29 ms·

Uber is experimenting with letting riders wait longer for a cheaper fare

174 points by prostoalex 8y ago

maerF0x0 8y ago
I just wanted to drop a note to say I think Uber is doing a good job, all things considered. Many public transit companies have been around for decades and haven't figured out how to scale up to the kind of service Uber is providing. 4B rides in 2017 is pretty amazing. If I understand the math correctly, BART claims about 126 million rides (2015) and cost $906M (~$7 a ride, comparable to some uber pool fares)
- Tiktaalik 8y ago
  >Many public transit companies have been around for decades and haven't figured out how to scale up to the kind of service Uber is providing This is because these are publicly funded organizations that are starved of funds for political reasons. Public transit works well where it's funded well. It's a political problem, not a technology problem.
  - selectodude 8y ago
    Even the best funded public transit services are substantial money losers. Paris covers 70 cents of every dollar, Madrid 60 cents, and even in Berlin and Munich its 30 cents. But that covers 100 percent of their expenses. If Uber had to shell out to fix the streets that they use, I bet it wouldn't be so cheap.
    - Pyxl101 8y ago
      > If Uber had to shell out to fix the streets that they use, I bet it wouldn't be so cheap. Streets are public infrastructure and are paid for by taxes, which Uber and all other companies that do business using roads presumably pay, just like everyone else. So, unless you have a specific reason to believe otherwise, it is fair to assume that yes, Uber is paying for the streets that they use. If streets are not being adequately paid for, then that's a failure of the government that's responsible for them, not the businesses that are using them (streets are there to be used).
      - selectodude 8y ago
        >Uber is paying for the streets that they use. Uber doesn't pay a cent in gas taxes (they're not employees, they're partners, right?), and since they've never made money before, they don't pay a cent in taxes either.
        woolvalley 8y ago
        The drivers pay gas taxes, and the majority of the revenue goes to the drivers. Therefore car activity that uber induces is also paid for by the customers that use it. Basic induction. What you are doing is like complaining about amazon or the local grocer inducing truck demand and not paying for the roads. It's a bit obvious you have a chip on your shoulder about Uber and ride share companies in general.
        icebraining 8y ago
        Careful about mistaking accounting for economics. If gas taxes were lowered to zero, could Uber increase their share of the ride payment by the current tax amount, without harming their relationship with the drivers? If so, then Uber is paying that tax, not the drivers.
        selectodude 8y ago
        Maybe if gasoline weren't extremely inelastic, your begging the question wouldn't be so ridiculous. I pay $4.00/gal for gas. The gas tax is 18 cents. Under 5 percent. Yes, I suppose Uber could lower their cut by a tenth of a percent and really put some extra change in my pocket!! PS. I have an expensive piece of paper in economics and statistics, but I appreciate you telling me to be careful. Gotta have somebody looking out for me, i suppose.
      - jakecopp 8y ago
        Lets dedicate the same public funding to trains & buses as we do to roads (including accounting for the property value sprawling roads occupy) and then see if public transport is comparable to ride-sharing. There's a reason advanced cities in Europe and Asia invest heavily in mass transit without the expectation of a commercial return, it's simply more space efficient.
    - dnautics 8y ago
      Singapore's public transit system is run as a for profit (two competing companies, in fact), and it's one of the best and cheapest in the world.
      - foepys 8y ago
        Considering that you can't just buy a car in Singapore and need to get a permit to buy one, it better should be the best in the world.
        megablast 8y ago
        Damn, that is the way it should be in the rest of the world.
      - jpatokal 8y ago
        It's operated by two for-profit companies, but the government paid the massive bill for the construction, sets the fares and even owns the rolling stock (trains) now: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/government-and-smrt-reach-agreement-on-new-rail-financing-framework https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/government-... ...and of course, this being Singapore, the companies in question (SMRT Corp and SBS Transit) are themselves largely owned by various government entities (Temasek etc).
        dnautics 8y ago
        They are, however, responsible for upkeep and maintenance. Comfortdelgro is not largely owned by the Singapore sovereign wealth fund, and I personally like its lines a bit better than the smrt lines.
      - afsina 8y ago
        That is an outlier. Almost all public transportation systems runs on deficit.
        dnautics 8y ago
    - walterstucco 8y ago
      ATM in Milan rides all the public transport of the area, including buses, trains and trams It also manage the Copenhagen's subway It makes profits
- inferiorhuman 8y ago
  > If I understand the math correctly, BART claims about 126 million rides (2015) and cost $906M (~$7 a ride, comparable to some uber pool fares) Scaling a mobile app is trivial compared to running a transit company. BART owns/maintains infrastructure (including an underwater tunnel) and vehicles, provides benefits (health, retirement, etc) to their drivers, and operates a multi-jurisdictional police force. Uber meanwhile hired a couple of tech bros (paid largely in stock instead of actual currency), pays their drivers near minimum wage with no benefits (as they're not actually employees), and disregards as many laws as possible (so there's little-to-no cost to enter a new market). It's not surprising they've been able to scale. What's surprising is how expensive their service still is.
  - wuunderbar 8y ago
    > tech bros What's your point with this?
    - kevinmgranger 8y ago
      Out of everything in the comment, I think this is the point least worth discussing.
    - andrei_says_ 8y ago
      I imagine a nod at the extremely sexist company culture and the complete absence of a moral compass. This may be related https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-on...
  - kemitche 8y ago
