6 ms·

$30/mo is slightly mind boggling for this. I’ve enjoyed the ~70 or so Waymo rides I have taken but to me Waymo, Uber, and Lyft are methods of last resort. My

$30/mo is slightly mind boggling for this. I’ve enjoyed the ~70 or so Waymo rides I have taken but to me Waymo, Uber, and Lyft are methods of last resort. My feet, BART, and SFMuni are my primary methods of transportation and for $104/mo I can take an unlimited number of trips, usually very conveniently.

laweijfmvo 4mo ago
A Waymo ride once quoted me close to $100 for a couple miles. The same Uber ride ended up being like $21. Surge pricing is real but c’mon.
solenoid0937 4mo ago
I would gladly pay this much for Waymo, Waymos are so much nicer than taxis and public transit.
CobrastanJorji 4mo ago
Yeah, but imagine you live in Phoenix, AZ, and you can't/won't drive for whatever reason, you've got to get to work every day. Phoenix has buses, but they're not going to be convenient for lots of possible daily commutes. Daily taxi/Uber/Waymo rides are probably a pretty good choice. Or imagine that you work a professional travel job and you're flying to/from the airport on a weekly basis. Your employer will pay for your ride to the airport, so why would you take public transit? Now you're doing at least 3-4 taxi/uber/waymo rides a week.
- cheeze 4mo ago
  Or LA
- hamdingers 4mo ago
  I have a job where I fly frequently, my employer pays my way to/from the airport, and I take transit whenever possible because uber/lyft/taxi services seem to select horrible drivers. I'd certainly consider a Waymo if I was flying to an airport they serviced though.
arjie 4mo ago
The biggest advantage with public transit is that your mind is not engaged driving. But at some point, the speed advantage is overwhelming. And eventually the price advantage dominates. Taking my family and grandparents to the airport is $40 by car^W rideshare and $45 by BART and twice the amount of time for me: I live upstairs from a T-train / Caltrain stop. I'd invite anyone to price out the difference themselves. Inside San Francisco, using public transit except for directly between BART stops is incredibly slow. For almost all journeys e-bikes dominate the speed discussion, and cars are second. The biggest constraint for us that made us take public transit is that our child was too young for a bike and we'd still only take it to Union Square. I spent over a decade on a bicycle plus Muni/BART Fastpass and it's pretty good for the price if you're single and stay inside the city. As such a person I could crack open a book and a 15 min from Glen Park to Montgomery St. was the same as a 1 h from Montgomery to El Cerrito (the latter even preferable). But the various policy choices popular in San Francisco (intentionally high labour usage, ill and violent people in public spaces, low cleaning capacity) do act against transit being a good choice. By comparison, I have family in Vancouver, BC where the politics are similar but the policy is different and the trains run very often and are fast (these are the most important things - made possible by removing labor from the equation) and are relatively clean. People will offer you a seat when you hop on with your stroller, elevators are functional and relatively clean, and it's overall a lot more usable as a family.
- nfw2 4mo ago
  Bart seems much more cleaner and safer now than in years past. I don't know if free mental space is the main benefit of transit. During rush hour, you can't do much outside of listen to something, which you can do while driving too. Not having to deal with parking and the fact that driving is actually very dangerous seem like stronger points in transits favor. Fwiw, driving also has some negative je ne sais quoi for me that goes beyond the functional advantages. Maybe it's the aesthetic onslaught of ugly concrete, noise, heat and smell of sitting in traffic for an hour on the highway. Maybe there's something about getting around on your feet that makes me feel viscerally connected to the city. Maybe it's just the exercise that compounds over time. But I hate driving.
  - 4mo ago
jbmchuck 4mo ago
It seems to me a lot of people just really don't like to be associated with public transit or anything associated with anything remotely underclass. It's a class marker to be driven around in an autonomous 6000lbs tank rather than move your legs a bit.
- frankfrank13 4mo ago
  This is a huge difference between NYC and SF. There are certainly some in NYC who would prefer Waymo (direct route, no driver chitchat), but I don't think many New Yorkers would be proud of taking Waymo's. Most people feel embarrassed to admit they took an Uber somewhere!
  - lanthissa 4mo ago
