91–100 of 438 posts
How can this be true? They'd need a very significant fraction of riders using lyft line (the multi-passenger service) to make up for the the overhead in the driver having to travel extra distance to pick someone up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the bubble mentality of someone who lives in the city and/or doesn't have a family. How about you try hauling a baby in a stroller, diaper bag, and two other kids to a metro train (if you're so lucky to have one close) and then onto a bus. Ride sharing doesn't solve those problems, either, especially since you'd be in need of carseats. So no, automobile ownership is not dumb. There's plenty of use cases where…
I'll accept that there are reasons for having a car related to child rearing, especially for the first, say, 5-10 years of a child's life. After that, ditch the car and get back to using public transportation or human-powered locomotion. When I was growing up my family had a car, but around middle school it was possible to bike to any school/sports/extracurricular activity within 20 minutes. My parents kept the car f…
Correlation != Causation. I moved to a city and sold my car, and shortly after used ride sharing for the first time. But I don't use it much and it certainly didn't cause me to sell it. I wouldn't be surprised of that's just how many of their customers recently moved to a city.
What a tiresome rebuttal, I'm sure Lyft's army of statisticians and data scientists managed to somehow overlook STAT 101.
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.
I didn't drive a lot (or own a car) until I graduated from school. But I do have trouble wrapping my head around not getting a driver's license past a certain point--whether they get one while in school or not. Even had Uber/Lyft existed at the time, I literally couldn't have done my first job (I regularly had to drive hours to a job site) and I would have been at least reliant on other people at other jobs. Vacation…
I've never really felt limited, though certainly there are places that would be expensive for me to get to thanks to the need of long taxi rides etc., but there are also far more places to go than I can get to see in a lifetime that are still easily accessible with public transport.
I something think maybe I should get a license so I could at least rent a car for certain places, but I've just never felt it's been important enough to get around to it.
Had I lived in the US, the situation certainly would be different - I have spent quite a lot of time in the Bay Area without a car pre-Uber/Lyft, and it certainly is possible but awkward even when you're there as a single person, and many other places I've visited in the US has been much worse.
But the thing is, I can totally see a lot of people there too adapting their life after what works with these services. A car is practical in some respects, but you have to deal with service and insurance and parking, and without it you can often spend a portion of that money living in a location where there's less need for a car to begin with, and a portion of it on taxis/Uber/Lyft. And then I can sit back and read or nap.
Of course it depends on the type of jobs you want etc.
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).
That's the bubble mentality of someone who lives in the city and/or doesn't have a family. How about you try hauling a baby in a stroller, diaper bag, and two other kids to a metro train (if you're so lucky to have one close) and then onto a bus. Ride sharing doesn't solve those problems, either, especially since you'd be in need of carseats. So no, automobile ownership is not dumb. There's plenty of use cases where…
Kids take the bus all the time with their parents. My brother, sister,and I took the bus all the time with my mom or grandma or occasionally both when we were very young. Sometimes when we'd add in a few cousins too, then we'd be rolling 8+ deep.
My parents car was always breaking down and my grandma never learned to drive so it was just totally normal to hear "we're taking the bus today."
When we were a little older (ages 3 4 and 6ish) we would take the bus with the teenage babysitter and her friend to go do something (usually it was ice skating).
It's just such a non-issue.
I really can't understand what sort of "problem" you'd have that you wouldn't have, say, walking on the sidewalk, or going to a store, or just leaving the house at all.
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Maintenance is time too. So pulling over and getting gas, bringing a car in for an oil change/replacing air filter/shocks/tire realignment etc. You have to get smog checks regularly. Parking tickets, speeding tickets, street cleaning. Maybe even a parking sticker. Also, don't ever get into an accident. I think a range depending on your risk profile makes more sense. Low end would be $3178 high end might be double tha…
You don't necessarily need to buy a junker to have an inexpensive car. You can lease a Fiat 500e for $90/month in California (which is what I do). That has the added benefit of removing fuel costs too.
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.
Uber, and I imagine Lyft, are banking on automation. So what is sustainability? Self driving vehicles, at scale, could profitably provide service for a lower cost per mile than a person who owns their own vehicle. And that industry is going to have incredibly rapid growth likely culminating in a monopoly that could yield the largest company in existence. We drive in the ballpark of ~300billion miles per month [1]. Co…
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).
That's the bubble mentality of someone who lives in the city and/or doesn't have a family. How about you try hauling a baby in a stroller, diaper bag, and two other kids to a metro train (if you're so lucky to have one close) and then onto a bus. Ride sharing doesn't solve those problems, either, especially since you'd be in need of carseats. So no, automobile ownership is not dumb. There's plenty of use cases where…
BTW, met a few people with marginal income. They totally wrecked their credit by buying a car. They did not foresee the TCO on a car. After loan payments, insurance, gas, and maintenance they were barely keeping afloat. Payday loans finally sank them and the cars ended up being repossessed anyway. They are still stuck paying the loan since the bank fees and depreciation weren't removed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't drive a lot (or own a car) until I graduated from school. But I do have trouble wrapping my head around not getting a driver's license past a certain point--whether they get one while in school or not. Even had Uber/Lyft existed at the time, I literally couldn't have done my first job (I regularly had to drive hours to a job site) and I would have been at least reliant on other people at other jobs. Vacation…
Some people are very bad drivers for various reasons (e.g. lack of depth perception, poor spatial awareness, whatever). While very little skill is required to get a license in most parts of the country, I fully support people not getting a license if they're bad at it.
(And I'd hope employers would be understanding and supportive of an employee in that position. They're less likely to be as supportive of an employee who just doesn't want to do something even if it affects their ability to do their job.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't necessarily need to buy a junker to have an inexpensive car. You can lease a Fiat 500e for $90/month in California (which is what I do). That has the added benefit of removing fuel costs too.
Just out of curiosity, what's the yearly milage limit on that lease?
You can get lucky and find deals where the money down is even lower. I missed one where it was $1500 down so CA was basically paying you $1000 to take the car (or if you factor in the monthly fee cost around $60 a month).
Part of the reason for this is that it's a compliance car. I think the way it works is CA requires the MPG of your fleet to meet some very high standard. In order to meet this manufacturers that want to sell in the state make an EV with a very high MPGe that helps the average. Then they have to sell a certain number of them (it can't exist in name only). You can end up getting lucky.
[Edit] Looks like my understanding of the compliance car bit was wrong, seems to be just a hard requirement to sell some amount of zero emissions vehicles: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-compliance-car-85648