6 ms·

Yeah, I'm mostly not a fan, now that we're a few years in. Waves of people inexperienced, untrained in shuttling people around a major metro have resulted in d

by bbarn 9y ago

Yeah, I'm mostly not a fan, now that we're a few years in. Waves of people inexperienced, untrained in shuttling people around a major metro have resulted in downtown Chicago being an utter mess compared to only a few years ago. Chicago forced cab drivers to go through a training and certification course that at least forced them to understand the major routes and grid system we're on, and every time I've been in an uber they are completely tethered to their phones nav systems. So, now we've got an army of drivers who can't drive, don't know where they are going, playing with their phones all day. It makes for an unpleasant experience whether you're on a bike, driving you car, or sometimes just walking across the street.

mring33621 9y ago
Fellow Chicagoan here. I agree. Used to be that cabs were the most annoying, unpredictable cars on the road. Now it's the Ubers and Lyfts.
- monksy 9y ago
  I'm incredibly glad they forced them to display the logo. Now you can tell it was the bad uber driver that just tried to hit you.
- monksy 9y ago
  They're still bad.
toast0 9y ago
I used to think cabs were terrible drivers, but most of them (especially in heavily regulated markets) are very experienced drivers and simply disregard rules of the road that are inconvenient for them. In contrast, 'ride sharing' drivers seem to have no sense of direction, and are genuinely oblivious to the rules of the road. In short, when in either type of car, I fear for my life.
- mikeash 9y ago
  That's interesting. I wonder if this is a regional thing, or just different personal experiences. For me, I've never had a particularly bad Uber driver, but I've had incredibly bad taxi drivers. (My favorite was the guy who decided that driving down I-395 in Arlington was a good time to catch up on some paperwork. He kept the cab on the road, but only by using all three lanes. Thankfully it was about 2AM and nobody else was using them.) While driving, I tend to fear for my life when taxis are around, but whenever I spot an Uber or Lyft car, they seem to behave unremarkably.
  - 11thEarlOfMar 9y ago
    Seconding that. I took a half-dozen Uber rides in Las Vegas two weekends ago. My biggest concern was trying to figure out how to use the app to tip them. All drivers were cordial, polite, had no problem with routing (admittedly, it's pretty simple in Vegas). One driver was a smoker and the car smelled and that was the only negative in 6 rides. Overall, it's the end-to-end experience. Call up the app, type in a destination, head to the curb. The car shows up about the same time I get there, I hop in, chat a bit on the way, hop out at the destination, rate & tip via the app and go on my way. The seamless experience, so far, makes up for the (so far mild) idiosyncrasies of drivers and cars.
  - 8ytecoder 9y ago
    There's also the other side of the problem that you don't get to see as a passenger. Uber/Lyft drivers in a rush to get to their pickups drive like maniacs here in SF. I'm from a developing country and I'm used to drivers who disregard rules but even those pay attention to the surroundings - you can read them and know if they are going to yield or not. But having gotten used to the polite driving of SF a few years ago, I find it quite dangerous to walk my dog out now. I stick to interior roads and wait till I know for sure that the car would yield for me before I cross. Driving and Biking have become usually miserable as well. My only request is that passengers don't encourage this by blindly rating everyone 5 stars. Take at least two star off for unsafe driving - not stopping at a stop sign, not yielding to pedestrians, not giving enough space while passing a bicyclist and at least one star for not following the rules - driving on the bus lane, double parking in the middle of a busy road, driving too fast on a 25Mph zone, not waiting long enough for the pedestrians to pass safe ...etc. If the economics don't work out for the drivers, the fare has to go up. By keeping the fare artificially low and pushing drivers to accommodate too many trips Uber and Lyft are ruining the experience for everyone and in doing so are perpetuating the need for more people to use them instead of considering alternate transport modes. This, sooner or later, will ruin it for everyone. Take it from me, America cannot handle a developing country style traffic. It requires a different set of skills. People here are used to predictable traffic.
bogomipz 9y ago