    in nyc any car based transportation is slower than subways often, but everyones so narrow minded they just think about their own life. if you're old in nyc cabs/ubers/waymo are a big deal, without them you're stuck walking to a bus stop or subway and that gets hard in your 70s and 80s.
  - throwaway2037 4mo ago
    > Most people [in NYC] feel embarrassed to admit they took an Uber somewhere! High income women (or women married to high income men) -- of all ages -- not at all. Most women under 30 with a good job expected to be "Uber'd" home from a date. As a joke, if you are very high income, you would be embarrassed to ride Uber because your car and driver were diverted for an unexpected repair.
- boredatoms 4mo ago
  Be serious. Its not a class marker, its a nessesity. Even the poor have cars People clearly chooses the convenience and predictability of cars, and pay significantly to do so In places where there is greater convenience/predictability from pubilc transit, they choose it. See london/ny
  - elmomle 4mo ago
bbor 4mo ago
This is for the people who uber to work every day. Yes, they somehow exist. It blew my mind to meet one — he was spending something like $40/day on transport, as a new grad SWE!
vidarh 4mo ago
I take public transport a lot and walk a lot (I live 3h walk from central London - I know because I've walked it, for fun), but I still also use Uber regularly because sometimes I simply don't have time. If I lived in the centre I probably would have very little use for it, but for people even slightly outside the core of cities well served by public transport, it's usually nice to have options.
- throwaway2037 4mo ago
  > I live 3h walk from central London - I know because I've walked it, for fun This sounds like a great blog post! Or you can collab with https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/ https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/
  - vidarh 4mo ago
    It wasn't that interesting. I had a healthcare appointment near Victoria and had a half day off and decided to walk home. I regularly do 2h walks, so it wasn't a big stretch... It wasn't a particularly exciting walk - mostly very similar stretches of semi-urban areas after the first 30m or so.
nonethewiser 4mo ago
Can someone help me put this into context? $30/month is way cheaper than $104/month. How would you compare the base metrics? Time to start traveling, average walk amount per trip, total trip duration, coverage parity, etc. I suspect you can get into a waymo quicker and with less walking than a subway, unless you live very close. I imagine total trip time is pretty variable. Coverage parity is hard to guess about - in theory a waymo can go anywhere but I suspect public transport has longer "tendrils."
- boarsofcanada 4mo ago
  For just the two daily BART trips that I do within SF, it would be $1200+/mo for Waymo/Uber/Lyft. So from that perspective perhaps the extra $30/mo for the small convenience of getting priority and being able to cancel a few rides could be seen as “cheap” by comparison. If I include the walks of 30+ minutes and bus rides, it’s probably pushing $2k/mo in rideshare costs.
- crooked-v 4mo ago
  It's $30/month for these extras. You're still paying per trip, just with a de facto 10% off.
  - nonethewiser 4mo ago
    Oh I missed that. Thanks for clarifying.
  - shostack 4mo ago
    10% off is practically nothing and also irrelevant because it is the total cost of the trip that matters and they can easily increase that over time behind the scenes in a way that makes up for that 10% and then some once they determine the price elasticity of these premium customers which I imagine is quite higher.
Brendinooo 4mo ago
It'll depend on your use cases, probably. If 15 rides a month averaging $30 a ride can remove your need to own a car, that's $450. In that range the subscription would pay for itself. Compare that to a car payment, insurance, maintenance, and gas. Pretty favorable!
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
Arainach 4mo ago
For many people this makes sense, but once you reach a level of money where your basic needs are met, most people trade their money for time, and things like this are one of the most obvious ways. Not long ago I walked from downtown SF up to the Golden Gate and walked across and back. My feet were tired and I didn't want to walk back downtown. It took me long enough to figure out where buses pick up that I missed one; at that point my decision was something like "70 minutes to wait for bus, take bus, transfer or walk to my hotel" or "23 minutes + $20 to get a Waymo" and I consider that a great value for my money. I am a huge fan of public transit and try to avoid driving whenever I can. When the public transit goes approximately from where you are to where you want to be, or when it comes frequently enough that transfers don't cost you half an hour if you miss a connection, it's great, but there are so many edge cases. I've never needed to call a taxi/Waymo in London, and in NYC the only time I did was getting from the airport to Manhattan the first time I went (every other time I know how to take AirTrain to public transit). In nearly every other city I've taken a Lyft/Waymo/Taxi at least once because the system isn't good enough to be universal.
