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Uber Is Taking Millions of Manhattan Rides Away from Taxis

fivethirtyeight.com

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Re: Uber Is Taking Millions of Manhattan Rides Away from Taxis

#11

Post by mizchief2 »

egocodedinsol wrote: post #6
gregwtmtno wrote: post #2

What I find interesting is that Uber doesn't seem to be having an effect on private car use. From the article, in the busiest part of New York, "Uber gained 3.10 million pickups, while taxis lost 3.09 million." I read this to say that almost every Uber ride would have been a taxi ride if Uber did not exist. It doesn't seem to be replacing private car use at all. If it were, we'd see Uber rides increasing faster than…

how much private car usage is there, actually, in Manhattan?

Nobody drives; there is too much traffic

Re: Uber Is Taking Millions of Manhattan Rides Away from Taxis

#12

Post by ghaff »

egocodedinsol wrote: post #6
gregwtmtno wrote: post #2

What I find interesting is that Uber doesn't seem to be having an effect on private car use. From the article, in the busiest part of New York, "Uber gained 3.10 million pickups, while taxis lost 3.09 million." I read this to say that almost every Uber ride would have been a taxi ride if Uber did not exist. It doesn't seem to be replacing private car use at all. If it were, we'd see Uber rides increasing faster than…

how much private car usage is there, actually, in Manhattan?

Low as a percentage but still significant. According to this (http://www.nycedc.com/blog-entry/new-yorkers-and-cars) only 23% of Manhattanites own a car. Of course, that's still a lot of cars and also doesn't account for commuters driving into the city.

Re: Uber Is Taking Millions of Manhattan Rides Away from Taxis

#13

Post by masterleep »

exstudent2 wrote: post #7
fjordames wrote: post #3

I think the word "earning" is what the author meant.

Yes, why "taking"? What Uber is doing is obviously working. Pre-Uber days, getting a cab in NY was painful. You can't call them to come pick you up. More often than not, the cabbie will complain about taking a credit card or just say the machine is broken. Rides TO the airport are a mixed bag of using the fixed fare vs the cabbie encouraging you to go off of it. Are there are legitimate complaints about Uber that don…

Many people worship at the altar of the state. To them, since Uber evades some regulation, it must be the work of the devil. It probably involves some filthy lucre as well.

Re: Uber Is Taking Millions of Manhattan Rides Away from Taxis

#14

Post by wildmusings »

exstudent2 wrote: post #7
fjordames wrote: post #3

I think the word "earning" is what the author meant.

Yes, why "taking"? What Uber is doing is obviously working. Pre-Uber days, getting a cab in NY was painful. You can't call them to come pick you up. More often than not, the cabbie will complain about taking a credit card or just say the machine is broken. Rides TO the airport are a mixed bag of using the fixed fare vs the cabbie encouraging you to go off of it. Are there are legitimate complaints about Uber that don…

>I just don't get the constant hate they receive.

Everyone is looking out for number one (themselves), so the protected cab industry is going to fight uber tooth and nail. They'd be stupid not to. Any protected industry would do the same. It's on the rest of us to see that for what it is.

Re: Uber Is Taking Millions of Manhattan Rides Away from Taxis

#15

Post by jessriedel »

The author takes pickups as a measure of congestion, but as they (sort of) admit much later on in the article, this is a bad measure.

The argument of regulators is that, in the absence of proper congestion pricing for cars on the road, the market equilibrium for number of taxis per inhabitant will be higher than is efficient. That's how they justify a cap on the number of cabs. (It increases wait times but, they argue, it is worth it for the fewer number of cars on the road causing congestion).

So the question isn't "are there more Manhattan pick-ups after Uber entered the market?", it's "are there more cars on Manhattan street?" or "Have average trip times in Manhattan increased?".

Re: Uber Is Taking Millions of Manhattan Rides Away from Taxis

#16

Post by _delirium »

fjordames wrote: post #3

I think the word "earning" is what the author meant.

This is pretty standard terminology for marketshare. "Apple takes smartphone market share from Android thanks to strong iPhone sales" [1] and similar. The idea is that the marketshare was one place, and another company was able to grab it. Maybe through a better product, maybe through cheaper pricing, maybe through a big ad campaign, maybe through mismanagement at the first company, maybe through changes in trends and styles, lots of possible reasons. Whether they "earned" it or not in some moral sense isn't usually particularly decidable or relevant.

[1] http://www.geekwire.com/2015/apple-takes-smartphone-market-s...

Re: Uber Is Taking Millions of Manhattan Rides Away from Taxis

#17

Post by MrApathy »

egocodedinsol wrote: post #6
gregwtmtno wrote: post #2

What I find interesting is that Uber doesn't seem to be having an effect on private car use. From the article, in the busiest part of New York, "Uber gained 3.10 million pickups, while taxis lost 3.09 million." I read this to say that almost every Uber ride would have been a taxi ride if Uber did not exist. It doesn't seem to be replacing private car use at all. If it were, we'd see Uber rides increasing faster than…

how much private car usage is there, actually, in Manhattan?

Quite a lot, actually. Certainly relative to almost all other areas of the country the rate of car ownership is low, but the streets are so packed with parked cars that many vehicle owners are willing to pay for private storage with monthly rental rates that are typically between $450 and $600.

My impression, though, is that most car owners are not using their cars for intra-Manhattan travel, which is what Uber is doing a lot of. Rather they're using their cars to travel to NJ, upstate NY, Long Island, or other areas where taking an Uber isn't practical.

Re: Uber Is Taking Millions of Manhattan Rides Away from Taxis

#18

Post by ilaksh »

Wow, I didn't realize there still was a taxi industry in Manhattan. Thought Uber had taken over.

I guess its actually slightly harder in an area like that to compete with cabs because there are lots of cabs and you can just wave one over. Although the app is pretty easy to use.

Do the taxi companies have an app now like Uber and are they competitive in pricing and pickup times?

Re: Uber Is Taking Millions of Manhattan Rides Away from Taxis

#19

Post by ilaksh »

Wow, I didn't realize there still was a taxi industry in Manhattan. Thought Uber had taken over.

I guess its actually slightly harder in an area like that to compete with cabs because there are lots of cabs and you can just wave one over. Although the app is pretty easy to use.

Do the taxi companies have an app now like Uber and are they competitive in pricing and pickup times?

Re: Uber Is Taking Millions of Manhattan Rides Away from Taxis

#20

Post by dsjoerg »

jessriedel wrote: post #15

The author takes pickups as a measure of congestion, but as they (sort of) admit much later on in the article, this is a bad measure. The argument of regulators is that, in the absence of proper congestion pricing for cars on the road, the market equilibrium for number of taxis per inhabitant will be higher than is efficient. That's how they justify a cap on the number of cabs. (It increases wait times but, they argu…

TFA addresses that: "The average number of Uber cars in Manhattan’s central business district between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on weekdays is 2,000, Mohrer said in a telephone interview."
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