16 ms·

Uber and Lyft don't save money, time, or the planet

nottorp 5y ago
Hmm where I am Uber and taxis are interchangeable. Except when it's a high demand time (event or something) when you're more likely to get an Uber because of the demand surcharge. Best feature of Uber vs traditional taxi is you don't need to tell the Uber driver where to find you. I suppose the post is actually complaining about airport rules.
myfavoritedog 5y ago
With Uber, Lyft, and Venmo - I feel almost zero concern that my college-ish aged children will feel the need to drive home drunk after a night partying. Apart from that, it seems pretty lame to blame the gig economy for failures often caused by a government trying to shut the gig economy down. LAX shuffles people using Uber and Lyft off to some terrible pickup location and charges extra fees that have to be factored into the price, so the thesis is that Uber and Lyft aren't living up to expectations? Meh.
a_imho 5y ago
What is the difference between a taxi service and Uber?
- acchow 5y ago
  Uber is global. No matter which city you travel to, customer support and the overall experience will be quite similar. You can always pay for your Uber electronically through the app. Good luck finding a taxi that will accept your credit card in whatever city you happen to be in.
  - a_imho 5y ago
    Personally I never had a problem with taxis accepting my card. Just to go back in time, when Uber was not global, what was the difference then?
    - acchow 5y ago
      You mean when Uber launched in San Francisco and was trying to bootstrap? Well, back then getting a taxi was difficult and unreliable. You could call ahead the day before for a 6am taxi to take you to the airport and have like a 30% chance that a taxi would actually show up. There was also no information passed to you as 6am got closer whether or not your taxi would actually be arriving, or at what time. Uber provided reliable service, continuous stream of realtime updates, and an easy-to-use UI
      - a_imho 5y ago
        Totally not my experience in Europe. We had reliable taxis back then as well. Uber looks and quacks like a taxi, I get that it is in their game to differentiate themselves and try not to be called a taxi or get treated as a taxi, but they are a taxi company at the end of the day.
jsiepkes 5y ago
> In 2015, Uber founder Travis Kalanick gave a TED talk in which he vowed the new rideshare business model would get “more people into fewer cars,” dramatically reduce air pollution and, as he put it, “reclaim our cities today.” At the risk of sounding too skeptical but these are the kind of quotes dreamed up by the marketing department. The kind of quotes that have no connection to the actual mission of a company. There is probably no KPI anywhere to be found within Uber that says: "Traffic reduced %". Even worse these quotes are often all based on "gut feeling" and "well sounds logical" kind of emotions with no factual basis whatsoever. Which probably isn't a surprise since it's marketings task to handle emotion.
- Guest42 5y ago
  Agreed, seems as though even rubber gloves are "empowering a new limitless future." Personally, I'd love a return to boring but accurate descriptions.
  - nathanaldensr 5y ago
    The assumption (or resignation?) that marketing language and tricks are somehow normal, immutable, and a fundamental part of life is wrong, especially to the extent we experience it today.
- treis 5y ago
  Uber was easily the single biggest improvement to my quality of life over the last 10 or so years. No, it didn't usher in a utopia of traffic free cities. But it made my large city accessible in ways that it was never before. Especially for a 20 something that wanted to go out on the weekends.
  - a2tech 5y ago
    Yes. Uber has radically changed my enjoyment of big cities and traveling. Now whether I step off the plane in London/Chicago/Barcelona I open up Uber, throw in an address and away I go. No bs trying to figure out the local transport tangle or crazy language struggles. Do all these cities have apps for their local transportation models? Of course! As a weekend visitor (or work traveler) do I have it? Of course not! I just want to go places and not fight with the mode of transportation. I don't give a fig whether its a bus/train/cab/pedal cart I just want to go to the places I want to go without fighting with transport.
bko 5y ago
> Sunday night, I flew into LAX from San Francisco and boarded a shuttle to the airport’s newish pickup spot for ground transportation just east of Terminal 1. I found myself standing amid an unhappy crowd of restless travelers who had been waiting as long as 30 minutes to be picked up by their Lyft drivers. Isn't this because most cities have ridiculous rules that disadvantage Uber drivers while cabs are allowed to park out in front? They have no convenient very short term parking, instead they're sometimes made to wait on the side of the highway, which makes the ride more expensive. They also charge fees. LAX charges $4 per ride [0] Isn't the fact that people use Uber proof that they provide some value? I think the point is to have an alternative to cabs that are highly variable as per the author's own admission. [0] https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-airport-uber-parking-revenue-20190301-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-airport-uber-parking-...
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  People use single-use unrecycleable plastic, unhealthy food and capsule coffee machines, all are unnessesary, net negative to society but enable lazyness and are a great business.
  - echopurity 5y ago
    The fact that destroying the planet and ruining people's lives is "good business" is a major part of the problem.
  - lexapro 5y ago
    Unnecessary maybe, but those things undoubtedly offer value.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      Slaves offer value too, what conclusion should I draw from this?
      - Nasrudith 5y ago
danpalmer 5y ago
Uber and Lyft are the best examples of the VC cycle: Disruptor comes along to stagnant industry. Pumps cash into growth, discounts get many people on board, crap service is made up for with liberal refunding by customer service. Push for profitability hits discounts, acquisition slows because it's no longer cheaper than the thing it was disrupting before, customer service stop refunding things and customers leave because they realise the service has pretty bad flaws. Incumbents have finally met the new table-stakes features to compete, disruptor isn't significantly better. See also: takeaway deliveries, meal kits, buying books online, and pretty much anything else. These cycles always look like they're going to be a 100% improvement, but always end up being a 10% improvement once everything settles down.
- diegoperini 5y ago
  I agree. I also like 10% improvements.
  - danpalmer 5y ago
    So do I! I'm not sure they justify multi-billion-dollar valuations though.
    - amelius 5y ago
      Yeah, someone wrote a CRUD app to do ride sharing and now somehow their worth is in the same ballpark as a semiconductor superpower.
    - freewilly1040 5y ago
      A 10% improvement over an incumbent means a complete takeover of the industry.
      - mantas 5y ago
