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Uber's predatory pricing is undermining public transit and density

• dpflan 10y ago
  Begin rambling brainstorm: I am curious about transport efficiency comparisons of trains/rail versus automobiles versus buses. Public sectors can miss out on interest in investment in infrastructure as Uber/ride-sharing is seen as an acceptable substitute good for public transit. But once a private entity has autonomous vehicles and even more efficient system, cities could tax the private entities for use of their transit infrastructure, e.g. roads. Could that mean then once private companies dominate the transportation market and raises prices, that cities then have the final card to play to either allow a company to be used in their city or not? Then they can create more efficient public systems or subsidized ride-sharing? Sure, citizens may be upset if they don't have Uber/riding sharing because of public sector decisions, but Uber would be upset about not getting revenue. I am just curious about others' thoughts about the big picture. Are cities doomed to privatized transportation and further inequality creation?
  • danjoc 10y ago
    The natural progression is car -> bus -> train. The Uber thing is now making congestion really bad where I live too. There's a town in New Jersey[1] that is opting for Uber instead of building a parking structure. Even though that is replacing cars with other cars, it still roughly doubles congestion; Ubers leave empty. More cars clogging the roads is bad for timely transportation and bad for the environment. Not just green house gasses, but motor oil, tires, litter. It's really unfortunate. [1] http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/3/13147680/uber-new-jersey-free-ride-parking-lot-train-commute http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/3/13147680/uber-new-jersey-f...
  • pchristensen 10y ago
    For cities, geometry is still the limiting factor. See http://humantransit.org/2012/09/the-photo-that-explains-almost-everything.html http://humantransit.org/2012/09/the-photo-that-explains-almo... "The scarcity of space per person is part of the very definition of a city, as distinct from suburbia or rural area, so the efficiency with which transport options use that space will always be the paramount issue."
  • maverick_iceman 10y ago
    Why privatized transportation would necessarily be a bad thing if it provides fast, comfortable journeys at a reasonable price? Of course if you're ideologically opposed to it then there's no point in discussing.
    • erispoe 10y ago
      It's not a question of private vs public. It's a question of space efficiency. A single rail line can transport 20 times more than a freeway lane (i.e. without street lights) Rail transit is vastly more space efficient than individual vehicles, autonomous or not. Japan has private rail transit for instance. Property rights in the US would make it very difficult for a private operator to actually build rail transit. Japan's private system also works because transit operators are also real estate developers and can cash in on the land they serve.
      • closeparen 10y ago
        > A single rail line can transport 20 times more than a freeway lane It can do that because its riders are forced into miserably packed standing room. Private vehicle transport can also be much denser if we give up such requirements as "sitting" and "personal space." You could pack, like, 20 people into a Camry and it'd still be far more pleasant than BART between 5-10am or 4-9pm. Of course, some of them would be in the trunk and others tied to the roof rack.
        • erispoe 10y ago
          Sitting might be a requirement for you, and it's fine, but should also be willing to pay the price for it, i.e. live in a suburb that can accommodate your preferences. You cannot live in a dense city rich in amenities and expect to be sitting all the time, it just doesn't work geometrically. In many cities (granted, not San Francisco), people happily stand in public transit for the dozens of minutes they have to spend there, and have satisfied with their experience. Go to Zürich for instance, you'll see bankers riding the S-Bahn when they could afford a car.
• wmil 10y ago
  The bigger issue is that city planners building public transit systems don't have the same interests as commuters. Inevitably they want to use public transit as an instrument for various social policies. Commuters just want to get to work reliably and they'd like a seat. And they'd like to have a minimum of screening so that they don't have to deal with people with severe mental issues on the way to work. In Toronto they've gone as far as launching a crowdfunded bus route, which the city had an icy response too. It had to shut down because of legal uncertainties. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/crowd-funded-bus-takes-a-run-at-transit-starved-liberty-village-1.2771419 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/crowd-funded-bus-takes... http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/sorry-toronto-commuters-liberty-village-bus-will-not-be-back-on-the-road-1.2192794 http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/sorry-toronto-commuters-liberty-vi... So I think the big problem with transit is that people in city gov refuse to recognise that commuters desires are perfectly reasonable. If the city won't provide them options then they should at least make sure there aren't legal issues with private providers.