    In the same breath you complain that they don't pay their drivers enough and that their service is too expensive. Drivers aren't going to get more than a few percentage points increase without increasing the price to the end user.
    - inferiorhuman 8y ago
- anon84598 8y ago
  Just to totally nitpick your last point, it's worth noting that the BART cost probably includes the entire infrastructure maintenance cost whereas Uber essentially has infrastructure subsidized (i.e., they don't need to pay for maintenance of the roads their cars drive on etc.) so a true comparison of efficiency would result in Uber "costing" more than that.
  - maerF0x0 8y ago
    The cost of the infrastructure is in capital and operating costs of the drivers. ie the capital in the cars and the taxes in the fuel (and income tax?). So these costs are passed along in the cost of an uber ride. You did point at something I missed though. Technically every ride is being subsidized by investors (because uber operates at a loss afaik). To whatever extent they're losing money on every ride is a sort of disadvantage to uber ...
  - manquer 8y ago
    Unlike bart that infra is shared and taxes are paid by all users . If uber and its drivers are paying lesser than they should for their usage the govt which needs to fix that, however it cannot be said uber is not paying for the infra they use.
  - so33 8y ago
    Uber, Lyft, and taxis don't just use subsidized infrastructure, it puts additional strain on that infrastructure compared to even single-occupancy vehicles. Uber cars circle around already heavily-congested roadways looking for fares (See: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/nyregion/uber-car-congestion-pricing-nyc.html); https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/nyregion/uber-car-congest... this creates congestion. And of course, anecdotally we've all driven behind an Uber car that suddenly pulls over to the side of a traffic lane to let its fare out.
- lazyasciiart 8y ago
  Public transit companies don't really have the option of scaling up just by adding another city to a dropdown.
- duxup 8y ago
  >Many public transit companies have been around for decades and haven't figured out how to scale up to the kind of service Uber is providing. Let's see what the long term outcome is for Uber before we give them too many high fives...
- lsc 8y ago
  >If I understand the math correctly, BART claims about 126 million rides (2015) and cost $906M (~$7 a ride, comparable to some uber pool fares) I think a better comparison than total cost is how much money they are losing. The difference between what I'm paying and what I feel like I'm getting with uber feels like... a lot, and that lines up with everything I've read of their financial situation. If you are willing to lose substantial money on a per-ride basis, sure, you are going to have a pretty nice transit product. (Personally, I'd be pretty okay with the government losing some of my tax money on public transit projects... though I think if the government is gonna do it, I want them to lose the money up front on expensive, durable, high-capacity infrastructure, then come closer to breaking even on a marginal ride basis)
  - Shivetya 8y ago
    BART and other big city light rail systems are plagued with billions in deferred maintenance because while politicians love ribbon cutting and pontificating they balk when the bill comes due. Across the US there is about a hundred billion in such deferred maintenance and the vast majority of it is for light rail systems that were built more because they could and sounded good than built where they would be used. Worse, to compensate for the costs bus routes get reduced which just exacerbates problems. hence why we have taxi services, why all cities across the world have taxi and similar services. transit cannot go everywhere nor can it quickly adapt to changes in public needs. buses are the best bet for adapting but services need both rolling stock, drivers, and usage cases, to move whereas taxi and ride sharing services react on need. plus in the current meta where "soon" there will be self driving cars and buses all which are EV it will completely transform public transit. I just hope to be there will it does.
    - lsc 8y ago
      > BART and other big city light rail systems are plagued with billions in deferred maintenance because while politicians love ribbon cutting and pontificating they balk when the bill comes due. Yeah, that is part of why I support systems that lean towards higher up front and lower ongoing costs. >plus in the current meta where "soon" there will be self driving cars and buses all which are EV it will completely transform public transit. I just hope to be there will it does. Self-driving won't help with congestion problems. unshared on-demand vehicles (and it doesn't really matter here if the on-demand vehicle is driven by a human gig economy worker or a computer) help with parking, but if anything, they make congestion worse, as they've gotta drive to pick me up in addition to driving to my destination. (of course, shared on-demand vehicles can help with congestion, at least when they are shared.) The only "game changer" here is that potentially a self-driving uber could be cheaper (either by directly lowering operating costs, or if we get the hang of things, by lowering the number of injuries caused by mistakes.) The problem is that if you charge less, I'm going to use the non-shared on-demand service more often; I only use the shared service to save a few bucks. My point here is that we can probably predict what self driving cars will get us by looking at what heavily subsidized ride sharing services get us. self-driving cars might even get us less; if I could get uber-like point to point without having to park service out of a personally-owned car at a price point that isn't much more than a regular personally-owned car? I'd probably share rides a whole lot less than I do now.
dm8 8y ago
Lyft used to do something similar couple of years ago (at least in Bay Area) in Lyft Line. I believe they had 10 min wait option wherein when you request and wait for 10 mins you'll get cheaper fare. I remember getting 10-20% cheaper fares consistently using that option. I'd regularly take 10 min wait option especially going to east bay or peninsula from SF. Uber also has "express pool" option (again in bay area), wherein you have to wait for 2 mins to get matched. As a rider, these options are great. However, not sure if it's profitable for these companies. I guess with higher rider/driver density, they can make it work?
