Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lyft says nearly 250K of its passengers ditched a personal car in 2017

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 438 posts

Re: Lyft says nearly 250K of its passengers ditched a personal car in 2017

#101

Post by garethsprice »

birdman3131 wrote: post #43

I don't get how using lyft/uber as your only form of transportation can be at all cheaper. Let me run some basic math. Uber wants $11.50 to take me home right now. Lyft wants $13.40 $11.50 * 2 = $23/day 23 * 5 = $115/week $115 * 52 weeks = $5980/year (I am ignoring vacation weeks for now.) My yearly cost for car ownership are roughly as follows. (Assuming only work and back.) Insurance(1): $886/year Fuel(2): $292.50…

Living in cities changes the equation.

My insurance (younger driver, no history) was about $250/mo ($3k/year), car payments (again, young with no capital & no credit history) were $300/mo ($3600/year) for a modest Hyundai.

Average cost for private NYC parking is $430/mo(!) or probably about half that in rent premium if you rent a (very rare) building with parking, but realistically you're parking on the street - a solid 30-45 minutes of looking for a space every time you drive and remembering to move the car when the alternate side parking rules are in effect. If you drive to work, you'll either need to work somewhere with parking, or pay for a space at the destination too - doubling parking costs.

So that's up to $13k/yr to have a car in NYC, or $35/day. I could ride Uber/Lyft to work and back every day for the equivalent cost.

However, most of the time I take the subway which is $116/mo (can pay out of my pre-tax payroll too so real cost is about $80) - my car would be dormant for all but a couple of trips a week & it'd just be a pain to have to move it around for parking. I have a car2go membership that I use once or twice a month (costs about $50, or $0 if I don't use it) and I use Lyft maybe a half-dozen times a week. Once or twice a year I rent a car for further drives ($150 to rent an SUV to move some furniture, or $400 to rent a Tesla from Turo for a weekend trip upstate)

Far cheaper and more convenient to use ride sharing and public transport than to own a car here in NY. I have zero desire to go back to car ownership.

Re: Lyft says nearly 250K of its passengers ditched a personal car in 2017

#102

Post by crzwdjk »

kasey_junk wrote: post #44
brndnmtthws wrote: post #20

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).

There are lots of cities where you can choose to live in particular places to minimize car usage. You don't need to redesign whole cities (and thats the ask to add fast efficient public transit) to support that. You can do localized changes such as tax incentives/penalties, subsidize parking less, zoning law changes that make it easier to mix businesses and residential etc. That plus smart investment in public transi…

The problem is that the number of such places is small and generally not growing particularly fast because transit isn't being expanded all that much (and often expansion comes in the form of rail lines to suburban park and rides), while zoning often prevents infill growth in existing neighborhoods. As a result, there is a scarcity of such places in many metro areas and they are becoming increasingly expensive as a result. California's proposed SB827 is an attempt to change this, and hopefully some progress will be made in this direction soon.

Re: Lyft says nearly 250K of its passengers ditched a personal car in 2017

#103

Post by panda888888 »

It's part of the reason I haven't bought a car. I'm in my mid 20s and didn't get my license in high school because insurance would have been too expensive (my parents wanted me to pay for it).

I think driving is a good life skill so I got my license in my early 20s, but I still have zero desire to own a car.

That said, I live in Seattle, where there is good public transportation.

Here are my numbers:

Parking (I work downtown): $250/month * 12 months = $3000

Parking spot at my apartment complex, 5 miles from city center: $130/month * 12 months = $1560

Gas: $100/month * 12 months = $1200

Car registration fees in Seattle: ~$400/year

Insurance for a 25 year old in Seattle: ~$1500 (It might actually be higher?)

Maintenance: we'll say $1000

So the total cost for me would be ~$8660+ per year. And that's excluding the cost of the car!

With a 5 mile commute, public transit 3 days a week plus Uber/Lyft 4 days a week is cheaper, hands down. Uber/Lyft 7 days a week cuts it closer but is still cheaper.