  • robert_foss 10y ago
    About the problems with the mentally ill using public transit. It seems to be something I see a lot of in every North American city I visit. The problem is likely not how mentally ill people are allowed to use public transit, but maybe the complete lack of care provided to them.
  • erispoe 10y ago
    Jarrett Walker, the writer of that blog post, makes actually the same point in another post. In public transit there is a trade-off between maximizing ridership by focusing on great service on a limited number of lines, or maximizing social service by multiplying lines that go everywhere but do not offer convenient service for commuters. Walker has long been an advocate of making that trade-off apparent so taxpayers know what they're getting, and of re-balancing networks in favor of maximizing ridership. It means fewer lines, serving dense parts of cities, and running frequently. Edit: the ridership/coverage tradeoff http://humantransit.org/basics/the-transit-ridership-recipe#ridershipcoveragetradeoff http://humantransit.org/basics/the-transit-ridership-recipe#...
  • 10y ago
• stale2002 10y ago
  It is no surprise to me that big government hates competition.
  • kjbflsudfb 10y ago
    Are municipalities considered "big government"?
    • douche 10y ago
      Cities like New York, LA, Boston, DC, SF have bigger governments than many states, and even larger than some countries.
• Alex3917 10y ago
  > Even pro-transit politicians and officials have begun to see ride-hailing services as an acceptable substitute for public transit. As a result, cities across the country are making important decisions about transportation that treat 10-year-old companies as fixed variables for the decades to come. The 2nd avenue subway is going to take tens of billions of dollars and several decades to complete. Why shouldn't the possibility of self-driving cars be taken into account when making these sorts of billion-dollar multi-decade planning decisions?
• cmurf 10y ago
  What happens if a city decides to buy, or even build, their own autonomous vehicular fleet as a replacement for aging public transit? And isn't this inevitable anyway?
• smokeyj 10y ago
  Sometimes I wonder where everyone's driving to. They're driving physical cars, into a physical office, to work on digital information? Surely middle management has a better way of keeping tabs on their minions. Cities should give companies tax incentives to keep employees at home. Just stay off the road. Live in a part of town where you can walk to get your groceries and snacks. Incentivize mixed use developments instead of suburbia hell. Having worked from home the past year I can't understand how people put up with cubicles. While I make more now, I'd be willing to take a big pay cut to keep my sanity.
  • vmarsy 10y ago
    I think that even working on digital information, physical meetings can be useful[1], but I agree, a company could minimize those meetings and encourage working from home more often, however you claim that WFH equals to keeping your sanity. Don't you think social interaction important to maintain it? I feel that working from home is a lonely activity, and that on the other hand, being at the office and having lunch with co-workers or friends (even from completely different teams) contributes a lot in keeping one's sanity. Maybe a nice solution could be a hybrid: companies having mini corporate coffee-shops around town, where employees could go and work remotely, but still interact with other employees and cutting on commute time. That being said, having a multitude of small locations is probably much more expensive and difficult to manage than a big main campus. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13177611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13177611 - see "Functions of a meeting"
    • smokeyj 10y ago
      Remote work allows me to rotate through several coffee shops and keep my environment fresh. I get to take a nice walk there and back, and pop into my favorite pastry shop on the way. Sometimes I workout during my lunch break. Or even take a little power nap if I so desire. I hate offices with an intense passion now. Not just offices, but office culture as well - where seniority is gained by being the first in the parking lot and last one out. I'm officially opting out of competing with these drones and focusing on my quality of living. I encourage other developers to do the same :)
  • 10y ago
• jdminhbg 10y ago
  Boy, if you think Uber is artificially subsidizing rides to a predatory degree, just wait until you see the numbers on light rail.
  • automatwon 10y ago
    Are light rails subsidized by government? Or by VCs?
    • maverick_iceman 10y ago
      Is being subsidized by the government i.e. taxpayers better? After all VC money comes from a bunch of rich guys, not the ordinary taxpayer.
