Didn't see this as I skimmed the article but: What happens when people return? The train lets off a bunch of people at once that need rides, but will there be enough uber drivers to meet the demand?
I'd really have a general question about how well Uber (or competitors) can deal with very spiky demands. Suburban towns haven't historically had a lot of demand for taxis so one wonders how many drivers will sign up to provide transportation during a fairly narrow timeframe in the morning and the evening.
It's not that there isn't a potential pool of drivers who are fine with working a few hours a day but it's not obvious.
For the commuter rail case, where there is a lot, would you be willing to hop in your car after getting off the commuter rail and turn on uber and be a driver for one ride on your way home? Would uber allow you to be a driver with such low volume?
I work near Dulles Airport and Uber sends pings to drivers throughout northern VA that a bunch of flights are about to come in, in some cases offering a bounty if they go.
This town itself may not have a ton of Uber drivers, but they can come from anywhere in the area.
Yeah, I guess that was my question. I know they can come from other areas, but when I've taken commuter rail to the suburbs, there are always a few taxis waiting, but never enough to handle the traffic of people who need to get home, it's usually just 1-3 taxis waiting.
That said, the town is 6 square miles and they're not getting rid of the existing lot. If you're close enough to the station, why not just walk?
Aren't there a bunch of flights coming in every minute, all day at a major airport like Dulles? If the pinged them when flights were coming it'd be pinging all day.
There are a few big rushes. The morning east coast shuttles get in at about 8:30, and the evening ones at about 6. The big bunch of intercontinental flights get in around midnight.
At 6 mi^2 and trains arriving once every 30-45 minutes at rush hour, that's enough time for a fare to be picked up at the station, dropped off at home, and the driver to return to the station to repeat.
The city is about 6 square miles in area and the general layout appears to be a central hub with major routes as spokes around it to each edge.
Anyone living between the spokes can probably get to a spoke by walking 0.75 miles or less.
Just two or three continually circling vans/buses could go from the city center, down a spoke, then back via another spoke. Probably could return every 20 minutes, give or take.
Can it be done for less than the $167,000 per year this Uber plan will cost the city?
3 vans, operating 16 hours per day, would require a minimum of 7 drivers (to perform two 8-hour shifts per day, with a driver to stand-in for call-outs and vacations). Let's assume we can pay the drivers $10/hr (which is on the low end). At 2080 hours per year per driver, that gives us an annual cost of $145600. And we haven't even paid Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, or worker's comp and unemployment insurance yet!
The Uber deal sounds more cost-effective than the van plan.
Most people would not Uber for only $10 an hour, knowing that their car needs gas and depreciates.
Short term Uber can subsidize the drivers, but long term? I guess a lot of uber drivers come during the busy morning rush, but 0 come at say 1pm or 8pm when it is very slow. How would uber get people to drive on the slow times??
Yeah, assume the city is 2 by 3 miles and the station is right at center, then one'd only need to walk at most ~1.7 miles to the train station. That's like half an hour walk before and after work. Do your cardio a favor and start walking and leave the parking space for less fortunate people who are not able to walk.
Winter exists in Chicago. Never stopped me from walking a few miles. A normal healthy person should be able to walk 2-3 miles down to -10 degrees or so, which would cover 99.99% of the year. Yes babies and the old and the sick need something else, but the bulk of people commuting on these trains are 30-60 year old healthy (if not a bit overweight) individuals.
Summit is suburbia. You don't have sidewalks across the entire city, it's very hilly in places, and the train station is not centrally located. Walking and biking year round is out of the question, and that's not even accounting for people not promptly clearing snowy sidewalks before commuting hours start (usually 6am).
Sad thing, to most 'muricans, even a 2 block walk is too far.
I would gladly walk 2 miles to/from work before I consider something else. In the 2-20 mile range I would glady bike yearround, as long as they keep the snow under control on the bike paths (which for example Chicago does a pretty awesome job at).
How do we change the culture of sit butt in car and push gas pedal? Killing the environment, and it is literally killing us with obesity and inactivity.
I agree with you. but the problem is working Americans are time starved, and in most places, it is much faster to drive. Especially for working parents who may only have two hours to see their kids before they go to bed. To change the culture, you would have to reduce working hours, reduce the huge time advantage driving currently has, and/or make driving prohibitively more expensive. I would be open to all three.