- Touche 8y ago
  It's better for them than you just not booking a ride and going with Lyft instead.
- nvr219 8y ago
  I mean right now nothing is profitable for these companies so
- jessriedel 8y ago
  The longer the rider is willing to wait, the more the service can optimize the allocation of drivers. (Less distance driven without a passenger, more distance driven with multiple passengers in a car pool, more direct carpools.) This is a real elimination of waste whose value can be split between the service and the passenger, although it's not clear whether the size of that value is really at the 10-20% level.
  - zaroth 8y ago
    If they can pair you up with a drop-off already on the way to your exact location by having you wait a couple minutes, I would estimate this is easily worth 20% to the driver, assuming average trip time is on the order of 10-20 minutes.
    - jessriedel 8y ago
      Sure, but the question is how much more often they can make this happen given a 10 minute wait.
bowmessage 8y ago
Bet that Uber employee is feeling the heat now...
- tedmiston 8y ago
  Given the deleted tweet, I guess he/she didn't realize the feature wasn't public yet?
chrisabrams 8y ago
Based on my rides recently I have seen the quality of drivers plummet on both Uber and Lyft. I'd be much more willing to wait (and maybe even pay) for a higher quality driver. Having a driver who cannot follow a GPS and takes you in a circle 3-4 times around the airport or does not speak English well enough to understand your request to stop on the right instead of the left like the GPS shows can be quite frustrating depending on the scenario. I wonder if this is the first step towards offering a "limit" option. For example, where I live the average price from our house (Jersey City) to the mall is $7, but some days it jumps up to $15 or more. My wife and I usually choose to walk those days, but it would be nice to say "hey we want to go to the mall today, let's set a $7 limit and when that hits we'll go." For the flexible consumer it's easy to wait for a better price and not need to constantly look at the phone to see what the current market price is. The limit price could help create a queue which could provide a driver with a continuous supply of rides during non-peak hours.
- godzillabrennus 8y ago
  Isn’t that what uber black car is? Pay for better service?
  - chrisabrams 8y ago
    Depending on where you are, that is not an option unfortunately. It is odd, some days uber black is an option, some days we can only choose between uber x and the black suv option.
  - tomsthumb 8y ago
    Customers should pay a premium for the driver to not park a block and a half from them at pickup?
    - chrisabrams 8y ago
      If you're in a suburb that should never happen. If you are in the NYC area for example, the GPS just really struggles between all the buildings. What's more frustrating is when you are on the other side of a busy street, you wave to the driver or even call them to let them know you're on the other side of the street, and they just sit there...
mandeepj 8y ago
Before ordering a ride, Uber always shows ~2 mins wait time. After placing an order, it goes up to 6-9 mins. Their GPS is also bad quality. I live in the downtown of a big city. Lyft drivers come right away, consistently. Lately, for the same reason, I have started using them. Whereas, Uber's drivers keep on circling around until I call them and give them directions. Their reason - it's these big buildings. I respond by saying: these big buildings also exist for Lyft. In a nutshell, this Uber feature is already there for me. I will admit - Uber's prices are mostly lower than Lyft.
- erikig 8y ago
  Turn off "Live Location Sharing" when you are around tall buildings especially on iOS. I commute via Uber/Lyft every day and this happens to me often and I've found that relying on the actual address instead of using location sharing gets me the best results. In most open places Live Location Sharing can be great especially in crowds or when dealing with intersections but it is too sensitive in areas with congested Wi-Fi signals or tall buildings.
remyM 8y ago
Uber is great in the suburbs (sydney, AU), and I'd be fine waiting 5-10 mins more and being put on a low priority so I can get it cheap. It'd also be pretty good during peak periods.
krishna_sh 8y ago
Sounds like taking the bus. :) There is a wait and a walk to get to the ride.
tvanantwerp 8y ago
I've frequently used Uber Pool, and have noticed that it's started forcing a waiting period of a minute to "find the best match". I've also noticed that I'm getting matched with drivers further and further away from me, frequently waiting up to ten minutes. The matching algorithms sure don't seem improved, so maybe they're just covering up a decreasing number of drivers in my area.
- smudgymcscmudge 8y ago
  Have you checked your rating lately? Maybe it’s getting harder to find drivers willing to pick you up.
  - tvanantwerp 8y ago
    4.83
- dannyw 8y ago
  Uber most likely thinks you're a habitual user, so it gives priority for newer riders. Uber dynamically prices rides based on the person and your ride history[1], as well as factors like your battery percentage. [1]: https://therideshareguy.com/uber-is-ripping-off-frequent-riders-and-heres-how-to-avoid-it/ https://therideshareguy.com/uber-is-ripping-off-frequent-rid... [2]: https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/20/11721890/uber-surge-pricing-low-battery https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/20/11721890/uber-surge-prici... - while it was only a study in 2016, in 2018 this is definitely true. Your upfront fares are hiked if your battery say 5%.
  - rrix2 8y ago
    > Your upfront fares are hiked if your battery say 5%. Do you have a source for this?
    - dannyw 8y ago
      See the second source. I've only anecdotally confirmed that this actually happens, but when your battery is low and you're requesting an Uber, I encourage you to get an upfront fare and then compare that versus Lyft.
sturmeh 8y ago
Good, sitting there and refreshing the view during random spikes in small surge periods is not a great experience.
maym86 8y ago