      • automatwon 10y ago
        Yes. The role of government is to ensure people can afford basic necessities. When government is competitive with private companies, it's to ensure prices are affordable for people. Uber wants to eliminate competition alltogether. If they become a monopoly, VCs win and consumers lose.
        • stale2002 10y ago
          But the end result is the same. It doesn't matter who is doing the "price dumping" or what their motivations are. The effect on society is equally good or bad no matter who is doing the dumping or price gouging.
          • automatwon 10y ago
            It will be equivalent to society if the private company persists with their subsidized prices. Consumers will stop reaping the price benefits once the private company becomes a monopoly, and changes their prices accordingly. You can say, well, the pie is fixed and it's just a matter of who gets a bigger of slice of the pie. Consumers or VCs. Is is it equally good to "society" if consumers get a smaller slice of the pie when the private company charges monopoly prices and their owners benefit?
• cperciva 10y ago
  This article makes some interesting assertions, but does very little to back them up with facts. Yes, in sparsely populated areas the availability of Uber often justifies cutting back on bus services -- but Uber is far superior to a once-an-hour bus service anyway. In some cases even allows for an increase in public transit usage, by handling the "last mile" (where individual vehicles are a good solution) and delivering people conveniently to and from train stations (whereupon they can switch to what public transit does efficiently -- moving a large number of people at once).
  • lefstathiou 10y ago
    I didn't think about this until you mentioned it but I definitely take commuter rails more frequently as a result of knowing there will be an Uber in the neighborhood to get me through the last mile. I do this at the expense of renting a car and for whatever reason, using the local taxi service that undoubtedly existed all the while never occurs to me (I've ridden enough sh1tty local cabs to never do it willingly).
    • ghaff 10y ago
      I hear this a lot and it seems odd to me. I have literally never taken an Uber (which I admittedly don't use a lot when traveling) when I haven't been fully aware of and prepared to take a taxi as an alternative. When I have taken an Uber I just decided it would be cheaper/easier/etc. but, if an Uber weren't an option, I would certainly just take a taxi.
      • Ensorceled 10y ago
        I take Uber when I can and a cab if I must. But if I must take a cab, I'll often just drive. I've had too many terrible or dangerous cab rides to be so blasé about the difference.
      • ohwello 10y ago
        Taxis suck in a lot of places. It takes then forever to show up when you call, if they show up at all. Very inconvenient for eg. making your way to the commuter rail station in the suburbs.
• nameisu 10y ago
  ube is undercutting everyone now and when traditional transport systems become bankrupt they will keep increase prices
  • caconym_ 10y ago
    Don't forget that they're going to save a lot of money as soon as they can cut all those expensive human drivers out of the loop.
  • conanbatt 10y ago
    There is more tax revenue to be had on almost any single ride over a public transport fare.
• ryan_j_naughton 10y ago
  The unsustainable pricing point overlooks how driverless vehicles will drive the cost of door to door transit to almost 0 (especially as cars go electric and solar brings extremely cheap power). While it will bring many ills (e.g. increased obesity due to cheap door to door transit, more spread out cities), let's not delude ourselves with this article's misguided rhetoric -- mass transit will be more affordable and accessible than ever in history to the masses. This article aims to treat the car sharing as ceteris paribus (all else equal) when in the current state of exponential change, it is anything but.
  • azakai 10y ago
    Possibly, but fully driverless cars in urban areas are likely decades away (unlike driverless trucks or driving assisting cars, which will arrive sooner). And electric is good, but there are some issues that will take more time to sort out, like charge times. It's true improvements will arrive, but they add another set of uncertainties for urban planners.
    • stale2002 10y ago
      It is not decades. It is 4 years. Every self driving car company is aiming for 2020 for mass consumer release.
  • maverick_iceman 10y ago
    Don't know why you and any other pro-Uber voices are being downvoted/flagged in this thread. You're making a very sensible argument and I don't know why people would downvote/flag it.