        Assuming that incumbent does not improve...
      - 5y ago
bongoman37 5y ago
In India, Uber (and Ola, Lyft isn't available here) certainly save money and time. I know lots of young people who haven't gotten cars because Uber/Ola is the default. I have a car but often used to take one of those when going to places where parking could be an issue. They eliminate haggling with cabbies, cabbies taking roundabout routes and are far safer for women compared to traditional rickshaws or cabs.
seibelj 5y ago
Uber and Lyft are private companies. They have to constantly improve their service, and if they aren't providing value to their customers, they can ultimately fail. They also have tons of headwinds from regulations and hatred from politicians / journalists. You know what I don't have a choice on? My tax dollars that pay for inefficient, unprofitable, and terrible service from public transportation. Washington DC spent hundreds of millions of dollars on brand new subway cars that were supposed last 40 years, now they all need to be replaced after 3 years. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/over-half-washington-d-c-metro-rail-cars-pulled-after-n1281814 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/over-half-washington-d-... Without the market test of profitable / unprofitable, politicians keep shoveling dollars at boondoggles that don't make any sense. I like Uber and Lyft because they respond to the needs of their customers. Government transportation is - at best - decent. It never blows you away, and is usually behind schedule, dirty, broken, and full of employees who don't care.
- dgan 5y ago
  Interesting thesis! Maybe constrained to US though. I really appreciate public transportation in Lyon and Paris, and never felt any need to own a car. You shouldn't generalize your particular experience to "public transportation" EDIT: okey lets be fair, a little less for Paris, because of constant strikes last years.
- mrtranscendence 5y ago
  > now they all need to be replaced after 3 years. Your link doesn't say that. They were all taken offline, but the issue is with the wheel assembly, not the entire car, and it seems likely to me that only a portion of those will have to be replaced.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  Public services should not have the goal of being profitable. That's how you get negative feedback loops of bad service and declining utilization. Public transportation does not have to be terrible, by the way. Many cities have great public transit - Montreal and Hong Kong are ones I've personally experienced that had great public transit systems. But I get the sense that a lot of US cities treat public transit as a parasitic entity taking up space and leeching money. When providing public transit is not a priority it's not surprising that it becomes compromised in ways that ruin its utility. > Washington DC spent hundreds of millions of dollars on brand new subway cars that were supposed last 40 years, now they all need to be replaced after 3 years. By the way, isn't this the fault of the (presumably private) contractor that built the things? It's not like a bunch of bureaucrats built these things with their welding rigs and wrenches. Until there are meaningful penalties for these kinds of fuckups by the private sector, why wouldn't they treat public projects as free money? It's what the profit motive dictates.
leesec 5y ago
Is this a serious thesis? The point is the average car owner can make some money off an existing asset (instead of having to buy a medallion), and the average person needing a ride has more options to choose from. Cab infrastructure simply does not exist at a reasonable scale in most cities. Money, Time and The Planet basically do not come into the equation when the alternative is getting stuck at the airport.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Airport to downtown is probably the primary use case where taxis actually work pretty well most of the time. I still use them in that case much of the time because assuming no massive line just getting into a cab to my hotel is easier than screwing around with an app.
aghastnj 5y ago
I always enjoy an article that starts by insulting my intelligence - especially if it can do it right in the headline. I enjoy it so much that I won't even bother to read it.
- pumaontheprowl 5y ago
  How do you know the author is insulting your intelligence and not just lacking in intelligence themself? I find the latter explanation more likely for this idiotic article.
tharne 5y ago
> Uber and Lyft don't save money, time, or the planet And yet people enjoy their services enough to voluntarily pay for them :)
unpolloloco 5y ago
The value to Uber is that it broke the taxi monopoly. Especially in second tier cities where calling a taxi meant that they might show up...eventually. This enables people to go out without a car - making more locations accessible and (maybe one of the largest benefits...) discouraging drunk driving. Environmental benefits are...highly overstated...but you can say the same thing for pretty much any innovation outside of the energy industry.
- seunosewa 5y ago
  the article mentioned Uber and Lyfts' effect on the taxi monopoly near the end: "On Sunday, I decided to forego the long wait for a Lyft and the absurdly high congestion pricing. I hopped into a cab and was home in 15 minutes. The tab: $34.69. The driver asked me for cash, of course. But when I brandished my credit card, he did not utter a peep of protest. Maybe — just maybe — I have Uber and Lyft to thank for that."
dhosek 5y ago
I've always found the cases where people like Uber/Lyft to be a bit absurd. I live just outside Chicago. In the city, there were (and still are) abundant taxis. It's a simple matter to hail a cab from most parts of the city (when I lived in the city proper, I would occasionally cab to work instead of take the bus if I was running late, or use one to get home from band practice and it was my usual mode of transport for dates since I didn't have a car) and the people who will go into an app to schedule an Uber or Lyft always seem absurd because they could be into a taxi in no time just by going to the corner and raising their hand. In the suburbs, it makes more sense because taxi service here is a much worse,¹ but I don't see a single defender of ride shares in the current threads talking about a suburban experience. The taxi driver/credit card thing varies on city, by the way. L.A. taxi drivers are always grumpy about taking credit cards. Chicago taxi drivers have no problem with it (I think because they've discovered that they tend to get better tips with credit cards than they do with cash which makes up for the processing fees. Fast food places discovered something similar where accepting credit cards increased their average order price enough to make up for the loss in net revenue from CC fees). ⸻⸻⸻ 1. This, admittedly is the case in some cities as well. Los Angeles (used to? I remember there was a proposal to change this but I don't know if it passed) banned cabs from picking up passengers who hailed them from a corner and that's the case with the suburban taxis in the Chicago area as well—they can only pick up dispatch rides, except at the airport.
