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> drivers can ignore it and wait for the more lucrative airport-to-downtown ride for $50. Why? Because the taxi meter only runs when that passenger is in the ca

> drivers can ignore it and wait for the more lucrative airport-to-downtown ride for $50. Why? Because the taxi meter only runs when that passenger is in the car so it punishes suburb-to-suburb trips and instead, incentives them to wait for the longer airport trips. So hub-to-suburb and suburb-back-to-hub is "dead time" the drivers are not paid for. Isn’t it the same for Uber? They don’t get paid to get to your location so the only advantage as a driver is being picking up someone in the area you drop off another passenger. Dispatch worked similarly but it had its limitations of its time. One thing that was not possible that Uber does is ride sharing.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
giantrobot 5y ago
> They don’t get paid to get to your location so the only advantage as a driver is being picking up someone in the area you drop off another passenger. That's why the GP talks about a "distributed mesh" of drivers. There's simply more Uber drivers than there have ever been taxis in most places. So in the age of Uber if you're in a suburban area there's a high likelihood there's an Uber driver near you. So there's a small amount of unpaid driving time for the driver. There's also a decent chance of them finding a return passenger at the destination thanks to a similar increase in the number of potential riders vs taxis.