The best source they could find for the article is someone who spent $1000 for a private driver for two days...
I visit Vancouver twice a year to spend time with family. Downtown core is walkable. SkyTrain and express buses are often significantly faster than driving when you factor in parking and traffic...
An extensive and affordable bike share system would be a great addition but the same forces (incumbent lobbying) plus strict helmet laws seem to be roadblocks...
I don't understand the point of anecdotes like this. Simply because we have reasonable transit (daytime hours only) and bike lines (if you have bike) that we don't need any more options? That's not much of an argument. I'm not biking home at 2:00am in December from a Christmas party.
Spotty public transit? Vancouver has one of the best public transportation systems in North America. Honestly, Vancouverites aren't at all bothered by the fact that Uber doesn't exist out there.
The author clearly has never been to other cities in Canada such as Toronto and/or Ottawa where commute is a nightmare.
I'm a Vancouver resident and the transit is great. The Skytrain is spotty in its coverage. No East/West travel, which I believe is what they're referring to.
Also after using Uber in Toronto, I am super jealous and want it here.
As a Vancouverite, I'm extremely bothered by it. The taxi situation in Vancouver is beyond pathetic -- it's difficult to get one even in off-peak times and the service is terrible. I've used Uber in other cities and it's fantastic; I've signed every petition there is to try and bring it here.
Transit in Vancouver is pretty good but it won't help you late at night. I've fully given up ever trying to get home after a Christmas party (I get a hotel room now and transit in the morning).
You're getting a lot of replies saying "it bugs me", so I guess I'll counter-balance them by stating that, while I was working there, nobody used cabs regularly enough for it to matter, and when we did, it was no issue.
Broad age range, from 18 year-old coop interns to 35 year old parents and 50 year old senior execs.
Parent is just missing the point of Uber. I've spent a fair amount of time in Vancouver, always Downtown. My use case for Uber was going across town at 10 or 11pm after hanging out after work (e.g. Gastown to West End). SkyTrain is no help and a bus is 1) probably not direct; 2) not immediately available.
An Uber would be there in 4 minutes and take me door-to-door.
I usually just walked in these situations. (It's about a 25-minute walk.)
> Saks has used Uber in more than 60 cities; in Vancouver he paid a private driver $1,000 to ferry him around.
Then he is an utter idiot. How many of those 60 cities do you suppose had perfectly workable public transit systems he could have used? I'd bet quite a few of them.
Uber is great because it allows you to be lazy. Turn up in a city you've never been to, hit a button, go. That doesn't mean they should have carte blanche to do whatever they want, wherever they want.
When I'm in Vancouver I either use the (pretty good) public transport options, or an app I found to reserve a taxi, which works just fine. Or (gasp) walk around the beautiful city.
Vancouver has called Uber exactly what it is: a limousine service. There is no ifs, ands, or buts. The fact that they are able to masquerade in other regions as they please because of the perceived benefit to consumers does not negate the fact of what they really are.
This co-opting of the 'sharing economy' to mean unregulated subcontractors is ridiculous. It removes the risk from Uber as a company and places it on the clients and the drivers. Vancouver (and BC) has determined this a risk to great.
If Uber wants to operate in this jurisdiction, they must play by the rules of that jurisdiction. If they refuse, then so be it. They certainly aren't losing money because of it, just losing OUT on it.
They are limousine service because the law defines them that way, it's circular logic. And the regulations on limousines exist to keep the taxi monopoly running.
These regulations are not commandments from God, they can be changed. And it's not immoral to try and change them. The current rules are terrible for consumers.
I agree. These laws are not set in stone. Times change, and so the regulations need to change. The government must do what is good for the people, and in this case, it may be letting Uber run (or may be not).
"This zoning is residential because the law defines it that way" is only "circular" if you dismiss all the history that led to that classification in the first place.
The idea that literally all zoning and transport regulation came as a result of the hotel/taxi lobby is ridiculous.
The article sounds one-sided in favor of Uber, but as a tourist who visited the place recently, it would have been much easier for me if Uber/Lyft operated.
The public transit may be nice, but as a tourist, I didn't bother with the bus timings and such: it was way easier to get a cab. Under such circumstances, Uber/Lyft may have made it much easier, especially since, at times we felt flagging down a cab was impossible.
If you're not used to public transport in your home city, you probably wouldn't know how to use it in a different city. For example, you can send a text to any bus-stop, and immediately get a list of upcoming bus times. They were also fully integrated to Map apps.
This is the sorest spot of "Uber culture" for me: wealthy and educated people who would put skills and pressure into keeping public transit sharp and usable for themselves (and therefore everybody else), instead "opt out" for their own private needs and leave public transit to rot.