    • astrange 10y ago
      What's sensible about it? Public transit has much lower energy costs than a car right now and it sure isn't free. You might be able to get somewhere with a public unscheduled version of UberPool, but Uber is cheap because the drivers are getting screwed, not because it's actually efficient. (The drivers are getting screwed because they're not getting paid enough for extra maintenance and depreciation on their cars. If Uber switches to owning cars they're going to take on this problem.)
• bubblesocks 10y ago
  Good for Uber. The public transit system where I live is a joke, and I'd love to see them undermined into non-existence. When I can pay an Uber driver $12 to get me somewhere in 15 minutes, or pay $8 for the transit authority to get me there in an hour, with only three transfers, each of which have a 5 to 15 minute wait out in the elements, that extra $4 starts looking like a pretty good deal.
  • ar15saveslives 10y ago
    You're describing public transportation in Ottawa.
• gigatexal 10y ago
  Lol @ predatory pricing. Surge pricing works in the same way that efficient markets do. When the road conditions are crazy and there's an imbalance in the number of drivers and the number of riders seeking drivers the price shoots up. The higher prices incentivize drivers to take the risk for the reward (compensation). This is simple economics.
  • Analemma_ 10y ago
    Yes, please keep repeating this to us as though we're idiots who have never heard of supply and demand, and as though we haven't heard this explanation from Uber defenders a thousand times before. And definitely don't consider the possibility that we understand this reasoning and still find it unsatisfactory.
    • maverick_iceman 10y ago
      If you don't say why you find this argument unsatisfactory then we'll be compelled to assume that you just don't understand supply and demand, just like SF NIMBYs.
      • astrange 10y ago
        You can't know how surge pricing actually works, because Uber's algorithm is proprietary. It could work in theory but not work in practice - people usually report they can beat surges by walking a block or switching to Lyft, and maybe drivers don't care about a 1.2x price surge or can't hear about it in time?
    • dang 10y ago
      Snark is deprecated here, so please don't do this. Instead, if a comment is annoyingly missing something important, wait for the annoyance to subside, then neutrally say what they're missing. Otherwise the discussion just degenerates.
  • swyman 10y ago
    You didn't even read the article. The predatory pricing they're talking about is running competition out of business by selling below cost until they have a monopoly.
• Fricken 10y ago
  This comment was posted yesterday in /r/urbanplanning: As a transportation / transit planner, there are an awful lot of suburban transit routes that are simply there due to politics instead of actual use. An example is one route I had done a bunch of work on that essentially showed the existing 5 riders a day would be better served at a cheaper rate by municipally subsidized taxis than by a gas guzzling, inflexible, union driven, public transit bus. The financials made sense, the data made sense to support a change. It was about to get changed until a politician came in and essentially canned everything because he didn't want his ward to not have a transit route because he would look bad. I firmly believe these gaps can and should be filled by alternative modes of transport, and I wouldn't necessarily look at this as a bad thing. Transport is a wildly flexible area that is constantly evolving . As for the costs going up for Uber, I don't really think those concerns are founded in anything other than speculation. His same logic about economies of scale would surely translate into it filling in that cost gap between providing the service and being revenue profitable. The truth is that every dollar invested in transit in the suburbs is nowhere near the same as every dollar invested in transit in urban areas. This article, I don't believe, made a real case for showing that the cost of providing transit would be cheaper, even in a future scenario, than having Ride hailing services filling in the gaps. The advantage of allowing Uber / taxis to fill first / last mile trips is that operating the line scales relatively well for scenarios where this type of service makes sense. There's a breakpoint where this cost of operation justifies switching over to providing a transit solution. But this allows agencies to build up demand before investing the capital and assuming some of the other maintenance costs such as bus stops, scheduling time, etc https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/5ijfa9/cities_are_cutting_public_transportation_because/db8qk5u https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/5ijfa9/citie...
• gkop 10y ago
  My buddy lives in SoMa and works 1.7 miles away at Lyft HQ in China Basin. He takes Muni to work because it's faster (despite being significantly less direct). San Francisco is not even a dense city. It's frightening to me that none of the comments here on this thread show any love for mass transit.
  • peterhunt 10y ago
    San Francisco is the second densest major city in the United States.