- freewilly1040 5y ago
  To some degree you’re making the case for Uber. The fact that you as the consumer can be completely oblivious to local cab driver idiosyncrasies is part of the appeal, as is the completely frictionless payment experience. Ok, cabs work fine in Chicago. If I get off a plane in city Foo, I have no idea what I’m going to get from a cab. I know what I’m getting from an Uber. There’s also some tacit acknowledgement in your comment that in many places local cabs are decidedly not fine. The last traditional cab I took in the SF bay drove 90 mph and charged me twice as much as an Uber. Why would I go back?
- tubby12345 5y ago
  I live two blocks off Michigan by the Hancock. I can look out my window and see the cars on Michigan. There are exactly zero taxis right now, 9AM Thursday morning. I have no clue what you're talking about when you say you can hail a cab.
vasilipupkin 5y ago
Uber and Lyft literally save lives https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/2780664 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/278...
nine_k 5y ago
A Lyft or Uber car can be hailed by an app, to the exact place I'm at. A city taxi would scan the most lucrative areas, and my never show up where it's convenient for me to be picked up. I don't understand how this drastic difference goes unnoticed. The fare is not the only factor; availability, convenience, and control are no less important.
- cletus 5y ago
  This. You see this in NYC. Yellow cabs are fairly easy to find in Manhattan (below 96th Street anyway) but you'll never see them in many areas of the city. The medallion system was invented to stop too many taxis appearing such that drivers couldn't earn an income. There are a ton of problems with this system and then the city decided to protect the "assets" (taxi medallions). Often ordinary people had bought these. Anyway, to combat this Manhattan-only problem, they invented the green cabs. These were much cheaper (medallion-wise) but couldn't pick people up off the street in Manhattan (below 96th). The result? Green cab drivers just picked new high-traffic areas and didn't want to take people to Manhattan. Why? Because once dropping someone off they couldn't pick someone up so they'd have to lose time and money driving out of the area. And on top of all this it used to be impossible to get a cab at all around shift change times (3-4pm was the bad one). They had to invent solutions for this (eg taxis stationed at certain areas like hotels so you could still get to the airport). And even if you get a cab you then have to communicate where you're going. The number of times I've had a driver mis-hear street numbers (eg 14th vs 40th) is astounding. While in the cab you're subjected to a loop of advertising (because, hey, more revenue). You can mute it but it's an added annoyance. After all that you then have to pay and for some reason cabs seem to be a common source of having your credit card skimmed (anecdotally; I have no proof of this). Uber/Lyft take away all the friction of finding a cab, telling it where to go and paying. The reputation system does a decent (but obviously not perfect) job of curbing the worst actors (drivers and riders). How anyone could think this doesn't have value is beyond me. Cost structure wise there's no $1 million medallion to pay for built into the Uber price. The price is still below cost but that gap seems to be narrowing.
  - jfrunyon 5y ago
Grimm1 5y ago
Lyft saves me plenty of time so I'm not sure I can agree here. The alternative would be relying on regular cabs or the public infrastructure here in NY which has on multiple occasions proven to be less reliable for me. I'll gladly pay a little extra to not arrive at my location 40minutes to an hour late because of a service disruption in the subway. If we actually took all the money invested in transportation in the city and made things better, instead of I assume pocketing it, maybe I would have different thoughts, but for now these services make my life significantly easier.
deleted 5y ago
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tossaway9000 5y ago
> I swore off taxis years ago after I realized that every time I walked out of an LAX terminal toward the taxi line, my neck and shoulders began to tense. I was bracing for a fight. Same thing with the "Grab" app in Asia, its just not worth fighting the cab drivers in Manila or Bangkok, when you can get a Grab driver they will give you zero drama but the cab drivers in those cities will haggle you, not use the meters, try to get you to go to some tourist trap, etc. Its not like that across those entire countries (Davao City notably has absolutely amazing taxi drivers) but the big cities are terrible. South Korea, Japan, and Singapore have such amazing public transpiration options there's little need for taxis most of the time (though its worth noting that when I have used them I had zero issues in those countries, even in Seoul and Tokyo.)
jvanderbot 5y ago
The promise of sharing rides using an app was a great one. I could just pick someone up heading for a place near my work and make $3. When people used it for employment, not sharing their ride but operating like a cab driver, uber leaned in and the stage was set for the clashes and class action that results in regulation, price increases, etc. If they had stayed niche and stayed smallish, ride sharing could have accomplished what it was supposed to. Greed is powerful, and drivers saw no need to limit to just sharing a trip to the mall, and uber saw no reason to prevent people from using their platform for it.
- peatmoss 5y ago
  The term “ride sharing” feels like an Orwellian anachronism as applied to current Uber/Lyft. Matching people who had to go from approximately the same place to approximately the same place had a lot of promise both to expand mobility, but also to address some “bowling alone” problems. Still, the fact that most cars sit idle IIRC > 95% of the time seems like there should be some genuine opportunity frontier. I think the dream was always to get to a point where autonomous driving and somewhat centralized route optimization could generate real efficiencies. But the Uber/Lyft needed to get people out of their own cars en masse for that to work. Autonomous driving didn’t appear at the right time for everything to work out, I think.
- jfrunyon 5y ago
  None of the "ride sharing" services were ever meant as anything other than a taxi service. Ride sharing was solely an excuse to evade the law and if you can't see that then you aren't looking.
bananamerica 5y ago
Wow, taxi drivers in LA are assholes. I've taken taxis in many Brazilian cities, and, while they're certainly not as nice as Uber drivers, they're not even remotely as bad as the ones in the article.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  I guess you have not been on Rio. Taxis there are famous on the entire country. And that's a huge problem, by the way. When you are in a city you don't know, you also don't know how trustworthy the taxi system is.
  - bananamerica 5y ago
    I have been briefly to Rio. Maybe I was lucky.
    - marcosdumay 5y ago
      Yes, as usual with people most are honest. It's only the ratio of dishonest ones that is way higher than most places. Once you interact enough, you get a history of problems. But for each interaction, the odds are that you will find a perfectly honest driver.
