31–40 of 159 posts
I'm a little surprised at the choice of "Pool" instead of more conventional terms in the sharing economy such as "UberShare" or "UberContribute." I was very disappointed that UberPool isn't a swimming-pool-as-a-service.
So I like it. I think the mentions about it triggering an association to car-pool are spot on.
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This got me thinking: why are short-term rental services so expensive? Surely the driver makes up a large chunk of the cost of a service like Uber, so renting the car alone should be much cheaper. My guess is that rental services need a considerable oversupply of vehicles to make up for the uneven nature of demand. If I'm going to use such a service, I need to be reasonably certain that I can get a car within walking…
I find that to be completely true-- the area around my office is completely void of Car2Go cars from around 4 PM later. I had to walk ~1/5 of a mile to get to the nearest one. Of course, I'm sure at 1 AM that you'd be able to find a parked car pretty close to you, provided you're not by a bunch of offices which have had the cars driven away to residential areas by people at their jobs.
Which is what, a 4 minute walk? That seems pretty minimal to me.
Sounds very similar to Hitch[0] which launched a couple of months ago in SF. It sounds very useful for long, expensive trips (e.g., cross bay, down to south bay) where the fixed cost of picking up or dropping off another passenger is a smaller factor. On an unrelated note, how is the form at the bottom supposed to update you when UberPool is in your area? Area codes are going to be inaccurate for anybody who's moved…
For a general near-real-time hailing system, limiting it to a smaller area means that even if your best match would add a relatively high distance penalty (say 50%), in absolute terms that's still tolerable (a few extra minutes). So that increases the probability of finding a match right now where the economics work out.
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ZipCar is $7-10 per hour on the low end of prices. Compared to Uber, that's extremely cheap.
ZipCar requires you to drop the car where you picked it up, right? So that $7-10/hour includes the time you spend on whatever non-driving activity you get up to at the destination.
Bicycle rentals don't work like that -- you get on a bike at one stand and leave it at the stand closest to where you want to end up. I don't know why the car model is so badly broken.
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ZipCar requires you to drop the car where you picked it up, right? So that $7-10/hour includes the time you spend on whatever non-driving activity you get up to at the destination.
Yes, as of 2012 when I could have used such a service. $10 / hour is a fine price for short-term car rental... but since I wanted to use the car to go places, as opposed to just driving around in the parking lot, it worked out to more like $50-100 per hour (of driving). Bicycle rentals don't work like that -- you get on a bike at one stand and leave it at the stand closest to where you want to end up. I don't know wh…
An hour of Divvy is surprisingly close in cost to an hour of ZipCar, which is astonishing considering how much more it must cost to operate ZipCar.
I'm a periodic Uber user and tend to use it later when public transit isn't running. This would be interesting, and if cheap enough, could be more convenient than waiting for a bus if you're in an area where they don't run frequently and it's storming, extremely hot, you don't want to wait around. I also just tried out Car2Go which costed me ~$15. The same trip from Uber, albiet at a different time of day, costs $9-1…
The same UberX trip would be $13 before taking mileage into account. If it took you 36 minutes, I assume you went at least 3 miles. So that makes the trip cost at least 17 bucks.
I've found that Car2Go is quite a bit cheaper than using either Lyft or UberX. I usually use them together though. I'll take a Car2Go to the bar, then take a rideshare home after drinking too much to drive.
What happens if you are requesting a ride and have a friend or two with you? UI could get a little complicated. And will they charge extra now if there is more than one rider?
If you are all starting and ending at the same location it is cheaper to do a single fare.
https://support.uber.com/hc/en-us/articles/201836586-Can-I-s...
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If you are all starting and ending at the same location it is cheaper to do a single fare.
Seems like you can split the fare with everyone that's riding. https://support.uber.com/hc/en-us/articles/201836586-Can-I-s...
We just use Venmo :)
There's some weird styling going on in the "Mobile Number" input box: http://i.imgur.com/bSG9eKx.png