    • blintz 10y ago
      Depends on how you count. If you look at the metropolitan area, it's the 7th densest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density#Metropolitan_areas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
    • gkop 10y ago
      Cities in the US are less dense than cities elsewhere [0] because of the large extent to which US cities are designed around cars [1] (including SF, which is #104! Even our more dense cities aren't very dense relative to the world). [0] http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-125.html http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-... [1] http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Environment/E_Casestudy/E_casestudy3.htm http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Environment/E_Casestudy/E_...
    • wheelerwj 10y ago
      that's not really a good stick to measure against.
  • maverick_iceman 10y ago
    >San Francisco is not even a dense city. Wow, man! Have you ever, like, been to San Francisco?
    • user5994461 10y ago
• robotcookies 10y ago
  Writer claims "I am constantly told that Uber will make transit obsolete." Who exactly are the people telling this writer that Uber will make transit obsolete? I live in a city where public transportation is very popular and have not once, ever heard this. The reality is public transit use is surging in popularity. Public ridership is up 39% since 1995 (you know, when most people did not have internet or smartphones). Young people flock to cities with good public transit. And while I've never once heard someone say "Uber will make public transit obsolete", I have heard many people say they chose a city because it had good public transit.
  • slyall 10y ago
    The Author is a transit consultant. He is constantly talking to cities/towns about optimizing their transit networks. I would guess he is hearing it from politicians and other parties in the areas he is talking to. They will say "Why should we spend $x on a new bus system when uber/driverless cars will solve the problem"
    • robotcookies 10y ago
      If he's hearing it from politicians/public officials then he should name who made such comments. Since it's the base of his argument that Uber is killing transit, it's important to cite where he heard it.
  • briandear 10y ago
    So people would move to a boring city with great public transit?
    • robotcookies 10y ago
      It's not the only factor, but it's often mentioned as an important one.
    • douche 10y ago
      If there are good jobs there, people will move to just about anywhere, transit or no, boring or not.
• briandear 10y ago
  Public transit isn't profitable either. It's heavily subsidized by the taxpayer, so the author's logic isn't intellectually honest. Look at Amtrak as a good example. Or the MTA in New York. Uber is subsidized by private investors, public transport is subsidized by everyone -- whether they want, need or use it or not.
  • makomk 10y ago
    No, the author's logic is good - the investors will expect to make that money back through a future monopoly, and proposals for replacing public transport with Uber often also include similar taxpayer subsides on top too.
    • maverick_iceman 10y ago
      You have antitrust laws to deal with any monopoly.
• ohwello 10y ago
  Uber is roughly breaking even in the US: https://www.google.com/amp/www.breitbart.com/california/2016/08/26/uber-losing-money-rate-2-4b-per-year/amp/?client=ms-android-verizon https://www.google.com/amp/www.breitbart.com/california/2016... Anyone hoping Uber is going to run out of VC money and lose favor after being forced to raise prices in cities where it is already popular is going to be sorely disappointed. Uber is profitable in those cities. The more plausible failure scenario is that it doesn't succeed in new markets and therefore ends up being worth less than its current valuation.
• iterrogo 10y ago
  For those comparing the cost of public transit to Uber don't forget to keep in mind that Uber is also subsidized by the government. They are not paying 100% of the cost of the roads and other infrastructure they use.
  • ar15saveslives 10y ago
    Drivers do.
  • briandear 10y ago
    Nope. Gasoline taxes pay for roads. Vehicle registration taxes pay for even more services from the government. Income taxes on earnings pays for some things as well. However city buses are tax subsidized. Why not boost the fare to actually cover the costs? Cities buses are driving on subsidized roads -- their fuel, vehicles, maintenance and marketing is tax subsidized. They even have special lanes built just for them -- paid for involuntary by people who are opposed to such things. Uber is paid for entirely by those that chose to pay for it, which is how it should be. Why should I pay for city buses I won't ride? Why shouldn't the people riding the bus pay for it?
