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UberHop: More people in fewer cars
- singingwolfboy 11y agoCongratulations, Uber, you just reinvented the bus.
- cscharenberg 11y agoBut the vehicle's route is chosen by exactly-known demand rather than following a centrally-set and inflexible schedule and route. It's not much like a bus at all in actual practice.
- sneak 11y agoThe blog post cites the prior practice of informal carpooling with strangers; it is somewhat dishonest to insinuate that they claimed to invent anything.
- mikeash 11y agoI've never seen a bus that dynamically picks a point-to-point route based on the needs of the passengers on it at the moment.
- bryanlarsen 11y agoMost private buses in the third world will do this.
- pavel_lishin 11y agoIt's exactly how taxis work in St. Thomas.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- superuser2 11y agoFor the passengers who are onboard, sure, but what about pickups?
- bryanlarsen 11y agoCall their cell. It's written on the bus.
- anonymfus 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka
- manacit 11y agoThey're very popular in a lot of places that aren't the USA (and even exist in NYC): Dolmuş in Turkey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolmu%C5%9F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolmu%C5%9F NYC "Shadow Transit": http://projects.newyorker.com/story/nyc-dollar-vans/ http://projects.newyorker.com/story/nyc-dollar-vans/ More broadly, "Share Taxis": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_taxi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_taxi The idea isn't anything new, but being able to pay and ride from the convenience of Uber is nice.
- bostonvaulter2 11y agoIt's worth noting that the ones in NYC are illegal. With that said I'm all for moving mass transit in this direction.
- akgerber 11y agoThey are illegal to street-hail— but this is unenforced. The city is working on normalizing them, including adding taxi-like branding: http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/industry/vans.shtml http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/industry/vans.shtml
- petra 11y agoI think it becomes something different and much more efficient with enough data and good algorithms.
- Eleopteryx 11y agoHmm yeah, this kind of technology combined with vehicles that can carry large numbers of people could be very effective. Not quite the same as a bus, significantly better in fact.
- graeme 11y agoNot quite. More like the shared taxi stops that operate in poorer countries. I saw many of these in Cuba. Not like a bus in that it was: 1. Faster 2. Carried fewer people 3. Had route flexibility. You could pay extra to go off the route, negotiated with the driver and checking it didn't inconvenience the other passengers. This is radically different from how we run transport in North America. With self driving cars, I could see Uber running shuttles around the city that decided optimal multi-user routes taking into consideration all the various route requests users had entered. I always figured this was their end game as far as consumer transport was concerned.
- adamwong246 11y agohuzzah! Another step closer to the dream of fully autonomous automobiles! Though human uber drivers must know that they are, at max, 5 years away from obsolescence?
- kcarter80 11y ago"human uber drivers must know that they are, at max, 5 years away from obsolescence" Care to place a friendly wager on that? I'll even forgive the "uber drivers must know" part of your crazy statement since that obviously isn't correct. Ubiquitous driverless cars are coming. 5 years is an incredibly aggressive time frame.
- tachyonbeam 11y agoIt's a ridiculous timeframe if you consider that there are no driverless cars for sale right now. Even if Tesla or Ford or any other vendor started selling them tomorrow, the driverless cars would be too expensive and the factories could hardly pump out enough of them to put every Uber driver out of a job in just 5 years. I'm looking forward to being able to order a driverless car from my phone, but in just 5 years, these cars might still be scarce, illegal in most places and they might suffer from limitations in their driving ability that prove problematic.
- OmarIsmail 11y agoYou're thinking about it wrong. No consumer is going to buy a driverless car. Instead you'll call an Uber or GoogleTaxi and there won't be a human behind the wheel. Just like Musk said, owning s car is going to become like owning a horse. People do it as a hobby but not as a necessity.
- adamwong246 11y agoI agree. We'll buy into car share networks. There will be super primo services where you can ride in a limo, business class networks that allow you to ride in privacy and maybe even economy class networks where busses and vans carpool like uber's new hop feature. Crucially, this allows the number of overall cars to slashed. 1 auto-auto can do the work of 10 non-auto-autos, and the cost will be spread out among subscribers and expensive electric cars will finally be cheap enough for everyone.
- tlrobinson 11y agoWatch out, Chariot (https://www.ridechariot.com/ https://www.ridechariot.com/) and Scoop (https://www.takescoop.com/ https://www.takescoop.com/)
- calvinbhai 11y agoAnd http://bridj.com http://bridj.com and http://split.us http://split.us
- infecto 11y agoWould love for this to hit SF and I can finally have alternatives. I have been dying to try out Chariot and got super excited when they announced a route to Outer Richmond. Lost enthusiasm when the route was only a couple stops on on Geary close to Inner Richmond.
- capkutay 11y agoI've been using Magicbus.io They're still the only commuter service that goes from SF to Palo Alto.
- hardtke 11y agoThe casual carpools in the East Bay save a lot of time going into San Francisco because of the carpool lane. Very few people use them in the reverse direction (people take the bus instead) since there is no time saving. AC Transit hates this since they need to buy more buses for the evening commute. Curious to see if the same asymmetry happens with UberCommute.