It's not the job of wealthy and educated people to use their skills to fix public transit, any more than it's my job as a private citizen on the East Coast to reform the police department in LA (take your pick which "LA"). That job belongs to the local government. If the local government is incompetent at running public transit in an efficient manner so that both locals and visitors can easily use it to get around, that's the fault of the local government. The "wealthy and educated" people you refer to are not government officials, and have no business telling the government what to do (they probably aren't even constituents). So they're doing the only thing they can: making a private service that solves a real problem and provides a real solution for many, many people.
If local governments would like to learn from this and come up with their own solutions, perhaps even hiring some of these smart people to help them, that'd be great. But I don't see them doing any of that.
Public transportation is fine in Vancouver, but getting a taxi is still as bad as ever. Many taxis simply choose not to show up, claim they have arrived when they have not, and dispatch is mostly indifferent.
The Vancouver taxi app suffers from the same problems. No rating system, so your driver can just abandon you or take a weird route.
These are the reasons Uber became so popular in other cities. If you are a businessperson in Vancouver with an urgent need to get somewhere you basically need a private driver.
Car2go and Evo car sharing services are good, but in competitively high demand. (I have found myself literally racing others on foot for the available ones.) Locals are desperate for driving solutions that don't involve long-term parking. And that still leaves visitors out of luck.
I got a popup with a countdown forcing me to leave it open for at least 5 seconds before I could close the popup, with the following text:
> We noticed that you're using an ad blocker, which may adversely affect the performance and content on Bloomberg.com. For the best experience, please whitelist the site.
I've stated before[1] here how I feel about anti-adblock popups. If you don't want me to view your content because I refuse to view ads, I'll respect your wishes and move on.
However, I don't like being lied to.
Sure, in an indirect economic sense, viewing Bloomberg's content without viewing ads will use their server cycles without providing them income, which in the long run could cause them to run low on funds and have to cut spending on servers, which could adversely affect the performance and content on the site, if Bloomberg continues to choose to operate on this business model. So technically yes, going on the website with an ad blocker is one factor (of many, and not the primary factor) which could hurt site performance and content.
But the wording here is very ambiguous. Nontechnical users reading this text would likely believe from reading this that there is some technical reason that ad blockers directly slow down website performance and content. And this is not the case; the direct impact of ad blockers is to improve the performance of websites and improve the viewing of content. Unless we are to believe that Bloomberg is technically ignorant, this ambiguity is intended to deceive.
I'll add this to the list of unethical behaviors encouraged by advertising.
Cab service is bad inside Vancouver and utterly miserable outside Vancouver proper. If you are in the North shore, Burnaby, Tri-cities or further, you pretty much have to book a cab well in advance and then call in to remind them, and even then you may be better off just taking transit. Good luck getting anywhere in a reasonable amount of time with out a car.
Did you try taking public transit at 2AM? In many cities, the public transit shuts down at some time in the evening, forcing people to use cabs (or Uber). It's great if a city has decent public transit, but there's a reason why other services have a role: some people are in a big hurry, others are caught out at a time when there's no public transit available. There's also plenty of cases where the public transit option just isn't very good for a particular route (such as, in the NYC area, try going from Jersey City to Staten Island on public transit).
While I disagree with the idea that Uber should have to charge $75/ride as a limousine service, it's honestly refreshing to see a place that doesn't let them flout regulation.
No, it's really not. First off, it's not unique: there's a bunch of places where they're outright banned or prevented from operating, such as Austin. Second, forcing them to price rides at $75 a ride is just a tactic to drive them out of business altogether, without the government doing anything to actually make the situation better for its citizens.
What enlightened local governments would do is figure out how to enact some sensible regulations on these new Uber-like services, and then let them set their own prices and compete fairly. Sensible regulations would have to do with employee treatment, such as the whole controversy about employees being "contractors" (which is a hard problem: many of them like working part-time, and even work for multiple services simultaneously, taking calls from one service or the other), and the controversy about how to deal with the auto insurance (this one's easier: they could simply require Uber to self-insure while a driver is on a call, but there's still an issue about when drivers are between calls). But I don't see any attempts by cities to do anything like this; they only want to prop up the existing taxi cartels, and do a terrible job with public transit.
> forcing them to price rides at $75 a ride is just a tactic to drive them out of business altogether, without the government doing anything to actually make the situation better for its citizens
They were classified as limos. I said I disagree with that. It's not some great conspiracy to target Uber, it's an application of the law. Would you rather they get lumped in with Taxi's and forced to follow all those regs?