    • ufo 10y ago
      Gasoline taxes do not currently cover highway maintenance costs: http://taxfoundation.org/article/gasoline-taxes-and-tolls-pay-only-third-state-local-road-spending http://taxfoundation.org/article/gasoline-taxes-and-tolls-pa... As for buses, it is a good thing if they are cheaper than cars. Encouraging public transport use is good for the environment, for people who cannot afford to own a car and also reduces congestion in the streets. By your argument we should also have a sizeable congestion tax for driving a car during peak hours as well as a substantially larger gas tax.
• wheelerwj 10y ago
  > have potentially unsafe run ins with the mentally ill. while i understand your point, it's not really fair. you can have potentially unsafe run-ins with the mentally sane just as easily. you can also have potentially unsafe run-ins with the mentally ill while in a Lyft or Uber. You are trying to say thay you want a quiet, peaceful, possibly even restful commute because you want to be focused at work. But that's not what you are actually typing.
  • yummyfajitas 10y ago
    It's actually a lot harder to have a violent run-in with a sane person. Crazy people really are more dangerous than normal ones. http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/mental-illness-and-violence http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/mental-illn...
    • lwf 10y ago
      The lede of your link appears to disagree with you: > Most individuals with psychiatric disorders are not violent. Although a subset of people with psychiatric disorders commit assaults and violent crimes, findings have been inconsistent about how much mental illness contributes to this behavior and how much substance abuse and other factors do.
      • WillPostForFood 10y ago
        No it doesn't; he didn't say most individuals with psychiatric disorders are violent. He said they are more violent than people with non-psychiatric disorders, which the article supports (especially if they also have a substance abuse problem).
        • wheelerwj 10y ago
          everyone with substance abuse problems are more violent. correlation is not causation.
          • 10y ago
• devereaux 10y ago
  If you like to be so generous and open hearted, and genuinely believe that most people are just like you, why exactly would you oppose crowfunded services? Because I think it put in plain sight that no, most people do not want that. I for one do not want to ride next to people who can physically harm me. I would love a "club" model for public transportation where members who don't play nice could be excluded from this club, and which would only use members money instead of subsidies. TLDR: do what you want with your money, I'll do what I want with mine. We will belong to different clubs providing different public transportation. Just don't force me to join your club by forbidding mine. (edit: downvote is not for indicating disapproval in case I hurt your feelz. If you believe I am wrong, please explain how and why)
  • throwaway29292 10y ago
    You aren't personally/individually wrong in wanting this, I get the sentiment, but if everybody started thinking and wanting this, the emergent effects would be a step backwards for society. This may not change your mind, but you can at least think about that.
  • cortesoft 10y ago
    I am not downvoting you, but there are serious flaws in your 'club' model. For one, there is nothing stopping people from doing your 'club' model right now; anyone can start a bus company, create memberships, and have criteria for who gets to ride on the bus. There aren't a lot of them, but ride share companies exist. If you don't want to use public transport, you are free to use one of them. Second, not everyone can afford to pay as much as a 'club' bus would cost. While you might think that is ok, and that people who can't afford it on their own don't deserve to be transported places, a lot of us disagree with that. We think that even poor people deserve to be able to get to work, to get to the store, and to move around.
  • PhasmaFelis 10y ago
    FYI, I'm downvoting you for the "hurt your feelz" business. This isn't Reddit.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• jackvalentine 10y ago
  I was talking about this with a friend last night. We (Australia) get annoyed when the Italians dump a bunch of below-cost tomatoes on to the market and slap them with penalties but don't seem to give a damn when Silicon Valley dumps a bunch of below-cost taxis on to that market.
  • douche 10y ago
    If your tomatos were expensive, dirty, and three-quarters rotten, and the Italians start selling better, cheaper tomatos, are you going to be upset, or rejoice? Depends on whether you are invested in providing terrible, expensive, mostly rotten tomatos.
    • jackvalentine 10y ago
      Taking the long term view though (and referring back to this article) we would rejoice initially, then realise our folly as the cheap tomatos destroy local industry and alternatives only to inevitably have to put up their prices.
