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Uber is experimenting with letting riders wait longer for a cheaper fare

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Re: Uber is experimenting with letting riders wait longer for a cheaper fare

#81

Post by ellius »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #48
kemitche wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same breath you complain that they don't pay their drivers enough and that their service is too expensive. Drivers aren't going to get more than a few percentage points increase without increasing the price to the end user.

This seems like a way of saying Uber does not actually have a possible business model. (Not saying I agree or disagree.)

Which many people have argued effectively. Izabella Kaminska has written the most interesting articles on that topic in my opinion.

Re: Uber is experimenting with letting riders wait longer for a cheaper fare

#82

Post by jessriedel »

zaroth wrote: post #68
jessriedel wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The longer the rider is willing to wait, the more the service can optimize the allocation of drivers. (Less distance driven without a passenger, more distance driven with multiple passengers in a car pool, more direct carpools.) This is a real elimination of waste whose value can be split between the service and the passenger, although it's not clear whether the size of that value is really at the 10-20% level.

If they can pair you up with a drop-off already on the way to your exact location by having you wait a couple minutes, I would estimate this is easily worth 20% to the driver, assuming average trip time is on the order of 10-20 minutes.

Sure, but the question is how much more often they can make this happen given a 10 minute wait.

Re: Uber is experimenting with letting riders wait longer for a cheaper fare

#83

Post by selectodude »

askafriend wrote: post #78
selectodude wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please. They drive around on roads that they don't pay for, in cars that they don't own, using drivers that they don't pay. The routing engine is Google's (they all use Maps). The rest of the stuff is impressive, and not something that you can put together in a day, or even a year. But I don't think it should be as difficult as it is for them to make a profit. I genuinely don't know what their expenses are other than…

You know Uber builds it's own mapping services right? And in fact, the guy who helped lead those efforts is the guy responsible for creating Google Earth which later formed the basis for Google's entire mapping efforts (which he led). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_McClendon He's a great guy by the way, in addition to being super smart. Your others points are not well thought through at all - I urge you to spend…

>You know Uber builds it's own mapping services right? And in fact, the guy who helped lead those efforts is the guy responsible for creating Google Earth which later formed the basis for Google's entire mapping efforts (which he led).

Yeah, but when I get into a car it's not Uber Maps on the phone, it's Google Maps. So I'm not very concerned about a guy who worked at Uber for less than two years.

>He's a great guy by the way, in addition to being super smart.

I'm sure he is, which is why he got the hell out of there.

>Do you complain that GrubHub doesn't use their own roads when they deliver your food?

Yes, I would like for them to pay their fair share in road taxes.

>Do you complain that Pizza Hut doesn't own it's own cars when their delivery drivers bring you pizza?

...yes, but now we're being redundant.

>Does United help pay for the airports that enable them to exist?

Now this is just ignorant. Yes, large airports charge millions in landing fees. Train companies pay absolutely egregious property tax rates. It's just cars and trucks that get away with paying 18.4 cents per gallon. Oh, and me who has to pay taxes to fix the roads here while congestion and air pollution here in Chicago have absolutely skyrocketed.

>which completely changed what transportation in cities means.

Uber's success is basically because they were able to push all of the legacy costs of public transit onto taxpayers and claiming that they're more efficient. It's VC-funded bus routes but using a phone. DISRUPTION.

Re: Uber is experimenting with letting riders wait longer for a cheaper fare

#84

Post by jakecopp »

askafriend wrote: post #60
CydeWeys wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point the commenter is making is that Uber is just providing access to it. They aren't training all those drivers, buying and maintaining all those cars, building and maintaining all the roads, etc. BART does all those things for their rail system.

The commenter almost certainly has no idea (or more likely, chooses to ignore) the operational infrastructure and excellence it takes to scale a marketplace like Uber's to 4 billion rides, as fast as Uber did it. Any hot-take that centers around "It's just an app that a couple of guys wrote in an afternoon with some underpaid drivers doing all the work" is someone arguing in bad faith (and I suspect the person is wel…

"...operational infrastructure and excellence it takes to scale a marketplace like Uber's to 4 billion rides..."

Nope! In the grand scheme of things, building an app, and some backend software while maintaining bunch of servers doesn't compare to building:

[1]

- 46 BART stations: 17 surface, 14 elevated and 15 subway stations.

- 669 revenue vehicles

- 112 miles of railway track

- a police force with 206 legally sworn-in law enforcement officers and 90 other staff members

- a wireless network that supplies cell phone service to riders underground

BART isn't even that good - I live in Sydney and we are always complaining about our double-decker dead-silent very clean commuter and city rail. Buzzfeed [2] even thinks our train system is from the future!

