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Lyft Is Said to Seek New Funding as Its Rival Uber Stumbles

nytimes.com

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Re: Lyft Is Said to Seek New Funding as Its Rival Uber Stumbles

#251

Post by cr1895 »

gydfi wrote: post #194
deusex_ wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe, your bus fare would be half of the price and probably you would need one or two connections. The public transport is much more developed and to me seems like a much better mass transportation alternative. More ecological, cheaper, less cars overall.

Yes but that's a bus. Public transport is intrinsically a worse and less convenient experience than having a private driver.

Maybe this is true for you where you live, but it is certainly not true in other places.

Re: Lyft Is Said to Seek New Funding as Its Rival Uber Stumbles

#252

Post by muse900 »

foxfired wrote: post #127

Here is how I see it. I rely on those rides to go to work every single day and here what it (would) costs me. Uber: $250 a month.(Majority) Lyft: $500 a month (Whenever Uber is too expensive) Bus : $100 a month (1h:15 for 6 miles and 3 buses... No) Politics and all internal conflicts aside, there is a need for these services whether we like it or not. When I need to make a decision in the morning I take whatever is t…

I find uberpool less useful, at least for me. I used it only 4 times until now and I ended up saving £3-4 while I ended up making circles around London to get home and all 4 times I got home 20-30 minutes later than uberx would take me. Although I dont use uber to commute to work, only when I am going somewhere on my own times, it seems like your issue is a bit more trivial and it all comes down to property values. I think its very common now in major tech cities like SF, London, NY etc that the rents are too expensive and you have to get out on the suburbs to get something. The UK Gov has already recognised the problem with the housing market and of course its planning on doing something but I don't see anything actual coming out of it in the next 10 years.

A great idea for lyft or uber would be judging by your case and thinking your not the only one doing it, to have a "commute to work" service or something similar, where they arrhythmicaly merge people like you that commute from around your location to town etc putting in minibuses with certain stops. The data is there, I mean they can clearly see that you are using Uber at a specific time going from A to B repetitively, if they can find another 15 people doing it around you going to the same place as you, why not put a minibus and then charge you a bit less or a monthly fee? (Of course the downside would be that this would reduce uber jobs around).

Re: Lyft Is Said to Seek New Funding as Its Rival Uber Stumbles

#253

Post by p47 »

biztos wrote: post #212
deusex_ wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe, your bus fare would be half of the price and probably you would need one or two connections. The public transport is much more developed and to me seems like a much better mass transportation alternative. More ecological, cheaper, less cars overall.

81 EUR in Berlin for the "normal" ticket (zones A+B), 100 EUR for the whole network. Discounted tickets for late sleepers. :-)

Pricy. It is 85CHF for Zuerich for zone 110 which covers majority of the city.

Re: Lyft Is Said to Seek New Funding as Its Rival Uber Stumbles

#254

Post by celticninja »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #213
trustfundbaby wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also helps that Europe and its cities are ... smaller.

Yes, but the physical size of American cities was a deliberate choice on our part. We could have had denser cities if we wanted, and we could fix that starting today if we wanted.

If your corporate overlords wanted to you mean.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_con...

Re: Lyft Is Said to Seek New Funding as Its Rival Uber Stumbles

#255

Post by aedron »

ryhamz wrote: post #232
patrickaljord wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately you, and many others are the ones benefitting from drivers being underpaid. To be fair, these drivers would be out of jobs without Uber. They are not qualified enough to find better paying jobs. Being underpaid is still better than not being paid at all. However, there's a limit to how little Uber can pay its drivers before they start looking for better paying jobs elsewhere. Uber needs to balance thi…

To be even more fair, a huge factor in them being underpaid is that the average driver will have a hard time factoring in depreciation, which hits you on a delay.

Not to mention that Uber pretty much bait-and-switched a lot of drivers, starting with artificially high payouts and then aggressively pushing the price down, fishing money out of the drivers' pockets and making their investments unprofitable. Which is what the driver in the recent video was complaining to Kalanick about.

