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Uber Closes in on Its Last Frontier: Airports
- xyzzy123 11y agoIt's not great that a private company is profiting off of crowdsourcing misdemeanours. On the other hand where I live (Sydney), airport charges are a total rort. Trains to and from the city cost $17 (!) (versus $3 if you walk one stop). The taxi surcharge is $4. So... carry on.
- NamTaf 11y agoIf it's anything like where I live (Brisbane), the airport railway line is privately owned as opposed to publically funded like the rest of the network. The service (maintenance and operations) is then contracted out and given that there's only one player (cityrail) it goes to them. As a result, the fare is much higher.
- vonklaus 11y agoHopefully companies like Lyft, Uber & Sidecar will provide a substitute for the train. This competition could drive down rail prices.
- NamTaf 11y agoI don't see that happening. The airport can only sustain so much road traffic before congestion becomes an issue and the ridesharing companies have the added issue in Australia of minimum wage requirements. That adds a whole lot of cost to the fares and really balances it back up (though still definitely cheaper than taxis). The airport is such that the $15 ticket is really not going to be equalled by any sort of road-based transport, because the distance from the CBD is simply too great. edit: I'm in this case referring to Brisbane airport, though I imagine that maps to many others given their generally remote proximity from CBDs.
- xyzzy123 11y agoYou make really good points, it's just that if it costs $3 to get to one place and $17 to get to another (in fact if you are going FURTHER from the other direction, it costs just $4 to the CBD), one has to wonder why there's this enormous cost gradient, and whether that's just a question of consumer price-sensitivity. Theoretically if roads were a problem a rational transport network would incentivise rail use, but in fact taxi use is effectively subsidised by about $10 due to the expense of trains. I'm just talking about Sydney though, don't know about Brisbane.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- xyzzy123 11y ago(much later comment): I totally misread you, sorry.
- NeutronBoy 11y agoAt least you have airport trains (I live in Melbourne, where an airport train has been a political football for at least 20 years)
- frio 11y agoAs a regular visitor from Auckland, I've wondered about that. Auckland's similarly mired in political crap, but at least Melbourne has an otherwise-functional train/tram network. It'd be a lot nicer taking a train than those airport busses, although getting dropped at the station is nice.
- NeutronBoy 11y agoThe existing network is part of the problem. Options put forward include do nothing, new dedicated line from CBD to the airport, or branch off one of two existing lines in the area for a new airport spur line. Then you have to think about, how often can you run airport trains on existing lines? Do they go express or stop at stations? If they stop at stations, does it take too long for airport passengers? None of them are hard questions, but in a partisan political environment where no parties can agree with each other, unless you can plan it in two years and build it in another 2, there's no way it's going to happen before next election.
- xyzzy123 11y agoYeah, the "Airport Link Corporation" built and operated the line. Apparently it has paid for its capital costs and is now in its "revenue sharing" phase. NSW transport is keeping the surcharge to subsidise the rest of the network.
- icebraining 11y agoHere in Lisbon, after getting the courts to ban Uber, our local taxi association just started lobbying for having a minimum (not flat) fee of 20€ for any ride starting from the airport - enough to pay for a ride across the city. Makes you feel really supportive of their plight!
- fennecfoxen 11y agoThe first time I landed in Atlanta (as a destination, not a connection airport) I took a taxi from the Atlanta airport to Sandy Springs (exactly on the opposite side of downtown, just outside the Perimeter). Shortly after leaving the airport, my driver diverted off the interstate (ostensibly to avoid a traffic jam) and promptly proceeded to drive around in circles, lapping the same parking lot twice (he was about to do it a third time before I intervened) because his GPS was telling him to turn around and get back on the highway and he didn't quite realize that was happening and kept missing the U-turn. (Also, the overall rate is close to twice Uber's.) I don't really trust Uber any further than I can throw my smartphone, but anything is better than a generic airport taxi. (At LGA, I've taken cabs more often than Atlanta -- it's harder to wait for Uber in the cold of winter -- and while I've never had any real trouble with Uber ever I've had two different taxi drivers pulled over and issued a ticket while I was in the taxi, both of them for running a red light on a left-hand-turn signal...) Anyway. In conclusion: fuck you, Atlanta airport/government.
- hoopd 11y agoThis seems to be how Uber's pulling it off: the costs of a worldwide Uber-dominated oligopoly are far away and intangible while the costs of the current atomized regulated oligoplies are present and clear. When Google was picking up steam back in the early 2000's it seemed wonderful because there were so many immediate benefits. Now, 10-15 years later it's clear how much power we gave them and what opportunities we lost in doing so. Instead of "free" stuff we could have worked towards a model of privacy and reasonable subscription fees where user-tracking and advertising weren't the default business model of the internet. But we didn't look ahead, we just said "Give us that shiny new thing!" I hope I'm wrong but Uber looks the same to me, it's that nagging feeling of somebody's gonna have to pay the piper.
