There is an irony in that the people that could easily afford to do this won't want to because they'll have to share the car...
New Yorkers Can Now Get Unlimited UberPool in Manhattan for $200
81–90 of 115 posts
Re: New Yorkers Can Now Get Unlimited UberPool in Manhattan for $200
#82Before 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…
Refuse to read Forbes due to their aggressive stance against AdBlockers
Re: New Yorkers Can Now Get Unlimited UberPool in Manhattan for $200
#83Earlier 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…
I've taken a taxi or Uber in Manhattan even when a train would be faster when I have a business call I need to take. I know that cell service/internet availability is a reason others I know will sometimes choose to take a car.
I don't know that I would take UberPool however.
Re: New Yorkers Can Now Get Unlimited UberPool in Manhattan for $200
#84Earlier 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'm not sure if "ask the destination to move" is technically a routing/mapping problem. Uber tries to get the car to come to you, you being defined as a lat/long pair, not as a presumably bipedal primate. They might be assuming that their customers don't want to have to walk around to make it more convenient for the driver. (And what if, in fact, you're not bipedal, but use a wheelchair and might not be able to cross…
As a customer, I care about literally none of what they do to model the problem.
I only care that it is self-evidently dumb. It wastes 5 minutes to achieve what can be done in 5 seconds.
If I'm in a wheelchair I can tap "no thanks" or set a setting or whatnot. If it's discriminatory (it might been seen as such), invert the setting so that's opt-out by default.
Re: New Yorkers Can Now Get Unlimited UberPool in Manhattan for $200
#85I 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.
> they drop off and pick up up to five people on your way Is this one of those 'nobody uses this, it's too crowded' situations?
No the car just drives out of its way to pick up new people, they do it to make the ride profitable. It is completely unreliable as a ride to work, since a 30 minute commute can turn into an hour one if the algorithm takes the car too far off course.
Re: New Yorkers Can Now Get Unlimited UberPool in Manhattan for $200
#86Earlier 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'm not sure if "ask the destination to move" is technically a routing/mapping problem. Uber tries to get the car to come to you, you being defined as a lat/long pair, not as a presumably bipedal primate. They might be assuming that their customers don't want to have to walk around to make it more convenient for the driver. (And what if, in fact, you're not bipedal, but use a wheelchair and might not be able to cross…
Uber Pool in Manhattan during commuter hours (and potentially other hours?) gives you a location to walk to. They also do not drop you off precisely at your destination. Roughly +/- 2 blocks.
Edit: Incidentally, this is the reason Lyft Line is so terrible commuting in Manhattan. Pickup and dropoff locations are completely arbitrary, which slows everything down for everyone when compared to arranging pickups/dropoffs on easily reachable corners.
Re: New Yorkers Can Now Get Unlimited UberPool in Manhattan for $200
#87Earlier 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…
[deleted]
Re: New Yorkers Can Now Get Unlimited UberPool in Manhattan for $200
#88Earlier 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…
It's the same in SF! One time I dropped the pin at the end of a block on a one-way street, near its intersection with a two-way street. The driver it gave me was literally a block away and could have come down the two-way street, only requiring me to walk five steps over to that intersection.
Instead, it kept him on the parallel street one block over and then had him loop over three blocks, one of which was a major street, all to save me from taking those five steps.
I asked the driver about it and he said he was planning to just take the short route, but a) most people aren't ready, and b) it's safer from a rating perspective to follow the given route.
Re: New Yorkers Can Now Get Unlimited UberPool in Manhattan for $200
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure if "ask the destination to move" is technically a routing/mapping problem. Uber tries to get the car to come to you, you being defined as a lat/long pair, not as a presumably bipedal primate. They might be assuming that their customers don't want to have to walk around to make it more convenient for the driver. (And what if, in fact, you're not bipedal, but use a wheelchair and might not be able to cross…
Uber Pool in Manhattan during commuter hours (and potentially other hours?) gives you a location to walk to. They also do not drop you off precisely at your destination. Roughly +/- 2 blocks. Edit: Incidentally, this is the reason Lyft Line is so terrible commuting in Manhattan. Pickup and dropoff locations are completely arbitrary, which slows everything down for everyone when compared to arranging pickups/dropoffs…
Ah, I didn't know that.
Re: New Yorkers Can Now Get Unlimited UberPool in Manhattan for $200
#90Earlier 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…
Uber losing could happen, sure.
But why would tiny companies win ? big companies still have somewhat better economics(volume discounts, vertically integrated maintenence, a variety of ways to raise capital, maybe a bit of branding(with regards to reliability, cleanliness...), etc).