoked. Personally, I don't care who comes up with a financially viable solution, public or private. Having seen what public delivers, I'm optimistic private can compete and deliver something meaningful in under three decades of studies, agreements, bonds issuing, lawsuits, etc. Overseas, private mass transit delivers at least on par with public mass transit. Moreover, the NYC subway system was borne from originally private systems. I guess autonomous vehicles like uber's are likely to win out over the ideas by united technologies' "people movers". Still unsurprising that in the end the ideas to get to efficient mass transit tend to merge.
alwaysdoit 11y ago
> One of the more subtle underlying issues with the rise of Uber is the company’s slow siphoning of the political will to fix existing—or build new—public transit infrastructure in major cities. I don't think this is really true, at least in the short run. Uber fills the gaps which previously prevented me from completely getting rid of my car. Now that I'm completely car free, I rely on public transportation for trips that are well supported by our infrastructure and use Uber for trips that aren't, so I care a lot about our public transportation infrastructure, and usually support improvements, unless they are very poorly budgeted or misguided.
myth_buster 11y ago
I think the documentary Taken for a ride(1996) [0][1] which showed up on /r/Documentaries [2] is perhaps relevant to this discussion. [0] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0236785/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0236785/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-I8GDklsN4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-I8GDklsN4 [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/3iflv6/taken_for_a_ride_1996_how_general_motors_bought/traffic https://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/3iflv6/taken...
curiousjorge 11y ago
fat chance in hell. as soon as uber makes money by raising prices, paying drivers less or both, many others will jump in, quickly destroying the returns on investment. I see uber as a giant bulldozer that is paving the way for future competitors. Once they realize there's no way to keep people locked in unless they form a cartel like the traditional taxi industry, investors will panick. An Uber cartel is the least possible outcome because they do not own the roads, the car, the people. Do I ride the bike to work or hitch a ride? Do I use Uber or just take a taxi that's parked right across my building? Do I use Lyft or Uber if Lyft is offering cheaper ride? Is there any noticeable difference or do I even care, I just want to go from A to B and pay the least amount of money. This is the endgame for Uber: enable future competitors to reap the returns on it's investment because they are focused on monopoly in an industry that won't make it possible.
dba7dba 11y ago
Remember UK rail system. Used to be publicly owned, privatized and now a disaster.
fredkbloggs 11y ago
The author writes "One of the more subtle underlying issues with the rise of Uber is the company’s slow siphoning of the political will to fix existing—or build new—public transit infrastructure in major cities." This seems quite logical, and is a common argument that's been tossed around for a while now, previously in reference to employer-funded transportation for employees (popularly, "the Google bus", though there are many). The only problem is that it's deliberately ignorant of the past. Since the author mentions SF Muni by name, we should recognize that Muni has been a total disaster since at least the 1970s. If there has ever been political will to improve it, it's been thwarted. The agency has never met any of its legally mandated service requirements, despite numerous (successful) ballot measures throwing money at the problem and setting policies giving it a high ("the highest", per Prop A) priority. So it's pretty difficult to pin the blame for that on something that's existed for only a few years. It's no secret that I have no love for Uber, or that I consider it just another taxi service that should be regulated as such (which doesn't necessarily mean it should be regulated the way taxi providers are today). But claims that Muni's failure are Uber's fault are simply laughable. Muni was a worthless pile of garbage before Uber's founders were born, and it wasn't on an improving trajectory that Uber came along and trashed, either. The other angle, which the author did not explore, is that private mass transit is very common and popular, as it once was in the US, in many of the world's poorer countries. It's ubiquitous in Asia and Latin America, and while it won't win any awards for speed or comfort, it is cheap, effective, and capable of operating profitably without direct subsidies. This seems at odds with the author's lament that those left to suffer the indignity of public transit in the US are those with no other choice. Clearly that is a product of a political system that champions public funding of mass transit, not some inevitable outcome. There are many ways to make transit (public or private) better. I don't believe Uber is one of them, but nothing the SFMTA has done suggests that it's part of the solution, either. And it's been failing without Uber's help.
oneJob 11y ago
So, I guess Hacker News is focused more on the tech than the political, but, still, I'm kinda taken aback by the comments here. The Uber "endgame" is a super-small fish in the bigger ocean called "neoliberalism". It's not just a tech issue, but technology does accelerate the issue. It's a very deep concept, and fairly complex. It includes related disciplines such as Neoliberal Jurisprudence. Before anyone goes all "you don't know what you're talking about" on me, I concede I'm no expert. It's a very deep concept, after all. My exposure to the issue is largely via my wife and others in her cohort, studying at one of the US's top political theory grad programs. They are heavily studying/working on neoliberalism, taking it very seriously. It's worth educating one's self about it. Both in general, and as an IT/Tech professional. It's already a thing, most people just aren't aware of it yet. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2011.01019.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2011.... http://inthesetimes.com/article/17533/how_to_sell_off_a_city http://inthesetimes.com/article/17533/how_to_sell_off_a_city http://www.popmatters.com/column/194010-neoliberalism-is-changing-our-world-without-our-even-noticing/ http://www.popmatters.com/column/194010-neoliberalism-is-cha...

