3 ms·

Apples and oranges. You can take Virgin (shared transportation) to Seattle for $59, but try booking a private plane for SFO->SEA at that rate! Your public tra

Apples and oranges. You can take Virgin (shared transportation) to Seattle for $59, but try booking a private plane for SFO->SEA at that rate! Your public transportation cost to SFO is about $10.

samstave 15y ago
Time is money. It costs me $2 to take the bus to bart, then $15 for a round trip bart ticket... but bart to SFO doesnt run until after 8AM on sundays and my flights are typically 7:35AM. (I fly to Seattle once a month on the Sunday 7:35AM virgin flight) Yes, you can say public is cheaper because it is shared transport, but what i am saying is that the cost for non-shared transport is ridiculous: Lets look at the cost/value of a trip to SFO from my house - $65.00 During the times I go to SFO and from SFO, there is no traffic - so i wont factor that in. The cabby picks me up and it takes 25 minutes to get to SFO. It is 13.7 miles from my house. This means that the cabby is making the equivalent of ~$4.75 per mile - OR ~$156 per hour. Gas costs the cabby $3.50 per gallon, he also needs to pay 20% to Uber. (I know independant Uber drivers, so Ill assume he is not sharing that remaining 80% with a parent company, for ease at this point) The car gets ~19 MPG, so at 13.7 miles, lets just round up and assume it costs one gallon to SFO, and 1 gallon back to wherever he was before my fare. The last Uber Driver I had had just bought 3 new towncars. He said the cars were $25K a piece and last to 300K miles. Lets assume one driver with one car: If he has a car that costs 25K over 60 months, that works out to .57 cents per hour for the car, we will round up to $1.00 to cover insurance. So, for 50 minutes of work (lets go ahead and assume he doesn't get a customer back from SFO), with $7 gas, $1 car cost and 20% of the fare to uber, that leaves the driver $44. SO, what I am saying is that at $44 to the driver, after expenses - that is the equivalent of $88,000 per year, assuming he were to have a fare 100% of the time. Which obviously he doesn't -- but for the time that I am in his car, I am paying him the equivalent salary of $88K for the use of his services. This, to me, is WAY too much money to pay someone who is simply driving me to the airport.
- mikeash 15y ago
  If that price is too high, sounds like a good opportunity to undercut Uber by starting a similar service that charges less.

Apples and oranges. You can take Virgin (shared transportation) to Seattle for $59, but try booking a private plane for SFO->SEA at that rate! Your public transportation cost to SFO is about $10.

samstave 15y ago

Time is money. It costs me $2 to take the bus to bart, then $15 for a round trip bart ticket... but bart to SFO doesnt run until after 8AM on sundays and my flights are typically 7:35AM. (I fly to Seattle once a month on the Sunday 7:35AM virgin flight) Yes, you can say public is cheaper because it is shared transport, but what i am saying is that the cost for non-shared transport is ridiculous: Lets look at the cost/value of a trip to SFO from my house - $65.00 During the times I go to SFO and from SFO, there is no traffic - so i wont factor that in. The cabby picks me up and it takes 25 minutes to get to SFO. It is 13.7 miles from my house. This means that the cabby is making the equivalent of ~$4.75 per mile - OR ~$156 per hour. Gas costs the cabby $3.50 per gallon, he also needs to pay 20% to Uber. (I know independant Uber drivers, so Ill assume he is not sharing that remaining 80% with a parent company, for ease at this point) The car gets ~19 MPG, so at 13.7 miles, lets just round up and assume it costs one gallon to SFO, and 1 gallon back to wherever he was before my fare. The last Uber Driver I had had just bought 3 new towncars. He said the cars were $25K a piece and last to 300K miles. Lets assume one driver with one car: If he has a car that costs 25K over 60 months, that works out to .57 cents per hour for the car, we will round up to $1.00 to cover insurance. So, for 50 minutes of work (lets go ahead and assume he doesn't get a customer back from SFO), with $7 gas, $1 car cost and 20% of the fare to uber, that leaves the driver $44. SO, what I am saying is that at $44 to the driver, after expenses - that is the equivalent of $88,000 per year, assuming he were to have a fare 100% of the time. Which obviously he doesn't -- but for the time that I am in his car, I am paying him the equivalent salary of $88K for the use of his services. This, to me, is WAY too much money to pay someone who is simply driving me to the airport.

mikeash 15y ago
If that price is too high, sounds like a good opportunity to undercut Uber by starting a similar service that charges less.