Re: Lyft Is Said to Seek New Funding as Its Rival Uber Stumbles

#256

Post by celticninja »

JoshuaRedmond wrote: post #173
kagamine wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never used the any of the 3 services you describe except the bus, can you or someone else explain how the driver makes less when taking on more passengers? Surely that works in an opposite way to the bus. The more paying passengers using the bus service simultaneously, the greater the margin per vehicle. But for some reason Uber turns this on its head? Note: I am a country bumpkin who grew up in the sticks and…

I believe they meant that the driver gets paid less for each new passenger, but the old passengers are still at the slightly higher rate. A full car still gets the driver more money per mile, but each subsequent passenger is worth less to the driver. Presumably this is to make it so it's worth picking up the first rider, which might be the only rider you get for that journey.

But a single rider in uberpool pays less than a single rider for a standard uber, so it's probably not as worthwhile unless you are getting a second, maybe third, rider.

Re: Lyft Is Said to Seek New Funding as Its Rival Uber Stumbles

#257

Post by pyrale »

kuschku wrote: post #198
ZainRiz wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how Uber and Lyft are both loosing money as it is, using government intervention to force them to pay their drivers more will just increase their chances of going out of business and mean there will be no driving jobs at all. In this situation I'd prefer letting the market decide the prices for drivers. They had jobs before Uber, and if Uber starts paying too little then they can try going back to those k…

> Considering how Uber and Lyft are both loosing money as it is... ... maybe they should be subsidized by taxes.

Maybe they should be subsidized by consumers.

Re: Lyft Is Said to Seek New Funding as Its Rival Uber Stumbles

#258

Post by duiker101 »

mc32 wrote: post #153
yladiz wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number one reason you don't use Lyft is because of tipping? What do you use instead, Uber, taxi, or do you drive? If it's the first, how do you justify using Uber when its practices are significantly worse than an optional tipping for the users? If it's the second, how do you justify using a taxi when tips (in the US) are almost mandatory?

Uber. It's just mentally easier to deal with. After spending time in other countries, I have come to dislike tipping. Having to decide --do they deserve it, do they not? I don't want to deal with it. Tipping used to be an optional thing in transactions but it has become pervasive. Tipping jars. Just charge me more and pay the barista a wage a highschooler or recent graduate can live on.

But that is what Lyft is doing... they charge your more to give a little more to the driver. And on top of that they offer the tipping. On the other hand Uber pays less and doesn't offer tipping. The worse of both worlds.

I agree with you on tipping but your reasoning seems to need some work.

Re: Lyft Is Said to Seek New Funding as Its Rival Uber Stumbles

#259

Post by pm215 »

IanCal wrote: post #207
Arnt wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which ones would that be? 6 miles is 10 km, that's a nice ride but I've never heard of traffic planners that expect 10km rides.

Maybe I'm totally wrong on this, I guess it just didn't seem like an odd choice in the UK and other countries have much stronger focus on cycling. "People I know" will be a hugely unrepresentative sample though. For another unrepresentative sample, cycling commuters on strava average a bit over 10 miles: http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/10-stats-pai... I can't find the stat I want for Copenhagen, they…

I think it doesn't seem a totally odd choice in the UK partly because the public transport is often pretty poor (London is a huge exception to the usual UK situation). Certainly here in Cambridge I'd choose a 6 mile cycle over the bus every time. But then I enjoy my (4 mile) cycle commute; I don't think I'm particularly representative. The right fix is for the buses to be better.

Re: Lyft Is Said to Seek New Funding as Its Rival Uber Stumbles

#260

Post by douche »

biztos wrote: post #212
deusex_ wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe, your bus fare would be half of the price and probably you would need one or two connections. The public transport is much more developed and to me seems like a much better mass transportation alternative. More ecological, cheaper, less cars overall.

81 EUR in Berlin for the "normal" ticket (zones A+B), 100 EUR for the whole network. Discounted tickets for late sleepers. :-)

Berlin has the finest public transit I've ever seen, by a long shot.

Still, you get in places where waiting for a bus to come is longer than just walking to the U/S-bahn station.

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