• mdasen 10y ago
  In my city, rents have skyrocketed near transit stops since it's so essential. When you're a 20-25min walk from a transit stop, prices are a lot cheaper, but you become hard to get to and hard to get to work. New transit isn't really an option because of density and cost (the cost to build per rider is astronomical). But the city is also dead set against increasing the density near transit stops to decrease rent/buy prices (and increase transit ridership due to it being convenient). Public transit in many cities creates hot-spots in the real estate market that isn't good public policy either. Of course, the article is right that people shifting into less dense transit will have bad environmental and congestion problems. But I don't think that traditional public transit will be the way of the future. Rather, I think that self-driving, reasonably high-density vehicles will be the future. Imagine a nice bus that seats 15-20 picking people up along an ad-hoc route in the morning determined as riders hail the bus and are instructed to an ad-hoc stop within a block and dropping them off within a block of their destination. That's a lot more convenient than most public transit systems where you have to travel to stops, maybe change lines, not getting exactly where you want to go, etc. It could also cut down on vehicle miles travelled by creating optimized routes. If Uber Pool can do what bus service can do for barely more money, a self-driving bus will be way better than a standard public transit experience and as efficient or more efficient environmentally. In fact, I think the self-driving future in cities will be determined by good incentives. During peak periods, charge for congestion. Not broad-based attacks on vehicles, but an incentive for people to commute in higher-density vehicles where the charge can be spread among more people. It would be easy for a city to incentive Uber, Lyft, and others to offer higher-density options for commuters via congestion charging. Likewise, environmental incentives could be offered to push customers and companies toward more economical vehicles and routes. I think it's reasonable to assume that in a self-driving future, companies like Lyft and Uber would want a lot of economical vehicles like Priuses getting 50MPG in the city. For higher-density vehicles, 10% fuel savings could push margins up a couple points - especially if environmental fuel taxes are put on top of the price of fuel. Similarly, better routing can lead to fewer miles travelled leading to savings. For those that want the privacy of single-person travel, they can be charged an appropriate amount to compensate society. Uber can't do a lot of high-density vehicles currently because it relies on vehicles owned by random people. But when self-driving vehicles truly become mainstream, there's no reason Uber wouldn't want to expand into company-owned, higher-density vehicles. They could run these at a fraction of the cost that most public transit systems are running at. In lower density areas, maybe medium-density vehicles and in even lower density areas, single-person rides in small vehicles may remain common. When Uber can control its vehicle stock with self-driving vehicles, there's a lot of options for them to optimize in ways that will boost their profits while also helping the environment and congestion. Maybe you think Uber isn't interested in a low-rent, non-premium service. That may be, but so many are interested in transit and it would be reasonably easy for a competitor to put together such a service and undercut Uber on price for so many riders. Uber would want to respond. Ultimately, the article talks about bus routes doing 10 boardings per hour and how that's more than an Uber will do. That's probably true, but an Uber-bus would likely do more boardings due to better ad-hoc routes and more convenience. In my city, fares only cover a quarter of bus operating costs (never mind capital costs) and two-thirds of subway costs. Part of the problem is that a lot of transit systems work off the principle that they need to serve off-peak and lower utility uses in order to hit that critical mass that would make them a good choice for users. Ad-hoc, self-driving routes could relieve transit systems of their bigger loss-leaders using vehicles optimized for those areas. Similarly, off-peak service that often sees low ridership and loses money could be off-loaded. This is also an environmental win - subways are environmentally friendly when there's a lot of riders, not when they're mostly empty. A bus route that's losing over $10 per rider is bad for a public transit system and also bad for the environment since the bus probably doesn't have enough people on it to make it fuel efficient on a per-passenger basis. I think there's a genuine opportunity to do a lot better than current public transit with self-driving vehicles. Something that's a lot more environmentally friendly and a lot more convenient.
• dnautics 10y ago
  Maybe public transit officials are undermining public transit? In singapore, one can get across the island for ~75c in a vehicle that is fast, clean, efficient, and almost never delayed. Maybe it’s time to quit discussing public transit officials and bureaucracies as though they were improving the world in a permanent way, and as though they will necessarily make cities better for everyone. We already know that’s hasn't been true.