> What enlightened local governments would do is figure out how to enact some sensible regulations on these new Uber-like services, and then let them set their own prices and compete fairly.
I agree. I support any efforts to bring in law changes to let Uber operate.
I don't support letting them just jump into the market and do what they want.
>They were classified as limos. I said I disagree with that. It's not some great conspiracy to target Uber, it's an application of the law. Would you rather they get lumped in with Taxi's and forced to follow all those regs?
No, I'd rather the local governments get their heads out of their asses and enact some sensible regulation instead of trying to kill the golden goose that's finally giving people a service that actually works well and that they like to use, unlike the taxis, and at a price that's affordable, unlike limos. Uber is a great thing, but it's in uncharted territory regulation-wise and does need some regulation to make sure that employees (yes, that's what they are when they work for you) are treated fairly, that issues about insurance are known and consistent, etc. I don't see anyone attempting to do this at all.
>I don't support letting them just jump into the market and do what they want.
What's your alternative? The problem is that governments actively refuse to govern properly, and instead work to protect incumbents. If Uber waited around for good regulations to be enacted, they'd be waiting decades, if it got done at all (in reality, it wouldn't). The only way to force governments to act is to do what they've done. As the old saying goes, "it's better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission". There's a reason this saying came about: if you ask permission, most likely you'll be told "no", because people (especially organizations, and most especially governments) hate change. If you go and do it anyway, then the other parties just have to deal with it and are forced to work with you.
Pressure governing bodies to bring in regulation to allow you to operate legally.
Uber isn't some small business fighting against an unfair market. It's a multi-billion dollar multinational corporation that deliberately flouts regulation to attempt to gain a foothold and then strongarm their way to a favorable outcome under threat of pulling service and pissing off voters.
Uber only became a multi-billion dollar multinational corporation by deliberately flouting regulation. They never would have gotten that way if they had followed all the existing taxi regulations instead of lawyering up and fighting it. Disruptive companies never succeed by playing by the rules the incumbents set.
I'm really curious how you think a company would amass billions of dollars without actually being in business first, providing a service, having customers, and gaining revenue. Companies don't just start out as multi-billion dollar multinational corporations.
I don't understand the apprehension to using public transportation, especially in a city that has a genuinely good system. If the issue is time, fair enough, Uber could be better, but with good enough planning you can get almost anywhere with buses, the Skytrain, and just walking. If you have an absolutely urgent need to get somewhere, I'd argue that you didn't plan well or you can hire a driver for the day, because even with Uber unless you're in a city that is at a high saturation level you're still gonna wait 5-10+ minutes for the Uber to arrive.
Also:
> "It's the only city in the world that I need to hire a driver"
He's never been to Seoul, one of the largest cities in the world, which also has effectively no Uber presence...
> I don't understand the apprehension to using public transportation
I use public transportation twice a day every weekday but that doesn't mean I wouldn't also, occasionally, need to have need of Uber. They serve different needs, is that so hard to understand?
> If you have an absolutely urgent need to get somewhere, I'd argue that you didn't plan well
If only there was a service that existed to help you get somewhere if something goes terribly wrong with your plans! Somebody should turn that into a business and make money.
> They serve different needs, is that so hard to understand?
Yes, because they serve the same need -- to get you from one place to another. They have different uses, sure, one being for something time sensitive and one for something potentially not, but they do not serve different needs. It's not fair to conflate need with want, because while humans generally need to get from one point to another, they don't need to use Uber. There are other options.
> Somebody should turn that into a business and make money.
That business model exists already, it's called a taxicab/livery service.
> Yes, because they serve the same need -- to get you from one place to another.
By that argument, you don't need airplanes either because we have greyhound. They don't serve the same need, they serve similar needs.
> They don't need to use Uber. There are other options.
So what? We don't need transit either, everybody could just take 2-4 hours to walk to work. What's the difference? I'm taking your poor argument and extending to the absurd conclusions that result from it. Why must we have fewer poorer options when we could have more better options? Is that not progress?
> That business model exists already, it's called a taxicab/livery service.
Unfortunately, in Vancouver, that service is a monopoly that has too few vehicles to serve the population. It has poor customer service that more often than not fails to deliver. If this were a free market environment, competition would come in and solve the problem but it is not.
Uber could be a better business model, could it not?
Again, from walking to buses to airplanes, they serve the same need, to get you from one point to another. How those methods do it is independent of their purpose, even if one is demonstrably better at serving the need. Arguably the only major difference in need is that it's not physically possible to get to some places with some methods of transportation, e.g. you cannot get from San Francisco to England using a bus.