102 points by enkiv2 11y ago

I got to the " Uber’s re-direction of the political will of its base was its total victory over Mayor Bill De Blasio’s hapless and deeply stupid campaign to limit the company’s growth in New York City—some of the final blows coming from celebrities (and even some business journalists!) tweeting messages written by Uber on its behalf. Would it be crazy to wonder what would happen if those same people mounted a similarly forceful campaign to get Governor Cuomo to clean out and fully fund the MTA to, say, make the L train less terrible?" Did the writer think for 5 seconds about this? Is the political will (or rather actual monies required) to spend 15 billion [1] on the MTA shortfall the same as not prohibiting a company from operating a tax service? [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/23/us-usa-newyork-mta-idUSKCN0HI29720140923 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/23/us-usa-newyork-mta...

orblivion 11y ago
Well, just to throw in this consideration, how much is Uber going to cost the MTA?
- icebraining 11y ago
  Aren't tickets subsidized? At least around here, every time the workers strike the company's balance sheet gets a boost.
  - fredkbloggs 11y ago
    Farebox recovery is somewhere in the 30% range, maybe a little less. That means somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of the cost of operating Muni is a direct subsidy from the taxpayers, or that in order to eliminate the subsidy, tickets would have to cost about $8 (without loss of ridership). Most of that cost is due to the extremely labor-friendly CBA that's in place, but equipment maintenance and the negative effects of past deferred maintenance are significant contributors as well. It's likely that NYC's MTA is similar.
bradleyjg 11y ago
It would be far, far more useful for the current group of politicians to fix the conditions that cause the MTA to be the single least efficient entity on the planet when it comes to rail construction[1], than it would be for them to rustle up another 15 billion dollars for today's project de jure. [1] https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-rail-construction-costs/ https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-r...
6d0debc071 11y ago
>Is the political will (or rather actual monies required) to spend 15 billion [1] on the MTA shortfall the same as not prohibiting a company from operating a tax service? It's not required that the two costs be identical for the writer's question to make sense. It's known that the Uber investment >||= the necessary criteria, but it's not known by how much. Maybe it was just about enough, or maybe it exceeded it by miles.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- omonra 11y ago
  The supposition that Uber spent 15bio to lobby NYC to let it operate in the city is nonsensical. Nevermind the alternative that it's not Uber's business to spend money on fixing the L train.
  - 6d0debc071 11y ago
    > The supposition that Uber spent 15bio to lobby NYC to let it operate in the city is nonsensical. The question was what the effect of directing that sort of campaign towards urging improvements to the rail infrastructure would be, not what the cost of the rail infrastructure would be. They're related because the more expensive something is the less progress you're likely to make on it if you choose to approach it without looking at things like efficiency and labour improvements, but they're a long way away from being anywhere near the same thing.
    - omonra 11y ago
      Yes - and the answer to the question "what would happen if those same people mounted a similarly forceful campaign to get Governor Cuomo to clean out and fully fund the MTA" is no effect. That's why his point is stupid - because that energy directed at funding the MTA would be a waste. It's like saying "instead of using your a/c to cool your apartment, did you consider putting it outside so that we could cool down the whole city block instead of just your private little space?"

