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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

#51

Post by ryanworl »

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.

Uber Pool gives a route in-app that is displayed to each rider. Drivers don't deviate from this because other passengers will be added along the way and their path needs to be relatively predictable I would imagine.

I don't know how the route is determined in-app, but at least for Uber Pool in Manhattan, they are not using Google Maps as much anymore except for stuff like traffic information.

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

#52

Post by Tiktaalik »

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.

I'm deeply skeptical about the viability of these sort of car sharing networks (autonomously driven or otherwise) for this reason.

This doesn't scale when everyone is trying to use the service and the street capacity for cars is fixed.

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

#54

Post by allengeorge »

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.

I never bother taking Uber during rush hour. You'll take as long (or longer) as taking the subway. I guess the only advantage is that you don't have to share your personal space with plebs like me who take mass transit :P

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

#55

Post by aub3bhat »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #52
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.

I'm deeply skeptical about the viability of these sort of car sharing networks (autonomously driven or otherwise) for this reason. This doesn't scale when everyone is trying to use the service and the street capacity for cars is fixed.

NO that's not how it works, in fact the street capacity of cars being fixed is the very reason why car sharing networks are awesome, otherwise you are stuck in current situation where each individual has his/her own car leading to traffic and congestion.

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

#56

Post by jacques_chester »

CPLX wrote: post #38
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…

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 actual…

They're betting on self-driving cars.

My expectation is that self-driving cars will be promptly disintermediated.

"Google Rides", maybe, or "Amazon Prime for People", scatter-gathering over thousands of small companies owning 1 or 2 cars. Prices will fall to the marginal return.

Uber's investor fountain will run dry and they'll be stuck with the same economics as everyone else. There will be no brand loyalty once price-finding apps enter the fray. They'll still be a major competitor, but the fevered dreams won't pan out.

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

#57

Post by macandcheese »

45h34jh53k4j wrote: post #46
dorianm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

$116.50, +1 for a new metrocard Uber beats subway by $16.50; or three and a bit uberpools/month But there is the whole: subway = nuclear power = low carbon footprint vs uber = dead dinosaurs.

There's also the whole: subway = not air conditioned and miserable, uber = air conditioned and comfortable. Also, as a Hudson Valley resident for most of my life, Indian Point and nuclear power in general is a huge concern for me.

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

#58

Post by mason55 »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #52
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.

I'm deeply skeptical about the viability of these sort of car sharing networks (autonomously driven or otherwise) for this reason. This doesn't scale when everyone is trying to use the service and the street capacity for cars is fixed.

I think the idea is that if all cars are automated then the street capacity grows. Imagine if all the cars on the road are talking to each other with swarming algorithms. Now you don't need stop lights, you don't have people cutting each other off, you don't have gridlock, you have seamless merging. You can also have the cars intelligently route around congestion to balance flow (similar to what Waze does only much more efficient since all cars on the road could do it).

Sure, there's still a limit to what the road can carry, but it would be much higher.

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

#59

Post by morley »

djrogers wrote: post #19
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…

You forgot that people commute 2 ways in your math, so 2 weeks of commutes would be 20 trips coming out to $5/trip, not 10.

This is compared to ~$2.50 a trip on the subway, which (depending on which line you're near and whether you have a transfer) could take substantially less time than a car ride.

There are however some "subway deserts" -- the upper-east and lower-east sides come to mind -- whose residences would greatly benefit from skipping two long walks a day.

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

#60

Post by [deleted] »

jacques_chester wrote: post #56
CPLX wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 actual…

They're betting on self-driving cars. My expectation is that self-driving cars will be promptly disintermediated. "Google Rides", maybe, or "Amazon Prime for People", scatter-gathering over thousands of small companies owning 1 or 2 cars. Prices will fall to the marginal return. Uber's investor fountain will run dry and they'll be stuck with the same economics as everyone else. There will be no brand loyalty once pri…

[deleted]
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