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My prediction is that in the cities, things mostly won’t change. In rural or suburban areas, cost and wait times will explode, if service is offered at all. Wi

My prediction is that in the cities, things mostly won’t change. In rural or suburban areas, cost and wait times will explode, if service is offered at all. With minimum wage enforced, waiting in areas where drivers don’t make minimum wage on average will vanish since scheduled services are risk adverse and have lots of information. Before drivers might service those areas hoping to get a ride taking them to urban areas. Drivers don’t have good statistics on where to wait. Coordinated services do.

908B64B197 6y ago
That and drivers refusing rides to certain neighborhoods, or customers.
ghaff 6y ago
I live in Boston exurbs and the once or twice I've needed a "taxi" I was able to get an Uber (from not a lot of choices during the day) but there weren't any Lyfts available. So, yes, ride-share can get pretty thin on the ground once you get out of cities. In normal times, I don't even try to use them for airport trips; just book a private car.
Barrin92 6y ago
> In rural or suburban areas, cost and wait times will explode, Utilization of ridesharing in rural areas is low[1]. It's a mode of transportation mostly used by urban affluent individuals with plenty of expendable income and as far as other reasons are concerned internet and credit card access trump any sort of supply problem. "Suzanne Ashe was once the only Uber driver in Haines, Alaska — population 1,374 — and said she kept getting kicked off the platform because there weren’t enough people asking for rides. She also found that some places weren’t on Uber’s maps, so clients couldn’t enter their destination, and internet could be spotty. For these reasons, Ashe quit Uber and started her own ride-hailing business called Red Cab, named for her 2010 Red Chevy HHR, the only car in her “company.” She charges a flat rate of $10 per ride and $30 per hour. “In order to cater to rural areas, especially areas where there isn’t a saturation of network, then a cab company makes a lot more sense,” she told Chilkat Valley News." It seems to have become fashionable to rush to Ubers defense by framing it as some sort of necessary mode of transportation for the undersupplied when instead every piece of data suggests the opposite. It's luxury transportation for the upper middle-class on the back of disenfranchised metropolitan army of reserve labour. [1]https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/1/11/18179036/uber-lyft-rural-areas-subscription-model https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/1/11/18179036/uber-lyft-r...
- ghaff 6y ago
  That's mostly true. Around where I live, most people own cars and parking isn't an issue. That said, if you don't own a car/can't drive public transit is essentially non-existent with a small regional bus system that is pretty much the option of last result. Uber's probably nice for the people who need to be transported to medical appointments and the like. On the other hand, there were other options including taxis/helpers of various types/family/etc. before Uber came along and the on-demand/convenient nature of Uber isn't as big a deal under those circumstances.
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  I don't see Uber as class- or luxury-related at all. They have all kinds of customers. Sure they have affluent customers but e.g. college students actively seek each other to split Uber fares too. Many people would prefer to drive instead of taking an Uber, but they do the latter because often there's something preventing them from so (like lack of parking space, or any car to begin with). Are cars luxury upper middle-class commodities now too? And when utilization is high, ride-sharing is arguably more carbon-friendly too. The same affluent folks you're talking about could be driving a car instead of sharing rides with other people if they were left with that option. Even if you think ride-sharing is somehow a sign of affluence (which it very obviously isn't, if you've lived in other countries where entire cities function on hitching rides with strangers every day), you shouldn't want to discourage it and look on people using it with disdain.
  - paulgb 6y ago
    Not sure why you're being downvoted. A lot of the Uber/Lyft users I know were (pre-Covid) Uber Pool/Lift Line users. Cramming into a car with strangers that takes 2-3 diversions on the way to your final destination isn't really luxury; it's a stop-gap for when the trip you're making is underserved by transit. For my lifestyle, owning a car would be the "luxury", not ride sharing.
    - undersuit 6y ago
      > Not sure why you're being downvoted. Their last sentence is a straw man from out of nowhere. That's what got me in action.
JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