Why doesn't Uber/Lyft support actual carpooling so that if I know I need to go somewhere I can offers other people a ride to/from nearby locations. Given the traffic in large cities and the number of single cars going the same direction at rush hour it would make a lot of sense. Adding the option for a longer wait like this would make it easier to manage for the commuting driver. I guess the issue is it'll annoy the more professional drivers but for users it would be good.
- pininja 8y ago
  Uber Commute existed in the past, but I’m not sure what happened to it.
- fstuff 8y ago
  Waze and a company called scoop do this
BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
This is pretty much what express pool does already. You sit on your thumbs for 2 minutes while the app pretends to do a search and then the car comes right to you anyway, and you pay less.
foobaw 8y ago
Hah! I remember this was an interview question for one of my PMs that was looking to join Uber. Without breaking NDA, it was something along the lines of "Why would Uber let customers wait longer?" It's an interesting product problem but I felt that it would be more relevant for an economist to analyze, given that it's more of a supply/demand equilibrium challenge.
Ar-Curunir 8y ago
Uber is becoming more and more like public transit. Just took a few billion dollars and lots of hype for us to realise that...
- sidcool 8y ago
  Regardless, its impact has been way bigger than any public transit. That impact also has been both positive and negative.
  - cozzyd 8y ago
    The number of Uber/Lyft rides a day pales in comparison to the number of public transit rides.
    - woolvalley 8y ago
      The cost is also far less than transit. If we judged Uber by the same standards that we judged local transit costs, they would be ahead by quite a bit and fairly profitable. You could even increase the take home that drivers took and still come out ahead.
  - Ar-Curunir 8y ago
    Maybe in the bay area, where investment in public transit is abysmal. When I've visited cities with good public transit I've never felt the need for Uber/Lyft.
    - toomanybeersies 8y ago
      I'll generally take a train over Uber if it's less than 10 minutes walk either side. But I'll take an Uber over a bus any day.
  - frobozz 8y ago
    Entire towns have been built because of public transit.
nanis 8y ago
My biggest disappointment with Uber is that they did not actually implement a double-auction, and instead they try set prices.
stephencoyner 8y ago
Waiting longer for a ride... So... A bus?
- njovin 8y ago
  Not having to stop a dozen times between pickup and destination makes it quite a bit better than a bus IMO.
  - stephencoyner 8y ago
    Less stops yes, but in Uber pools the stops can be incredibly inconvenient and made worse with poor drivers or riders, resulting in long rides. At least with a bus I get a well trained professional who is prepared for almost all scenarios. I also can estimate how long s bus will take, pools can be unpredictability long.
    - so33 8y ago
      The idea of Uber Express Pool is set up so that you walk to a designated pickup point, wait, and walk from a designated drop-off point. So, essentially, it's a tiny bus that makes stops along a route. But with less capacity than a bus and less consistent scheduling and routing. (To be clear - I am pretty skeptical of the idea of demand-responsive "microtransit" such as Uber Express Pool).
      - sokoloff 8y ago
        In this case, semi-customized routing and scheduling soundly beats consisting routing and scheduling. Even when my ride is paid by someone else (business travel), I will often use Pool and now Express Pool as I find it efficient.
    - toomanybeersies 8y ago
      > At least with a bus I get a well trained professional who is prepared for almost all scenarios Your city clearly has different bus drivers to every city I've ever lived in. The best moment I've ever had on a bus was when the bus driver stopped on a level crossing while a train was coming. I've also had bus drivers clip signs and parked cars, crash into other cars and busses, brake and accelerate like they were trying to dodge a heat seeking missile, and just generally bad drivers. And in my current city, the bus drivers (and tram drivers) won't do anything about bad passengers, they sit in their little perspex box and ignore the passengers. I was on a tram the other day while an ex con was screaming obscenities at old Asian lady. The lady complained to the tram driver, who did literally nothing. She had to get off the tram because he was getting so abusive I swear he was about to hit her.
dannyw 8y ago
IMO, the worst thing about Uber's pricing 'experiments' are silently gouging frequent riders with higher upfront fares, hiking up return fares (since it knows you didn't drive to the location) as well as hidden surges (that aren't passed on to the driver) during night. https://therideshareguy.com/uber-is-ripping-off-frequent-riders-and-heres-how-to-avoid-it/ https://therideshareguy.com/uber-is-ripping-off-frequent-rid...
- masonic 8y ago
  hiking up return fares ... which is why one should have separate accounts on separate devices. For each trip, compare prices. Or, split Uber/Lyft.
ericnyamu12 8y ago
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barking 8y ago
Never taken an uber nor a lyfft, was in a taxi in Gran Canaria, professional, nice livery, well maintained cars and the drivers wear a uniform.
543543636363 8y ago
this is a very nice forum,check it out https://www.bit.ly/2M0hqJa https://www.bit.ly/2M0hqJa
ihsw2 8y ago
Frequently, the actual time-to-pick-up does not match the predicted time-to-pick-up. It's effectively the proposed system -- you have to wait longer. Now they want to make you wait even longer. Why not offer better service for higher prices (instead of the reverse)? Getting service from a "super" tier of drivers, ones that have: * a history of ON TIME pick-ups * fluent spoken English * straightforward following of GPS directions * GUARANTEED air-conditioning * non-smoking * quiet not talking loudly on the phone * not a POS car with destroyed vehicle suspension/shock absorbers and trashed seating
ulisesrmzroche 8y ago
I don't use Uber, but I do like the idea. Hopefully, Lyft steals it.
hardlianotion 8y ago
I do wonder how you get drivers to accept rates for them that flow from lower prices. I visit Accra reasonably often and frequently get drivers dropping me on price grounds - this would make the areas covered by this behaviour bigger, I think.
johnchristopher 8y ago
Funny, in the tourism industry we are asking more money from people to cut lines.