So yeah, it depends on where you live.

Re: Lyft says nearly 250K of its passengers ditched a personal car in 2017

#105

Post by vidarh »

ryanianian wrote: post #67
paulcole wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So you're relying on friends/family to do the driving if you're outside of lyft/public-transit areas e.g. on vacation in a rental car? Not having a car is a great idea if you can get away with it - not having a license basically means you can't help out when necessary.

It doesn't become necessary unless you make it necessary. It makes some places harder or more expensive to get to, but there are plenty of other places to go to.

It's a tradeoff, and obviously if you want to go places where there's no public transport options at all on a regular basis, it's probably a good idea to at least have a license, but for my part that's simply been enough of a reason to bother getting a license.

Re: Lyft says nearly 250K of its passengers ditched a personal car in 2017

#106

Post by ataturk »

starik36 wrote: post #11

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.

When you were 16 insurance probably wasn't as huge a freaking scam as it is now. Damn rent seekers everywhere now.

Re: Lyft says nearly 250K of its passengers ditched a personal car in 2017

#107

Post by burlesona »

ctdonath wrote: post #89
birdman3131 wrote: post #43

I don't get how using lyft/uber as your only form of transportation can be at all cheaper. Let me run some basic math. Uber wants $11.50 to take me home right now. Lyft wants $13.40 $11.50 * 2 = $23/day 23 * 5 = $115/week $115 * 52 weeks = $5980/year (I am ignoring vacation weeks for now.) My yearly cost for car ownership are roughly as follows. (Assuming only work and back.) Insurance(1): $886/year Fuel(2): $292.50…

You're taking an upper-end Lyft case vs a remarkably low-end ownership case ... and ending up with actually fairly close numbers. Replace some of the chauffeured trips with cheaper paths (bike, hoverboard, bus, telecommute), and use more normal/realistic car costs (purchase around $20,000 over less than 10 years). Result will be much closer numbers; throw in issues like urban parking (very expensive) or higher fuel c…

This is exactly what I thought. Of course one can purchase a beater car for a small amount of money, but the cheapest car I ever bought was $3000 and I recall spending $500-1000 a year on 1-2 breakdowns a year. The inconvenience of the breakdowns was actually worse for me than the cost of repairs, as (at that time and living in that place) I couldn't get to work when the car was broken down, so I lost income in addition to losing cash for maintenance.

Re: Lyft says nearly 250K of its passengers ditched a personal car in 2017

#108

Post by nemothekid »

ghaff wrote: post #21
starik36 wrote: post #11

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…

25, and live in SF. No drivers license. Well I had one, but it had expired and I never bothered renewing. I've only personally had to drive a car once in the last 4 years. I recently took a job in the Peninsula, where my commute is now Lyft -> Caltrain -> Lyft, which given the cost of parking in my building turns out to still be cheaper than owning a car - this might be an equation unique to SF.

The only downside of not having a license is getting into bars. Bartenders don't like expired ids and I've been looking into getting a new one.

Re: Lyft says nearly 250K of its passengers ditched a personal car in 2017

#109

Post by bungie4 »

Living in a small northern Ontario town, I wish we had Lyft or Uber here. Instead, just taxi's (or family) and public transport.

Our public transport is based on a center hub topology with the hub being downtown. So if my kid wants to take the bus to work, about kilometer away, it takes 45 minutes half of which is in the wrong direction and involves at least one transfer. Oddly, it takes even longer to get home.

Our public transport is a joke.

Re: Lyft says nearly 250K of its passengers ditched a personal car in 2017

#110

Post by megaman22 »

brndnmtthws wrote: post #20

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'm sort of baffled at people exclaiming about the high costs of automobile ownership. Yeah, if you have a brand new car, it's expensive. But I've known a lot of people over the years that bomb around in $1000 third-hand Subarus and junky cars very inexpensively. Mostly because they have to - out in the boonies, there's no bus, there's no taxi, you either drive or get somebody else to.
Post reply on HN