- socalgal2 4mo ago
  > most people trade their money for time, and things like this are one of the most obvious ways. Non-sequitur but that reminds me I lived in Tokyo where the trains stop around 12am to 5am. It is (was?) a commitment to decide to stay out late because I knew I'd have to say out until morning. Eventually though, 4-5 years after living there, I realized $50-$75, 2 or 3 times a month to cab it home at 2am or 3am was better than not going out because I didn't want to stay out until 5am. And even then, my total transportation expenses were below a car. My current car, owned for 5 years, not including electricity, but including replacing the tires once, and paying car ins, effectively costs $1350 a month, $337 a week. In other words, a train/bus pass + a few cabs/uber/waymo rides is generally less than $337 a week. At 10yrs, assuming no repairs, and no change in car ins, the car would be $216 a week. Remember, that's not including fuel/electricity. If I used it to commit my fuel bill would be $75 a month currently (short commute) so add that in.
gopalv 4mo ago
> me Waymo, Uber, and Lyft are methods of last resort. Most of my Waymo rides were from or to a BART station - the real utility of these services is to pull a last mile when I don't have a car. There's no better way of getting out of Powell out of the traffic deadlock at 5 PM than BART. But once you get south of Daly City, there's no timed connections for the surface streets. If you need to go to Brisbane from Powell, the 2 mile car ride is worth the effect.
- throwaway2037 4mo ago
  This is a great post. Very practical. This part: > If you need to go to Brisbane from Powell, the 2 mile car ride is worth the effect. I checked Google Maps. I don't see any BART stations that are only 2 miles (3 km) from downtown Brisbane (California). What I am missing? Or are you taking Caltrain, then getting an Uber from 4th and King Caltrain terminal to Powell?
crooked-v 4mo ago
"Mind boggling"? I don't see that at all. You still have to pay for each trip, this is a separate cost on top.
aeternum 4mo ago
All hail the exemplary citizen! (does that satisfy you sir?)
throwaway2037 4mo ago
Don't tell me... you are a man? I guess so. How many middle class women and above want to ride SFMuni after dark? Few. The future of self-driving taxis is women (customers) who want to live in a big city, but don't want to ride mass transit, nor ride in a ride-hailing services (Uber, etc.) with a human driver... because most drivers are men.
- saghm 4mo ago
  I imagine that Uber can also be somewhat sketchy but with a different risk profile (getting into the car with a stranger, often a man, and needing to trust that they'll drive you to the right location), which means that self-driving taxis would be a potential safety upgrade over that as well.
  - throwaway2037 4mo ago
    1000%. Ask any women who uses ride-hailing services: Have you ever had a situation where the driver made you uncomfortable or fear for your safety? I would conservatively estimate 100% of women. I think men just do not understand how much women are willing to pay to guarantee they can avoid this situation.
    - saghm 4mo ago
      I definitely was not aware of this when I was younger, but after years of learning to be a better listener and learn about experiences outside my own, my perception is that there are unfortunately quite a lot of situations that most men would consider quite mundane but pretty much all women will have had to fear for their safety in. I guess I shouldn't be so surprised that when others have trouble conceiving of this phenomenon given how long I went without picking up on it, but now that I'm aware of it it's impossible not to see it everywhere.
    - throwawaytea 4mo ago
      Not a single woman has even asked or cared if I felt uncomfortable at a gas station at night, or ATM, or walking down the street. Yet data shows men are more likely to be physically assaulted and/or killed by strangers.
arnonejoe 4mo ago
It would be nice if they had Bart first class with fast wifi and premium interior. The green vinyl seats are better than the old cloth ones but it’s still pretty gross.
socalgal2 4mo ago
Works in SF if you are near one. Does not work in Los Angeles (and probably other Waymo cities)
spiznnx 4mo ago
If you spend $300 on waymo per month, which is easy if you take it to work 3x a week, it's free after the 10% cash back. I don't see how its mind boggling, it's clearly not for anyone who takes Waymo as a last resort.

