> That's all fine and good if you have a choice in when you travel. Car broken down and you need to get to work? Good luck having a choice. Doctor's appointment

> That's all fine and good if you have a choice in when you travel. Car broken down and you need to get to work? Good luck having a choice. Doctor's appointment? Need to go to court? You are just stuck having to pay. But this is exactly the problem that surge pricing solves, other people that can choose when to travel will already be traveling at other times, which means you'll have a car available instead of having 0 because everyone else is trying to travel at the same time. Making the price constant doesn't guarantee that you'll be able to travel when you need, only that if you can get a car, you'll pay a certain price. If you want both that seems like something that is solved by both surge pricing and insurance. > You can plan on having more cabs during busy hours and fewer during less busy hours. Buses often have more busses on the routes during busy times of day. That means higher infrastructure costs (need more cars, more maintenance, more/bigger roads) which will lead to higher prices. > If you want choice in such things, it takes more than surge pricing. Cooperation between workplaces and so on to stagger start/end times, for example. Yes, but surge pricing can nudge that cooperation into existence. Maybe not by itself, but in conjunction with surge pricing in other areas as well. Our societies have to deal with extra costs because of the man-made rush-hour: "Everyone" showers at the same time, turns on their toasters at the same time, occupies the roads/buses at the same time, etc. Turn those costs into real dollars instead of subsidizing them with higher prices on the low hours and watch businesses start to fix it by themselves.