174 points by prostoalex 8y ago

I just wanted to drop a note to say I think Uber is doing a good job, all things considered. Many public transit companies have been around for decades and haven't figured out how to scale up to the kind of service Uber is providing. 4B rides in 2017 is pretty amazing. If I understand the math correctly, BART claims about 126 million rides (2015) and cost $906M (~$7 a ride, comparable to some uber pool fares)

Tiktaalik 8y ago
>Many public transit companies have been around for decades and haven't figured out how to scale up to the kind of service Uber is providing This is because these are publicly funded organizations that are starved of funds for political reasons. Public transit works well where it's funded well. It's a political problem, not a technology problem.
- selectodude 8y ago
  Even the best funded public transit services are substantial money losers. Paris covers 70 cents of every dollar, Madrid 60 cents, and even in Berlin and Munich its 30 cents. But that covers 100 percent of their expenses. If Uber had to shell out to fix the streets that they use, I bet it wouldn't be so cheap.
  - Pyxl101 8y ago
    > If Uber had to shell out to fix the streets that they use, I bet it wouldn't be so cheap. Streets are public infrastructure and are paid for by taxes, which Uber and all other companies that do business using roads presumably pay, just like everyone else. So, unless you have a specific reason to believe otherwise, it is fair to assume that yes, Uber is paying for the streets that they use. If streets are not being adequately paid for, then that's a failure of the government that's responsible for them, not the businesses that are using them (streets are there to be used).
    - selectodude 8y ago
      >Uber is paying for the streets that they use. Uber doesn't pay a cent in gas taxes (they're not employees, they're partners, right?), and since they've never made money before, they don't pay a cent in taxes either.
      - woolvalley 8y ago
        The drivers pay gas taxes, and the majority of the revenue goes to the drivers. Therefore car activity that uber induces is also paid for by the customers that use it. Basic induction. What you are doing is like complaining about amazon or the local grocer inducing truck demand and not paying for the roads. It's a bit obvious you have a chip on your shoulder about Uber and ride share companies in general.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        Careful about mistaking accounting for economics. If gas taxes were lowered to zero, could Uber increase their share of the ride payment by the current tax amount, without harming their relationship with the drivers? If so, then Uber is paying that tax, not the drivers.
        selectodude 8y ago
        Maybe if gasoline weren't extremely inelastic, your begging the question wouldn't be so ridiculous. I pay $4.00/gal for gas. The gas tax is 18 cents. Under 5 percent. Yes, I suppose Uber could lower their cut by a tenth of a percent and really put some extra change in my pocket!! PS. I have an expensive piece of paper in economics and statistics, but I appreciate you telling me to be careful. Gotta have somebody looking out for me, i suppose.
    - jakecopp 8y ago
      Lets dedicate the same public funding to trains & buses as we do to roads (including accounting for the property value sprawling roads occupy) and then see if public transport is comparable to ride-sharing. There's a reason advanced cities in Europe and Asia invest heavily in mass transit without the expectation of a commercial return, it's simply more space efficient.
  - dnautics 8y ago
    Singapore's public transit system is run as a for profit (two competing companies, in fact), and it's one of the best and cheapest in the world.
    - foepys 8y ago
      Considering that you can't just buy a car in Singapore and need to get a permit to buy one, it better should be the best in the world.
      - megablast 8y ago
        Damn, that is the way it should be in the rest of the world.
    - jpatokal 8y ago
      It's operated by two for-profit companies, but the government paid the massive bill for the construction, sets the fares and even owns the rolling stock (trains) now: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/government-and-smrt-reach-agreement-on-new-rail-financing-framework https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/government-... ...and of course, this being Singapore, the companies in question (SMRT Corp and SBS Transit) are themselves largely owned by various government entities (Temasek etc).
      - dnautics 8y ago
        They are, however, responsible for upkeep and maintenance. Comfortdelgro is not largely owned by the Singapore sovereign wealth fund, and I personally like its lines a bit better than the smrt lines.
    - afsina 8y ago
      That is an outlier. Almost all public transportation systems runs on deficit.
      - dnautics 8y ago
  - walterstucco 8y ago
    ATM in Milan rides all the public transport of the area, including buses, trains and trams It also manage the Copenhagen's subway It makes profits
inferiorhuman 8y ago
> If I understand the math correctly, BART claims about 126 million rides (2015) and cost $906M (~$7 a ride, comparable to some uber pool fares) Scaling a mobile app is trivial compared to running a transit company. BART owns/maintains infrastructure (including an underwater tunnel) and vehicles, provides benefits (health, retirement, etc) to their drivers, and operates a multi-jurisdictional police force. Uber meanwhile hired a couple of tech bros (paid largely in stock instead of actual currency), pays their drivers near minimum wage with no benefits (as they're not actually employees), and disregards as many laws as possible (so there's little-to-no cost to enter a new market). It's not surprising they've been able to scale. What's surprising is how expensive their service still is.
- wuunderbar 8y ago
  > tech bros What's your point with this?
  - kevinmgranger 8y ago
    Out of everything in the comment, I think this is the point least worth discussing.
  - andrei_says_ 8y ago
