Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Uber’s transit offering just went live in Denver

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 106 posts

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

#91

Post by bdamm »

masonic wrote: post #87
roel_v wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The idea includes offering short hop Ubers with long-haul public transit, which Google won't do. Maybe Google will expand the multi-model option set that's already present in Transit to include short-hop Ubers and then I'd surely go to Gmaps every time.

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

#92

Post by Tempest1981 »

erklik wrote: post #65
roel_v wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Of course this could only happen if the Uber app has all functionality the Google Maps app has, and every bit as good, Something that I have found is Uber doesn't seem to be as good as Google Maps doing routing between two people. Google has better traffic management and having routes that are shorter and faster. Uber seems to sometimes take a much longer route. Anecdote, of course but yeah, IMO, they have a long w…

So the Uber drivers will, in turn, be using Google maps. Or Waze.

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

#95

Post by roel_v »

paganel wrote: post #83
roel_v wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, I'm not saying it's easy, but still out of all other things they'd be up against, it'd be on the easier side...

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

#96

Post by paganel »

roel_v wrote: post #95
paganel wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, I'm not saying it's easy, but still out of all other things they'd be up against, it'd be on the easier side...

Apple tried it and failed, with a much bigger available budget, but, yeah, maybe if Uber manages to hire the right people from the very beginning they might pull it off.

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

#97

Post by alkonaut »

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…

GPS on buses seems like a no brainer compared to other investments if you want to make public transit more popular. Being able to walk to the bus stop and knowing you’ll wait 1-2 minutes is great compared to running to the bus stop and waiting 15 minutes.

My local authority has had a free public API for a long time and also contacts people following up on how API use is going, arranging meetups for people wanting to code things with the API and so on.

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

#99

Post by Symbiote »

eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #60
drivers99 wrote: post #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?

I'm a Denver resident and use the train anytime I go to the airport (union station -> DIA). It's probably the easiest fair they do, flat rate. The RTD app is ATROCIOUS -- my first attempt I was double billed. Also, it's functionally worse than a paper ticket because you have to constantly take your phone out of your pocket and open up the RTD app to show the guard. With a paper ticket, you can simply leave the ticket…

> you have to constantly take your phone out of your pocket and open up the RTD app to show the guard

How often are you checked!?

I've only used a couple of trains in the USA, but in Europe it would be very unusual to be checked more than once on any journey. Twice can happen on long journeys if the guard changes.

Usually there's either no check, or only a check by machine like a ticket gate.

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

#100

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

zhobbs wrote: post #77
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #3

Seems 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…

I look at it more in the sense of Uber's product not being a rideshare app, but being a "move you from point A to B in the best way possible app" (best = meets your cost/time/comfort needs). Here's a good writeup on the "jobs to be done": https://stratechery.com/2018/aggregators-and-jobs-to-be-done...

I didn’t realize anyone was actually treating that Uber tagline as more than marketing fluff.
Post reply on HN