  • deleted 10y ago
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• megiddo 10y ago
  Three capitalist pigs were in a jail cell in the USSR. They were chatting, when the subject of their incarceration came up. The first said, "I charged less than the market, and found guilty of dumping." The second says, "I charged more than the market and was accused of gouging." The last responded, "I charged the same as everyone else, and was accused of price fixing!"
  • TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Context matters. The first pig could be like Martin Shkreli, pricing necessities beyond the reach of people who need them. The second could be like Uber, being able to undercut the competition thanks to blatant disregard for laws and good taste. And as for the third, take your pick from these role models: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing#Examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing#Examples.
    • witty_username 10y ago
      > The first pig could be like Martin Shkreli, pricing necessities beyond the reach of people who need them. Source? Who was unable to buy the medicine? According to him IIRC about 60% of the drug is given for 1$ or some nominal. Also, most people's insurance buys it.
• smsm42 10y ago
  I call bullshit on the premise that Uber is undermining public transit. A lot of places have had crappy public transit and crappy taxi service long before Uber showed up. A lot of places will continue to have it. Blaming it on Uber because it's there is lazy and unfair. > But much of the confusion arises because people sincerely don’t understand how narrow the range of opportunities is for ride-sourcing to improve on fixed route transit’s efficiency. As if I cared about improving abstract "efficiency". I care about being able to get a ride within 5 minutes at any point in the city. Whether or not that improves some abstract metric invented for completely other reasons carries no importance to me. > We know Uber is unprofitable, which means its prices are unsustainable. No it actually doesn't mean that. Profitability has other dimensions than consumer prices, such as investments, capital costs, etc. > Uber’s behavior often looks like an intentional effort to undermine competitors and thus reduce customer choice I haven't seen any behavior aimed to reduce customer choice. The only people trying to reduce the customer choice are those inventing reasons to ban Uber (and similar service), often at explicit prompting and for direct benefit of incumbent stakeholders. > no doubting the value of these companies in the lives of fortunate people who can afford to use their services routinely Oh, those fatcats that can afford to shell out whole $9 for a ride! Who cares about those, they probably each own a park of helicopters anyway. > and many welcome regulation precisely to plug that gap. Which regulation, to do what? No mention of it. Why bother? Of course regulation is good and no regulation is bad. Terrible article, full of FUD and calls to "do something", without bothering to outline what and for what purpose.
• ChuckMcM 10y ago
  Interesting thesis (that city planners will reallocate tax dollars assuming Uber and other ride sharing services will pick up the slack) but I don't know if I buy it. I'm fascinated by the various company buses in the Bay Area. If you look at the passengers they carry they take a significant number of cars off the road. And even though they are economically inefficient (every company has their own set of fixed costs) there is no effort to create a public/private partnership that would meet the needs of companies and urban planners with less cost.
• sjwright 10y ago
  I can't speak for other people or other cities, but I'm in Sydney, Australia and everyone I know who uses UberX doesn't use it because it's cheaper (though it is) but rather because the quality of service is consistently much higher than the traditional taxi. The idea that Uber might be competing with bus or rail seems very surprising and indicates that something must be seriously, seriously screwed with the mass transit infrastructure in that city.
• pbreit 10y ago
  Actual headline: "Sounding the Alarm about Uber’s Impacts on Transit, and on Cities" Current HN headline: "Uber's predatory pricing is undermining public transit and density" The article barely mentions predatory pricing. It also pins much on whether or not Uber is profitable, citing conflicting reports. But at 30% take rates it's pretty easy to see that it would be quite profitable on a gross margin basis.
• mgalka 10y ago
  Seems weird to question Uber's sustainabiliy based on it's costs being too high. If it stopped investing in growth, I'm not rven sure it would have any costs. It's just a routing app that earns a cut from the drivers.
  • makomk 10y ago
    Of course it would have costs. It'd have the cost of IT and management, software maintenance, PR, support and of course drivers and vehicles. One of the fundamental problems of Uber is that they cannot be cost-competitive either on the driver and vehicle side or on the corporate side because they're less efficient than their competitors at both: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/12/can-uber-ever-deliver-part-two-understanding-ubers-uncompetitive-costs.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/12/can-uber-ever-deliver...