Minimum wage isn't really that expensive. Suppose a driver makes $12/hour. That's $96 per day. If they do just 10 rides in 8 hours -- and they could do much more -- riders need to pay just $9.60 per ride. Sure, the rideshare company needs their cut, so add a 15% premium. It doesn't sound all that expensive. A 3 mile trip through town isn't going to become a $30 affair just because the driver makes minimum wage.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  Does that include fuel, maintenance and depreciation?
  - neltnerb 6y ago
    Doesn't seem to, but they pointed out that they were being conservative in saying that an employee that makes 10 rides in a day charging $9.60 per ride covers their salary. If they made 15 that would probably cover fuel, maintenance, depreciation, and their salary. Of course this would be a company owned car and they'd be reimbursed for fuel and stuff so at least the company is the one taking that risk. But if they're real employees, firing ones that can't make fifteen rides happen in eight hours is just kind of the obvious result.
    - bobthepanda 6y ago
      Pizza drivers don't generally use company cars, I don't see why Lyft or Uber would necessarily do so.
    - LegitShady 6y ago
      >Doesn't seem to, but they pointed out that they were being conservative in saying that an employee that makes 10 rides in a day charging $9.60 per ride covers their salary. If they made 15 that would probably cover fuel, maintenance, depreciation, and their salary. I think its the opposite of conservative to ignore the greatest cost of being an uber driver - your car.
    - vii 6y ago
dmode 6y ago
Can you clarify how this will change from the current situation ? Even now drivers in suburbs know they won’t get rides and often are there because they are starting the day, or they dropped off someone
Alex3917 6y ago
> My prediction is that in the cities, things mostly won’t change. The reason Arcade City is growing so fast is because they not only allow but encourage drivers to own their relationship with the riders, unlike Uber and Lyft where you get banned for going off platform. So the drivers all love it and they promote the platform like crazy to their riders, and also to other drivers in their WhatsApp groups. If anything I would think owning your own Rolodex would be more valuable in cities, given the higher density of high-value customers.
bsder 6y ago
> My prediction is that in the cities, things mostly won’t change. In rural or suburban areas, cost and wait times will explode, if service is offered at all. This, in a nutshell, is exactly the problem. Uber and Lyft make almost all their money in areas where there is already a useful, functioning cab system. Had Uber and Lyft positioned themselves as serving San Diego, Sacramento, Bakersfield, etc. people would have been falling all over themselves to defend them. Instead, they focused on San Francisco and Los Angeles and "disrupted" the cab system which was already functioning because that's where all the profit was and they wanted "Unicorn scale". Well, okay, you reap what you sow. > Drivers don’t have good statistics on where to wait. That's totally false. Drivers absolutely know. My street has a lot of brewpubs that close at 10:00PM on weekdays, and the Uber/Lyft drivers flood the area and cruise just ahead of that. It's actually incredibly annoying if you live in the area because it creates a huge traffic spike on a relatively small road that is also a cycling route at a time that people are going home.
- prostoalex 6y ago
  The words “functional” and “San Francisco cab system” were never used in the same sentence during the heyday. You basically had to call 3-4 different companies in the hopes of one showing up.
  - donw 6y ago
    Agreed, unless prefaced with the phrase "We don't have a". When Uber came to Japan, they pushed heavily on their three main points: - Uber is convenient. - Uber is safe. - Uber is clean. Japanese taxis are (a) everywhere; (b) probably about the safest form of transport that doesn't have armor plating; and (c) are probably cleaner than the a Blue Cross operating theater.
- aeternum 6y ago
  SF cab experience was terrible before uber/lyft. Calling a dispatcher was about as useful as yelling into the wind. When a cab did pull up, they would crack their window with doors locked and ask where you were going. If the ride wasn't lucrative enough they would drive away. Many would take longer routes because it was 'faster' unless you spoke up. Good luck trying to pay with a credit card, and after paying with cash, they somehow never had proper change forcing you to either escalate the situation or just round up significantly.
dehrmann 6y ago
> In rural or suburban areas, cost and wait times will explode, if service is offered at all. It'd think the economics would look more like a local, pre-Uber taxi service, but with 2-4x the volume because of improvements in ride hailing. Interestingly, it could be worse because Uber drove the local taxi out of business, and the local taxi might have been a sole proprietor who can work for less than minimum wage.
dreamcompiler 6y ago
Why do you believe coordinating a ride service on a network of GPS-enabled phone apps among both drivers and riders is in any way difficult?

