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New Yorkers Can Now Get Unlimited UberPool in Manhattan for $200

forbes.com

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Re: New Yorkers Can Now Get Unlimited UberPool in Manhattan for $200

#31

Post by potatolicious »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #17
whenwillitstop wrote: post #10

I live in Manhattan. This is a rip off. The Uber Pool rides can take up to an hour sometimes, they drop off and pick up up to five people on your way. Uber if you are reading this, everyone in NYC realizes what a waste of time Uber Pool is.

How does Uber Pool even work during rush hour? Do you spend all day trapped in Times Square waiting to pick up the second person? Or does Uber try and route around gridlock? Does it just skip the other person if the car gets stuck? Or maybe I'm paranoid because of a bad experience trying to get to a job interview via cab my first time in NYC.

> "How does Uber Pool even work during rush hour?"

I haven't used it during rush hour myself, but I know some people who have. The short answer is: it doesn't work during rush hour.

All of the issues you've highlighted are issues, but even without some exceptional traffic just picking up and dropping off multiple people makes the whole thing interminably slow.

Not to mention that Manhattan below 125th St is subway central - I can see the value for people in Brooklyn and Queens who live in subway deserts, but Manhattan? Even regular non-pool Uber is already slower than taking the train during rush hour.

I can appreciate that uberpool is a great thing for people in other cities, but the product market fit for Manhattan is exceptionally poor. I wonder why Uber is bothering with this market when there are many others (see: SF) where this "unlimited pass" would be actually useful.

Re: New Yorkers Can Now Get Unlimited UberPool in Manhattan for $200

#32

Post by dorianm »

ixtli wrote: post #11

Before you get all excited about this, it's ONLY UberPOOL and your destination must start and end in Manhattan. So if you use this to commute for two weeks you're paying 10 (edit: obviously 100/20 = 5, it's early. leave me alone) dollars flat for a cab ride that you share and will take longer than normal because of the overhead of splitting the ride. There are certainly some people for whom this will be cost effectiv…

Personnaly it's at least three trips, work, going out and home and sometimes more on the weekend so this is pretty amazing actually.

It's much more comfortable than taking subways (which is also 100$ a month)

Re: New Yorkers Can Now Get Unlimited UberPool in Manhattan for $200

#34

Post by JoeAltmaier »

jacques_chester wrote: post #30
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Uber Pool even work during rush hour? Do you spend all day trapped in Times Square waiting to pick up the second person? Or does Uber try and route around gridlock? Does it just skip the other person if the car gets stuck? Or maybe I'm paranoid because of a bad experience trying to get to a job interview via cab my first time in NYC.

Uber's wayfinding logic in Manhattan is actively dumb. With billions of dollars they could just hire a thousand locals to sit in a passenger seat to give navigation instructions. If a car is ahead of me on an avenue, even by half a street, it will send them around the block instead of suggesting I walk forward a bit. Or, instead of asking me to cross an avenue, it will send the driver down a different avenue for mult…

I thought they used google. Anyway, NYers are notorious for having strong opinions about the 'right way' to navigate any given route. Grain of salt.

Re: New Yorkers Can Now Get Unlimited UberPool in Manhattan for $200

#35

Post by sthatipamala »

empath75 wrote: post #14
whenwillitstop wrote: post #10

I live in Manhattan. This is a rip off. The Uber Pool rides can take up to an hour sometimes, they drop off and pick up up to five people on your way. Uber if you are reading this, everyone in NYC realizes what a waste of time Uber Pool is.

I thought uberpool was for commuters that were going to the same way every day.

No its simply sharing a regular uberX ride on demand. It's not for (necessarily) daily carpooling.

Re: New Yorkers Can Now Get Unlimited UberPool in Manhattan for $200

#37

Post by CPLX »

potatolicious wrote: post #31
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Uber Pool even work during rush hour? Do you spend all day trapped in Times Square waiting to pick up the second person? Or does Uber try and route around gridlock? Does it just skip the other person if the car gets stuck? Or maybe I'm paranoid because of a bad experience trying to get to a job interview via cab my first time in NYC.

