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It's a shame to say goodbye to something that is quite synonymous with San Francisco life. From the comments a lot of people don't "get it" and then think that
by wmab 8y ago
It's a shame to say goodbye to something that is quite synonymous with San Francisco life. From the comments a lot of people don't "get it" and then think that this is the reason it failed. I'm sure it's a decision based on the complexities of scaling and working with each city and county to make a truly successful business that they ran into too many problems.
Not all businesses need to grow to huge heights to not be considered successful. It's a shame they can't continue to operate in the areas that it works well in (such as here in SF). Scoot have had a hard time growing, but are as successful as ever in SF, so that should be seen as a success in itself. We now have very lofty expectations for businesses either Blitzscaling [1] or dying, but surely it doesn't need to be that binary.
Clearly private solutions to commuting need to exist, people are not satisfied with the public transit in most cities. In a capitalist country, the markets will reward those who succeed. Lyft/Uber are helping somewhat, but you can point to as many articles [2] showing how over congested cities become because of them (even with pooling), which take up much more road space than buses. Let's hope someone else gives this another shot, and we don't shoot them down if they don't become a unicorn.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Blitzscaling-Lightning-Fast-Building-Massively-Companies/dp/1524761419 https://www.amazon.com/Blitzscaling-Lightning-Fast-Building-...
[2] https://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/technology/ct-uber-lyft-congestion-20180225-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/technology/ct-uber-ly...
- save_ferris 8y agoWe're beginning to feel the crunch of car culture in the US, and not everyone is excited at the prospect of footing the bill to overhaul infrastructure and transportation systems at the public level. > In a capitalist country, the markets will reward those who succeed. This may be true, but markets will favor a solution that involves maintaining control of the system in order to generate profit. If we want our transportation system to rival that of Europe's, it won't be done through market competition for transportation services/technology. Why? Because services like ridesharing don't incentivize the development of solid public-use transportation infrastructure. They represent the next revolution of US car culture, which isn't going to benefit as many people directly once cars become unaffordable for too many Americans, a trend that is already being observed[0]. Once this happens, we're going to rely on cars more than ever because we won't have a viable alternative. I'm not sure how comfortable I am with that idea. [0]: http://fortune.com/2017/06/28/car-buy-price/ http://fortune.com/2017/06/28/car-buy-price/
- jeffbax 8y agoNot true. The best train systems in the world are private businesses. The problem is having to compete with the government. The NYC subway used to be two private systems and the government put them out of business and now it's death by politics A business focused on transit could otherwise profit and maintain for less cost than government fails to do.