karaterobot 5y ago
One thing about this article: their argument that it doesn't save time or money is taken from a very specific use case in which it doesn't save time or money: traveling from LAX to the author's house in Venice. As noted elsewhere in the thread, this is true because of specific usage and pricing restrictions at LAX, which are not true in most other cases. Calling a cab to pick you up at your home and take you somewhere else in the city would be a more common use case to compare to, but likely would not support the author's claims, which is probably why they don't mention it. The pollution claim may be more valid: I have no thoughts on that other than the speculation that, if rideshare vehicles are spending 40% of their time driving without passengers, I bet they're returning to places where they're expecting to get more lucrative calls. This seems like something Uber and Lyft could somewhat mitigate with their pricing or compensation structure, if they wanted to. So, a problem for sure, but not one that's inherent to ridesharing. I also wonder why taxis wouldn't have the same problems. I recall reading that buses drive without passengers about 25% of the time, so it's not like this phenomenon is unique to rideshare. Based on common sense and observation, I would assume taxis are deadheading about as much as Lyft and Uber, but can find no citation for it. Lastly, the fact that this article has links to supporting resources, but those links are disguised to look like unstyled body text, is really frustrating.
- jfrunyon 5y ago
  As noted elsewhere in the thread, it's actually true in general, and has been for years. Taxis adjusted their business to compete with ride-sharing, and ride-sharing adjusted their business to stop hemorrhaging money a LONG time ago.
kbsspl 5y ago
Absolutely true. And it's worse. But that isn't Uber's job. Other than a bit of convenience, Uber is a technocracy push.
MAGZine 5y ago
I recently moved to NYC and the taxis have been a godsend--though (somewhat comically) the drivers are aware they're operating a lower-cost business. My friend recently got in a taxi and the cabbie immediately asked how much she thought the fare would be. She said "I'm not sure, maybe $15?" The Cabbie turned off the fare meter and said, sure, $15 it is. The reality is that uber and lyft are just not actually competitive in NYC. And rather than wait around for a lyft coming from god knows where, through manhattan traffic, it really is easier to just walk outside and stick your hand up. It can be much, MUCH cheaper, too. When I was in SF, Lyft wanted $72 to go from SOMA to Lower Haight--not what I would consider acceptable.
- dfadsadsf 5y ago
  Let me fix it for you > The reality is that uber and lyft are just not actually competitive in Manhattan < 90st if you need to go to Manhattan/Brooklyn. In most of New York taxis are nowhere to be found and they often refuse to leave Manhattan/Brownstone Brooklyn. Another big thing is that it's not big deal to walk to Ave to flag a taxi if you are young, healthy and it's not pouring rain (there are no taxis on streets) but imaging if you have limited mobility or have to carry heavy bags. Uber/Lyft is godsend in those cases.
  - MAGZine 5y ago
    If either of those cases, you could always, you know, pick up the phone and call. But agreed. I think in ¬Dense Manhattan, Uber and Lyft have been a nice improvement service-wise, at least as far as a guarantee you know a ride is coming, and no hassles about payment and/or source/destination.
- ryan_lane 5y ago
  Your friend was stolen from. The cabbie isn't running the meter because they know the price was going to be less than $15. It also means they won't take a credit card for that ride, because the ride was illegal and it requires the meter to supply the price. It's funny to me that you see this anecdote as something that reflects well on the taxi industry in NYC.
tristor 5y ago
Disagree on at least two of these claims. They definitely save time and money. The only way someone can claim they don't is if they've never actually had to travel and use taxis. Taxis are horrible, pretty much universally. The drivers will do everything possible to cheat you, the experience is shit, and availability is basically only good at the airport, downtown in that city, and nowhere else. An Uber (I don't really use Lyft since it's basically non-existent outside the US and pre-pandemic I traveled internationally a lot) will meet me wherever I happen to be regardless of where it is in the city, at whatever time I need a ride regardless of hour, pick me up, and take me to my destination via the quickest route determined by a GPS app, for a predetermined non-negotiable price, automatically charged to my credit card or business account without needing to reveal anything or expose any money to a stranger, and without me needing to deal with foreign exchange rates. A taxi does literally none of these things. The only similarity between a taxi and an Uber is that they both are a stranger driving me somewhere in a car. After that, an Uber is a better experience that saves me both time and money every step of the way, while being massively more consistent and reliable. Taxis suck, and there is effectively no way to make them better without essentially cloning what Uber does, which gets us right back where we're at. I'm seeing this more and more these days, and I'm not sure the cause, but a lot of articles in "reputable" newspapers making bold claims that nobody who has had even an inkling of experience with the subject matter would make with a straight face. Uber has many issues, I will grant, but to claim it isn't a better experience in every facet than a taxi isn't just stupid, it's dishonest.
- rileymat2 5y ago
  > They definitely save time and money. The only way someone can claim they don't is if they've never actually had to travel and use taxis. To be fair, the author had a very specific use case with respect to cost and time, with well known fares and availability from the airport to home. But I think the author would agree with most of your points, it goes on for a bit about how much she does not like Taxis. The interesting claim is the one about eco friendliness and how much driving around without a fare, or going to a fare Uber takes up.
  - tristor 5y ago
locallost 5y ago
The business model never made sense except in the way it played out - the taxi industry getting hammered and uber and lyft eventually jacking up the prices. Worse, the model is always going to be more expensive because every driver is on their own. It's a lot more expensive to buy and maintain a car if you're one person than it is if you do it for hundreds of cars. The tech was good since it works well at scale. The better way would've been to rent the tech to actual taxis around the world so that you have one app a user can use. But it was a lot more lucrative to sell the pipe dream that we're not a cab because we have an app, or that we improve congestion.
adminscoffee 5y ago
it saves lives, drunk driving crashes have gone wayyyyy down since uber and lyft came into the market. let's not downplay that please.