I love software - I want to make a career out of it, but we can't forget "real" engineering fields and the effort that goes into them.

[1]: https://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/04/us/san-francisco-bay-area...

[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/sydney/comments/8rulvn/mfw_american...

Re: Uber is experimenting with letting riders wait longer for a cheaper fare

#85

Post by selectodude »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #80
selectodude wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the best funded public transit services are substantial money losers. Paris covers 70 cents of every dollar, Madrid 60 cents, and even in Berlin and Munich its 30 cents. But that covers 100 percent of their expenses. If Uber had to shell out to fix the streets that they use, I bet it wouldn't be so cheap.

> If Uber had to shell out to fix the streets that they use, I bet it wouldn't be so cheap. Streets are public infrastructure and are paid for by taxes, which Uber and all other companies that do business using roads presumably pay, just like everyone else. So, unless you have a specific reason to believe otherwise, it is fair to assume that yes, Uber is paying for the streets that they use. If streets are not being…

>Uber is paying for the streets that they use.

Uber doesn't pay a cent in gas taxes (they're not employees, they're partners, right?), and since they've never made money before, they don't pay a cent in taxes either.

Re: Uber is experimenting with letting riders wait longer for a cheaper fare

#86

Post by praneshp »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #22
maerF0x0 wrote: post #16

I just wanted to drop a note to say I think Uber is doing a good job, all things considered. Many public transit companies have been around for decades and haven't figured out how to scale up to the kind of service Uber is providing. 4B rides in 2017 is pretty amazing. If I understand the math correctly, BART claims about 126 million rides (2015) and cost $906M (~$7 a ride, comparable to some uber pool fares)

> If I understand the math correctly, BART claims about 126 million rides (2015) and cost $906M (~$7 a ride, comparable to some uber pool fares) Scaling a mobile app is trivial compared to running a transit company. BART owns/maintains infrastructure (including an underwater tunnel) and vehicles, provides benefits (health, retirement, etc) to their drivers, and operates a multi-jurisdictional police force. Uber meanw…

> operates a multi-jurisdictional police force.

operates a joke of a police force.

Re: Uber is experimenting with letting riders wait longer for a cheaper fare

#87

Post by dnautics »

selectodude wrote: post #74
Tiktaalik wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Many public transit companies have been around for decades and haven't figured out how to scale up to the kind of service Uber is providing This is because these are publicly funded organizations that are starved of funds for political reasons. Public transit works well where it's funded well. It's a political problem, not a technology problem.

Even the best funded public transit services are substantial money losers. Paris covers 70 cents of every dollar, Madrid 60 cents, and even in Berlin and Munich its 30 cents. But that covers 100 percent of their expenses. If Uber had to shell out to fix the streets that they use, I bet it wouldn't be so cheap.

Singapore's public transit system is run as a for profit (two competing companies, in fact), and it's one of the best and cheapest in the world.

Re: Uber is experimenting with letting riders wait longer for a cheaper fare

#88

Post by rayiner »

smt88 wrote: post #53
always_good wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you have to set a pickup pin explicitly, how does GPS matter at all, here?

In my experience, the location I choose is often lost in translation between my Uber app and the driver's maps app. Sometimes the difference is egregious.

Uber is nuts for letting drivers use their own maps app.

Re: Uber is experimenting with letting riders wait longer for a cheaper fare

#89

Post by jakecopp »

praneshp wrote: post #86
inferiorhuman wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I understand the math correctly, BART claims about 126 million rides (2015) and cost $906M (~$7 a ride, comparable to some uber pool fares) Scaling a mobile app is trivial compared to running a transit company. BART owns/maintains infrastructure (including an underwater tunnel) and vehicles, provides benefits (health, retirement, etc) to their drivers, and operates a multi-jurisdictional police force. Uber meanw…

> operates a multi-jurisdictional police force. operates a joke of a police force.

Better than none, and using the public's resources.

Re: Uber is experimenting with letting riders wait longer for a cheaper fare

#90

Post by fstuff »

maym86 wrote: post #41

Why doesn't Uber/Lyft support actual carpooling so that if I know I need to go somewhere I can offers other people a ride to/from nearby locations. Given the traffic in large cities and the number of single cars going the same direction at rush hour it would make a lot of sense. Adding the option for a longer wait like this would make it easier to manage for the commuting driver. I guess the issue is it'll annoy the…

Waze and a company called scoop do this
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