- blacksmythe 11y agoUber can apply some market pricing to this by charging more for the SF commute and less for the return direction.
- samstave 11y agoWait until uber starts bus services. That will be great.
- aikah 11y ago> Wait until uber starts bus services. That will be great. lol, but why wouldn't they try? they'll have to set up their own bus stops though. I wonder if it would be "legal".
- smackfu 11y agoSomeone tried, it didn't go so well: http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/09/san-franciscos-luxury-bus-startup-finally-folds-selling-off-last-3-vehicles/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/09/san-franciscos-luxur...
- jquery 11y agoHave you EVER relied on Muni to get to work? > I wonder if it would be "legal" It would be "legal" just like their "ride sharing" service was "legal".
- eanzenberg 11y agoThe nice thing about the eastbay casual carpool (which I use every morning) is it runs on a universal first-come first-serve basis. Uberhop will not have this unless it is universally used. Uberhop may succeed at creating new carpool routes but it will fail at breaking into established ones because of added friction.
- johnrob 11y agoThe ride sharing industry is finally offering ride sharing! Seriously though, I never understood why we've been calling them 'ride sharing' apps, when they've essentially been drivers-for-hire.
- jonawesomegreen 11y agoThey claim to be ride sharing apps so that they are not blatantly breaking laws that protect taxi monopolies. Its a backdoor they have been using to try to open up this industry.
- stonogo 11y agoThose laws that protect taxi monopolies are also the laws that enforce consumer rights in this space, so let's maybe scale back the editorializing a bit?
- samstave 11y agoWhile you may be technically correct, where was my right to actually receive the thousands of taxis I've called over the years that never showed up in SF. I was literally banned from all taxis in 2008 in SF as I would have to call four companies for a cab to my place in the presidio as they would never show up. I wound up getting the numbers of various private black car drivers whom I could call upon at a moments notice to deliver me anywhere and they always showed up. If these laws were designed to protect "consumers" I don't know what the fuck they are protecting! I've used uber since they were born, and I've only ever had nothing short of a wonderful experience with them. Whilst they may have certain business practices which people can complaint about - uber should be the text book example of how you disrupt an existing service.
- smt88 11y agoThe taxi-protecting laws and consumer-protecting laws are separate. Uber could be regulated as a taxi service, just like pre-existing taxi services are. Consumer rights could be protected by the law. However, in most places, there is a medallion system for officially-licensed taxis, which basically imposes a very high tax on anyone trying to operate as a taxi service. Because Uber couldn't function within the medallion system, it was also shut out of consumer protection laws. But that doesn't mean things have to be that way. The problem is that allowing Uber around the medallion system essentially destroys a bunch of value already stored up in medallions. Also, where else should someone editorialize, if not a comment on a social news site?
- burkemw3 11y agoDo uberCOMMUTE drivers get 1099s? Assuming so, I'm not sure the hassle of doing more taxes and actually paying those taxes would be worth it to me.
- altonzheng 11y agoSo how does Uber benefit from pairing you with another commuter? Will you negotiate a price and then Uber takes a cut?
- bosdev 11y agoI believe Uber will charge you for the trip (but less than the cost of a normal ride), and give a chunk of the money to the driver (just as they do normally).
- metanoia 11y agoAnyone notice this statement? "We will be piloting a new program for drivers who want to share their commute and recoup the cost of the trip." (emphasis mine) If we go with what is implied by this, I don't see how this is much different than using the destination filter, except for possibly paying the driver "costs" instead of the typical fare.
- ZainRiz 11y agoGood catch. This means the driver is no longer an employee of Uber (not even a freelance one) so he wouldn't be eligible to unionize or receive worker's rights
- chrisseaton 11y agoWhat would stop the driver starting or joining a union? You can be self employed and still be in a union. You can even be unemployed or a student and still be in a union. (May be UK-speficic)
- cyan_atrus 11y agocertain powers of unions are protected by the government -- i.e., by default you can't band together with a bunch of people and set a minimum wage you'll all work for (that's price fixing).
- metanoia 11y agoThe race to the bottom continues. The bottom for the driver, that is.
- patcon 11y agoIf a million people were driving cars twice daily with no passengers, and now they have the option to fill their cars, then I'd say the former situation was "the bottom" for them. So it depends who your archetypal "driver" is -- the /true/ average driver, or the career driver. Maybe there's no room for a career driver anymore. fwiw, I don't like Uber the company, but this dynamic will continually resurface, with or without them.
- Apocryphon 11y agoIsn't this pretty similar to Lyft Carpool? https://www.lyft.com/carpool https://www.lyft.com/carpool
- mmahemoff 11y agoThe Lyft page doesn't make it clear if the route is fixed. That's what's new here, otherwise Carpool would be the same as what Uber has already been running with UberPOOL. In any event, all these services are converging on the same thing, a kind of replacement for public transportation on a fine-grained scale. Car pooling, fixed routes, and eventually self-driving vehicles are all table stakes for any ride-sharing operation that wants to approximate the economics of a local bus service (but with added convenience and service).
- jonknee 11y agoNo. This is more similar to a fixed price shuttle that ends up being an SUV instead of a minibus or regular bus. (Fixed starts/stops, route reverses from morning to evening, etc.)
