31–40 of 438 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure people in the US would love to walk to work, but the layout of US cities doesn't lend itself to that. People tend to live pretty dang far from where they work in the US.
Move to a different city.
So there's something like 260+ million [1] vehicles registered here in 2015. That 250k number seems like an impossibly high percentage of people that have given up on owning a car because of ride sharing apps. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicle...
ADDED: Their numbers actually suggest something higher because this is just among Lyft's user base. It doesn't count Uber or other ridesharing apps.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Any ride sharing trip is going to be Driver Start > Pickup > Drop-off which is by necessity longer than pickup > drop-of You forgot "circling for twenty minutes searching for parking." Include the parking footprint of private cars and I think ridesharing comes out ahead.
That's only relevant in places limited to street level parking. The general case is driving to a parking lot/garage which could make the trip shorter or longer depending on where it's located relative to your destination. You might spend more time driving in a garage, but that does not impact street level congestion compared to all those extra Miles drivers add going to pick you up. As to density, cars parked in a ga…
I think the biggest impact is going to be felt with current generations of 18 year olds. My kid (about to be 18) has no interest in getting a driver's license and neither are any of his friends. He's happy to be taking Uber and Lyft anywhere he goes. And between the cost of the vehicle and insurance, it's cheaper for me as well. When I was 16, I couldn't wait to get a car.
This is one of the few cases where I was ahead of my time. I turned 16 about 20 years ago and had 0 interest in a driver's license. I lived in an extremely rural area. My parents (rightly) said that I'd need to get a job to pay for a car. I figured why bother since I'd be paying for a car to drive to the job where I'd make money to pay for the car. Seemed like a complete waste of time and effort. 20 years later, I st…
How sustainable is Lyft's pricing in comparison to Uber? I've been getting absolutely dirt cheap Uber Pool fares in the Bay Area. From my apartment to work the fare is often less than two dollars (which is around what BART would cost me), and I've even had fares less than dollar. I would be amazed if this is making anyone a profit, but if the price even doubled I would be way less likely to use Uber/Lyft on a whim.
[1] - https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring...
> We surveyed 30,000 passengers and 37,000 drivers in 52 major cities.
I suspect they may have done some generous extrapolation here...(e.g. "0.1% of the 30,000 Lyft passengers we surveyed got rid of their cars for ridesharing, so 0.1% of the U.S. population must have ditched cars for ridesharing")
typically i can either (1) take a bus or train or (2) take a lyft line (or uber pool, if it's much cheaper for some reason--i don't mind uber paying part of my trip). but because my trips are often 2-3 miles or less, the time savings of a lyft is taken up by (1) pickup time, (2) driver confusion/mistakes, (3) poor driver routing due to not knowing the local traffic conditions, and (4) other riders added behind us en route. so no time savings, which (to me) is the big advantage of lyft/uber. the buses and trains are on a schedule, but they usually come often enough that the time savings of a lyft would be less than 5 minutes.
i can pay $1.75 for the bus or train, or pay $4-5 for a lyft line. lyft line is usually more comfortable, but sometimes the car or other riders smell bad or are rude, so that's not always an obvious win.
and if i'm not really rushed, a little walking on either end of the trip is a good thing.
consistently paying 2-3x for short trips on lyft don't seem to make sense, and so my usage has gone down over time (occasionally i'm in a big hurry or are going farther, and in those cases lyft does work out better).
i don't think this bodes well for lyft or uber solving the last-mile problem.
Automobile ownership is dumb, but ridesharing isn't the answer either. Cities need to invest in public infrastructure, especially fast efficient public transit. People should also rediscover the joy of human power (walk, bike, run).
I think the biggest impact is going to be felt with current generations of 18 year olds. My kid (about to be 18) has no interest in getting a driver's license and neither are any of his friends. He's happy to be taking Uber and Lyft anywhere he goes. And between the cost of the vehicle and insurance, it's cheaper for me as well. When I was 16, I couldn't wait to get a car.