Hmm where I am Uber and taxis are interchangeable. Except when it's a high demand time (event or something) when you're more likely to get an Uber because of the demand surcharge. Best feature of Uber vs traditional taxi is you don't need to tell the Uber driver where to find you. I suppose the post is actually complaining about airport rules.

myfavoritedog 5y ago

With Uber, Lyft, and Venmo - I feel almost zero concern that my college-ish aged children will feel the need to drive home drunk after a night partying. Apart from that, it seems pretty lame to blame the gig economy for failures often caused by a government trying to shut the gig economy down. LAX shuffles people using Uber and Lyft off to some terrible pickup location and charges extra fees that have to be factored into the price, so the thesis is that Uber and Lyft aren't living up to expectations? Meh.

a_imho 5y ago

What is the difference between a taxi service and Uber?

acchow 5y ago
Uber is global. No matter which city you travel to, customer support and the overall experience will be quite similar. You can always pay for your Uber electronically through the app. Good luck finding a taxi that will accept your credit card in whatever city you happen to be in.
- a_imho 5y ago
  Personally I never had a problem with taxis accepting my card. Just to go back in time, when Uber was not global, what was the difference then?
  - acchow 5y ago
    You mean when Uber launched in San Francisco and was trying to bootstrap? Well, back then getting a taxi was difficult and unreliable. You could call ahead the day before for a 6am taxi to take you to the airport and have like a 30% chance that a taxi would actually show up. There was also no information passed to you as 6am got closer whether or not your taxi would actually be arriving, or at what time. Uber provided reliable service, continuous stream of realtime updates, and an easy-to-use UI
    - a_imho 5y ago
      Totally not my experience in Europe. We had reliable taxis back then as well. Uber looks and quacks like a taxi, I get that it is in their game to differentiate themselves and try not to be called a taxi or get treated as a taxi, but they are a taxi company at the end of the day.

jsiepkes 5y ago

> In 2015, Uber founder Travis Kalanick gave a TED talk in which he vowed the new rideshare business model would get “more people into fewer cars,” dramatically reduce air pollution and, as he put it, “reclaim our cities today.” At the risk of sounding too skeptical but these are the kind of quotes dreamed up by the marketing department. The kind of quotes that have no connection to the actual mission of a company. There is probably no KPI anywhere to be found within Uber that says: "Traffic reduced %". Even worse these quotes are often all based on "gut feeling" and "well sounds logical" kind of emotions with no factual basis whatsoever. Which probably isn't a surprise since it's marketings task to handle emotion.

Guest42 5y ago
Agreed, seems as though even rubber gloves are "empowering a new limitless future." Personally, I'd love a return to boring but accurate descriptions.
- nathanaldensr 5y ago
  The assumption (or resignation?) that marketing language and tricks are somehow normal, immutable, and a fundamental part of life is wrong, especially to the extent we experience it today.
treis 5y ago
Uber was easily the single biggest improvement to my quality of life over the last 10 or so years. No, it didn't usher in a utopia of traffic free cities. But it made my large city accessible in ways that it was never before. Especially for a 20 something that wanted to go out on the weekends.
- a2tech 5y ago
  Yes. Uber has radically changed my enjoyment of big cities and traveling. Now whether I step off the plane in London/Chicago/Barcelona I open up Uber, throw in an address and away I go. No bs trying to figure out the local transport tangle or crazy language struggles. Do all these cities have apps for their local transportation models? Of course! As a weekend visitor (or work traveler) do I have it? Of course not! I just want to go places and not fight with the mode of transportation. I don't give a fig whether its a bus/train/cab/pedal cart I just want to go to the places I want to go without fighting with transport.

bko 5y ago

> Sunday night, I flew into LAX from San Francisco and boarded a shuttle to the airport’s newish pickup spot for ground transportation just east of Terminal 1. I found myself standing amid an unhappy crowd of restless travelers who had been waiting as long as 30 minutes to be picked up by their Lyft drivers. Isn't this because most cities have ridiculous rules that disadvantage Uber drivers while cabs are allowed to park out in front? They have no convenient very short term parking, instead they're sometimes made to wait on the side of the highway, which makes the ride more expensive. They also charge fees. LAX charges $4 per ride [0] Isn't the fact that people use Uber proof that they provide some value? I think the point is to have an alternative to cabs that are highly variable as per the author's own admission. [0] https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-airport-uber-parking-revenue-20190301-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-airport-uber-parking-...

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
People use single-use unrecycleable plastic, unhealthy food and capsule coffee machines, all are unnessesary, net negative to society but enable lazyness and are a great business.
- echopurity 5y ago
  The fact that destroying the planet and ruining people's lives is "good business" is a major part of the problem.
- lexapro 5y ago
  Unnecessary maybe, but those things undoubtedly offer value.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    Slaves offer value too, what conclusion should I draw from this?
    - Nasrudith 5y ago

danpalmer 5y ago

Uber and Lyft are the best examples of the VC cycle: Disruptor comes along to stagnant industry. Pumps cash into growth, discounts get many people on board, crap service is made up for with liberal refunding by customer service. Push for profitability hits discounts, acquisition slows because it's no longer cheaper than the thing it was disrupting before, customer service stop refunding things and customers leave because they realise the service has pretty bad flaws. Incumbents have finally met the new table-stakes features to compete, disruptor isn't significantly better. See also: takeaway deliveries, meal kits, buying books online, and pretty much anything else. These cycles always look like they're going to be a 100% improvement, but always end up being a 10% improvement once everything settles down.