>"Waves of people inexperienced, untrained in shuttling people around a major metro have resulted in downtown Chicago being an utter mess compared to only a few years ago." Has the city published any traffic impact studies? NYC showed concerned for Uber impact on traffic and made an attempt to get data and it turned into a political kerfuffle with accusations of protecting the taxi industry etc. I don't like the title of this blog post but it points to similar of what you are stating about downtown Chicago: http://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/02/27/its-settled-uber-is-making-nyc-gridlock-worse/ http://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/02/27/its-settled-uber-is-ma...
- bbarn 9y ago
  I think it'd be hard to actually quantify the impact. Chicago's also constantly under construction, the downtown area has had major bus route redesigns with the "JUMP" routes, and that's caused a lot of congestion too. I'm not really familiar with new york's streets, but ours have been over capacity forever and now with uber/lyft there's a lot more single passenger car traffic in the business areas. Much more so than cabs, because getting them is much more convenient than cabs ever were here - calling a cab in chicago is a joke, honestly, and if you weren't in an area they pass by frequently you were out of luck. I feel like more people choose the uber option for short trips that would have been transit in the past. The convenience of it is the model, after all.
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    >"I think it'd be hard to actually quantify the impact." You would need Uber/Lyft's help I believe. But I think if you combined the Uber/Lyft data with data that the DOT keeps it would be pretty easy to quantify the impact. I think that was NYC's point as well. But unfortunately the mayor had received money from a taxi lobbying effort which allowed Uber to cry foul and make accusations of protectionism.[1] One metric used is average travel speed which according to this recent article is down 12% to 8.1 miles compared to 2010[2] [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/nyregion/de-blasio-reaps-big-donations-from-taxi-industry-he-aided.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/nyregion/de-blasio-reaps-b... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/nyregion/uber-ride-hailing-new-york-transportation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/nyregion/uber-ride-hailin...
stillhere 9y ago
ADA non-compliant vehicles as well. Disabled passengers cannot ride an Uber most of the time. It has been difficult to sue Uber though.
- hirsin 9y ago
  Huh, wonder if someone succeeded. In Seattle we have ADA compliant Uber as an option, and the price is set to zero.
- jghn 9y ago
  I've had a leg immobilizer and crutches for a bit now. People keep telling me I should uber/lyft around to be more mobile but I can't easily do that. My two choices are to sit lengthwise across the back seat after a lot of work scooting in or to get in the front with the seat all the way back. Both will annoy a lot of drivers and trash my rating. It's been pretty eye opening.
  - nradov 9y ago
    I'm tall, and when I use Lyft I typically sit in the front and move the seat back. Hasn't been a problem.
awkwarddaturtle 9y ago
This is just the first step. The ultimate goal is driverless taxi fleets. Whether that's achievable ( technologically, legally, etc ) is another story.
ajmurmann 9y ago
I've had the occasional Lyft driver who could have made better choices. However, the one thing I've only had with taxis is a driver who is actively malicious and makes one turns clearly on purpose to drive up the bill. Lyft cars also have been consistently much cleaner. The skankyness of some taxis I've been in is just without competition.
- sokoloff 9y ago
  I've literally had cab drivers on airport pickups ask me "Do you know the best way?" I can only assume that's an overt sizing up to determine whether I know anything about the city or whether they can take me for a figurative ride. Those cab drivers can't get starved out of business fast enough as far as I'm concerned.
  - Paul-ish 9y ago
    I am so naive. I've been asked that before by a Taxi driver in NYC I believe on my way to the airport and just said "Uh, shouldn't you?" I never realized what they were up to.
    - smsm42 9y ago
      In many places there are fixed prices for rides between major points, like city center->airport, etc. Not the case in NYC?
      - slededit 9y ago
        There are for certain airports. A yellow cab will be cheaper than an Uber in some cases especially when surge pricing is in play.
sixQuarks 9y ago