And people should also eat their vegetables and floss daily. Even ignoring bad weather, the city needs to plan for transportation the way people actually behave rather than how they ought to behave.
I like the approach, but north jersey gets considerable snow in the winter. No one is walking that in heavy snow to stand outside waiting for a shuttle
At that point, you're basically adding public transit. And a lot of folks won't want to take "the bus" and potentially walk half a mile or more in all kinds of weather.
I see this as Ubers endgame- it doesn't have to beat lyft or other rideshare options, it has to outlast insolvent public transportation options and fickle taxpayers and be the biggest network such that they can get these government contracts. We are seeing more and more of these local deals as it is a superior option in quality and cost to public transportation except in certain mass transport situations.
> it is a superior option in quality and cost to public transportation except in certain mass transport situations.
In your humble opinion. It's not better in my town, it's not better environmentally than mass transit, and I don't think it's better for jobs and workers.
The plan in the article is complementary, not against public transit. It has the potential to fix the "first and last mile" problem for trains. If successful, it would greatly increase use of rail public transit.
Uber will never outlast urban public transit. Because bigger vehicles and fixed routes are simply more efficient at transporting a lot of people in dense environment.
It can easily replace inefficient minibus lines in the suburbs though, and riding your own car to real public transit (in this case, the train). That's potentially a significant market, but I doubt it's as big as the taxi market they're trying to take over.
Externalization is the key to Uber disrupting mass transit. It doesn't matter how much more efficient busses and trains are if Uber can continue to push the costs of its operations onto the environment, taxpayers, and the less wealthy who drive for the company.
(I know this article isn't about that directly, just wanted to chime in)
It's about basic geometry, not cost. You simply cannot fill the streets of San Francisco, Seattle or New York with all the people who would take the bus (not even speaking about trains), with 4 people per car max (often 1 or 2), and not expect streets to be clogged to death. It takes way less space to transport people by public transit.
> bigger vehicles and fixed routes are simply more efficient at transporting a lot of people in dense environment
Sure, for the most heavily travelled routes. Some fraction of trips—those where you're going to the same place, from the same place, at the same time as a bunch of people—fall in that category. Daily commute from a dense suburb to a metropolitan city center. Weekend trips from a dense city to a popular beach.
But for the majority of trips, a giant empty bus running several blocks away in the slightly wrong direction is far from the most optimal transport method, especially if you have a fleet of various sized driverless cars.
Centralized routes and large fixed vehicle size are generally not going to be a good thing for efficiency once we have autonomous driving.
Can't read the article at work but I'll just add this anecdote: Uber is so aggressively adding promos in my city that it's actually cheaper for me to to take a 15-20 min ride in an Uber in a suburb than using local transit.
And just two days ago, my friend took an Uber from the suburbs to downtown (25-30 min ride), which only cost him an extra two bucks compared to taking public transit (1.5 - 2 hours commute).
TLDR as the facts in the article were hard for me to divine at first glance:
- People ride the train in Summit NJ to work in NYC / elsewhere
- It's a pain to park at the train station and wastes a lot of time in the AM
- It costs $4 to park in the lot currently
- Uber will offer $2 each way rides to 100 residents within the city
- Summit will reimburse Uber for the difference between the flat fares and the true cost of a ride, which drivers will receive up front
- Summit NJ is about 6 square miles
Normally, I'm wary of Uber and it's business practices, but I am soooo ready for this. The cabs where I grew up were awful - they took forever to come and the drivers were often rude and unhelpful. I could never count on them. Plus, drop-offs and pickups at the train stations were always a nightmare.
The difference is that there's now a rating system for them, and because Uber's broken the protectionist medallion racket, even if they're rude and unhelpful, at least you can get a ride reasonably quickly, and they can't take kooky routes without being accountable. It's pretty clear that even if the driver pool includes all cab drivers that this is a major net positive for riders.
With Uber's massive political and PR operation, now I always wonder:
* Did Uber influence the politicians somehow?
* Did Uber place or pay for the article?
* How many of the anecdotal cab complaints (EDIT: And anecdotal Uber raves) in every HN Uber story are part of that PR operation (my apologies to all the legit ones)?
Yes. They influenced them by convincing them that this was a better option than a major capital expenditure on a parking lot.
* Did Uber place or pay for the article?
Almost certainly not. This is a newsworthy story. They may have given the writer an exclusive, however.
