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My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

whatever.scalzi.com

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Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#131

Post by latchkey »

jschwartzi wrote: post #88
cldellow wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elsewhere, the contract notes: "Any changes to the reservation may impact the rental charges." Which is what will happen here. They'll charge you this fee, but also adjust the base rental charges to much higher rates that reflect the fleet management burden caused by one-way rentals.

When I talked to Enterprise on the phone about one-way use, they explicitly told me most places will waive the charge unless they don't have space to take the inventory. Rental car places have a lot of fixed capital costs like hotels, and renting the car at anything above a significant loss still recoups those costs. You can usually just ask for things. I've been offered upgrades pretty routinely just because they do…

Remember though, he did ask for things. They had a car, even booked it, and still wouldn't give it to him.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#132

Post by ses1984 »

p2t2p wrote: post #75
refurb wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t imagine a train leaving every 10 minutes could ever be cost effective. There just aren’t that many people who want to do that trip (8 hours?) when you could do it in 2 hours by plane.

It is not two hours. The flight time from my home town to Moscow is 50 minutes. Whole trip is about 6 hours. Get to the airport, takes about 1 hour (drive 60k or 40 miles). If you don’t have a car - even longer. You arrive in advance, security, luggage check in then boarding, then runway. It’s been around 3 hours so far. Now you fly for 50 to 70 minutes and it doesn’t include the plane driving through airport after l…

>Get to the airport, takes about 1 hour (drive 60k or 40 miles). If you don’t have a car - even longer.

Well you also have to commute to train stations.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#133

Post by [deleted] »

koolba wrote: post #108
payne92 wrote: post #54

The other hack is to “pony express” in stages: use Lyft/Uber to get part way or to a mid point, where you are confident you CAN get a rental, a train/bus, or another Lyft/Uber to keep going. This is especially useful if you can’t find a driver that will take you all the way.

I got in short but very loud argument with an airport taxi driver when I did this to get dropped off just outside the airport taxi zone. The “real” ride was 5x the price at the airport taxi rate vs taking an Uber. The louder the driver got, the more I realized how good of decision it was to get the hell out of his car.

[deleted]

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#134

Post by dredmorbius »

rayiner wrote: post #96
bobthepanda wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the crow flies, Chicago to New York is similar to Beijing to Shanghai, which is a long-ish high-speed-rail journey of 4.5 hours. If you have to fight lots of traffic to get to the airport that's not too bad. Probably not enough to drive demand for every ten minutes. The real value of such a network would be an intermediate trip. If Cleveland or Pittsburgh are both two hours away from New York and Chicago and the t…

LGA to ORD is 3 million passengers per year. Beijing to Shanghai is 7 million by air, plus 180 million by train (including intermediate stops). Total US air travel between all destinations is only 750 million per year. The ability of the Chinese to recoup their capital investment through ridership is massive compared to what you could expect in the US.

Rail passengers to Denver, CO, in 1869, numbered nil. Construction of the 100 mile Denver Pacific spur line to the transcontinental railroad route in Cheyenne not only increased that somewhat, but saw Denver's population grow from 4,700 th over 35,000 within ten years.

Induced demand is a thing.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#135

Post by dredmorbius »

tptacek wrote: post #123
gok wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I'd start with high frequency, non-high-speed rail. With no new track or stations, a lot of routes would be competitive with driving if they just ran more often and reliably.

One problem is that the rail routes themselves are incredibly expensive; they involve rights of way through valuable urban land and across multiple states. If you're going to invest billions in new passenger rail routes, you need the ridership to fund it, and if you're running the kinds of routes Amtrak does today (outside of Acela), you're not getting those riders. One reason existing tracks and routes don't run tha…

I'm starting to realise that a major war (and frequently being on the (or a) losing side) is a strong prerequisite for establishing a strong rail network.

Otherwise land values rise too high and fast to establish rights of way.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#136

Post by learnfromstory »

envy2 wrote: post #42

This is a fun story—but he should've just booked a round-trip rental car, and dropped it off in Dayton anyway. I've done this a bunch of times, and all they'll do is charge you the one-way rate and grumble a bit... Better to ask forgiveness than permission.

Once I rented a car in Seattle one way to Vancouver. Apparently there is some shitburg nobody has ever heard of called Vancouver, WA but I was going to the more famous Canadian city. The flunkie at the counter booked the domestic trip and I drove to the proper Vancouver. When I got there they tried to charge me over $8000 in fees. I think there is no practical upper bound to what they'll try to charge you for such things.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#137

Post by bobthepanda »

ses1984 wrote: post #132
p2t2p wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not two hours. The flight time from my home town to Moscow is 50 minutes. Whole trip is about 6 hours. Get to the airport, takes about 1 hour (drive 60k or 40 miles). If you don’t have a car - even longer. You arrive in advance, security, luggage check in then boarding, then runway. It’s been around 3 hours so far. Now you fly for 50 to 70 minutes and it doesn’t include the plane driving through airport after l…

>Get to the airport, takes about 1 hour (drive 60k or 40 miles). If you don’t have a car - even longer. Well you also have to commute to train stations.

In general trains stop in more central locations than airports, which usually get sited far away from people who might complain about the noise. And if you set up the system to do so, trains can stop multiple times within a metropolitan area for easier access. Tokaido Shinkansen trains call at Tokyo, Shingawa, and Shin-Yokohama; the ICE stops at Berlin Ostkreuz, Hbf and Spandau going west, or Gesundbrunnen, Hbf and Sudkreuz going south.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#138

Post by uxamanda »

Zanni wrote: post #92
ilamont wrote: post #16

I followed this as it unfolded on his Twitter account ( https://twitter.com/scalzi ). He has a way of taking some small experience or observation and turning it into a great little story or one-liner. He's written some good sci-fi, too. Worth following.

Also worth checking out: the comment from "toyko uber story" on an insane Black Car Uber ride in Japan (scroll down, it's currently 6th from the bottom).

Agreed! That story was an unexpectedly hilarious find in the comments. Direct link to that comment: https://whatever.scalzi.com/2019/07/23/my-300-mile-lyft-ride...

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#139

Post by em-bee »

koolba wrote: post #108
payne92 wrote: post #54

The other hack is to “pony express” in stages: use Lyft/Uber to get part way or to a mid point, where you are confident you CAN get a rental, a train/bus, or another Lyft/Uber to keep going. This is especially useful if you can’t find a driver that will take you all the way.

I got in short but very loud argument with an airport taxi driver when I did this to get dropped off just outside the airport taxi zone. The “real” ride was 5x the price at the airport taxi rate vs taking an Uber. The louder the driver got, the more I realized how good of decision it was to get the hell out of his car.

in my experience airport taxi drivers all hate short trips. we used to live near an airport, and taking a taxi home was always a nerve-racking moment in how the driver would take it. usually they were grumpy which made for a frustrating experience.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#140

Post by sokoloff »

ska wrote: post #84
sokoloff wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time based depreciation and registration, insurance, and property/excise tax are all fixed costs that apply whether or not the Lyft driver takes that 300 mile round trip or parks the car that day.

That argument applies to any similar business though, so while I think I get where you are coming from I don't know why you would treat Lyft specially, here.

When considering “I’m being offered $300 for a 600 mile drive; is that more profitable (and by how much) than parking the car and watching TV instead?”, you should consider only those costs that vary with usage rather than those that you’d incur anyway.

When considering “Should I buy a car to drive Lyft?”, you should consider all costs, of course.

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