Uber was actually a little too early into the game. They are going to have legacy issues transitioning into self-driving taxis. The whole end-game with this is to have self-driving cars and get rid of drivers, this was the stated goal at least 4 years ago. This is where Tesla is going to have an advantage. They're going to start with self-driving, no need to deal with pissed off drivers and other problems that come with a transition. Same thing with their dealerships - they didn't have to deal with the dealer-franchise system.
jdauriemma 9y ago
So true. Good luck getting a driver to pick you up around Wacker. Upper/lower confuses the heck out of the uninitiated.
- wenc 9y ago
  I would normally assume Upper. Where would one pick up passengers on Lower Wacker? (genuinely curious, not being snarky). Apart from the fact GPSes don't really work on Lower Wacker, so it's hard to nail down the pickup location on the app.
  - jdauriemma 9y ago
    No idea, but many drivers who aren't familiar with the area just follow the GPS and end up getting lost down there.
- THE_PUN_STOPS 9y ago
  For the uninitiated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wacker_Drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wacker_Drive Chicago has also begotten the most amazingly complicated 3D road diagram in America: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Chicago_top_down_view.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Chicago_...
jxramos 9y ago
That might explain the two red light runners I've seen in the last two days with Uber stickers on their windshield. One nearly struck me and would have if I didn't slow down my approach.
wenc 9y ago
I live in Chicago, and my experience with rideshare drivers has been uniformly good. Many of them genuinely enjoy driving. Some can be opportunistic but I guess my baseline for city driving was shaped in cities where the traffic is much worse than Chicago's (try Sao Paulo). I actually think Chicago drivers are ok. The worst drivers are cab drivers in the Loop during rush hour who will honk at the slightest provocation, who don't use turn signals, and will suddenly stop in front of you. If Chicago cab drivers are trained, that training certainly isn't evident. On the other hand, Lyft drivers have stars docked if they exhibit unsafe driving behaviors, and they are deactivated if their rating gets too low (4.6 stars is the threshold I believe). Many non-casual Lyft drivers actually try not to crash their ratings. https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-real-reason-Uber-and-Lyft-use-ratings/answer/Leonid-S.-Knyshov?srid=iQx0 https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-real-reason-Uber-and-Lyft-us... Cabs don't have this feedback loop. Only accidents will get them off the road. Edit: I speak as a driver and a passenger. I imagine things have gotten worse for bicyclists. Also, I don't use Uber, only Lyft. I've heard Uber drivers are worse because Uber is more liberal with their rating system.
arstin 9y ago
Yea my experience with biking in Chicago is that at least cabs are clearly marked as such so you know they might cut you off at any moment and you'll cuss at each other. Uber drivers will just stealthily swerve into your lane and full stop. Plus the GPS systems here will take you down these speed bump residential roads and do crazy contortions to drop off on a one-way road. On the flip side though, when I first moved here a cab was like $20 each way just from like Broadway to Kimball. Now it's...$4.
- akgerber 9y ago
  In NYC, Uber drivers are required to be licensed by the Taxi and Limousine Commission, and you can report their dangerous driving to the commission, who will fine them. It seems like a much better system.
  - Fej 9y ago
    It's almost like people have been through this problem before and devised regulations to fix it. Don't get me wrong, I always use Uber or Lyft over a cab. Taxi regulations are often cited as awful. But this particular one is a good one.
smsm42 9y ago
I'd think making a nav system work properly with given map once is more efficient than making hundreds of drivers to constantly learn it over and over. > It makes for an unpleasant experience whether you're on a bike, driving you car, or sometimes just walking across the street. How drivers guided by a nav system is worse for streetwalkers than any other drivers? And, from my experience, long-term commercial driving doesn't always make a driver a model road citizen - in fact, in many places taxi drivers are kinda notorious for being less than model co-roaders.
godzillabrennus 9y ago
Chicago cab drivers were the worst. Uber drivers are leagues better. Last time I was in a cab in Chicago the driver ran a man over in the street and just kept going. When I jumped out to see if the victim was okay the driver yelled to me that I was fare dodging before he sped away....