diegoperini 5y ago
I agree. I also like 10% improvements.
- danpalmer 5y ago
  So do I! I'm not sure they justify multi-billion-dollar valuations though.
  - amelius 5y ago
    Yeah, someone wrote a CRUD app to do ride sharing and now somehow their worth is in the same ballpark as a semiconductor superpower.
  - freewilly1040 5y ago
    A 10% improvement over an incumbent means a complete takeover of the industry.
    - mantas 5y ago
      Assuming that incumbent does not improve...
    - 5y ago

bongoman37 5y ago

In India, Uber (and Ola, Lyft isn't available here) certainly save money and time. I know lots of young people who haven't gotten cars because Uber/Ola is the default. I have a car but often used to take one of those when going to places where parking could be an issue. They eliminate haggling with cabbies, cabbies taking roundabout routes and are far safer for women compared to traditional rickshaws or cabs.

seibelj 5y ago

Uber and Lyft are private companies. They have to constantly improve their service, and if they aren't providing value to their customers, they can ultimately fail. They also have tons of headwinds from regulations and hatred from politicians / journalists. You know what I don't have a choice on? My tax dollars that pay for inefficient, unprofitable, and terrible service from public transportation. Washington DC spent hundreds of millions of dollars on brand new subway cars that were supposed last 40 years, now they all need to be replaced after 3 years. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/over-half-washington-d-c-metro-rail-cars-pulled-after-n1281814 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/over-half-washington-d-... Without the market test of profitable / unprofitable, politicians keep shoveling dollars at boondoggles that don't make any sense. I like Uber and Lyft because they respond to the needs of their customers. Government transportation is - at best - decent. It never blows you away, and is usually behind schedule, dirty, broken, and full of employees who don't care.

dgan 5y ago
Interesting thesis! Maybe constrained to US though. I really appreciate public transportation in Lyon and Paris, and never felt any need to own a car. You shouldn't generalize your particular experience to "public transportation" EDIT: okey lets be fair, a little less for Paris, because of constant strikes last years.
mrtranscendence 5y ago
> now they all need to be replaced after 3 years. Your link doesn't say that. They were all taken offline, but the issue is with the wheel assembly, not the entire car, and it seems likely to me that only a portion of those will have to be replaced.
AlexandrB 5y ago
Public services should not have the goal of being profitable. That's how you get negative feedback loops of bad service and declining utilization. Public transportation does not have to be terrible, by the way. Many cities have great public transit - Montreal and Hong Kong are ones I've personally experienced that had great public transit systems. But I get the sense that a lot of US cities treat public transit as a parasitic entity taking up space and leeching money. When providing public transit is not a priority it's not surprising that it becomes compromised in ways that ruin its utility. > Washington DC spent hundreds of millions of dollars on brand new subway cars that were supposed last 40 years, now they all need to be replaced after 3 years. By the way, isn't this the fault of the (presumably private) contractor that built the things? It's not like a bunch of bureaucrats built these things with their welding rigs and wrenches. Until there are meaningful penalties for these kinds of fuckups by the private sector, why wouldn't they treat public projects as free money? It's what the profit motive dictates.

leesec 5y ago

Is this a serious thesis? The point is the average car owner can make some money off an existing asset (instead of having to buy a medallion), and the average person needing a ride has more options to choose from. Cab infrastructure simply does not exist at a reasonable scale in most cities. Money, Time and The Planet basically do not come into the equation when the alternative is getting stuck at the airport.

ghaff 5y ago
Airport to downtown is probably the primary use case where taxis actually work pretty well most of the time. I still use them in that case much of the time because assuming no massive line just getting into a cab to my hotel is easier than screwing around with an app.

aghastnj 5y ago

I always enjoy an article that starts by insulting my intelligence - especially if it can do it right in the headline. I enjoy it so much that I won't even bother to read it.

pumaontheprowl 5y ago
How do you know the author is insulting your intelligence and not just lacking in intelligence themself? I find the latter explanation more likely for this idiotic article.

tharne 5y ago

> Uber and Lyft don't save money, time, or the planet And yet people enjoy their services enough to voluntarily pay for them :)

unpolloloco 5y ago

The value to Uber is that it broke the taxi monopoly. Especially in second tier cities where calling a taxi meant that they might show up...eventually. This enables people to go out without a car - making more locations accessible and (maybe one of the largest benefits...) discouraging drunk driving. Environmental benefits are...highly overstated...but you can say the same thing for pretty much any innovation outside of the energy industry.

seunosewa 5y ago
the article mentioned Uber and Lyfts' effect on the taxi monopoly near the end: "On Sunday, I decided to forego the long wait for a Lyft and the absurdly high congestion pricing. I hopped into a cab and was home in 15 minutes. The tab: $34.69. The driver asked me for cash, of course. But when I brandished my credit card, he did not utter a peep of protest. Maybe — just maybe — I have Uber and Lyft to thank for that."

dhosek 5y ago

I've always found the cases where people like Uber/Lyft to be a bit absurd. I live just outside Chicago. In the city, there were (and still are) abundant taxis. It's a simple matter to hail a cab from most parts of the city (when I lived in the city proper, I would occasionally cab to work instead of take the bus if I was running late, or use one to get home from band practice and it was my usual mode of transport for dates since I didn't have a car) and the people who will go into an app to schedule an Uber or Lyft always seem absurd because they could be into a taxi in no time just by going to the corner and raising their hand. In the suburbs, it makes more sense because taxi service here is a much worse,¹ but I don't see a single defender of ride shares in the current threads talking about a suburban experience. The taxi driver/credit card thing varies on city, by the way. L.A. taxi drivers are always grumpy about taking credit cards. Chicago taxi drivers have no problem with it (I think because they've discovered that they tend to get better tips with credit cards than they do with cash which makes up for the processing fees. Fast food places discovered something similar where accepting credit cards increased their average order price enough to make up for the loss in net revenue from CC fees). ⸻⸻⸻ 1. This, admittedly is the case in some cities as well. Los Angeles (used to? I remember there was a proposal to change this but I don't know if it passed) banned cabs from picking up passengers who hailed them from a corner and that's the case with the suburban taxis in the Chicago area as well—they can only pick up dispatch rides, except at the airport.