I'm also not saying that there must be fewer options, and I'm saying there are other options, not one single option (e.g. walking). I'm saying that it's not necessary for Uber to exist because other options currently exist that fill the exact same niche, even if those other options are potentially not as efficient.
> In May Daniel Saks, who runs a San Francisco cloud-services startup called App Direct, flew in for a two-day business trip. Saks has used Uber in more than 60 cities; in Vancouver he paid a private driver $1,000 to ferry him around.
He could have rented a car for around $50/day for a compact. Want something more flashy? Mustang Convertible for around $80/day.
40 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 26.0 ms ] threadAlthough, the note the article ends in, it's pretty clear that it's an ad.
Also after using Uber in Toronto, I am super jealous and want it here.
Transit in Vancouver is pretty good but it won't help you late at night. I've fully given up ever trying to get home after a Christmas party (I get a hotel room now and transit in the morning).
Broad age range, from 18 year-old coop interns to 35 year old parents and 50 year old senior execs.
An Uber would be there in 4 minutes and take me door-to-door.
I usually just walked in these situations. (It's about a 25-minute walk.)
Then he is an utter idiot. How many of those 60 cities do you suppose had perfectly workable public transit systems he could have used? I'd bet quite a few of them.
Uber is great because it allows you to be lazy. Turn up in a city you've never been to, hit a button, go. That doesn't mean they should have carte blanche to do whatever they want, wherever they want.
When I'm in Vancouver I either use the (pretty good) public transport options, or an app I found to reserve a taxi, which works just fine. Or (gasp) walk around the beautiful city.
This co-opting of the 'sharing economy' to mean unregulated subcontractors is ridiculous. It removes the risk from Uber as a company and places it on the clients and the drivers. Vancouver (and BC) has determined this a risk to great.
If Uber wants to operate in this jurisdiction, they must play by the rules of that jurisdiction. If they refuse, then so be it. They certainly aren't losing money because of it, just losing OUT on it.
These regulations are not commandments from God, they can be changed. And it's not immoral to try and change them. The current rules are terrible for consumers.
The idea that literally all zoning and transport regulation came as a result of the hotel/taxi lobby is ridiculous.
The public transit may be nice, but as a tourist, I didn't bother with the bus timings and such: it was way easier to get a cab. Under such circumstances, Uber/Lyft may have made it much easier, especially since, at times we felt flagging down a cab was impossible.
This is the sorest spot of "Uber culture" for me: wealthy and educated people who would put skills and pressure into keeping public transit sharp and usable for themselves (and therefore everybody else), instead "opt out" for their own private needs and leave public transit to rot.
If local governments would like to learn from this and come up with their own solutions, perhaps even hiring some of these smart people to help them, that'd be great. But I don't see them doing any of that.
The Vancouver taxi app suffers from the same problems. No rating system, so your driver can just abandon you or take a weird route.
These are the reasons Uber became so popular in other cities. If you are a businessperson in Vancouver with an urgent need to get somewhere you basically need a private driver.
Car2go and Evo car sharing services are good, but in competitively high demand. (I have found myself literally racing others on foot for the available ones.) Locals are desperate for driving solutions that don't involve long-term parking. And that still leaves visitors out of luck.
> We noticed that you're using an ad blocker, which may adversely affect the performance and content on Bloomberg.com. For the best experience, please whitelist the site.
I've stated before[1] here how I feel about anti-adblock popups. If you don't want me to view your content because I refuse to view ads, I'll respect your wishes and move on.
However, I don't like being lied to.
Sure, in an indirect economic sense, viewing Bloomberg's content without viewing ads will use their server cycles without providing them income, which in the long run could cause them to run low on funds and have to cut spending on servers, which could adversely affect the performance and content on the site, if Bloomberg continues to choose to operate on this business model. So technically yes, going on the website with an ad blocker is one factor (of many, and not the primary factor) which could hurt site performance and content.
But the wording here is very ambiguous. Nontechnical users reading this text would likely believe from reading this that there is some technical reason that ad blockers directly slow down website performance and content. And this is not the case; the direct impact of ad blockers is to improve the performance of websites and improve the viewing of content. Unless we are to believe that Bloomberg is technically ignorant, this ambiguity is intended to deceive.
I'll add this to the list of unethical behaviors encouraged by advertising.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11901684
What?
Since when?
Are they going to have big tech companies paying big tech company?
Is this just based on the outrageous housing prices?
> With spotty public transportation and a dearth of taxis, Canada's third-largest city seemed built for ride-sharing
Never had a problem with transit in vancouver. Taxis are stupidly expensive, but skytrain + a bus is usually not too bad.