amyjess 11y ago

Given how shitty public transit is here (and has been for decades) and how good Lyft is, this is an endgame I welcome. Ever since I started using Lyft, I stopped taking the local public transit (except on certain special routes, like going straight downtown when I'm near a train station) because it's better.

hiou 11y ago

> It is telling though that Constine notes that one of Uber’s Smart Routes runs “up Fillmore St. from Haight St. to Bay St. in the Marina, which the Bay Area’s BART service doesn’t cover,” when the route is directly covered by the SF MUNI 22 bus, which runs every eight minutes according to Google Maps again: > every eight minutes and only costs $2.25 If only we could remove the stigma an bigotry associated with riding the bus, so many issues with public transit would be cured.

umanwizard 11y ago
I think this stigma and bigotry is an SF Bay Area thing. Or at any rate, I have never seen it here in Seattle. Plenty of well-off Amazon employees on the bus every morning. I wonder if it has to do with the Bay Area being so spread out and car-centric, that only quite lower-class people don't have cars. Just a hypothesis from an outsider.
- PaulHoule 11y ago
  This stigma is why General Motors invented the school bus. Whatever you are driven around in as a kid you will hate when you grow up. The bad smells, bullying, getting puked on and feeling of being an effect rather than a cause that you get from riding the school bus will translate to you hating busses as an adult and wanting to get your own private car just as soon as you can. Nobody ever talks about Generation X, but one thing about us is that we grew up in minivans so that the thought of driving a minivan is like putting your hand in a toilet.
- hiou 11y ago
  Seattle is a fantastic counterpoint. Of all the cities I've seen, Seattle has managed to have excellent service and ridership using a primarily bus oriented public transit system. It's a great example of how the stigma of buses is one of the largest obstacles public transit in the US needs to overcome.
habosa 11y ago
I don't think people are taking Uber over the MUNI because of "stigma" or "bigotry". For sure there are some Uber users who are too good for public transportation, but I don't think that's a majority. The real reason not to take the MUNI is speed. The MUNI is really, really slow. First of all it's a bus in SF traffics so it's a natural disadvantage except where it has a preferred lane. Second, the MUNI stops way too frequently, which adds many minutes to travel time. Sometimes it stops at every block [0]. So a ride on the MUNI that would be about 40m will be 20m in an Uber because the Uber will stop only 1-2 times depending on how many people you're sharing the ride with. So the MUNI is $2.25 and the Uber will be about $6 (in my experience). If you add in the convenience of hailing the Uber with your phone and getting to track it with GPS, you can see why people with extra money would use this. However you should not take this as an endorsement, it's simply an explanation. I find it pathetic that the best SF can offer me to get from the north part of the city to downtown is a 45 minute jam-packed bus ride. It's only 3 miles! I'd love to see public transportation get more effective. Until then, I'll pretty much always ride my bike or take a Lyft Line. 0 - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/us/san-francisco-buses-are-slow-but-just-try-eliminating-a-stop.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/us/san-francisco-buses-are...

taigeair 11y ago

Jamaica has had this system for years. You stand next to the street and point if you want to go up or down, and you get a ride for $1. It's pretty cool. 7 people in one car at times.

umanwizard 11y ago
Lebanon has a similar thing. Stand by the highway, get in the next private bus/van that comes by, pay the driver $1-$2 when you get off at your destination. You can go anywhere in the country for $2; it's amazing.

omouse 11y ago

Uh no, the end game is autonomous logistics; getting someone or something from point A to point B. More automation is good, we're sorely lacking in automation. The real issue is distribution of profits. If the money gained stays at the top levels and doesn't move around much, you get stagnation and a poorer standard of living.

adventured 11y ago
If a small group of people gets rich off of Uber's solution (eg via stock), while everyone else gets to benefit from the drastic improvement in the taxi or transport system - it's everyone else that is getting the extreme majority of the benefit, as with nearly all similar scenarios. Larry Page and Sergey Brin have given me an extraordinary benefit to my life. I've maybe given them a few dollars over the years. It's clear who got the most out of that trade. They got $30 billion total (much of which will no doubt go to charity), the world got how much in benefit from what their search engine can do and how well it can do it? The same will plausibly be true with Uber in concept.
- gress 11y ago
  You make it sound as though Larry and Sergey personally created all the content on the internet that you consume.
  - maxwelljoslyn 11y ago
    I think adventured was referring to the value created by Google search, in itself, being so good at what it does - and not to the actual contents of its results.
    - gress 11y ago
      And I am suggesting that the value created is much lower than the value captured.

