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Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says

#71

Post by bogomipz »

bbarn wrote: post #46
bogomipz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Waves of people inexperienced, untrained in shuttling people around a major metro have resulted in downtown Chicago being an utter mess compared to only a few years ago." Has the city published any traffic impact studies? NYC showed concerned for Uber impact on traffic and made an attempt to get data and it turned into a political kerfuffle with accusations of protecting the taxi industry etc. I don't like the titl…

I think it'd be hard to actually quantify the impact. Chicago's also constantly under construction, the downtown area has had major bus route redesigns with the "JUMP" routes, and that's caused a lot of congestion too. I'm not really familiar with new york's streets, but ours have been over capacity forever and now with uber/lyft there's a lot more single passenger car traffic in the business areas. Much more so than…

>"I think it'd be hard to actually quantify the impact."

You would need Uber/Lyft's help I believe. But I think if you combined the Uber/Lyft data with data that the DOT keeps it would be pretty easy to quantify the impact. I think that was NYC's point as well. But unfortunately the mayor had received money from a taxi lobbying effort which allowed Uber to cry foul and make accusations of protectionism.[1]

One metric used is average travel speed which according to this recent article is down 12% to 8.1 miles compared to 2010[2]

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/nyregion/de-blasio-reaps-b...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/nyregion/uber-ride-hailin...

Re: Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says

#72

Post by xenadu02 »

bagacrap wrote: post #56

Doesn't uber itself game the surge pricing? That is, they'll show you surge prices more often if you have shown a tendency to accept them.

I haven’t seen any proof but it seems like Lyft does this. I almost never accept surge prices and I absolutely will never accept anything beyond 1.5x. Often if I leave the app open or check back 30 seconds later it will lower the surge rate.

It makes sense if you think about it: giving people who won’t pay surge prices a ride anyway makes drivers scarcer for those who will pay, raising surge prices even further.

I’m pretty sure that surge pricing outside a narrow range will eventually be made illegal. It makes too many people too angry and they’d rather get on a car waiting list than see a 3x price. You can argue the economics all you like but people are irrational.

Re: Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says

#73

Post by rectang »

loceng wrote: post #69
mabey wrote: post #67

Yup. Last week I left a Dodgers game in about the eighth inning, and there was a huge parking lot full of Ubers and tons of people were standing around waiting but couldn't find drivers. The drivers wait until the game ends and the masses exit so that the real surge pricing kicks in.

I wonder what, if any, ways are there to counter this kind of behaviour?

Driving for Lyft/Uber in traffic jams is economically unrewarding, because the fee schedule is tilted towards per-distance-unit and the per-minute fees are a pittance. Raising the per-minute fees would incentivize drivers to take fares which are currently not worthwhile rather than wait for surge pricing.

However, drivers do not set the per-minute pricing -- that's the rideshare company's prerogative.

Re: Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says

#74

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

mabbo wrote: post #53
toast0 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think cabs were terrible drivers, but most of them (especially in heavily regulated markets) are very experienced drivers and simply disregard rules of the road that are inconvenient for them. In contrast, 'ride sharing' drivers seem to have no sense of direction, and are genuinely oblivious to the rules of the road. In short, when in either type of car, I fear for my life.

> simply disregard rules of the road that are inconvenient for them. There is a bit of a natural selection process to it. If you're a cab driver, and you keep getting into accidents, you won't be a cab driver for long. If you take no risks and are constantly late, you won't be a cab driver for long. If you have a poor sense of direction, or spacial awareness when driving, you probably won't be a driver for very long.…

> Everyone's a newbie.

Not really. A newbie at being paid to drive, but in many cases, not new to driving. In my area, I can predict to the minute when I'll arrive at my destination, and what route is best at that time of day, even for a 20 mile trip and without software support. That's because I've been driving 24k miles+ annually here for nearly 30 years.

Not to mention, the driver's app has the same real-time mapping features that smart phones have. So they can avoid grid locked areas, accidents, etc. even without years of cab driving experience.

Yes, an experienced cab driver will be a better cab driver, in general, than a new Uber driver. But not enough better to keep the masses away from Uber/Lyft. Cab companies are getting slaughtered, cab drivers are panicking and two-timing or jumping to Uber/Lyft, and this is happening globally.

Re: Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says

#75

Post by cpsempek »

During a fare, an uber driver told me that when he goes to an area with lots of drivers, he will turn off his app for a minute or so to artificially decrease the number of drivers in the area. If this is practiced by multiple drivers repeatedly, the result can cause a surge. He told me that he does this, and, that he holds training sessions where he teaches this practice to other drivers, among other things. I do not know if this was actually effective or if it still is.

Re: Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says

#76

Post by potatolicious »

aianus wrote: post #9

The first guy to log back in (or the guy who doesn't log off at all) wins the game to the detriment of the others, limiting the extent of this practice. You can't have a successful oligopoly when there's no barrier to entry.

Surge pricing - at least on Uber - is only re-evaluated at a fixed frequency. Which is to say even if the supply rushes in to fill the void there is still a certain amount of time before the surge is turned off.

I imagine multiple people (heck, many people) can win the game in this period.

Re: Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says

#77

Post by wavefunction »

cpsempek wrote: post #75

During a fare, an uber driver told me that when he goes to an area with lots of drivers, he will turn off his app for a minute or so to artificially decrease the number of drivers in the area. If this is practiced by multiple drivers repeatedly, the result can cause a surge. He told me that he does this, and, that he holds training sessions where he teaches this practice to other drivers, among other things. I do not…

Damn, a real hack!

Re: Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says

#78

Post by whipoodle »

cpsempek wrote: post #75

During a fare, an uber driver told me that when he goes to an area with lots of drivers, he will turn off his app for a minute or so to artificially decrease the number of drivers in the area. If this is practiced by multiple drivers repeatedly, the result can cause a surge. He told me that he does this, and, that he holds training sessions where he teaches this practice to other drivers, among other things. I do not…

It would be pretty easy to build a service to coordinate this. (And of course Uber would whine about it even though that's exactly the kind of thing they do all the time)

Re: Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says

#79

Post by sixQuarks »

bbarn wrote: post #10
mikeash wrote: post #5

Obvious in hindsight. This sort of thing is inevitable any time you have dumb software on one side and humans on the other side. I'm mostly a fan of these non-taxi "taxi" services, but it seems like they are slowly and painfully rediscovering why taxis ended up so regulated in the first place.

Yeah, I'm mostly not a fan, now that we're a few years in. Waves of people inexperienced, untrained in shuttling people around a major metro have resulted in downtown Chicago being an utter mess compared to only a few years ago. Chicago forced cab drivers to go through a training and certification course that at least forced them to understand the major routes and grid system we're on, and every time I've been in an…

Uber was actually a little too early into the game. They are going to have legacy issues transitioning into self-driving taxis. The whole end-game with this is to have self-driving cars and get rid of drivers, this was the stated goal at least 4 years ago.

This is where Tesla is going to have an advantage. They're going to start with self-driving, no need to deal with pissed off drivers and other problems that come with a transition. Same thing with their dealerships - they didn't have to deal with the dealer-franchise system.

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