- newman314 11y agoThis seems interesting as a commute option but I would still like to see Uber adopt a stance where they get rid of rider route history after X months or at least give people the option to opt out.
- serge2k 11y agoUberCommute sounds like a decent idea, but also something I don't particularly want to give a middle man a cut for.
- capkutay 11y agoHow else would you do it? Go around asking random people if they would be willing to drive you to work for $10?
- cyan_atrus 11y agoCertainly matching you with a commuter going in the same direction is a service worth paying for? Plus integrating payments, trust, safety, and all the other things you get with the uber app.
- hotgoldminer 11y agoMight as well collect as much interchange as possible between now and the Alphabet self-driving service.
- GnarfGnarf 11y agoGreat idea. It's just like the colectivo system used in Lima, Peru and other Latin American cities since the 60's and earlier. Colectivos are taxis traveling a fixed route and shared by a carful of people. You stand by the side of the road, waive one down and he takes you downtown real cheap.
- zymhan 11y agoThey have these in the Middle East as well.
- yekim 11y agoOr like becaks and opelets in Indonesia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_rickshaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_rickshaw https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oplet https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oplet
- petra 11y agoI don't think it's like that , i think uber polans to offer a more dynamic route.
- acjohnson55 11y agoThese exist pretty much everywhere, by dozens of names: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_taxi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_taxi
- bloat 11y agoAlso known as a bus! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/09/uber-uberhop-bus http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/09/uber-uberh...
- gt565k 11y agoAre there any restrictions on the model year of the car for UberHop / UberCommute?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- spooningtamarin 11y agoWhat this means is that Uber doesn't have an efficient enough algorithm for ride sharing and they currently are giving us a solution that will optimize the routes upfront. This will give them enough competitive data to figure out the live on-line algorithm. And of course, lowering the prices still, but it won't work for those of us who want the routes now, not planned upfront. Way to go free datasets. Although it's nice to know that researchers at Uber still haven't figured it out, makes the competition a bit happier. It's quite funny how a company raises so much money, and then, after you have it you go solve the hard problems, or at least that's how Uber works.
- badusername 11y agoWhat you said doesn't make much sense. Much more important than the algorithm is the market that the algorithm operates in. Uber couldn't unleash a magical algorithm and solve commuting inefficiencies for every user if there isn't a sufficient density of both riders and drivers (i.e. the main inputs to the algorithm in this case).
- spooningtamarin 11y agoThat doesn't seem to be a problem for the competition. Prices are the problem, and Uber is trying really hard to lower the prices and profit, that's why the algorithm IS most important. I really do not understand why almost everyone thinks that "network effect" is the best thing Uber has, when it obviously isn't.
- badusername 11y agoIt is. I get an uber where I live within 2-3 minutes. And sometimes I've gotten uberPool matches essentially going to the same destination picked up within a block. These are only achievable with considerable penetration into a local market.
- spooningtamarin 11y agoFor smaller towns this effect is negligible, and there are more smaller towns than big ones.
- achow 11y agoFor the people who are confused (I was) between uberPOOL, uberHOP and uberCOMMUTE: uberPOOL most will know matches a rider real-time with another one heading in the same direction. The riders split the cost between them. uberHOP is like a bus service - uses designated pickup locations and matches people going on similar routes. It costs riders a flat fee of $5 for each ride. Difference between uberHOP & uberPOOL - uberPOOL does not require riders to walk to pre-determined locations, instead having drivers pick up passengers at their exact location. The cost is variable and not a flat fee. For uberHOP riders have to walk to a predetermined spot (something like a bus stop). uberCOMMUTE is less formal than the other two carpooling options and is designed for everyday people (ex. an office goer) that want to share space in their car. In other words, one temporarily becomes an uber driver when they are driving to their office. On their way to office a person can pickup passengers and gets compensated for that. For passengers, it’s Uber as usual. They simply input their destination and then uber matches them with a driver going the same way.
- dmix 11y agoComparative descriptions like this are a great way to describe products. It's too bad most companies publish new products with a presumption the reader is closely familiar with the existing products/business to make their own comparison. They really should start with how the new products fits into the greater scheme of the companies offerings, so we can all have a clear mental-model of why it makes sense and when I might want to use it. Curse-of-knowledge and last-minute rushed blog posts after a product launch is probably why it's so common. Or maybe making the assumption since it's being posted on the company blog that the average blog reader is better informed than the homepage - which is rarely the case.
- SilasX 11y ago>Comparative descriptions like this are a great way to describe products. It's too bad most companies publish new products with a presumption the reader is closely familiar with the existing products/business to make their own comparison. I tend to read this behavior oppositely: they're not assuming you have the knowledge, they're hoping you don't, and obscuring the similarity to existing products that they might seem inferior to when framed as competitors for the same use case. "Hey, UberHOP is just Lyft Lines + hotspots with an extra requirement that they hit more stops off my route..."
- suhastech 11y ago> It’s estimated that the average American commuter spends 42 hours a year stuck in traffic. I'm reading this as Indian (specifically Bangalore) and it brings a smile on my face.