by bbarn 9y ago

mring33621 9y ago

Fellow Chicagoan here. I agree. Used to be that cabs were the most annoying, unpredictable cars on the road. Now it's the Ubers and Lyfts.

monksy 9y ago
I'm incredibly glad they forced them to display the logo. Now you can tell it was the bad uber driver that just tried to hit you.
monksy 9y ago
They're still bad.

toast0 9y ago

I used to think cabs were terrible drivers, but most of them (especially in heavily regulated markets) are very experienced drivers and simply disregard rules of the road that are inconvenient for them. In contrast, 'ride sharing' drivers seem to have no sense of direction, and are genuinely oblivious to the rules of the road. In short, when in either type of car, I fear for my life.

mikeash 9y ago
That's interesting. I wonder if this is a regional thing, or just different personal experiences. For me, I've never had a particularly bad Uber driver, but I've had incredibly bad taxi drivers. (My favorite was the guy who decided that driving down I-395 in Arlington was a good time to catch up on some paperwork. He kept the cab on the road, but only by using all three lanes. Thankfully it was about 2AM and nobody else was using them.) While driving, I tend to fear for my life when taxis are around, but whenever I spot an Uber or Lyft car, they seem to behave unremarkably.
- 11thEarlOfMar 9y ago
  Seconding that. I took a half-dozen Uber rides in Las Vegas two weekends ago. My biggest concern was trying to figure out how to use the app to tip them. All drivers were cordial, polite, had no problem with routing (admittedly, it's pretty simple in Vegas). One driver was a smoker and the car smelled and that was the only negative in 6 rides. Overall, it's the end-to-end experience. Call up the app, type in a destination, head to the curb. The car shows up about the same time I get there, I hop in, chat a bit on the way, hop out at the destination, rate & tip via the app and go on my way. The seamless experience, so far, makes up for the (so far mild) idiosyncrasies of drivers and cars.
- 8ytecoder 9y ago
  There's also the other side of the problem that you don't get to see as a passenger. Uber/Lyft drivers in a rush to get to their pickups drive like maniacs here in SF. I'm from a developing country and I'm used to drivers who disregard rules but even those pay attention to the surroundings - you can read them and know if they are going to yield or not. But having gotten used to the polite driving of SF a few years ago, I find it quite dangerous to walk my dog out now. I stick to interior roads and wait till I know for sure that the car would yield for me before I cross. Driving and Biking have become usually miserable as well. My only request is that passengers don't encourage this by blindly rating everyone 5 stars. Take at least two star off for unsafe driving - not stopping at a stop sign, not yielding to pedestrians, not giving enough space while passing a bicyclist and at least one star for not following the rules - driving on the bus lane, double parking in the middle of a busy road, driving too fast on a 25Mph zone, not waiting long enough for the pedestrians to pass safe ...etc. If the economics don't work out for the drivers, the fare has to go up. By keeping the fare artificially low and pushing drivers to accommodate too many trips Uber and Lyft are ruining the experience for everyone and in doing so are perpetuating the need for more people to use them instead of considering alternate transport modes. This, sooner or later, will ruin it for everyone. Take it from me, America cannot handle a developing country style traffic. It requires a different set of skills. People here are used to predictable traffic.

bogomipz 9y ago

>"Waves of people inexperienced, untrained in shuttling people around a major metro have resulted in downtown Chicago being an utter mess compared to only a few years ago." Has the city published any traffic impact studies? NYC showed concerned for Uber impact on traffic and made an attempt to get data and it turned into a political kerfuffle with accusations of protecting the taxi industry etc. I don't like the title of this blog post but it points to similar of what you are stating about downtown Chicago: http://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/02/27/its-settled-uber-is-making-nyc-gridlock-worse/ http://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/02/27/its-settled-uber-is-ma...

bbarn 9y ago
I think it'd be hard to actually quantify the impact. Chicago's also constantly under construction, the downtown area has had major bus route redesigns with the "JUMP" routes, and that's caused a lot of congestion too. I'm not really familiar with new york's streets, but ours have been over capacity forever and now with uber/lyft there's a lot more single passenger car traffic in the business areas. Much more so than cabs, because getting them is much more convenient than cabs ever were here - calling a cab in chicago is a joke, honestly, and if you weren't in an area they pass by frequently you were out of luck. I feel like more people choose the uber option for short trips that would have been transit in the past. The convenience of it is the model, after all.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  >"I think it'd be hard to actually quantify the impact." You would need Uber/Lyft's help I believe. But I think if you combined the Uber/Lyft data with data that the DOT keeps it would be pretty easy to quantify the impact. I think that was NYC's point as well. But unfortunately the mayor had received money from a taxi lobbying effort which allowed Uber to cry foul and make accusations of protectionism.[1] One metric used is average travel speed which according to this recent article is down 12% to 8.1 miles compared to 2010[2] [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/nyregion/de-blasio-reaps-big-donations-from-taxi-industry-he-aided.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/nyregion/de-blasio-reaps-b... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/nyregion/uber-ride-hailing-new-york-transportation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/nyregion/uber-ride-hailin...

stillhere 9y ago

ADA non-compliant vehicles as well. Disabled passengers cannot ride an Uber most of the time. It has been difficult to sue Uber though.

hirsin 9y ago
Huh, wonder if someone succeeded. In Seattle we have ADA compliant Uber as an option, and the price is set to zero.
jghn 9y ago
I've had a leg immobilizer and crutches for a bit now. People keep telling me I should uber/lyft around to be more mobile but I can't easily do that. My two choices are to sit lengthwise across the back seat after a lot of work scooting in or to get in the front with the seat all the way back. Both will annoy a lot of drivers and trash my rating. It's been pretty eye opening.
- nradov 9y ago
  I'm tall, and when I use Lyft I typically sit in the front and move the seat back. Hasn't been a problem.

awkwarddaturtle 9y ago

This is just the first step. The ultimate goal is driverless taxi fleets. Whether that's achievable ( technologically, legally, etc ) is another story.

ajmurmann 9y ago

I've had the occasional Lyft driver who could have made better choices. However, the one thing I've only had with taxis is a driver who is actively malicious and makes one turns clearly on purpose to drive up the bill. Lyft cars also have been consistently much cleaner. The skankyness of some taxis I've been in is just without competition.