Aqueous 11y ago

Uber isn't a ride-sharing service - it's a ride-hailing service. The only thing that makes people want to use Uber over a Yellow Cab is that with Uber I open an app, click "Request Uber," the app shows me where the cab is, gives an accurate time of their arrival, and gives me information about my driver. You want to compete with Uber? Those are fairly straight-forward features to add to existing cab-hailing apps. Uber's technological advantage can thus be nullified easily, leaving it only to compete on price. Plus, taxis have an advantage because of the heavier regulation around taxis making them (theoretically) safer. The sooner the world's cabs companies beef up their technology infrastructure the sooner this upheaval will stop. There will be no further privatization of public transport assuming the taxi companies realize this soon. Oh, and cab medallions are already privately owned.

noir_lord 11y ago
We have a cab firm in my city that pushes the technology (as well as offering incredible service compared to others) I'd use them over Uber even at a somewhat higher price purely because I trust them in terms of safety and vehicle maintenance more than I do Uber.
smacktoward 11y ago
Ahem: http://gocurb.com/ http://gocurb.com/

jrockway 11y ago

Privatized public transportation seems to work in other countries. This particular plan sounds exactly like Hong Kong's minibuses. Also in other countries, private companies own competing rail networks, competing directly against the local government. (Tokyo is an example, compare Tokyo Metro and Toei. JR was once the government, but was privatized. Keio, Tobu, Seibu, Tokyu, etc. were always private companies.) Meanwhile, the government-funded model of public transportation seems to be failing in the US. The MTA spent billions of dollars buying new trains and resignalling entire lines to run trains every 1 minute 30 seconds. But didn't actually schedule service that frequently, resulting in trains that are un-boardable during rush hours. (In fact, unresignalled lines have higher levels of service. The Flushing line runs at 33 trains per hour. The upgraded Canarsie line only runs 26 tph.) Off-peak service is similarly abysmal, with trains running every 20 minutes as early as 11:00pm, that are often as packed as rush hour trains. They can't afford three more trains per hour to run them at 10 minute headways? With more people using public transportation than ever before, it's a sad time for the government to be unable to justify expanding service to meet the needs of the new commuters. But they are doing a great job of being inept, so it would be great to see the private sector come in and fix things. I don't care who I pay to get to work, I just want to get there quickly and hassle-free.

Tiktaalik 11y ago
It's important to recognize that public transit as a concept has major opponents in North America and cities are constantly having to fight to be able to build necessary infrastructure. Bafflingly expansion and funding of transit seems to need to go to referendums, where projects are frequently defeated (a yes vote in a referendum is very tough to achieve). In contrast other transportation infrastructure simply goes ahead as regular government spending. Ideological Anti-Tax, special interest groups have put huge amounts of money and effort into discrediting and defunding public transit and turning public opinion against expansion projects that would benefit everyone. The most recent example of this would be the Vancouver transit referendum, where the Canadian Taxpayers Federation seeded the idea that the transit runner Translink was a woefully inefficient organization even though in reality by almost any measure it's the best performing transit system on the west coast of NA. In the United states the Koch Brothers' Americans for Prosperity group has been pushing back against transit expansion and funding all across America. http://billmoyers.com/2014/10/03/koch-brothers-war-transit/ http://billmoyers.com/2014/10/03/koch-brothers-war-transit/

ilaksh 11y ago

Same as Amazon, Google, Github. Basically technology monopolies, or technopolies as I like to call them. They have become so powerful that they are the de facto government in certain areas. Thrn they get in bed with the government and its hard to say where one stops and the next begins. The endgame is for America to become the next China.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

zdw 11y ago

Imagine the dystopic future where Uber then colludes with the legal/prison complex, and can track everyone. Even if you don't use their services, their roving band of rfid/wifi/bluetooth sensing cars with cameras that read and recognize object like other cars, license plates, and other people in their environment will be observing everyone and everything, all the time. Every vehicle, a subpoena-able bundle of sensors. Watching. Personally, I find that even scarier than the mass destruction of public transit.