    I imagine a nod at the extremely sexist company culture and the complete absence of a moral compass. This may be related https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-on...
- kemitche 8y ago
  In the same breath you complain that they don't pay their drivers enough and that their service is too expensive. Drivers aren't going to get more than a few percentage points increase without increasing the price to the end user.
  - inferiorhuman 8y ago
anon84598 8y ago
Just to totally nitpick your last point, it's worth noting that the BART cost probably includes the entire infrastructure maintenance cost whereas Uber essentially has infrastructure subsidized (i.e., they don't need to pay for maintenance of the roads their cars drive on etc.) so a true comparison of efficiency would result in Uber "costing" more than that.
- maerF0x0 8y ago
  The cost of the infrastructure is in capital and operating costs of the drivers. ie the capital in the cars and the taxes in the fuel (and income tax?). So these costs are passed along in the cost of an uber ride. You did point at something I missed though. Technically every ride is being subsidized by investors (because uber operates at a loss afaik). To whatever extent they're losing money on every ride is a sort of disadvantage to uber ...
- manquer 8y ago
  Unlike bart that infra is shared and taxes are paid by all users . If uber and its drivers are paying lesser than they should for their usage the govt which needs to fix that, however it cannot be said uber is not paying for the infra they use.
- so33 8y ago
  Uber, Lyft, and taxis don't just use subsidized infrastructure, it puts additional strain on that infrastructure compared to even single-occupancy vehicles. Uber cars circle around already heavily-congested roadways looking for fares (See: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/nyregion/uber-car-congestion-pricing-nyc.html); https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/nyregion/uber-car-congest... this creates congestion. And of course, anecdotally we've all driven behind an Uber car that suddenly pulls over to the side of a traffic lane to let its fare out.
lazyasciiart 8y ago
Public transit companies don't really have the option of scaling up just by adding another city to a dropdown.
duxup 8y ago
>Many public transit companies have been around for decades and haven't figured out how to scale up to the kind of service Uber is providing. Let's see what the long term outcome is for Uber before we give them too many high fives...
lsc 8y ago
>If I understand the math correctly, BART claims about 126 million rides (2015) and cost $906M (~$7 a ride, comparable to some uber pool fares) I think a better comparison than total cost is how much money they are losing. The difference between what I'm paying and what I feel like I'm getting with uber feels like... a lot, and that lines up with everything I've read of their financial situation. If you are willing to lose substantial money on a per-ride basis, sure, you are going to have a pretty nice transit product. (Personally, I'd be pretty okay with the government losing some of my tax money on public transit projects... though I think if the government is gonna do it, I want them to lose the money up front on expensive, durable, high-capacity infrastructure, then come closer to breaking even on a marginal ride basis)
- Shivetya 8y ago
  BART and other big city light rail systems are plagued with billions in deferred maintenance because while politicians love ribbon cutting and pontificating they balk when the bill comes due. Across the US there is about a hundred billion in such deferred maintenance and the vast majority of it is for light rail systems that were built more because they could and sounded good than built where they would be used. Worse, to compensate for the costs bus routes get reduced which just exacerbates problems. hence why we have taxi services, why all cities across the world have taxi and similar services. transit cannot go everywhere nor can it quickly adapt to changes in public needs. buses are the best bet for adapting but services need both rolling stock, drivers, and usage cases, to move whereas taxi and ride sharing services react on need. plus in the current meta where "soon" there will be self driving cars and buses all which are EV it will completely transform public transit. I just hope to be there will it does.
  - lsc 8y ago
    > BART and other big city light rail systems are plagued with billions in deferred maintenance because while politicians love ribbon cutting and pontificating they balk when the bill comes due. Yeah, that is part of why I support systems that lean towards higher up front and lower ongoing costs. >plus in the current meta where "soon" there will be self driving cars and buses all which are EV it will completely transform public transit. I just hope to be there will it does. Self-driving won't help with congestion problems. unshared on-demand vehicles (and it doesn't really matter here if the on-demand vehicle is driven by a human gig economy worker or a computer) help with parking, but if anything, they make congestion worse, as they've gotta drive to pick me up in addition to driving to my destination. (of course, shared on-demand vehicles can help with congestion, at least when they are shared.) The only "game changer" here is that potentially a self-driving uber could be cheaper (either by directly lowering operating costs, or if we get the hang of things, by lowering the number of injuries caused by mistakes.) The problem is that if you charge less, I'm going to use the non-shared on-demand service more often; I only use the shared service to save a few bucks. My point here is that we can probably predict what self driving cars will get us by looking at what heavily subsidized ride sharing services get us. self-driving cars might even get us less; if I could get uber-like point to point without having to park service out of a personally-owned car at a price point that isn't much more than a regular personally-owned car? I'd probably share rides a whole lot less than I do now.