sokoloff 9y ago
I've literally had cab drivers on airport pickups ask me "Do you know the best way?" I can only assume that's an overt sizing up to determine whether I know anything about the city or whether they can take me for a figurative ride. Those cab drivers can't get starved out of business fast enough as far as I'm concerned.
- Paul-ish 9y ago
  I am so naive. I've been asked that before by a Taxi driver in NYC I believe on my way to the airport and just said "Uh, shouldn't you?" I never realized what they were up to.
  - smsm42 9y ago
    In many places there are fixed prices for rides between major points, like city center->airport, etc. Not the case in NYC?
    - slededit 9y ago
      There are for certain airports. A yellow cab will be cheaper than an Uber in some cases especially when surge pricing is in play.

sixQuarks 9y ago

Uber was actually a little too early into the game. They are going to have legacy issues transitioning into self-driving taxis. The whole end-game with this is to have self-driving cars and get rid of drivers, this was the stated goal at least 4 years ago. This is where Tesla is going to have an advantage. They're going to start with self-driving, no need to deal with pissed off drivers and other problems that come with a transition. Same thing with their dealerships - they didn't have to deal with the dealer-franchise system.

jdauriemma 9y ago

So true. Good luck getting a driver to pick you up around Wacker. Upper/lower confuses the heck out of the uninitiated.

wenc 9y ago
I would normally assume Upper. Where would one pick up passengers on Lower Wacker? (genuinely curious, not being snarky). Apart from the fact GPSes don't really work on Lower Wacker, so it's hard to nail down the pickup location on the app.
- jdauriemma 9y ago
  No idea, but many drivers who aren't familiar with the area just follow the GPS and end up getting lost down there.
THE_PUN_STOPS 9y ago
For the uninitiated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wacker_Drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wacker_Drive Chicago has also begotten the most amazingly complicated 3D road diagram in America: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Chicago_top_down_view.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Chicago_...

jxramos 9y ago

That might explain the two red light runners I've seen in the last two days with Uber stickers on their windshield. One nearly struck me and would have if I didn't slow down my approach.

wenc 9y ago

I live in Chicago, and my experience with rideshare drivers has been uniformly good. Many of them genuinely enjoy driving. Some can be opportunistic but I guess my baseline for city driving was shaped in cities where the traffic is much worse than Chicago's (try Sao Paulo). I actually think Chicago drivers are ok. The worst drivers are cab drivers in the Loop during rush hour who will honk at the slightest provocation, who don't use turn signals, and will suddenly stop in front of you. If Chicago cab drivers are trained, that training certainly isn't evident. On the other hand, Lyft drivers have stars docked if they exhibit unsafe driving behaviors, and they are deactivated if their rating gets too low (4.6 stars is the threshold I believe). Many non-casual Lyft drivers actually try not to crash their ratings. https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-real-reason-Uber-and-Lyft-use-ratings/answer/Leonid-S.-Knyshov?srid=iQx0 https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-real-reason-Uber-and-Lyft-us... Cabs don't have this feedback loop. Only accidents will get them off the road. Edit: I speak as a driver and a passenger. I imagine things have gotten worse for bicyclists. Also, I don't use Uber, only Lyft. I've heard Uber drivers are worse because Uber is more liberal with their rating system.

arstin 9y ago

Yea my experience with biking in Chicago is that at least cabs are clearly marked as such so you know they might cut you off at any moment and you'll cuss at each other. Uber drivers will just stealthily swerve into your lane and full stop. Plus the GPS systems here will take you down these speed bump residential roads and do crazy contortions to drop off on a one-way road. On the flip side though, when I first moved here a cab was like $20 each way just from like Broadway to Kimball. Now it's...$4.

akgerber 9y ago
In NYC, Uber drivers are required to be licensed by the Taxi and Limousine Commission, and you can report their dangerous driving to the commission, who will fine them. It seems like a much better system.
- Fej 9y ago
  It's almost like people have been through this problem before and devised regulations to fix it. Don't get me wrong, I always use Uber or Lyft over a cab. Taxi regulations are often cited as awful. But this particular one is a good one.

smsm42 9y ago

I'd think making a nav system work properly with given map once is more efficient than making hundreds of drivers to constantly learn it over and over. > It makes for an unpleasant experience whether you're on a bike, driving you car, or sometimes just walking across the street. How drivers guided by a nav system is worse for streetwalkers than any other drivers? And, from my experience, long-term commercial driving doesn't always make a driver a model road citizen - in fact, in many places taxi drivers are kinda notorious for being less than model co-roaders.

godzillabrennus 9y ago

Chicago cab drivers were the worst. Uber drivers are leagues better. Last time I was in a cab in Chicago the driver ran a man over in the street and just kept going. When I jumped out to see if the victim was okay the driver yelled to me that I was fare dodging before he sped away....