laweijfmvo 4mo ago

A Waymo ride once quoted me close to $100 for a couple miles. The same Uber ride ended up being like $21. Surge pricing is real but c’mon.

solenoid0937 4mo ago

I would gladly pay this much for Waymo, Waymos are so much nicer than taxis and public transit.

CobrastanJorji 4mo ago

Yeah, but imagine you live in Phoenix, AZ, and you can't/won't drive for whatever reason, you've got to get to work every day. Phoenix has buses, but they're not going to be convenient for lots of possible daily commutes. Daily taxi/Uber/Waymo rides are probably a pretty good choice. Or imagine that you work a professional travel job and you're flying to/from the airport on a weekly basis. Your employer will pay for your ride to the airport, so why would you take public transit? Now you're doing at least 3-4 taxi/uber/waymo rides a week.

cheeze 4mo ago
Or LA
hamdingers 4mo ago
I have a job where I fly frequently, my employer pays my way to/from the airport, and I take transit whenever possible because uber/lyft/taxi services seem to select horrible drivers. I'd certainly consider a Waymo if I was flying to an airport they serviced though.

arjie 4mo ago

The biggest advantage with public transit is that your mind is not engaged driving. But at some point, the speed advantage is overwhelming. And eventually the price advantage dominates. Taking my family and grandparents to the airport is $40 by car^W rideshare and $45 by BART and twice the amount of time for me: I live upstairs from a T-train / Caltrain stop. I'd invite anyone to price out the difference themselves. Inside San Francisco, using public transit except for directly between BART stops is incredibly slow. For almost all journeys e-bikes dominate the speed discussion, and cars are second. The biggest constraint for us that made us take public transit is that our child was too young for a bike and we'd still only take it to Union Square. I spent over a decade on a bicycle plus Muni/BART Fastpass and it's pretty good for the price if you're single and stay inside the city. As such a person I could crack open a book and a 15 min from Glen Park to Montgomery St. was the same as a 1 h from Montgomery to El Cerrito (the latter even preferable). But the various policy choices popular in San Francisco (intentionally high labour usage, ill and violent people in public spaces, low cleaning capacity) do act against transit being a good choice. By comparison, I have family in Vancouver, BC where the politics are similar but the policy is different and the trains run very often and are fast (these are the most important things - made possible by removing labor from the equation) and are relatively clean. People will offer you a seat when you hop on with your stroller, elevators are functional and relatively clean, and it's overall a lot more usable as a family.

nfw2 4mo ago
Bart seems much more cleaner and safer now than in years past. I don't know if free mental space is the main benefit of transit. During rush hour, you can't do much outside of listen to something, which you can do while driving too. Not having to deal with parking and the fact that driving is actually very dangerous seem like stronger points in transits favor. Fwiw, driving also has some negative je ne sais quoi for me that goes beyond the functional advantages. Maybe it's the aesthetic onslaught of ugly concrete, noise, heat and smell of sitting in traffic for an hour on the highway. Maybe there's something about getting around on your feet that makes me feel viscerally connected to the city. Maybe it's just the exercise that compounds over time. But I hate driving.
- 4mo ago

jbmchuck 4mo ago

It seems to me a lot of people just really don't like to be associated with public transit or anything associated with anything remotely underclass. It's a class marker to be driven around in an autonomous 6000lbs tank rather than move your legs a bit.