dm8 8y ago

Lyft used to do something similar couple of years ago (at least in Bay Area) in Lyft Line. I believe they had 10 min wait option wherein when you request and wait for 10 mins you'll get cheaper fare. I remember getting 10-20% cheaper fares consistently using that option. I'd regularly take 10 min wait option especially going to east bay or peninsula from SF. Uber also has "express pool" option (again in bay area), wherein you have to wait for 2 mins to get matched. As a rider, these options are great. However, not sure if it's profitable for these companies. I guess with higher rider/driver density, they can make it work?

Touche 8y ago
It's better for them than you just not booking a ride and going with Lyft instead.
nvr219 8y ago
I mean right now nothing is profitable for these companies so
jessriedel 8y ago
The longer the rider is willing to wait, the more the service can optimize the allocation of drivers. (Less distance driven without a passenger, more distance driven with multiple passengers in a car pool, more direct carpools.) This is a real elimination of waste whose value can be split between the service and the passenger, although it's not clear whether the size of that value is really at the 10-20% level.
- zaroth 8y ago
  If they can pair you up with a drop-off already on the way to your exact location by having you wait a couple minutes, I would estimate this is easily worth 20% to the driver, assuming average trip time is on the order of 10-20 minutes.
  - jessriedel 8y ago
    Sure, but the question is how much more often they can make this happen given a 10 minute wait.

bowmessage 8y ago

Bet that Uber employee is feeling the heat now...

tedmiston 8y ago
Given the deleted tweet, I guess he/she didn't realize the feature wasn't public yet?

chrisabrams 8y ago

Based on my rides recently I have seen the quality of drivers plummet on both Uber and Lyft. I'd be much more willing to wait (and maybe even pay) for a higher quality driver. Having a driver who cannot follow a GPS and takes you in a circle 3-4 times around the airport or does not speak English well enough to understand your request to stop on the right instead of the left like the GPS shows can be quite frustrating depending on the scenario. I wonder if this is the first step towards offering a "limit" option. For example, where I live the average price from our house (Jersey City) to the mall is $7, but some days it jumps up to $15 or more. My wife and I usually choose to walk those days, but it would be nice to say "hey we want to go to the mall today, let's set a $7 limit and when that hits we'll go." For the flexible consumer it's easy to wait for a better price and not need to constantly look at the phone to see what the current market price is. The limit price could help create a queue which could provide a driver with a continuous supply of rides during non-peak hours.

godzillabrennus 8y ago
Isn’t that what uber black car is? Pay for better service?
- chrisabrams 8y ago
  Depending on where you are, that is not an option unfortunately. It is odd, some days uber black is an option, some days we can only choose between uber x and the black suv option.
- tomsthumb 8y ago
  Customers should pay a premium for the driver to not park a block and a half from them at pickup?
  - chrisabrams 8y ago
    If you're in a suburb that should never happen. If you are in the NYC area for example, the GPS just really struggles between all the buildings. What's more frustrating is when you are on the other side of a busy street, you wave to the driver or even call them to let them know you're on the other side of the street, and they just sit there...

mandeepj 8y ago

Before ordering a ride, Uber always shows ~2 mins wait time. After placing an order, it goes up to 6-9 mins. Their GPS is also bad quality. I live in the downtown of a big city. Lyft drivers come right away, consistently. Lately, for the same reason, I have started using them. Whereas, Uber's drivers keep on circling around until I call them and give them directions. Their reason - it's these big buildings. I respond by saying: these big buildings also exist for Lyft. In a nutshell, this Uber feature is already there for me. I will admit - Uber's prices are mostly lower than Lyft.

erikig 8y ago
Turn off "Live Location Sharing" when you are around tall buildings especially on iOS. I commute via Uber/Lyft every day and this happens to me often and I've found that relying on the actual address instead of using location sharing gets me the best results. In most open places Live Location Sharing can be great especially in crowds or when dealing with intersections but it is too sensitive in areas with congested Wi-Fi signals or tall buildings.

remyM 8y ago

Uber is great in the suburbs (sydney, AU), and I'd be fine waiting 5-10 mins more and being put on a low priority so I can get it cheap. It'd also be pretty good during peak periods.

krishna_sh 8y ago

Sounds like taking the bus. :) There is a wait and a walk to get to the ride.

tvanantwerp 8y ago

I've frequently used Uber Pool, and have noticed that it's started forcing a waiting period of a minute to "find the best match". I've also noticed that I'm getting matched with drivers further and further away from me, frequently waiting up to ten minutes. The matching algorithms sure don't seem improved, so maybe they're just covering up a decreasing number of drivers in my area.

smudgymcscmudge 8y ago
Have you checked your rating lately? Maybe it’s getting harder to find drivers willing to pick you up.
- tvanantwerp 8y ago
  4.83
dannyw 8y ago
Uber most likely thinks you're a habitual user, so it gives priority for newer riders. Uber dynamically prices rides based on the person and your ride history[1], as well as factors like your battery percentage. [1]: https://therideshareguy.com/uber-is-ripping-off-frequent-riders-and-heres-how-to-avoid-it/ https://therideshareguy.com/uber-is-ripping-off-frequent-rid... [2]: https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/20/11721890/uber-surge-pricing-low-battery https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/20/11721890/uber-surge-prici... - while it was only a study in 2016, in 2018 this is definitely true. Your upfront fares are hiked if your battery say 5%.
- rrix2 8y ago
  > Your upfront fares are hiked if your battery say 5%. Do you have a source for this?
  - dannyw 8y ago
    See the second source. I've only anecdotally confirmed that this actually happens, but when your battery is low and you're requesting an Uber, I encourage you to get an upfront fare and then compare that versus Lyft.

sturmeh 8y ago

Good, sitting there and refreshing the view during random spikes in small surge periods is not a great experience.

maym86 8y ago

Why doesn't Uber/Lyft support actual carpooling so that if I know I need to go somewhere I can offers other people a ride to/from nearby locations. Given the traffic in large cities and the number of single cars going the same direction at rush hour it would make a lot of sense. Adding the option for a longer wait like this would make it easier to manage for the commuting driver. I guess the issue is it'll annoy the more professional drivers but for users it would be good.

pininja 8y ago
Uber Commute existed in the past, but I’m not sure what happened to it.
fstuff 8y ago
Waze and a company called scoop do this

BugsJustFindMe 8y ago

This is pretty much what express pool does already. You sit on your thumbs for 2 minutes while the app pretends to do a search and then the car comes right to you anyway, and you pay less.

foobaw 8y ago

Hah! I remember this was an interview question for one of my PMs that was looking to join Uber. Without breaking NDA, it was something along the lines of "Why would Uber let customers wait longer?" It's an interesting product problem but I felt that it would be more relevant for an economist to analyze, given that it's more of a supply/demand equilibrium challenge.

