Here’s a little update on my thought stylings regarding Uber, Lyft, and ultimately self driving cars. A neighbor needed help on a work project this morning so we headed off to his office. There was a momentary debate about the relative merits of taking the bus, biking, or getting an Uber. I was inclined to ride my bike. But my neighbor shrugged, whipped out his cell phone, and in thirty seconds an Uber rolled up. C’est magique!
Here are two points I think are worth pondering. First, public transit only works in places where there’s broad middle class buy in. London, New York, Boston, Toronto, San Francisco… these are transit towns where everyone uses trains, buses, and streetcars on a daily basis. If a significant chunk of the middle class isn’t actively using public transit in any given location it’s almost always pathetic. Auto dependent landscapes are where the unfortunates of society can be seen on the side of the road. They wait for long periods of time for a bus that may or may not ever appear. Whatever. I mean… really. These people don’t matter. Who cares? Transit is a waste of taxpayer money. Duh.
Uber fills a peculiar niche. It’s better than waiting for a bus. But it’s more expensive. Middle class people can hop an Uber without thinking about it much. People lower down on the food chain typically can’t. If you live in a place that doesn’t yet have great transit Uber just made it a whole lot more difficult to get started.
Here’s something else to mull over. Whenever I find myself in an Uber, Lyft, or taxi I ask the driver where they live and what it’s like driving people around. Today the driver confirmed what a lot of drivers say. He lives in a suburban part of Oakland near San Leandro and commutes in to San Francisco to take fares from 4 AM to 10 AM (the most lucrative hours) and then heads back home when he’s done for the day. He said he can make more money in the city since Uber structures fares differently for different locations based on supply and demand. San Francisco pays better than the suburbs. There’s also more volume. In the city there’s a continuous churn of passengers. The numbers just aren’t as good elsewhere.
Car services like Uber and Lyft work best in places where there’s already a robust pedestrian culture and where a large percentage of the middle class population doesn’t necessarily own a car. The suburbs? Not so much.
By the way, we walked home from the office since it was such a beautiful day.
Uber works everywhere, but don’t expect the driver to earn a lot if he just uses it to drive around a small town.
Uber is not really meant for small town where its comparatively easy to walk or use bicycle to reach most of the places. Such places don’t really use taxi also. Uber is more for big cities where you struggle to find a parking spot.
Uber is trying to make people get ride of their cars, trying to make travelling on shared ride cheaper than owning a car. That’s the only way people will actually prefer Uber over a personal car.
It should always be kept as an option and not the only way to travel around your city.
Uber and Lyft are just an alternative to the sclerotic urban taxi business. Originally, taxi drivers sold rides to passengers. Then taxi companies sold shifts to drivers who then sold rides to passengers in hopes of earning enough to pay for the shift and to live on. Uber and Lyft brought back the driver selling rides to passengers by selling a dispatch service to the drivers. Of course, Uber and Lyft have a fair bit of power, so I’m hoping the drivers organize and push back as part of keeping the local government from shutting down such services.
I live in a town of 20,000 in a rural county, and we have some bus service, but most people need to own a car. There are a few taxis available, but there is not enough ride density for ride on demand like Uber or Lyft. It would be nice of it could all be done with bicycles and short walks, but some people need taxis. Even relatively poor people use them to shop at the bigger stores and haul stuff home. Sometimes they are needed for medical appointments. A lot of these trips could be scheduled, so there is probably a niche for a small city or suburban dispatch service, but it wouldn’t be Uber or Lyft.
When I was a kid in Glendale CA the rich old ladies up in the Verdugo Hills area would send a taxi to pick up their groceries or whatever and bring the stuff to them. And this was back in the 1940s and 50s. so the concept isn’t really new.
Uber and Lyft are good coping mechanisms for the unfortunate way we have built our neighborhoods and cities. Living in a place where a walk is interesting and useful seems like a real luxury when you encounter place after place that is designed primarily for cars. Considering the painful and jerky process of transition from culture and habits of the automotive model, Uber and Lyft provide a high grade brand of methadone.
Nail on the head. Uber is a minor (software) update on the taxi & taxis don’t work in suburbs. And autonomous vehicles are still cars. Maybe they’re cheaper, more efficient and/or can reduce congestion (I’m not convinced on those counts. I doubt Google is out to lose money.)
But who cares? It’s all so much nibbling at the edges of the real problem, which is our strange self-inflicted dependence on automobiles and the associated subsidy required for our continued “freedom.”