masterleep 11y ago
You find government owned transit better in this regard?
- masklinn 11y ago
  It could hardly be worse, and there's the remote possibility of holding your government accountable.
  - bsbechtel 11y ago
    Huh? You hold Uber accountable by not using their service. That's much more accountability than being 1 of ~150million votes.
    - pavel_lishin 11y ago
      Apparently 8 million people use Uber. Being 1 of ~8 million isn't significantly better than being 1 of ~150 million, in terms of accountability. But it's a faulty argument, anyway. It's not a single citizen that holds a government accountable, it's the masses, and the media, etc.
      - bsbechtel 11y ago
        Even if it is the masses and media that hold the government accountable, they can still be more effective by pointing their power towards Uber than a government. The media's effect on Nike's labor practices in the mid-90s comes to mind as an example.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago

So they've invented low-capacity, very expensive buses?

justincormack 11y ago
No, they had been invented in many places before eg the dolmuş in Turkey [1], or the pesero in Mexico [2]/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolmu%C5%9F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolmu%C5%9F [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesero
batbomb 11y ago
Lyft Line is a low-capacity, slightly more expensive bus.
imgabe 11y ago
More like on-demand buses that adjust their routes automatically according to where people need to go.
- mvid 11y ago
  And filter the riders to not be obnoxious, violent, unhygienic, racist, etc. And have real, working location status updates. And are clean. And won't tell you they are coming even though they are at capacity. As you can tell, this bus analogy irks me.
  - maxwelljoslyn 11y ago
    Uber really only has two things in common with public transit: cars and buses both have wheels to go places, and the services are both paid. {1} On-demand vs. scheduled {2} The given number of cars in the field sets a harder upper limit on number of riders. With buses, it's basically always "pack more people onto the bus, no matter how crowded" (i.e. the bus is forced to approach closer to "theoretical" carrying capacity of vehicle's physical volume - compare this to how much Uber is used for single riders.) {3} Anti-"troll" filtering (I mentioned elsewhere that this works for the same reason it works on web forums - you eliminate the irresponsible elements.) {4} No routes with Uber: go where you want. Normally this flexibility costs you at the rate of a taxi. Etc.

GuiA 11y ago

The problem is that current technology is making this new model for mass transit realistic. When everyone has a cellphone, and we can have tons of sensors on vehicles that communicate in real time (and might eventually be self driving), the old model for transit (fixed routes, pickups at fixed times, etc.) doesn't make sense anymore. Many socially disadvantaged people would especially benefit from such a modern form of public transportation: if a single mom working a minimum wage job can go to her workplace in 20 minutes rather than 1h30 for the same price, her quality of life would dramatically improve. If you subscribe to the view that the government should provide a set of basic services to all of its population (eg basic food, shelter, education, healthcare, transportation), then what should really happen is that the local public transportation agencies (SFMTA, NYMTA, etc.) should be the ones experimenting with new models and offering incrementally better services to citizens as technology evolves. But that's not how it works, because these agencies are bloated, ineffective, and the complete opposite of innovative. In countries where public transportation is in a better shape (e.g. a lot of western european countries) and the government is more left leaning (ie has no qualms making Uber illegal), services like Uber are a bit slower to reach the mass they are in the US, but it's still going to happen in the long term. We can't have it both ways. Either we go full capitalist, and in this case privatized public transit the Uber way seems inevitable in the long term, creating a 2 tiered public transit system: one privatized that works really well for the higher social classes, and the regular public transit system that will further languish and deteriorate as only poorer people use it (an outcome which I personally hate and find absolutely dystopian). Or we need to figure out a way for local governments to provide those basic services to their citizens, growing and changing them as the technology matures. That's much more appealing, but I'm not quite sure how to get there in a way that benefits all citizens equally.

hiou 11y ago
> But that's not how it works, because these agencies are bloated, ineffective, and the complete opposite of innovative That's quite a blanket statement that sounds a whole lot like ideology. Data seems to point to a high usage in several cities[1] and usage continues to grow over time. If this was such a horrific service as you describe, I think we would see little to no ridership. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_high_transit_ridership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_high_... Please be a bit more pragmatic about actions that will effect around 100 million people.