Ar-Curunir 8y ago

Uber is becoming more and more like public transit. Just took a few billion dollars and lots of hype for us to realise that...

sidcool 8y ago
Regardless, its impact has been way bigger than any public transit. That impact also has been both positive and negative.
- cozzyd 8y ago
  The number of Uber/Lyft rides a day pales in comparison to the number of public transit rides.
  - woolvalley 8y ago
    The cost is also far less than transit. If we judged Uber by the same standards that we judged local transit costs, they would be ahead by quite a bit and fairly profitable. You could even increase the take home that drivers took and still come out ahead.
- Ar-Curunir 8y ago
  Maybe in the bay area, where investment in public transit is abysmal. When I've visited cities with good public transit I've never felt the need for Uber/Lyft.
  - toomanybeersies 8y ago
    I'll generally take a train over Uber if it's less than 10 minutes walk either side. But I'll take an Uber over a bus any day.
- frobozz 8y ago
  Entire towns have been built because of public transit.

nanis 8y ago

My biggest disappointment with Uber is that they did not actually implement a double-auction, and instead they try set prices.

stephencoyner 8y ago

Waiting longer for a ride... So... A bus?

njovin 8y ago
Not having to stop a dozen times between pickup and destination makes it quite a bit better than a bus IMO.
- stephencoyner 8y ago
  Less stops yes, but in Uber pools the stops can be incredibly inconvenient and made worse with poor drivers or riders, resulting in long rides. At least with a bus I get a well trained professional who is prepared for almost all scenarios. I also can estimate how long s bus will take, pools can be unpredictability long.
  - so33 8y ago
    The idea of Uber Express Pool is set up so that you walk to a designated pickup point, wait, and walk from a designated drop-off point. So, essentially, it's a tiny bus that makes stops along a route. But with less capacity than a bus and less consistent scheduling and routing. (To be clear - I am pretty skeptical of the idea of demand-responsive "microtransit" such as Uber Express Pool).
    - sokoloff 8y ago
      In this case, semi-customized routing and scheduling soundly beats consisting routing and scheduling. Even when my ride is paid by someone else (business travel), I will often use Pool and now Express Pool as I find it efficient.
  - toomanybeersies 8y ago
    > At least with a bus I get a well trained professional who is prepared for almost all scenarios Your city clearly has different bus drivers to every city I've ever lived in. The best moment I've ever had on a bus was when the bus driver stopped on a level crossing while a train was coming. I've also had bus drivers clip signs and parked cars, crash into other cars and busses, brake and accelerate like they were trying to dodge a heat seeking missile, and just generally bad drivers. And in my current city, the bus drivers (and tram drivers) won't do anything about bad passengers, they sit in their little perspex box and ignore the passengers. I was on a tram the other day while an ex con was screaming obscenities at old Asian lady. The lady complained to the tram driver, who did literally nothing. She had to get off the tram because he was getting so abusive I swear he was about to hit her.

dannyw 8y ago

IMO, the worst thing about Uber's pricing 'experiments' are silently gouging frequent riders with higher upfront fares, hiking up return fares (since it knows you didn't drive to the location) as well as hidden surges (that aren't passed on to the driver) during night. https://therideshareguy.com/uber-is-ripping-off-frequent-riders-and-heres-how-to-avoid-it/ https://therideshareguy.com/uber-is-ripping-off-frequent-rid...

masonic 8y ago
hiking up return fares ... which is why one should have separate accounts on separate devices. For each trip, compare prices. Or, split Uber/Lyft.

ericnyamu12 8y ago

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barking 8y ago

Never taken an uber nor a lyfft, was in a taxi in Gran Canaria, professional, nice livery, well maintained cars and the drivers wear a uniform.

543543636363 8y ago

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ihsw2 8y ago

Frequently, the actual time-to-pick-up does not match the predicted time-to-pick-up. It's effectively the proposed system -- you have to wait longer. Now they want to make you wait even longer. Why not offer better service for higher prices (instead of the reverse)? Getting service from a "super" tier of drivers, ones that have: * a history of ON TIME pick-ups * fluent spoken English * straightforward following of GPS directions * GUARANTEED air-conditioning * non-smoking * quiet not talking loudly on the phone * not a POS car with destroyed vehicle suspension/shock absorbers and trashed seating

ulisesrmzroche 8y ago

I don't use Uber, but I do like the idea. Hopefully, Lyft steals it.

hardlianotion 8y ago

I do wonder how you get drivers to accept rates for them that flow from lower prices. I visit Accra reasonably often and frequently get drivers dropping me on price grounds - this would make the areas covered by this behaviour bigger, I think.

johnchristopher 8y ago

Funny, in the tourism industry we are asking more money from people to cut lines.