* How many of the anecdotal cab complaints (EDIT: And anecdotal Uber raves) in every HN Uber story are part of that PR operation (my apologies to all the legit ones)?
Anecdotal cab complaints are probably real, and for verification, just be a person who has had to deal with cabs.
In fairness, I don't know Uber did the things I am concerned about in this case, but I do know that they've done them in other cases.
> Anecdotal cab complaints are probably real, and for verification, just be a person who has had to deal with cabs
I am, in several towns, and am a very satisfied customer. I've almost never had any of the problems described so regularly here. That doesn't make them impossible, of course. Also, I don't think anyone would say Uber was above astroturfing on HN.
Is anyone else slightly apprehensive about Uber substituting as public transport? What if their motive is to bankrupt public transport agencies and then raise prices when people have no alternative?
I agree. It's also a risk for people living on very limited budgets; what do they do if Uber raises prices? How do they get to work? The grocery? The doctor?
Private enterprise relies on business failure and distribution of resources to those who can pay the most for them. Some things can't fail (police, fire, transportation, water, medical, etc.) and are needed by everyone regardless of income.
> What if their motive is to bankrupt public transport agencies and then raise prices when people have no alternative?
Uber prides itself, IME, on very aggressive business tactics, concerned only for profit and not, for example, its own workers, local laws, etc. I would be surprised if they did otherwise than what you say.
It sounds like the city described in the article (and others mentioned) is subsidizing Uber fares for people in the city. So, if Uber displaces public transport agencies, I suspect it'll end up being the city which gets stuck with the bill.
That said, I don't think the situation is as dire as you're describing. Getting around in smaller American cities is _already_ difficult for many people- as you mentioned, those living on very limited budgets, but also the elderly and other people that can't drive themselves around and must rely on family and friends.
So, in the end, I think it's less a matter of "replacing public transportation", and more a matter of "creating a realistic model for publicly-funded transportation in suburban and semi-rural America".
This is not to say that I'm super chuffed with Uber being the one to do it. But I can see a future where municipal governments become comfortable with the idea, which would open the door to competition, just as we've seen in major cities where there are plenty of alternatives to Uber.
No. It's cable cars that don't exist being torn out for cars all over again. Suburban/exurban mass transit is pretty much non-existent other than commuter rail (in many areas).
My adjacent city just spent something like 2 years and who knows how much money putting in a new parking garage for one of the MBTA stations that have been notorious for insufficient parking for pretty much forever. With no parking at all during the construction. Assuming the numbers and logistics worked out, something like this would have been very interesting.
* Uber is not substituting for public transport. It's replacing the "last mile" of suburban commuters driving to the local NJTransit station with a pool of drivers who can keep rolling throughout the day.
* Uber replacing a mass-transit link (especially something like a train line into NYC) is unthinkable. The links for cars between NJ and NYC are already at or beyond capacity, and the planning is right now trying to drive commuters to use public transit when possible.
This is a prototype for Uber in a suburban area where public transit isn't as robust as what you'd get in a city. Summit itself doesn't have much by way of intra-city public transit (just a few bus stops downtown and one at the train station), but is spread out enough that walking or biking isn't a viable option for most residents.
Why do I care that my mass transit is public? Once the market can solve logistics we can regulate it, but we don't need it to be public any more than we need a public shoe ministry.
The biggest pain in my daily commute is bus to train station. The time's don't mesh up and theres usually a 1 -> 1.5 hour lead time. I travel to Philadelphia, and in Pennsylvania septa had discounts via uber to several stations[1]. It's ~10$ per way to the station. It's realistically the best way for me to get there, but that's an additional 200 a month.
I think mass transit needs to be rethought. On the one hand when I ride buses in Wilmington they are primarily empty. I can totally understand why over the past several years they have raised the fairs, decreased running times, and condensed lines and stops. On the other I can't get really get around without a car.
Due to the car first mentality uber is not heavily in demand, and prices seem higher than when I was in Philadelphia. Uber has not even entered the vocabulary of alot of people around Wilmington.
So which way do you go, the bus routes are expensive and require alot of man power. Yet there's limited demand. Do you put that in a private company? I really don't trust government to vendor relations. I know they easily get overcharged. I would literally toss money at a family subscription for uber or lyft. Locking in rides at a set rate. But that would require a subsidy. I've also seen as you said, rates start small then they raise and bankrupt another party.