freewilly1040 5y ago
To some degree you’re making the case for Uber. The fact that you as the consumer can be completely oblivious to local cab driver idiosyncrasies is part of the appeal, as is the completely frictionless payment experience. Ok, cabs work fine in Chicago. If I get off a plane in city Foo, I have no idea what I’m going to get from a cab. I know what I’m getting from an Uber. There’s also some tacit acknowledgement in your comment that in many places local cabs are decidedly not fine. The last traditional cab I took in the SF bay drove 90 mph and charged me twice as much as an Uber. Why would I go back?
tubby12345 5y ago
I live two blocks off Michigan by the Hancock. I can look out my window and see the cars on Michigan. There are exactly zero taxis right now, 9AM Thursday morning. I have no clue what you're talking about when you say you can hail a cab.

vasilipupkin 5y ago

Uber and Lyft literally save lives https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/2780664 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/278...

nine_k 5y ago

A Lyft or Uber car can be hailed by an app, to the exact place I'm at. A city taxi would scan the most lucrative areas, and my never show up where it's convenient for me to be picked up. I don't understand how this drastic difference goes unnoticed. The fare is not the only factor; availability, convenience, and control are no less important.

cletus 5y ago
This. You see this in NYC. Yellow cabs are fairly easy to find in Manhattan (below 96th Street anyway) but you'll never see them in many areas of the city. The medallion system was invented to stop too many taxis appearing such that drivers couldn't earn an income. There are a ton of problems with this system and then the city decided to protect the "assets" (taxi medallions). Often ordinary people had bought these. Anyway, to combat this Manhattan-only problem, they invented the green cabs. These were much cheaper (medallion-wise) but couldn't pick people up off the street in Manhattan (below 96th). The result? Green cab drivers just picked new high-traffic areas and didn't want to take people to Manhattan. Why? Because once dropping someone off they couldn't pick someone up so they'd have to lose time and money driving out of the area. And on top of all this it used to be impossible to get a cab at all around shift change times (3-4pm was the bad one). They had to invent solutions for this (eg taxis stationed at certain areas like hotels so you could still get to the airport). And even if you get a cab you then have to communicate where you're going. The number of times I've had a driver mis-hear street numbers (eg 14th vs 40th) is astounding. While in the cab you're subjected to a loop of advertising (because, hey, more revenue). You can mute it but it's an added annoyance. After all that you then have to pay and for some reason cabs seem to be a common source of having your credit card skimmed (anecdotally; I have no proof of this). Uber/Lyft take away all the friction of finding a cab, telling it where to go and paying. The reputation system does a decent (but obviously not perfect) job of curbing the worst actors (drivers and riders). How anyone could think this doesn't have value is beyond me. Cost structure wise there's no $1 million medallion to pay for built into the Uber price. The price is still below cost but that gap seems to be narrowing.
- jfrunyon 5y ago

Grimm1 5y ago

Lyft saves me plenty of time so I'm not sure I can agree here. The alternative would be relying on regular cabs or the public infrastructure here in NY which has on multiple occasions proven to be less reliable for me. I'll gladly pay a little extra to not arrive at my location 40minutes to an hour late because of a service disruption in the subway. If we actually took all the money invested in transportation in the city and made things better, instead of I assume pocketing it, maybe I would have different thoughts, but for now these services make my life significantly easier.

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tossaway9000 5y ago

> I swore off taxis years ago after I realized that every time I walked out of an LAX terminal toward the taxi line, my neck and shoulders began to tense. I was bracing for a fight. Same thing with the "Grab" app in Asia, its just not worth fighting the cab drivers in Manila or Bangkok, when you can get a Grab driver they will give you zero drama but the cab drivers in those cities will haggle you, not use the meters, try to get you to go to some tourist trap, etc. Its not like that across those entire countries (Davao City notably has absolutely amazing taxi drivers) but the big cities are terrible. South Korea, Japan, and Singapore have such amazing public transpiration options there's little need for taxis most of the time (though its worth noting that when I have used them I had zero issues in those countries, even in Seoul and Tokyo.)

jvanderbot 5y ago

The promise of sharing rides using an app was a great one. I could just pick someone up heading for a place near my work and make $3. When people used it for employment, not sharing their ride but operating like a cab driver, uber leaned in and the stage was set for the clashes and class action that results in regulation, price increases, etc. If they had stayed niche and stayed smallish, ride sharing could have accomplished what it was supposed to. Greed is powerful, and drivers saw no need to limit to just sharing a trip to the mall, and uber saw no reason to prevent people from using their platform for it.

peatmoss 5y ago
The term “ride sharing” feels like an Orwellian anachronism as applied to current Uber/Lyft. Matching people who had to go from approximately the same place to approximately the same place had a lot of promise both to expand mobility, but also to address some “bowling alone” problems. Still, the fact that most cars sit idle IIRC > 95% of the time seems like there should be some genuine opportunity frontier. I think the dream was always to get to a point where autonomous driving and somewhat centralized route optimization could generate real efficiencies. But the Uber/Lyft needed to get people out of their own cars en masse for that to work. Autonomous driving didn’t appear at the right time for everything to work out, I think.
jfrunyon 5y ago
None of the "ride sharing" services were ever meant as anything other than a taxi service. Ride sharing was solely an excuse to evade the law and if you can't see that then you aren't looking.

bananamerica 5y ago

Wow, taxi drivers in LA are assholes. I've taken taxis in many Brazilian cities, and, while they're certainly not as nice as Uber drivers, they're not even remotely as bad as the ones in the article.

marcosdumay 5y ago
I guess you have not been on Rio. Taxis there are famous on the entire country. And that's a huge problem, by the way. When you are in a city you don't know, you also don't know how trustworthy the taxi system is.
- bananamerica 5y ago
  I have been briefly to Rio. Maybe I was lucky.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    Yes, as usual with people most are honest. It's only the ratio of dishonest ones that is way higher than most places. Once you interact enough, you get a history of problems. But for each interaction, the odds are that you will find a perfectly honest driver.