908B64B197 6y ago

That and drivers refusing rides to certain neighborhoods, or customers.

ghaff 6y ago

I live in Boston exurbs and the once or twice I've needed a "taxi" I was able to get an Uber (from not a lot of choices during the day) but there weren't any Lyfts available. So, yes, ride-share can get pretty thin on the ground once you get out of cities. In normal times, I don't even try to use them for airport trips; just book a private car.

Barrin92 6y ago

> In rural or suburban areas, cost and wait times will explode, Utilization of ridesharing in rural areas is low[1]. It's a mode of transportation mostly used by urban affluent individuals with plenty of expendable income and as far as other reasons are concerned internet and credit card access trump any sort of supply problem. "Suzanne Ashe was once the only Uber driver in Haines, Alaska — population 1,374 — and said she kept getting kicked off the platform because there weren’t enough people asking for rides. She also found that some places weren’t on Uber’s maps, so clients couldn’t enter their destination, and internet could be spotty. For these reasons, Ashe quit Uber and started her own ride-hailing business called Red Cab, named for her 2010 Red Chevy HHR, the only car in her “company.” She charges a flat rate of $10 per ride and $30 per hour. “In order to cater to rural areas, especially areas where there isn’t a saturation of network, then a cab company makes a lot more sense,” she told Chilkat Valley News." It seems to have become fashionable to rush to Ubers defense by framing it as some sort of necessary mode of transportation for the undersupplied when instead every piece of data suggests the opposite. It's luxury transportation for the upper middle-class on the back of disenfranchised metropolitan army of reserve labour. [1]https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/1/11/18179036/uber-lyft-rural-areas-subscription-model https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/1/11/18179036/uber-lyft-r...

ghaff 6y ago
That's mostly true. Around where I live, most people own cars and parking isn't an issue. That said, if you don't own a car/can't drive public transit is essentially non-existent with a small regional bus system that is pretty much the option of last result. Uber's probably nice for the people who need to be transported to medical appointments and the like. On the other hand, there were other options including taxis/helpers of various types/family/etc. before Uber came along and the on-demand/convenient nature of Uber isn't as big a deal under those circumstances.
mehrdadn 6y ago
I don't see Uber as class- or luxury-related at all. They have all kinds of customers. Sure they have affluent customers but e.g. college students actively seek each other to split Uber fares too. Many people would prefer to drive instead of taking an Uber, but they do the latter because often there's something preventing them from so (like lack of parking space, or any car to begin with). Are cars luxury upper middle-class commodities now too? And when utilization is high, ride-sharing is arguably more carbon-friendly too. The same affluent folks you're talking about could be driving a car instead of sharing rides with other people if they were left with that option. Even if you think ride-sharing is somehow a sign of affluence (which it very obviously isn't, if you've lived in other countries where entire cities function on hitching rides with strangers every day), you shouldn't want to discourage it and look on people using it with disdain.
- paulgb 6y ago
  Not sure why you're being downvoted. A lot of the Uber/Lyft users I know were (pre-Covid) Uber Pool/Lift Line users. Cramming into a car with strangers that takes 2-3 diversions on the way to your final destination isn't really luxury; it's a stop-gap for when the trip you're making is underserved by transit. For my lifestyle, owning a car would be the "luxury", not ride sharing.
  - undersuit 6y ago
    > Not sure why you're being downvoted. Their last sentence is a straw man from out of nowhere. That's what got me in action.