frankfrank13 4mo ago
This is a huge difference between NYC and SF. There are certainly some in NYC who would prefer Waymo (direct route, no driver chitchat), but I don't think many New Yorkers would be proud of taking Waymo's. Most people feel embarrassed to admit they took an Uber somewhere!
- lanthissa 4mo ago
  in nyc any car based transportation is slower than subways often, but everyones so narrow minded they just think about their own life. if you're old in nyc cabs/ubers/waymo are a big deal, without them you're stuck walking to a bus stop or subway and that gets hard in your 70s and 80s.
- throwaway2037 4mo ago
  > Most people [in NYC] feel embarrassed to admit they took an Uber somewhere! High income women (or women married to high income men) -- of all ages -- not at all. Most women under 30 with a good job expected to be "Uber'd" home from a date. As a joke, if you are very high income, you would be embarrassed to ride Uber because your car and driver were diverted for an unexpected repair.
boredatoms 4mo ago
Be serious. Its not a class marker, its a nessesity. Even the poor have cars People clearly chooses the convenience and predictability of cars, and pay significantly to do so In places where there is greater convenience/predictability from pubilc transit, they choose it. See london/ny
- elmomle 4mo ago

bbor 4mo ago

This is for the people who uber to work every day. Yes, they somehow exist. It blew my mind to meet one — he was spending something like $40/day on transport, as a new grad SWE!

vidarh 4mo ago

I take public transport a lot and walk a lot (I live 3h walk from central London - I know because I've walked it, for fun), but I still also use Uber regularly because sometimes I simply don't have time. If I lived in the centre I probably would have very little use for it, but for people even slightly outside the core of cities well served by public transport, it's usually nice to have options.

throwaway2037 4mo ago
> I live 3h walk from central London - I know because I've walked it, for fun This sounds like a great blog post! Or you can collab with https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/ https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/
- vidarh 4mo ago
  It wasn't that interesting. I had a healthcare appointment near Victoria and had a half day off and decided to walk home. I regularly do 2h walks, so it wasn't a big stretch... It wasn't a particularly exciting walk - mostly very similar stretches of semi-urban areas after the first 30m or so.

nonethewiser 4mo ago

Can someone help me put this into context? $30/month is way cheaper than $104/month. How would you compare the base metrics? Time to start traveling, average walk amount per trip, total trip duration, coverage parity, etc. I suspect you can get into a waymo quicker and with less walking than a subway, unless you live very close. I imagine total trip time is pretty variable. Coverage parity is hard to guess about - in theory a waymo can go anywhere but I suspect public transport has longer "tendrils."

boarsofcanada 4mo ago
For just the two daily BART trips that I do within SF, it would be $1200+/mo for Waymo/Uber/Lyft. So from that perspective perhaps the extra $30/mo for the small convenience of getting priority and being able to cancel a few rides could be seen as “cheap” by comparison. If I include the walks of 30+ minutes and bus rides, it’s probably pushing $2k/mo in rideshare costs.
crooked-v 4mo ago
It's $30/month for these extras. You're still paying per trip, just with a de facto 10% off.
- nonethewiser 4mo ago
  Oh I missed that. Thanks for clarifying.
- shostack 4mo ago
  10% off is practically nothing and also irrelevant because it is the total cost of the trip that matters and they can easily increase that over time behind the scenes in a way that makes up for that 10% and then some once they determine the price elasticity of these premium customers which I imagine is quite higher.

Brendinooo 4mo ago

It'll depend on your use cases, probably. If 15 rides a month averaging $30 a ride can remove your need to own a car, that's $450. In that range the subscription would pay for itself. Compare that to a car payment, insurance, maintenance, and gas. Pretty favorable!

deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]

Arainach 4mo ago

For many people this makes sense, but once you reach a level of money where your basic needs are met, most people trade their money for time, and things like this are one of the most obvious ways. Not long ago I walked from downtown SF up to the Golden Gate and walked across and back. My feet were tired and I didn't want to walk back downtown. It took me long enough to figure out where buses pick up that I missed one; at that point my decision was something like "70 minutes to wait for bus, take bus, transfer or walk to my hotel" or "23 minutes + $20 to get a Waymo" and I consider that a great value for my money. I am a huge fan of public transit and try to avoid driving whenever I can. When the public transit goes approximately from where you are to where you want to be, or when it comes frequently enough that transfers don't cost you half an hour if you miss a connection, it's great, but there are so many edge cases. I've never needed to call a taxi/Waymo in London, and in NYC the only time I did was getting from the airport to Manhattan the first time I went (every other time I know how to take AirTrain to public transit). In nearly every other city I've taken a Lyft/Waymo/Taxi at least once because the system isn't good enough to be universal.

