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Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver

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Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver

#81

Post by qudat »

shereadsthenews wrote: post #70
duxup wrote: post #68

I'm worried about tying public transpiration to companies that aren't / don't know if they're at all profitable.

You should be much more concerned about tying transportation to a company that _is_ profitable. The point of public transportation is to provide an external benefit. Uber will just interpose itself and extract rents.

What about the extraction of taxes? The government has already imposed itself and setup a coercive monopoly for transportation. They are the ultimate in extracting rents.

Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver

#82

Post by inferiorhuman »

Rafert wrote: post #42
o10449366 wrote: post #23

I 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…

Is Transit ( https://transitapp.com/ ) available where you live? If there's no official API for realtime updates, it also allows you to share your GPS data to the rest of the app users for crowdsourcing this info. Overall it works pretty well for me.

Oh Transit fakes data where they don't have real-time info too. They just put a slick interface on it. After waiting in the cold for a once an hour bus that they were lying about I finally uninstalled the app. The incessant prompts to pay for an Uber didn't help matters either.

Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver

#83

Post by paganel »

roel_v wrote: post #79
joncrane wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in Costa Rica and I used Google Maps to navigate my way around some beaches and stuff. And to look at the satellite imagery. Nothing to do with directions or even roads. No way Uber is competing with that.

Just serving up a bunch of maps and satellite imagery is probably one of the easier things to replicate though.

You would think so but having closely watched this online maps space for more than 10 years there was almost no-one who managed to really compete with Google on delivering nicer maps and nicer satellite views. Yahoo Maps used to have a more useful reverse geo-location API at the very beginning (I think 2005-2006) but shortly after Google caught up even there and they haven’t been surpassed by anyone since then.

Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver

#84

Post by deanCommie »

When I heard Uber was getting into Transit I imagined something more disruptive than just aggregation of different transportation types.

Consider: Public bus systems are constrained to fixed schedules and stops for obvious reasons. Neither apply in a Mobile App.

Uber could sign up drivers who own mini-vans or large buses, and dynamically generate "bus routes" using on key waypoints, and both ongoing and forecasted demand (based on historical data).

As a consumer, the experience is still 1) Pick a destination

2) Go to the spot where Uber asks you to go (Which already happens in places like Airports, or if you use Uber Pool which asks you to move a little closer to the route to decrease driving time

3) Get in the uber

4) Get off at a spot when the app/driver tells you which isn't exactly at your destination but close

All for a much much lower price

Meanwhile, as a driver, the experience is: 1) Follow the Uber app's navigation that tells you where your next 'Stop' is. 2) Drive around in a circle that changes throughout the day.

It's a hard problem to solve and get perfect but it would actually justify improving an existing public service.

Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver

#85

Post by kweks »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #82
Rafert wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Transit ( https://transitapp.com/ ) available where you live? If there's no official API for realtime updates, it also allows you to share your GPS data to the rest of the app users for crowdsourcing this info. Overall it works pretty well for me.

Oh Transit fakes data where they don't have real-time info too. They just put a slick interface on it. After waiting in the cold for a once an hour bus that they were lying about I finally uninstalled the app. The incessant prompts to pay for an Uber didn't help matters either.

Not to defend the app in question, but certain public transport organisations publish incorrect data. One example of this is the RATP (Paris public transport) - they refuse to publish live feeds: the data they publish is a basically their "best effort" static timetable.

Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver

#86

Post by masonic »

deanCommie wrote: post #84

When I heard Uber was getting into Transit I imagined something more disruptive than just aggregation of different transportation types. Consider: Public bus systems are constrained to fixed schedules and stops for obvious reasons. Neither apply in a Mobile App. Uber could sign up drivers who own mini-vans or large buses, and dynamically generate "bus routes" using on key waypoints, and both ongoing and forecasted de…

This sounds a lot like the Dial-A-Ride concept that Santa Clara county Transit tried in the 1970s.

Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver

#87

Post by masonic »

roel_v wrote: post #63
bradleyjg wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This means opening Google Maps less, and opening the Uber app more. I have both installed on my phone. What possible reason could I have for picking the uber one to open up if I'm looking to take public transportation? Is it better in any way whatsoever?

The goal is to let the Uber app do (or at least suggest) the mode choice for you. So instead of thinking 'hmm, I'll use PT, now I need to open app XYZ', you could be 'I want to go from point A to point B. Let me open the Uber app to check my options.' And those options would include the travel times and costs of all available modes. Basically, the goal is to have one 'transport' app, and that would be the Uber app. R…

  And those options would include the travel times and costs of all available modes.
All available modes, or all available Uber modes? In contract, Google shows you driving, biking, bus, public transportation, and rail all on the same page.

Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver

#88

Post by [deleted] »

pofilat wrote: post #52
BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps announced this back in October: > Drive , walk and ride : support for mixed-mode commutes > There’s a new feature for people whose commutes involve both driving and public transit. You can see helpful information about when to leave, and for each leg of your trip: you’ll know if there’s traffic on your drive, when the next train departs, and how long it’ll take to walk from the train station to the office…

Caveat: That feature only works if you pay with enhanced access to your (unrelated) data, by enabling Web and App Activity tracking/logging.

[deleted]

Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver

#89

Post by uber-employee »

deanCommie wrote: post #84

When I heard Uber was getting into Transit I imagined something more disruptive than just aggregation of different transportation types. Consider: Public bus systems are constrained to fixed schedules and stops for obvious reasons. Neither apply in a Mobile App. Uber could sign up drivers who own mini-vans or large buses, and dynamically generate "bus routes" using on key waypoints, and both ongoing and forecasted de…

Uber is already doing buses in LatAm and MENA. Most North American cities (except NYC really) just don’t have the density to make the unit economics work for a marketplace with buses. Also, Express POOL (shared ride with walking in order to make the trip more efficient) is already dirt cheap.

Re: Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver

#90

Post by inferiorhuman »

kweks wrote: post #85
inferiorhuman wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh Transit fakes data where they don't have real-time info too. They just put a slick interface on it. After waiting in the cold for a once an hour bus that they were lying about I finally uninstalled the app. The incessant prompts to pay for an Uber didn't help matters either.

Not to defend the app in question, but certain public transport organisations publish incorrect data. One example of this is the RATP (Paris public transport) - they refuse to publish live feeds: the data they publish is a basically their "best effort" static timetable.

The data presented by the Transit app matched neither the published timetables nor reality. If memory serves it was marked as real-time data. My assumption is that Transit was using their bullshit "crowd sourced" algorithm.

Plenty of of agencies publish bogus data (e.g.: Muni has predictions for outbound train service even when a train will be taken out of service at the end of the line, as a result only the second to last prediction for the night is valid). This was Transit being useless.

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