Chevalier 11y ago

Oh for christ's sake. I am a major proponent of public transit and walkable cities. Anyone who shares my support should be cheering wildly at Uber's expansion. Uber is the greatest, and perhaps the only, threat that we've ever had to American car ownership. With Uber, those occasional necessary car trips can be contracted out cheaply and easily. When you aren't FORCED to own a car to survive, many people simply won't buy one. The fewer people that own cars, the more heavily transit and bicycles will be used for daily trips. Ride-sharing is perhaps the most important blow ever struck against American car dependency.

jhspaybar 11y ago
To this point, I am a car guy, I was a car salesman for many years, and always had a nice car. A few years ago when I moved to Seattle, I decided to take a chance on public transit and Uber and decided to only have a single car for my family of four. It worked out! I actually can't stand to even drive anymore, and when my wife and I go out we try to avoid driving ourselves whenever possible. We still need the vehicle for long trips and for things like going to home depot, but it gets driven far less. I've also found myself taking the bus to destinations I normally wouldn't because the bus stop is a few miles from where I want to be, knowing that when I arrive I can get an Uber for the last little leg of the trip.

dajohnson89 11y ago

With very few exceptions, public transit in America sucks. In the cases where public transit is run by a private company (usually contracted out by the local government), it is much better. I for one welcome private involvement.

dangerlibrary 11y ago
[Citation needed]
- kaonashi 11y ago
  I think OP lives in a post-war town and is extrapolating anecdata.
  - dajohnson89 11y ago
    Baltimore ;-)
locahost 11y ago
Thirty years ago my small hometown had bus service to the closest big cities. Three private companies supplied round trips from one downtown to another several times a day. Now there is only a shuttle, which costs twice as much, runs only three times daily, and doesn't go anywhere but the airport. If you are car-free in this town, whether by choice, poverty, or disability, you're going nowhere unless you have friends to drive you. So I was excited about what Uber or Lyft could do for the rural car-free...until I remembered how the private bus companies left us high and dry. What's to keep Uber from doing the same?

jerf 11y ago

Take ideology off the hook for a moment, and if you are a supporter of lots of government support for mass transit, ask yourself, do you really want government agencies to engage in extremely, extremely speculative development [1] of millions of dollar's worth of software, radical new ways of organizing mass transit, and experimenting with a brand new way of providing services that have never been seriously tried before, and by all rational measures, at the outset of the project the most likely outcome can only rationally be considered failure? Honestly, if this wasn't an ideologically-loaded "private industry vs. government" issue and we were all wearing our rational thought hats instead of our politics hats, we would vigorously condemn any mass transit authority that prioritized such a risky venture at the risk of dropping actual services to poor people! That's not their job. This isn't a private vs. public story. Let the private industry prove out the model at their own risk and their own expense. Let them recoup the expense and pocket some profit for the risk at the expense of those who can afford the service. (The poor are not actually hurt by not having access to Uber, anymore than they were hurt by not having access to it 10 years ago.) Let the government come in behind and work on providing services based on the risks taken and the lessons learned. Perhaps even by contracting out to Uber, or perhaps more likely, a yet-to-be-founded mass-transit-focused competitor, when the model has been derisked enough that the poor aren't at high risk of being boned by the vagueries and vissitudes of Silicon Valley unicorns. This would hold true even if all the city governments were models of efficiency, and all had highly trained and skillful staffs of programmers on staff who could easily write all this code. But come now, even you promoters of government, let's all be honest with each other, this is not the case. And, again, that's not least because it would be unacceptable for a mass transit authority to hire all that talent when it should be using money to provide service. Government can't be good at everything, because there are something things that it can only be good at at the expense of other things it is supposed to be doing instead. Wildly risky experimentation certainly sounds like a good candidate for that category to me. [1]: By contrast, to be clear, I am fully behind incremental advancement, exploration, and development by governments. It routinely happens and it should. But in general, it is not their job to do moon shots with social programs. (Note the "moon shot" and "the bomb" and all the other really experimental stuff that you might want to name are not social programs. A line of military research coming up dry does not directly harm the poor. (Especially under progressive taxation where "the poor" pay either very little or negative taxes in the US, so you can't even really complain about their tax load.))

