Slightly off topic. I took a Uber ride recently that took the worse route. It went thru many small streets that were full of snow. Cars could not pass each other. They had to slow down for safely. Maybe its a good shortcut in the summer.
Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver
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Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver
#22/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?
> equity and accessibility
People with disabilities(especially electric wheelchairs).
Uber currently has a service in some markets: https://www.uber.com/ride/uberwav/
Many people with disabilities depend on municipal "paratransit". For example this is for Denver http://www.rtd-denver.com/accessARide.shtml
If you visit the page you can see the experience is less than awesome. You typically need to book your trip a day or more in advance . Considering how expensive paratransit can be for a municipality, I imagine they could see using Uber, even if only for dispatch) as a potential big win in both overall user experience and cost savings.
> increase efficiency
Many muncipalities prefer to do as much in the private sector as possible. Handing ticketing and payment over to 3rd party providers has the potential for cost saving if Uber and other services can do it for less money.
Edit: I should add that I'm not writing this as something I think will end up being true as much as I'm clarifying the corporate speak that Uber is sending out for other decision makers in other municipalities.
Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver
#23I would love to see this come to more cities. I live in a major north American city where public transportation is run by the local government. They have an official transportation app, but it's a buggy mess that's just a wrapper for the phone browser. It features "real time" (their words) route tracking, but as I quickly found out, the busses that move along the map aren't actually representative of the real busses and their locations (e.g. GPS tracking). Instead, their location and arrival estimates are based entirely on where they should be at that time under ideal conditions, making them entirely useless at rush hour and in inclimate weather conditions (which is precisely when people rely on them the most).
As a result, catching the bus is a complete guessing game every day. There are three possible outcomes:
1) The bus arrives 5-10 minutes early and doesn't wait around, so you have to get to your stop at least 15 minutes early.
2) The bus is late (the typical scenario), so you spend 15-60+ minutes convincing yourself you aren't crazy and the bus didn't pass before your eyes while wondering how long you can continue standing outside before getting frostbite.
3) You spend 15-30 minutes standing around in scenario (2) above before getting an "alert" from the app that your route has been cancelled. These late alerts ensure that even if you manage to find a different route to take you to your destination, you'll have to repeat the guessing game above and you'll definitely be late.
Uber and Lyft have numerous problems still, but as far as I'm concerned their disruption of the transportation industry has been long overdue. My local government refuses to expose the transportation API, so even if there was a motivated individual who wanted to make a better app they wouldn't have access to the information they needed. I can't wait for more competition in this space.
Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver
#24Getting into the Municipal ticketing racket won't dig Uber out of their massive money pit.
Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver
#25It's like Google Maps but perhaps slightly inferior in quality. Smart, I like the way Uber thinks. They should add Apple Maps integration next in order to improve their overall map fidelity.
Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver
#26Seems 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…
Charging anything for information about public services is ridiculous. If there is one thing public services should be able to do is to make it as easy as possible for all consumers to be as informed as possible.
Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver
#27Getting into the Municipal ticketing racket won't dig Uber out of their massive money pit.
What do you mean "Municipal ticketing racket"? Did you read the article?
Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver
#28This would be very useful if they could automatically solve the "last mile" problem for transit. For example, if I can make a single order from home to work, involving both Uber for the short distance from home to the train, and then a train ticket to work, then this could add some value.
Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver
#29This 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…
For UBER it's great - they get highly targeted access to large amount of people needing transportation - AND that are willing to sit next to other people to save money.
So as a first step, they could offer those people to share their first/last mile with other passengers, in a 6-passenger minivan. The price will be cheap/cheapest, and the trip fast(the route will be optimized).
That would be an easy sell. Probably viral. And it would increase transit ridership - and lead to other transportation authorities cooperating.
And Google can't compete with that.
Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver
#30Getting into the Municipal ticketing racket won't dig Uber out of their massive money pit.
What do you mean "Municipal ticketing racket"? Did you read the article?
Yeah. You don't think that's a goal? Uber desperately needs to show additional revenue streams as the (un)reality of self-driving cars and food delivery sets in. Muni tickets is big business. Look at Cubic Transportation Systems.
> Initially, the ability to purchase tickets via the Uber app won’t be available, but it’s on the horizon. The in-app ticketing portion, in partnership with Masabi, will be available in the coming weeks, Reich said.