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago

Minimum wage isn't really that expensive. Suppose a driver makes $12/hour. That's $96 per day. If they do just 10 rides in 8 hours -- and they could do much more -- riders need to pay just $9.60 per ride. Sure, the rideshare company needs their cut, so add a 15% premium. It doesn't sound all that expensive. A 3 mile trip through town isn't going to become a $30 affair just because the driver makes minimum wage.

bobthepanda 6y ago
Does that include fuel, maintenance and depreciation?
- neltnerb 6y ago
  Doesn't seem to, but they pointed out that they were being conservative in saying that an employee that makes 10 rides in a day charging $9.60 per ride covers their salary. If they made 15 that would probably cover fuel, maintenance, depreciation, and their salary. Of course this would be a company owned car and they'd be reimbursed for fuel and stuff so at least the company is the one taking that risk. But if they're real employees, firing ones that can't make fifteen rides happen in eight hours is just kind of the obvious result.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    Pizza drivers don't generally use company cars, I don't see why Lyft or Uber would necessarily do so.
  - LegitShady 6y ago
    >Doesn't seem to, but they pointed out that they were being conservative in saying that an employee that makes 10 rides in a day charging $9.60 per ride covers their salary. If they made 15 that would probably cover fuel, maintenance, depreciation, and their salary. I think its the opposite of conservative to ignore the greatest cost of being an uber driver - your car.
  - vii 6y ago

dmode 6y ago

Can you clarify how this will change from the current situation ? Even now drivers in suburbs know they won’t get rides and often are there because they are starting the day, or they dropped off someone

Alex3917 6y ago

> My prediction is that in the cities, things mostly won’t change. The reason Arcade City is growing so fast is because they not only allow but encourage drivers to own their relationship with the riders, unlike Uber and Lyft where you get banned for going off platform. So the drivers all love it and they promote the platform like crazy to their riders, and also to other drivers in their WhatsApp groups. If anything I would think owning your own Rolodex would be more valuable in cities, given the higher density of high-value customers.

bsder 6y ago

> My prediction is that in the cities, things mostly won’t change. In rural or suburban areas, cost and wait times will explode, if service is offered at all. This, in a nutshell, is exactly the problem. Uber and Lyft make almost all their money in areas where there is already a useful, functioning cab system. Had Uber and Lyft positioned themselves as serving San Diego, Sacramento, Bakersfield, etc. people would have been falling all over themselves to defend them. Instead, they focused on San Francisco and Los Angeles and "disrupted" the cab system which was already functioning because that's where all the profit was and they wanted "Unicorn scale". Well, okay, you reap what you sow. > Drivers don’t have good statistics on where to wait. That's totally false. Drivers absolutely know. My street has a lot of brewpubs that close at 10:00PM on weekdays, and the Uber/Lyft drivers flood the area and cruise just ahead of that. It's actually incredibly annoying if you live in the area because it creates a huge traffic spike on a relatively small road that is also a cycling route at a time that people are going home.

prostoalex 6y ago
The words “functional” and “San Francisco cab system” were never used in the same sentence during the heyday. You basically had to call 3-4 different companies in the hopes of one showing up.
- donw 6y ago
  Agreed, unless prefaced with the phrase "We don't have a". When Uber came to Japan, they pushed heavily on their three main points: - Uber is convenient. - Uber is safe. - Uber is clean. Japanese taxis are (a) everywhere; (b) probably about the safest form of transport that doesn't have armor plating; and (c) are probably cleaner than the a Blue Cross operating theater.
aeternum 6y ago
SF cab experience was terrible before uber/lyft. Calling a dispatcher was about as useful as yelling into the wind. When a cab did pull up, they would crack their window with doors locked and ask where you were going. If the ride wasn't lucrative enough they would drive away. Many would take longer routes because it was 'faster' unless you spoke up. Good luck trying to pay with a credit card, and after paying with cash, they somehow never had proper change forcing you to either escalate the situation or just round up significantly.

dehrmann 6y ago

> In rural or suburban areas, cost and wait times will explode, if service is offered at all. It'd think the economics would look more like a local, pre-Uber taxi service, but with 2-4x the volume because of improvements in ride hailing. Interestingly, it could be worse because Uber drove the local taxi out of business, and the local taxi might have been a sole proprietor who can work for less than minimum wage.

dreamcompiler 6y ago

Why do you believe coordinating a ride service on a network of GPS-enabled phone apps among both drivers and riders is in any way difficult?