2 ms·

I think Lyft and Uber hurt public transit. There has gotta be a better way to make American cities more livable and accessible without adding additional car tra

I think Lyft and Uber hurt public transit. There has gotta be a better way to make American cities more livable and accessible without adding additional car traffic. Buses, denser house, better urban planning, metro rail and subway additions are the way we need to go like Asia and Europe. Uber and Lyft are not doing well in Europe and Asia because leaders realize they make traffic worse and are trying to focus on zoning and transit instead.

Andrex 7y ago
> There has gotta be a better way to make American cities more livable and accessible without adding additional car traffic. This problem and its solutions are not new. The solutions weren't implemented because there wasn't enough desire to implement them, and I doubt that has changed today. American culture pushes the idea of personal vehicle ownership equaling success, and if you have a car you're going to drive it instead of taking the subway.
JCStr 7y ago
I don't know what you think can be done, because all the "solutions" you offer are just plain unworkable and unfeasible. Ride sharing, aka taxis, was a solution to that problem even though it may have not only just been a con job to take over the taxi industry in every single city and town, but it also surely led to people using Uber instead of walking a few blocks. That may have abated a bit since the introduction of scooters, but even though that also "hurts public transit", I will leave that be. The reality is that public transit hurts public transit way way more than anything else, just like taxis not only destroyed themselves, but they alone made Uber/Lyft even possible. Just like without taxis being an utterly miserable experience in most cases (which clearly has now been normalized in U/L to some degree) made people flock to U/L even with efforts like Curb (and whatever they were called before that) in addition to some other efforts to organize taxis in an app; so is and did public transport sabotage itself too. People who advocate for public transport (and I must assume that includes you) tend to not at all understand the true costs and issues with public transport beyond the obvious ones like subways/trams being stuck on rigid lines or busses that are limited in their route. What those people do not take into account is even just the full financial cost of operations, not even to mention future obligations due to unfunded liabilities/benefits for utterly unproductive/lazy government employees, and all the accompanying authoritarian/tyrannical gaslighting propaganda that comes with it, e.g., "how dare you point out or note the crimes and violence on BART. You are a horrible person for not subjecting yourself to it". But reality is that, e.g., the NYC subway system is HEAVILY subsidized, which makes it so "cheap", just like all the European public transit is even more subsidized and makes it even "cheaper". Just for example because I was looking at the figures recently, the WashDC Metro system only receives half its operational budget from fares, and the other half is drained from surrounding counties and the city of DC. And that is at a cost of commuting to and from work into and out of the city of about $7.5 every single day, partially due to recent fare increases. That's ~$2,000 per year to commute to work when one is to believe that being jammed into busses/subways should produce some kind of savings over owning and operating a car, which would clearly not cost $2,000 in costs for commuting per year unless you are talking about a mid sized luxury vehicle. You are wildly mistaken, at least regarding Europe, why U/L are doing poorly. They are doing poorly there because the people still care about maintaining a line against the very "disruptive" types that SV and YC for that matter is full of. People in Europe at least for the time being still have a shared common bond to maintain the line against pure capitalists that have demoralized and broken through that line in the USA in particular, where no such bonds of unity and common interest exist anymore to hold the line against the abuses and excesses of the pure capitalists like basically all the tech companies are. Uber is, ironically successful in the USA specifically through abuse, fraud, manipulation, deception, plunder, and degeneracy. Like I said, at least for the time being, that defensive wall has not yet been broken trough yet in Europe, even though it surely is coming, with the invasion of the same kind of foreign low wage serf labor that fuels U/L.
tomp 7y ago
I live in London. It's not dense, but has (supposedly) good public transport... tons of busses, taxis, and probably better underground network than most other EU cities. Uber is still a blessing. Cheaper than cabs, better managed (I can order it anywhere, monitor its progress, don't need to care about payment, ...). Don't get me wrong, I think the company is pretty shit, but the service is extremely valuable!

Andrex 7y ago

> There has gotta be a better way to make American cities more livable and accessible without adding additional car traffic. This problem and its solutions are not new. The solutions weren't implemented because there wasn't enough desire to implement them, and I doubt that has changed today. American culture pushes the idea of personal vehicle ownership equaling success, and if you have a car you're going to drive it instead of taking the subway.

JCStr 7y ago

I don't know what you think can be done, because all the "solutions" you offer are just plain unworkable and unfeasible. Ride sharing, aka taxis, was a solution to that problem even though it may have not only just been a con job to take over the taxi industry in every single city and town, but it also surely led to people using Uber instead of walking a few blocks. That may have abated a bit since the introduction of scooters, but even though that also "hurts public transit", I will leave that be. The reality is that public transit hurts public transit way way more than anything else, just like taxis not only destroyed themselves, but they alone made Uber/Lyft even possible. Just like without taxis being an utterly miserable experience in most cases (which clearly has now been normalized in U/L to some degree) made people flock to U/L even with efforts like Curb (and whatever they were called before that) in addition to some other efforts to organize taxis in an app; so is and did public transport sabotage itself too. People who advocate for public transport (and I must assume that includes you) tend to not at all understand the true costs and issues with public transport beyond the obvious ones like subways/trams being stuck on rigid lines or busses that are limited in their route. What those people do not take into account is even just the full financial cost of operations, not even to mention future obligations due to unfunded liabilities/benefits for utterly unproductive/lazy government employees, and all the accompanying authoritarian/tyrannical gaslighting propaganda that comes with it, e.g., "how dare you point out or note the crimes and violence on BART. You are a horrible person for not subjecting yourself to it". But reality is that, e.g., the NYC subway system is HEAVILY subsidized, which makes it so "cheap", just like all the European public transit is even more subsidized and makes it even "cheaper". Just for example because I was looking at the figures recently, the WashDC Metro system only receives half its operational budget from fares, and the other half is drained from surrounding counties and the city of DC. And that is at a cost of commuting to and from work into and out of the city of about $7.5 every single day, partially due to recent fare increases. That's ~$2,000 per year to commute to work when one is to believe that being jammed into busses/subways should produce some kind of savings over owning and operating a car, which would clearly not cost $2,000 in costs for commuting per year unless you are talking about a mid sized luxury vehicle. You are wildly mistaken, at least regarding Europe, why U/L are doing poorly. They are doing poorly there because the people still care about maintaining a line against the very "disruptive" types that SV and YC for that matter is full of. People in Europe at least for the time being still have a shared common bond to maintain the line against pure capitalists that have demoralized and broken through that line in the USA in particular, where no such bonds of unity and common interest exist anymore to hold the line against the abuses and excesses of the pure capitalists like basically all the tech companies are. Uber is, ironically successful in the USA specifically through abuse, fraud, manipulation, deception, plunder, and degeneracy. Like I said, at least for the time being, that defensive wall has not yet been broken trough yet in Europe, even though it surely is coming, with the invasion of the same kind of foreign low wage serf labor that fuels U/L.

tomp 7y ago

I live in London. It's not dense, but has (supposedly) good public transport... tons of busses, taxis, and probably better underground network than most other EU cities. Uber is still a blessing. Cheaper than cabs, better managed (I can order it anywhere, monitor its progress, don't need to care about payment, ...). Don't get me wrong, I think the company is pretty shit, but the service is extremely valuable!