socalgal2 4mo ago
> most people trade their money for time, and things like this are one of the most obvious ways. Non-sequitur but that reminds me I lived in Tokyo where the trains stop around 12am to 5am. It is (was?) a commitment to decide to stay out late because I knew I'd have to say out until morning. Eventually though, 4-5 years after living there, I realized $50-$75, 2 or 3 times a month to cab it home at 2am or 3am was better than not going out because I didn't want to stay out until 5am. And even then, my total transportation expenses were below a car. My current car, owned for 5 years, not including electricity, but including replacing the tires once, and paying car ins, effectively costs $1350 a month, $337 a week. In other words, a train/bus pass + a few cabs/uber/waymo rides is generally less than $337 a week. At 10yrs, assuming no repairs, and no change in car ins, the car would be $216 a week. Remember, that's not including fuel/electricity. If I used it to commit my fuel bill would be $75 a month currently (short commute) so add that in.

gopalv 4mo ago

> me Waymo, Uber, and Lyft are methods of last resort. Most of my Waymo rides were from or to a BART station - the real utility of these services is to pull a last mile when I don't have a car. There's no better way of getting out of Powell out of the traffic deadlock at 5 PM than BART. But once you get south of Daly City, there's no timed connections for the surface streets. If you need to go to Brisbane from Powell, the 2 mile car ride is worth the effect.

throwaway2037 4mo ago
This is a great post. Very practical. This part: > If you need to go to Brisbane from Powell, the 2 mile car ride is worth the effect. I checked Google Maps. I don't see any BART stations that are only 2 miles (3 km) from downtown Brisbane (California). What I am missing? Or are you taking Caltrain, then getting an Uber from 4th and King Caltrain terminal to Powell?

crooked-v 4mo ago

"Mind boggling"? I don't see that at all. You still have to pay for each trip, this is a separate cost on top.

aeternum 4mo ago

All hail the exemplary citizen! (does that satisfy you sir?)

throwaway2037 4mo ago

Don't tell me... you are a man? I guess so. How many middle class women and above want to ride SFMuni after dark? Few. The future of self-driving taxis is women (customers) who want to live in a big city, but don't want to ride mass transit, nor ride in a ride-hailing services (Uber, etc.) with a human driver... because most drivers are men.

saghm 4mo ago
I imagine that Uber can also be somewhat sketchy but with a different risk profile (getting into the car with a stranger, often a man, and needing to trust that they'll drive you to the right location), which means that self-driving taxis would be a potential safety upgrade over that as well.
- throwaway2037 4mo ago
  1000%. Ask any women who uses ride-hailing services: Have you ever had a situation where the driver made you uncomfortable or fear for your safety? I would conservatively estimate 100% of women. I think men just do not understand how much women are willing to pay to guarantee they can avoid this situation.
  - saghm 4mo ago
    I definitely was not aware of this when I was younger, but after years of learning to be a better listener and learn about experiences outside my own, my perception is that there are unfortunately quite a lot of situations that most men would consider quite mundane but pretty much all women will have had to fear for their safety in. I guess I shouldn't be so surprised that when others have trouble conceiving of this phenomenon given how long I went without picking up on it, but now that I'm aware of it it's impossible not to see it everywhere.
  - throwawaytea 4mo ago
    Not a single woman has even asked or cared if I felt uncomfortable at a gas station at night, or ATM, or walking down the street. Yet data shows men are more likely to be physically assaulted and/or killed by strangers.

arnonejoe 4mo ago

It would be nice if they had Bart first class with fast wifi and premium interior. The green vinyl seats are better than the old cloth ones but it’s still pretty gross.

socalgal2 4mo ago

Works in SF if you are near one. Does not work in Los Angeles (and probably other Waymo cities)

spiznnx 4mo ago

If you spend $300 on waymo per month, which is easy if you take it to work 3x a week, it's free after the 10% cash back. I don't see how its mind boggling, it's clearly not for anyone who takes Waymo as a last resort.