rayiner 11y ago

There is theoretically a public bus in Wilmington for $1 that makes a frequent trip past where my wife works (in the heart of the CBD) to the Amtrak station (about a mile and change away). Except it's never on time (in a small city with no traffic to speak of), and drivers decide to just randomly end their trips early and stop picking up passengers. Now that Uber is available in Wilmington, my wife has started using it heavily. That's great for her, not so great for all the low income people who actually need to use the service. And ultimately it's not Uber's fault that they're offering an alternative to the dysfunctional public transit system. The municipal government is supposed to be the ones offering poor people a safe and convenient alternative to walking through downtown Wilmington at night, and they fail at their job miserably.

tvanantwerp 11y ago

I live in DC. Our public transit is regularly late or broken, and is on fire often enough that people feel the need to check before their morning commute [1]. If the future of public transit is Uber, then I can't wait. [1] http://www.ismetroonfire.com/ http://www.ismetroonfire.com/

hoopd 11y ago

The price vs. users graph[0] is hopelessly wrong, dangerously wrong even. So wrong I can't take anything the author says about economics or markets seriously at all. I think they're trying to make the argument that Uber will achieve economies of scale but that would be cost vs. users, not price. Price and cost are different things. The graph also implicitly makes the assumption that there are an infinite number of users and Uber has competitors. In reality as the number of users increases Uber looks more and more like a monopoly and the price approaches whatever maximizes Uber's profits as opposed to "free". The bigger Uber gets the more they become the government they're fighting against. In a healthy free market price will approach marginal cost, but Uber isn't fighting for a healthy free market. It's the last thing they want. > While zero car ownership will undoubtedly and unremittingly be a net social good—can’t wait until driving is something one does for fun, ban cars! Can't tell if the author is for or against regulation. [0] - http://cdn.theawl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/price.jpg http://cdn.theawl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/price.jpg

placeybordeaux 11y ago

This sounds a bit like a scare piece given that dollar vans [1] already exist, they just aren't smart phone enabled. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_van https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_van

ThomPete 11y ago

Honestly that sounds more like spin than anything. They are working on self driving cars which is going to be a much more profitable business than privatizes public transit. I believe this is probably more likely to be an attempt to change public perception.

mc32 11y ago

For me the main problem with infrastructure heavy mass transit, which the author seems to prefer, is that the horizons are in multiple decades. I've forever been frustrated by mass transit going not where they are needed. In addition, in the SF south bay, mass transit infrastructure suffers from a chicken and egg problem. Density isn't high enough to support transit, so it would be unwise to waste tax revenue in elephants, but without the build-up, the environ for mass transit isn't stoked. Personally, I don't care who comes up with a financially viable solution, public or private. Having seen what public delivers, I'm optimistic private can compete and deliver something meaningful in under three decades of studies, agreements, bonds issuing, lawsuits, etc. Overseas, private mass transit delivers at least on par with public mass transit. Moreover, the NYC subway system was borne from originally private systems. I guess autonomous vehicles like uber's are likely to win out over the ideas by united technologies' "people movers". Still unsurprising that in the end the ideas to get to efficient mass transit tend to merge.

alwaysdoit 11y ago

> One of the more subtle underlying issues with the rise of Uber is the company’s slow siphoning of the political will to fix existing—or build new—public transit infrastructure in major cities. I don't think this is really true, at least in the short run. Uber fills the gaps which previously prevented me from completely getting rid of my car. Now that I'm completely car free, I rely on public transportation for trips that are well supported by our infrastructure and use Uber for trips that aren't, so I care a lot about our public transportation infrastructure, and usually support improvements, unless they are very poorly budgeted or misguided.

