New Yorkers Can Now Get Unlimited UberPool in Manhattan for $200 • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 30, 2016, 10:08 AM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #98

petra wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

A company that limits itself to online dispatch and doesn't own any vehicles itself (a) can expand to new cities at almost no cost, (b) can perform well on certain metrics like return on capital invested and revenue per employee, (c) faces no risk from buying too much capacity and (d) bears much less of the costs of risks like bad routing, mispricing or vandal customers, and so doesn't have to spend money mitigating…

[deleted]

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

#112

Post by rdlecler1 » Fri, Sep 30, 2016, 1:42 PM UTC

I called an UberPool in Manhattan at around 3:00 on a weekday. It was a 10 minute wait and when it did arrive the car already had four other passengers in the car. In many cases it's much faster and cheaper to take the train/cab.

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

#113

Post by lloyd-christmas » Fri, Sep 30, 2016, 2:44 PM UTC

aub3bhat wrote: post #108

lloyd-christmas wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> otherwise you are stuck in current situation where each individual has his/her own car leading to traffic and congestion. This is a terrible assumption. The deal being offered is Manhattan -> Manhattan, and only below 125th street. That's a population of ~1m people[0], which doesn't even factor in age demographics. There are 1.6m commuters into manhattan each day and only 225k cars registered in manhattan[1]. Only…

As someone who lives in Manhattan below 125th street, you could not be more wrong. What you have is transition from Cabs with single rider to Uber Pool, not Subway to Uber Pool. Also you are using figures of user who live "outside" Manhattan which do not at all benefit from Uber POOL.

> As someone who lives in Manhattan below 125th street, you could not be more wrong.

I've lived in NY for 30 years. I've lived below 125th street in manhattan for a decade of that. The wealth of statistics available to defend your point is at your fingertips. And... you went with "nuh-uh". That doesn't really convince me of much.

For some anecdata, I've only known 1 person to take a cab in both directions every day. The only reason was because they got a new job. 3 months later their lease was up and they moved to a more convenient spot. I know plenty of people who take cabs several times a week, but that's also not a demographic it will be taking from.

> Also you are using figures of user who live "outside" Manhattan which do not at all benefit from Uber POOL.

That was my point. I'm pointing out that the majority of the traffic comes from elsewhere or non-commuter traffic, meaning that the impact of this would be insignificant in the big picture.

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

#114

Post by roguecoder » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

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…

It's particularly baffling since Manhattan is the only place I've been where taxis are a credible competitor. UberX isn't, in my experience, cheaper than the cabs and even X is slower than hailing a cab. The last time I tried to used Pool, it assigned me a driver 20 minutes away; I could have walked the route before the driver got there.

Every other American city I've visited, cabs are impossible to hail and twice the price, but in NYC there are options.

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

#115

Post by roguecoder » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 5:17 PM UTC

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.

I know my Mini with "Google-backed" maps sometimes has terrible taste in routes and very out-of-date traffic info compared to actual Google Maps. I wouldn't be surprised if somehow the API isn't the same quality as the direct maps results.