karaterobot 5y ago

One thing about this article: their argument that it doesn't save time or money is taken from a very specific use case in which it doesn't save time or money: traveling from LAX to the author's house in Venice. As noted elsewhere in the thread, this is true because of specific usage and pricing restrictions at LAX, which are not true in most other cases. Calling a cab to pick you up at your home and take you somewhere else in the city would be a more common use case to compare to, but likely would not support the author's claims, which is probably why they don't mention it. The pollution claim may be more valid: I have no thoughts on that other than the speculation that, if rideshare vehicles are spending 40% of their time driving without passengers, I bet they're returning to places where they're expecting to get more lucrative calls. This seems like something Uber and Lyft could somewhat mitigate with their pricing or compensation structure, if they wanted to. So, a problem for sure, but not one that's inherent to ridesharing. I also wonder why taxis wouldn't have the same problems. I recall reading that buses drive without passengers about 25% of the time, so it's not like this phenomenon is unique to rideshare. Based on common sense and observation, I would assume taxis are deadheading about as much as Lyft and Uber, but can find no citation for it. Lastly, the fact that this article has links to supporting resources, but those links are disguised to look like unstyled body text, is really frustrating.

jfrunyon 5y ago
As noted elsewhere in the thread, it's actually true in general, and has been for years. Taxis adjusted their business to compete with ride-sharing, and ride-sharing adjusted their business to stop hemorrhaging money a LONG time ago.

kbsspl 5y ago

Absolutely true. And it's worse. But that isn't Uber's job. Other than a bit of convenience, Uber is a technocracy push.

MAGZine 5y ago

I recently moved to NYC and the taxis have been a godsend--though (somewhat comically) the drivers are aware they're operating a lower-cost business. My friend recently got in a taxi and the cabbie immediately asked how much she thought the fare would be. She said "I'm not sure, maybe $15?" The Cabbie turned off the fare meter and said, sure, $15 it is. The reality is that uber and lyft are just not actually competitive in NYC. And rather than wait around for a lyft coming from god knows where, through manhattan traffic, it really is easier to just walk outside and stick your hand up. It can be much, MUCH cheaper, too. When I was in SF, Lyft wanted $72 to go from SOMA to Lower Haight--not what I would consider acceptable.

dfadsadsf 5y ago
Let me fix it for you > The reality is that uber and lyft are just not actually competitive in Manhattan < 90st if you need to go to Manhattan/Brooklyn. In most of New York taxis are nowhere to be found and they often refuse to leave Manhattan/Brownstone Brooklyn. Another big thing is that it's not big deal to walk to Ave to flag a taxi if you are young, healthy and it's not pouring rain (there are no taxis on streets) but imaging if you have limited mobility or have to carry heavy bags. Uber/Lyft is godsend in those cases.
- MAGZine 5y ago
  If either of those cases, you could always, you know, pick up the phone and call. But agreed. I think in ¬Dense Manhattan, Uber and Lyft have been a nice improvement service-wise, at least as far as a guarantee you know a ride is coming, and no hassles about payment and/or source/destination.
ryan_lane 5y ago
Your friend was stolen from. The cabbie isn't running the meter because they know the price was going to be less than $15. It also means they won't take a credit card for that ride, because the ride was illegal and it requires the meter to supply the price. It's funny to me that you see this anecdote as something that reflects well on the taxi industry in NYC.

tristor 5y ago

Disagree on at least two of these claims. They definitely save time and money. The only way someone can claim they don't is if they've never actually had to travel and use taxis. Taxis are horrible, pretty much universally. The drivers will do everything possible to cheat you, the experience is shit, and availability is basically only good at the airport, downtown in that city, and nowhere else. An Uber (I don't really use Lyft since it's basically non-existent outside the US and pre-pandemic I traveled internationally a lot) will meet me wherever I happen to be regardless of where it is in the city, at whatever time I need a ride regardless of hour, pick me up, and take me to my destination via the quickest route determined by a GPS app, for a predetermined non-negotiable price, automatically charged to my credit card or business account without needing to reveal anything or expose any money to a stranger, and without me needing to deal with foreign exchange rates. A taxi does literally none of these things. The only similarity between a taxi and an Uber is that they both are a stranger driving me somewhere in a car. After that, an Uber is a better experience that saves me both time and money every step of the way, while being massively more consistent and reliable. Taxis suck, and there is effectively no way to make them better without essentially cloning what Uber does, which gets us right back where we're at. I'm seeing this more and more these days, and I'm not sure the cause, but a lot of articles in "reputable" newspapers making bold claims that nobody who has had even an inkling of experience with the subject matter would make with a straight face. Uber has many issues, I will grant, but to claim it isn't a better experience in every facet than a taxi isn't just stupid, it's dishonest.

rileymat2 5y ago
> They definitely save time and money. The only way someone can claim they don't is if they've never actually had to travel and use taxis. To be fair, the author had a very specific use case with respect to cost and time, with well known fares and availability from the airport to home. But I think the author would agree with most of your points, it goes on for a bit about how much she does not like Taxis. The interesting claim is the one about eco friendliness and how much driving around without a fare, or going to a fare Uber takes up.
- tristor 5y ago

locallost 5y ago

The business model never made sense except in the way it played out - the taxi industry getting hammered and uber and lyft eventually jacking up the prices. Worse, the model is always going to be more expensive because every driver is on their own. It's a lot more expensive to buy and maintain a car if you're one person than it is if you do it for hundreds of cars. The tech was good since it works well at scale. The better way would've been to rent the tech to actual taxis around the world so that you have one app a user can use. But it was a lot more lucrative to sell the pipe dream that we're not a cab because we have an app, or that we improve congestion.

adminscoffee 5y ago

it saves lives, drunk driving crashes have gone wayyyyy down since uber and lyft came into the market. let's not downplay that please.