myth_buster 11y ago

I think the documentary Taken for a ride(1996) [0][1] which showed up on /r/Documentaries [2] is perhaps relevant to this discussion. [0] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0236785/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0236785/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-I8GDklsN4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-I8GDklsN4 [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/3iflv6/taken_for_a_ride_1996_how_general_motors_bought/traffic https://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/3iflv6/taken...

curiousjorge 11y ago

fat chance in hell. as soon as uber makes money by raising prices, paying drivers less or both, many others will jump in, quickly destroying the returns on investment. I see uber as a giant bulldozer that is paving the way for future competitors. Once they realize there's no way to keep people locked in unless they form a cartel like the traditional taxi industry, investors will panick. An Uber cartel is the least possible outcome because they do not own the roads, the car, the people. Do I ride the bike to work or hitch a ride? Do I use Uber or just take a taxi that's parked right across my building? Do I use Lyft or Uber if Lyft is offering cheaper ride? Is there any noticeable difference or do I even care, I just want to go from A to B and pay the least amount of money. This is the endgame for Uber: enable future competitors to reap the returns on it's investment because they are focused on monopoly in an industry that won't make it possible.

dba7dba 11y ago

Remember UK rail system. Used to be publicly owned, privatized and now a disaster.

fredkbloggs 11y ago

The author writes "One of the more subtle underlying issues with the rise of Uber is the company’s slow siphoning of the political will to fix existing—or build new—public transit infrastructure in major cities." This seems quite logical, and is a common argument that's been tossed around for a while now, previously in reference to employer-funded transportation for employees (popularly, "the Google bus", though there are many). The only problem is that it's deliberately ignorant of the past. Since the author mentions SF Muni by name, we should recognize that Muni has been a total disaster since at least the 1970s. If there has ever been political will to improve it, it's been thwarted. The agency has never met any of its legally mandated service requirements, despite numerous (successful) ballot measures throwing money at the problem and setting policies giving it a high ("the highest", per Prop A) priority. So it's pretty difficult to pin the blame for that on something that's existed for only a few years. It's no secret that I have no love for Uber, or that I consider it just another taxi service that should be regulated as such (which doesn't necessarily mean it should be regulated the way taxi providers are today). But claims that Muni's failure are Uber's fault are simply laughable. Muni was a worthless pile of garbage before Uber's founders were born, and it wasn't on an improving trajectory that Uber came along and trashed, either. The other angle, which the author did not explore, is that private mass transit is very common and popular, as it once was in the US, in many of the world's poorer countries. It's ubiquitous in Asia and Latin America, and while it won't win any awards for speed or comfort, it is cheap, effective, and capable of operating profitably without direct subsidies. This seems at odds with the author's lament that those left to suffer the indignity of public transit in the US are those with no other choice. Clearly that is a product of a political system that champions public funding of mass transit, not some inevitable outcome. There are many ways to make transit (public or private) better. I don't believe Uber is one of them, but nothing the SFMTA has done suggests that it's part of the solution, either. And it's been failing without Uber's help.

oneJob 11y ago

So, I guess Hacker News is focused more on the tech than the political, but, still, I'm kinda taken aback by the comments here. The Uber "endgame" is a super-small fish in the bigger ocean called "neoliberalism". It's not just a tech issue, but technology does accelerate the issue. It's a very deep concept, and fairly complex. It includes related disciplines such as Neoliberal Jurisprudence. Before anyone goes all "you don't know what you're talking about" on me, I concede I'm no expert. It's a very deep concept, after all. My exposure to the issue is largely via my wife and others in her cohort, studying at one of the US's top political theory grad programs. They are heavily studying/working on neoliberalism, taking it very seriously. It's worth educating one's self about it. Both in general, and as an IT/Tech professional. It's already a thing, most people just aren't aware of it yet. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2011.01019.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2011.... http://inthesetimes.com/article/17533/how_to_sell_off_a_city http://inthesetimes.com/article/17533/how_to_sell_off_a_city http://www.popmatters.com/column/194010-neoliberalism-is-changing-our-world-without-our-even-noticing/ http://www.popmatters.com/column/194010-neoliberalism-is-cha...