21–30 of 100 posts
> Won't Be Happy Why so negative. I like how Europeans/Chinese/Everyone stands behind their companies and expect them to succeed globally. USA on other hand is bent on destroying/defaming their own.
But their lines of business have inherently low barriers to entry and inherent economic disincentives to artificially keep supply as high as these services do in outlying regions. The minute they either pay drivers less, charge riders more, or reduce supply, it’s an immediate opportunity for another entrant. Diversifying into e-bikes won’t change that. It’s just an inherent property of the entire concept of a regiona…
Now to be fair, they claim to feed 68 million people each day right now, so they are on their way.
But there is a reason that in a free market, they are unlikely to ever create the pseudo-monopoly they desire.
And with public transport, Uber and Lyft have even more of a hurdle to clamber over.
Firstly, in many parts of the World the public transport system is government-owned in some capacity. You can buy Citibike, sure, but it's not actually possible to buy the London equivalent: it's operated by the Mayor through the public sector entity Transport for London (TfL).
And this is in in the UK where there is extensive privatisation in the bus and train markets, so you'd think there would be opportunity there. Maybe now: the free market experiment on these quasi-monopolies has been widely considered at least a partial failure and the appetite for nationalisation of the train network has never been higher.
Developing cycle networks is reasonable. I despise the "leave anywhere" bikes, because they are already cluttering up London in reaction to the government owned scheme. However, I can see how this is super attractive for some classes of customer, and the cost base is low enough it wouldn't surprise me to see the mayor follow suit and mimicking their platforms.
But a wholly integrated stack? I'm sceptical.
A system where I could book a point-to-point journey from say my home to my girlfriend's mothers (180 miles away) that incorporated car from my home to the train station, the train itself and then a car at the other end would appeal, but only if it was significantly price competitive with me doing that myself right now, which ideally requires advance booking, a model that Uber is specifically uninterested in.
It's also not obvious Uber/Lyft needs to own or operate most of that stack, and owning it may actually make it less attractive.
Given an Uber or Lyft app that did this, and a third-party app that used APIs to integrate and give me wider options and more competitive pricing, I'm not likely to go with Uber or Lyft.
Uber's & Lyft's only option then is to try and eliminate in its entirety any sense of competition. This rarely ends well.
So you then end up with a race to the bottom on price, and that's unlikely to lead to profitable businesses, unless they try and borrow budget airline business models, which again, models itself on advance booking price/yield management, a model Uber and Lyft seem to be trying to avoid.
I don't quite see the big picture here. CityMapper might be the people to watch in this space...
i sure wouldn't mind some vc-subsidized underground trains. maybe if they became competitive rapid transit operators as well, the world could become a better place
I'm sure it would be great until they captured the market then raised prices and started sharing your data with 3rd parties as an additional way to monetize.
i sure wouldn't mind some vc-subsidized underground trains. maybe if they became competitive rapid transit operators as well, the world could become a better place
I'm sure it would be great until they captured the market then raised prices and started sharing your data with 3rd parties as an additional way to monetize.
Germany's national broadcaster Deutsche Welle produced an excellent documentary looking at the exact same scenario you described. [0]
It looked into the possibility of making short-haul transportation (focusing primarily on Hyperloop) virtually free with just one caveat: a precondition that users share all their private data that advertisers might find valuable -- free ride in exchange for ad-targetable data -- scary and intriguing at the same time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure it would be great until they captured the market then raised prices and started sharing your data with 3rd parties as an additional way to monetize.
At which point people would outrage and the government buys it out for political capital. Still sounds like a win win to me.
But their lines of business have inherently low barriers to entry and inherent economic disincentives to artificially keep supply as high as these services do in outlying regions. The minute they either pay drivers less, charge riders more, or reduce supply, it’s an immediate opportunity for another entrant. Diversifying into e-bikes won’t change that. It’s just an inherent property of the entire concept of a regiona…
“Ridesharing isn’t a profitable business” - this isn’t true. Uber and Lyft both have many cities that have positive unit economics. IIRC the North American market as a whole is profitable for both companies. Both companies are losing money because they are plowing into more and more growth (a la amzn), not because the business is bunk.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tldr for the lazy?
From Wikipedia The process was very controversial at the time, and still is, and its success is hotly debated – with the claimed benefits including a reduced cost to the taxpayer, lower fares, improved customer service, and more investment. Despite opposition from the Labour Party, who gained power in 1997 under Tony Blair, the process has never been reversed wholesale by any later government, and the system remains…
https://www.ft.com/content/d82848ca-f7ba-11e7-88f7-5465a6ce1...
>There is a growing consensus among both executives and industry experts as well as the public that Britain’s unique attempt to create competition on Britain’s rail network has not delivered.
>While it has led to more services, and encouraged more users to pay higher prices, it has not unleashed the productivity improvement necessary both to upgrade the network and stabilise the network’s finances.
>Over the same period, for instance, London’s state-owned metro network, Transport for London, has grown just as quickly and delivered much more state-of-the-art investment.
> Won't Be Happy Why so negative. I like how Europeans/Chinese/Everyone stands behind their companies and expect them to succeed globally. USA on other hand is bent on destroying/defaming their own.
Companies aren't national sports teams. You shouldn't "stand behind them" unless they deserve it.
i sure wouldn't mind some vc-subsidized underground trains. maybe if they became competitive rapid transit operators as well, the world could become a better place
For a vision of how that plays out, see: United Kingdom. It doesn’t end well, not well at all.