Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver
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Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver
1–10 of 106 posts
Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver
#2So, does this just tell you which public transit options you have available, with plans for ticket purchasing in the future? I don't see why any city would want to give uber a piece of their transit fare revenue. Google and Apple both provide great information about navigating public transit as a funnel for new users, and they do it as a free service.
Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver
#3Seems like a data play. You’ll likely enable location in the Uber app, so now they’ll get your location passively when you’re just searching public transit routes.
Turn that around and resell the location data to other data aggregating businesses. Or use it in-house to augment forecasting or pricing models.
Seems slimey to me. Public funds should be providing app access for this sort of thing, with audits to demonstrate personal data is not collected.
Really wish it was more popular to lock down privacy options in phones to make it so this sort of thing is not profitable for companies like this.
Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver
#4This means opening Google Maps less, and opening the Uber app more. The ability of Google Maps to show an estimated Uber price and provide a link to the Uber app is nice for Uber but it's better for Uber to have users opening their own app than to have a tiny feature in another company's app.
They might be providing walking directions in the future, I think. And once it's a fully-fledged map app, having it track your location outside of the ride has the same justification as Google.
Wow, I hadn't noticed but they got rid of that feature. Perhaps they'll reinstate it at some point. https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/29/16219542/uber-location-tr...
Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver
#5/r/denver discussion:
https://old.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/alsm56/uber_transit...
RTD already has their own app for buying tickets. Transit app (or google maps) work well for planning trips. You can’t even actually buy a ticket yet on the Uber app.
> Uber is aiming to increase efficiency, enhance the experience and increase equity and accessibility
What does that mean?
Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver
#6/r/denver discussion: https://old.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/alsm56/uber_transit... RTD already has their own app for buying tickets. Transit app (or google maps) work well for planning trips. You can’t even actually buy a ticket yet on the Uber app. > Uber is aiming to increase efficiency, enhance the experience and increase equity and accessibility What does that mean?
They're trying to integrate Uber with transit. Catch a ride to a bus stop and bus the rest of the way.
Edit: It doesn't look like that's their offering now, but I think they'll move towards it.
Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver
#7Seems like a data play. You’ll likely enable location in the Uber app, so now they’ll get your location passively when you’re just searching public transit routes. Turn that around and resell the location data to other data aggregating businesses. Or use it in-house to augment forecasting or pricing models. Seems slimey to me. Public funds should be providing app access for this sort of thing, with audits to demonstr…
The cities could actually charge for access to an api with this data. It would be a new revenue stream for transportation departments and allow for front end viewing to be open to the free market. I'd gladly pay for an app that consisted of OSM with a transit data layer and a strict privacy policy.
I'd be okay requesting the entire map of a region from the front end service to cache and doing the computation with geolocation on my local device.
Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver
#8/r/denver discussion: https://old.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/alsm56/uber_transit... RTD already has their own app for buying tickets. Transit app (or google maps) work well for planning trips. You can’t even actually buy a ticket yet on the Uber app. > Uber is aiming to increase efficiency, enhance the experience and increase equity and accessibility What does that mean?
>What does that mean?
It is so vague, it means absolutely anything you want to imagine, and nothing specific. I would be surprised if a variation of that specific line you quoted didn’t end up in the next season of HBO’s Silicon Valley
Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver
#9/r/denver discussion: https://old.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/alsm56/uber_transit... RTD already has their own app for buying tickets. Transit app (or google maps) work well for planning trips. You can’t even actually buy a ticket yet on the Uber app. > Uber is aiming to increase efficiency, enhance the experience and increase equity and accessibility What does that mean?
They're trying to integrate Uber with transit. Catch a ride to a bus stop and bus the rest of the way. Edit: It doesn't look like that's their offering now, but I think they'll move towards it.
That's only one interpretation of what they said. Their statement was specifically vague to allow people to fill in the blanks themselves.
Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver
#10Seems like a data play. You’ll likely enable location in the Uber app, so now they’ll get your location passively when you’re just searching public transit routes. Turn that around and resell the location data to other data aggregating businesses. Or use it in-house to augment forecasting or pricing models. Seems slimey to me. Public funds should be providing app access for this sort of thing, with audits to demonstr…
The cities could actually charge for access to an api with this data. It would be a new revenue stream for transportation departments and allow for front end viewing to be open to the free market. I'd gladly pay for an app that consisted of OSM with a transit data layer and a strict privacy policy. I'd be okay requesting the entire map of a region from the front end service to cache and doing the computation with geo…
Denver RTD already does this: http://www.rtd-denver.com/Developer.shtml
And they have an app for checking bus locations and buying tickets, and it's free.
I think the API is great for enabling integrations, but I really hope they keep their existing apps. There's no reason end users shouldn't be able to get the data directly from RTD, and they definitely shouldn't be forced into using a sleazy company like Uber.