What enlightened local governments would do is figure out how to enact some sensible regulations on these new Uber-like services, and then let them set their own prices and compete fairly. Sensible regulations would have to do with employee treatment, such as the whole controversy about employees being "contractors" (which is a hard problem: many of them like working part-time, and even work for multiple services simultaneously, taking calls from one service or the other), and the controversy about how to deal with the auto insurance (this one's easier: they could simply require Uber to self-insure while a driver is on a call, but there's still an issue about when drivers are between calls). But I don't see any attempts by cities to do anything like this; they only want to prop up the existing taxi cartels, and do a terrible job with public transit.
Yes, it really is.
> forcing them to price rides at $75 a ride is just a tactic to drive them out of business altogether, without the government doing anything to actually make the situation better for its citizens
They were classified as limos. I said I disagree with that. It's not some great conspiracy to target Uber, it's an application of the law. Would you rather they get lumped in with Taxi's and forced to follow all those regs?
> What enlightened local governments would do is figure out how to enact some sensible regulations on these new Uber-like services, and then let them set their own prices and compete fairly.
I agree. I support any efforts to bring in law changes to let Uber operate.
I don't support letting them just jump into the market and do what they want.
No, I'd rather the local governments get their heads out of their asses and enact some sensible regulation instead of trying to kill the golden goose that's finally giving people a service that actually works well and that they like to use, unlike the taxis, and at a price that's affordable, unlike limos. Uber is a great thing, but it's in uncharted territory regulation-wise and does need some regulation to make sure that employees (yes, that's what they are when they work for you) are treated fairly, that issues about insurance are known and consistent, etc. I don't see anyone attempting to do this at all.
>I don't support letting them just jump into the market and do what they want.
What's your alternative? The problem is that governments actively refuse to govern properly, and instead work to protect incumbents. If Uber waited around for good regulations to be enacted, they'd be waiting decades, if it got done at all (in reality, it wouldn't). The only way to force governments to act is to do what they've done. As the old saying goes, "it's better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission". There's a reason this saying came about: if you ask permission, most likely you'll be told "no", because people (especially organizations, and most especially governments) hate change. If you go and do it anyway, then the other parties just have to deal with it and are forced to work with you.
Pressure governing bodies to bring in regulation to allow you to operate legally.
Uber isn't some small business fighting against an unfair market. It's a multi-billion dollar multinational corporation that deliberately flouts regulation to attempt to gain a foothold and then strongarm their way to a favorable outcome under threat of pulling service and pissing off voters.
I'm really curious how you think a company would amass billions of dollars without actually being in business first, providing a service, having customers, and gaining revenue. Companies don't just start out as multi-billion dollar multinational corporations.
Also: > "It's the only city in the world that I need to hire a driver"
He's never been to Seoul, one of the largest cities in the world, which also has effectively no Uber presence...
I use public transportation twice a day every weekday but that doesn't mean I wouldn't also, occasionally, need to have need of Uber. They serve different needs, is that so hard to understand?
> If you have an absolutely urgent need to get somewhere, I'd argue that you didn't plan well
If only there was a service that existed to help you get somewhere if something goes terribly wrong with your plans! Somebody should turn that into a business and make money.
Yes, because they serve the same need -- to get you from one place to another. They have different uses, sure, one being for something time sensitive and one for something potentially not, but they do not serve different needs. It's not fair to conflate need with want, because while humans generally need to get from one point to another, they don't need to use Uber. There are other options.
> Somebody should turn that into a business and make money.
That business model exists already, it's called a taxicab/livery service.
By that argument, you don't need airplanes either because we have greyhound. They don't serve the same need, they serve similar needs.
> They don't need to use Uber. There are other options.
So what? We don't need transit either, everybody could just take 2-4 hours to walk to work. What's the difference? I'm taking your poor argument and extending to the absurd conclusions that result from it. Why must we have fewer poorer options when we could have more better options? Is that not progress?
> That business model exists already, it's called a taxicab/livery service.
Unfortunately, in Vancouver, that service is a monopoly that has too few vehicles to serve the population. It has poor customer service that more often than not fails to deliver. If this were a free market environment, competition would come in and solve the problem but it is not.
Uber could be a better business model, could it not?
I'm also not saying that there must be fewer options, and I'm saying there are other options, not one single option (e.g. walking). I'm saying that it's not necessary for Uber to exist because other options currently exist that fill the exact same niche, even if those other options are potentially not as efficient.
In theory, we could replace restaurants and kitchens with Soylent. I wouldn't want to do that, because food tastes good and I like having that option.
On the list of things that are useful, Uber is very high.
He could have rented a car for around $50/day for a compact. Want something more flashy? Mustang Convertible for around $80/day.