> "How does Uber Pool even work during rush hour?" I haven't used it during rush hour myself, but I know some people who have. The short answer is: it doesn't work during rush hour. All of the issues you've highlighted are issues, but even without some exceptional traffic just picking up and dropping off multiple people makes the whole thing interminably slow. Not to mention that Manhattan below 125th St is subway ce…

It's useful for people who work out on the west side highway like at IAC or in the Starrett-Leigh building and live on like Avenue D or something. Or other similar oddly crosstown commutes that aren't necessarily gridlocked. Or people who work in hospitality like bartenders and so on who have to otherwise take a couple trains to get home.

Which, I guess, is a use case.

Re: New Yorkers Can Now Get Unlimited UberPool in Manhattan for $200

#38

Post by CPLX »

jacques_chester wrote: post #30
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Uber Pool even work during rush hour? Do you spend all day trapped in Times Square waiting to pick up the second person? Or does Uber try and route around gridlock? Does it just skip the other person if the car gets stuck? Or maybe I'm paranoid because of a bad experience trying to get to a job interview via cab my first time in NYC.

Uber's wayfinding logic in Manhattan is actively dumb. With billions of dollars they could just hire a thousand locals to sit in a passenger seat to give navigation instructions. If a car is ahead of me on an avenue, even by half a street, it will send them around the block instead of suggesting I walk forward a bit. Or, instead of asking me to cross an avenue, it will send the driver down a different avenue for mult…

Yeah Uber's navigation in Manhattan and Brooklyn is unusually bad in my experience. The last incident that truly soured me on Uber Pool was when it tried to take me from Downtown Brooklyn into Manhattan to drop the other guy off before me, when I was going to Brooklyn Heights. Um.

That, however was only my second worst Pool experience, not nearly as surreal as the driver who spoke nearly no English, and didn't actually understand the basic concept of Uber Pool. So I get in, then it prompts him to pick up another passenger, but he doesn't understand so he drives to the spot and expects me to get out. I try to explain that he just drove by the woman he was supposed to pick up, and after much confusion, she gets in the car. The driver thinks she's a friend of mine, and doesn't understand that we're now going to two different destinations sequentially. Then it prompts him to pick up someone else. It would have been more painful if it wasn't sort of mildly amusing.

Oh wait that might be tied for second with the time that I was headed down Canal leisurely when the app pinged indicating a new passenger, and prompting the driver to take an immediate right, which caught him off guard a little and he veered right into the Holland Tunnel approaches. Thankfully I was paying attention and immediately vocal enough to get him to stop and escape by moving a few traffic cones. Your average tourist would have been blissfully headed for New Jersey in that scenario.

Or, in other words, Uber needs to stop spending so much time fantasizing about valuations and robot cars and actually improve their product.

I have no idea why they're spending so much to theoretically develop a monopoly when ever user in this town at least is developing many reasons to bolt to a credible competitor on moment's notice.

Re: New Yorkers Can Now Get Unlimited UberPool in Manhattan for $200

#39

Post by manacit »

chadlavi wrote: post #36

Only in Manhattan, and the $100 is only TWO weeks. A full month is $200. As one of the 80% of New Yorkers who live in the other 4 boroughs, this is useless to me.

Not to mention that the part of town this is limited to is extremely well covered by almost every train, which will virtually always be faster (and cheaper) than getting into an Uber Pool that's going to hop around and pick people up.

Re: New Yorkers Can Now Get Unlimited UberPool in Manhattan for $200

#40

Post by jacques_chester »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #34
jacques_chester wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber's wayfinding logic in Manhattan is actively dumb. With billions of dollars they could just hire a thousand locals to sit in a passenger seat to give navigation instructions. If a car is ahead of me on an avenue, even by half a street, it will send them around the block instead of suggesting I walk forward a bit. Or, instead of asking me to cross an avenue, it will send the driver down a different avenue for mult…

I thought they used google. Anyway, NYers are notorious for having strong opinions about the 'right way' to navigate any given route. Grain of salt.

Last time I complained about this, someone blamed it on Apple Maps.

Some drivers have both, mostly so they can see the traffic data from Google Maps. I like those drivers.

Edit: I'd actually be surprised if it was Google Maps at fault, given that their Maps team has a large contingent in the NYC office.

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