- blfr 11y agoWhat opportunities have we lost to Google? And how can you implement subscription without tracking? A subscription-based search engine, or a video hosting website, would need to connect your searches and watching habits with a credit card.
- nl 11y agoIn many cities (Florence comes to mind) there is a tacit understanding where street vendors sell good on the streets, but have to be able to put them away quickly enough to "hide" them when the police car comes past on one of it's periodic circuits. The variable enforcement of laws (like my example, and also like the laws around taxi pick-ups) is something I'm very interested in from a formal economics view. Are there any studies showing the how the loose enforcement impacts different groups?
- bmmayer1 11y agoIn a system where nearly everything is forbidden are burdensomely permitted, enforcement ends up targeting the most vulnerable in society (the poor, minorities, etc). I think most Americans would be shocked if, overnight, every law on the books in the US, from income tax on cash income to street vendor permitting, to casual, personal drug usage, to hair salon certification laws, to laws against home poker games, were stringently and consistently enforced across the board. Half of Americans would be in prison or in court before the end of the year.
- kaolinite 11y agoUnrelated but I always found it shocking the number of street sellers peddling counterfeit designer goods in Italy, seeing as luxury goods are such a huge industry in the country. I would have assumed that, of all places, Italy would have a zero-tolerance approach to counterfeits.
- CaptainZapp 11y ago
- ionwake 11y agoCan someone explain to me how Uber took off? Why did a company like it exist 5 years ago?
- Thriptic 11y agoThey took on an industry in which existing players were poorly serving consumers and have been providing a good product. Other potential competitors avoided the market due to the regulatory environment in the industry. Uber dealt with this by stating that they are exempt from the existing regulations.
- dylanjermiah 11y agoTravis said they tried it 6 months earlier and the battery life of the current gen phones couldn't handle what was required, even while plugged in. Only one of the reasons however.
- ionwake 11y agoThank you for the insight =]
- jacalata 11y agoIts last frontier will be wheelchair accessibility, surely.
- webwanderings 11y agoI'm not a savvy nor a regular traveler. When recently I had to travel, back and forth airport to home in a suburb, I compared the uber and regular taxi prices. I didnt find any difference so I opted for regular taxi's flat rate. A regulated service gives a sort of confidence compared to anything else.
- AVTizzle 11y agoInteresting new application of the phrase "deadhead trips" here... In the 1970's, that would have meant something else entirely :)
- turbostyler 11y agoLast frontier? I was just traveling around Europe, and most cities had limited/no service. Outside of London/Paris, no one knows what Uber is.
- MrSourz 11y agoI believe it is a last frontier from a legal perspective.
- cm2187 11y agoI find it interesting that most comments from people using uber are about price. To me it is rather about convenience. I have never been in Atlanta's airport but most airports and train stations I use in Europe have a 30min+ queue for taxis. To me the revolution was to be able to book on my smartphone, not have to carry cash and worry about whether I have enough to go back home, not having to wait outside of a bar looking for a cab but rather booking it from my table and only leaving the bar when the taxi is there, etc. I remember a taxi ride with some colleagues in Paris. That was even before uber. The driver (a licensed taxi) was ranting about the fact that there were too many taxis. And to make his points he said something like "a few years ago, a client could call a taxi company and taxis were so rare that he wouldn't even be sure he would get a taxi, these were the good days". We were not very sympathetic. In all the places I live in, taxis had a toxic monopole that needed to be challenged.
- icebraining 11y agoYeap. Here in Lisbon, just a month ago, after I told him my destination (which would come to ~5€), the taxi driver started ranting how they should raise the minimum ride to 15€. What a nice way to greet your customer /s
- tim333 11y agoI once got a regular taxi from terminal 4 to terminal 2 at Heathrow because the tube had packed up and I needed to get a flight but the taxis hate that. They have to queue for 3 or 4 hours to get a fare because the fares being so marked up it pays for them to do so. Heathrow to Harpenden, ~40 miles is about £120 by regular black cab, £50 by Uber for example. The system seems dumb - they should drop the regular cab fare to something more like the market rate.
- amyjess 11y ago> not have to carry cash and worry about whether I have enough to go back home I was so thankful when the City of Dallas passed laws requiring all cabs to accept credit cards and install credit card readers. That made riding in a cab much less painful... until I discovered Lyft, and now I'm too used to doing everything on my phone to ever go back.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- blueskin_ 11y agoFree: https://archive.is/hfbkz https://archive.is/hfbkz I tried to catch an Uber ride from Heathrow before, and it was a total nightmare in terms of not knowing where to go, having come out of the wrong exit, and the driver ending up in a car park. Really, the airports benefit from allowing them too, as they reduce traffic congestion and the number of confused people milling around looking for where their ride is...