Excepting major thoroughfares, public transport will be replaced by self-driving car service. The economics of busses running mostly empty on centralized don't make sense when you can have a fleet of variously sized vehicles roaming around picking people up and dropping them off.
For almost all routes, the cost per mile, carbon footprint, and convenience will all be better than a bus or train.
Major thoroughfares will still want to be subway/light rail/commuter rail/bus, for traffic alleviation purposes, and because high capacity is where public transit efficiency really shines. But think of it more like internet backbone—a way to quickly and efficiently get batched traffic through bottlenecks—not as the default mode of access.
Think commuters disembarking rail cars and boarding a swarm of continuously replenished self-driving vehicles, from 2-seaters (faster) to microbuses (cheaper), on the other side of the platform. Those two modes of transport, maximum efficiency and maximum convenience, will squeeze out almost everything in between.
Without centralized routes, there is no point to government involvement for the last mile (last five?) transit system, and Uber/Google/Tesla will coalesce close to cost plus 10% or whatever.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 96.7 ms ] threadIt's not that there isn't a potential pool of drivers who are fine with working a few hours a day but it's not obvious.
This town itself may not have a ton of Uber drivers, but they can come from anywhere in the area.
That said, the town is 6 square miles and they're not getting rid of the existing lot. If you're close enough to the station, why not just walk?
Anyone living between the spokes can probably get to a spoke by walking 0.75 miles or less.
Just two or three continually circling vans/buses could go from the city center, down a spoke, then back via another spoke. Probably could return every 20 minutes, give or take.
Can it be done for less than the $167,000 per year this Uber plan will cost the city?
3 vans, operating 16 hours per day, would require a minimum of 7 drivers (to perform two 8-hour shifts per day, with a driver to stand-in for call-outs and vacations). Let's assume we can pay the drivers $10/hr (which is on the low end). At 2080 hours per year per driver, that gives us an annual cost of $145600. And we haven't even paid Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, or worker's comp and unemployment insurance yet!
The Uber deal sounds more cost-effective than the van plan.
Most people would not Uber for only $10 an hour, knowing that their car needs gas and depreciates.
Short term Uber can subsidize the drivers, but long term? I guess a lot of uber drivers come during the busy morning rush, but 0 come at say 1pm or 8pm when it is very slow. How would uber get people to drive on the slow times??
They won't. You just described the benefits of Uber's system. Their driver pool scales with demand and allows for part time work.
Many many requests, many drivers. Cool.
But 10, 5, 3 requests per hour? 0 drivers.
So I don't think you can compare a service that doesn't really work at quiet times, with a 16 hour continuous shuttle...
I would gladly walk 2 miles to/from work before I consider something else. In the 2-20 mile range I would glady bike yearround, as long as they keep the snow under control on the bike paths (which for example Chicago does a pretty awesome job at).
How do we change the culture of sit butt in car and push gas pedal? Killing the environment, and it is literally killing us with obesity and inactivity.
You can please leave out this insult and still effectively communicate your point.
Talk about insolvent...
In your humble opinion. It's not better in my town, it's not better environmentally than mass transit, and I don't think it's better for jobs and workers.
It can easily replace inefficient minibus lines in the suburbs though, and riding your own car to real public transit (in this case, the train). That's potentially a significant market, but I doubt it's as big as the taxi market they're trying to take over.
Externalization is the key to Uber disrupting mass transit. It doesn't matter how much more efficient busses and trains are if Uber can continue to push the costs of its operations onto the environment, taxpayers, and the less wealthy who drive for the company.
(I know this article isn't about that directly, just wanted to chime in)
Sure, for the most heavily travelled routes. Some fraction of trips—those where you're going to the same place, from the same place, at the same time as a bunch of people—fall in that category. Daily commute from a dense suburb to a metropolitan city center. Weekend trips from a dense city to a popular beach.
But for the majority of trips, a giant empty bus running several blocks away in the slightly wrong direction is far from the most optimal transport method, especially if you have a fleet of various sized driverless cars.
Centralized routes and large fixed vehicle size are generally not going to be a good thing for efficiency once we have autonomous driving.
And just two days ago, my friend took an Uber from the suburbs to downtown (25-30 min ride), which only cost him an extra two bucks compared to taking public transit (1.5 - 2 hours commute).
- People ride the train in Summit NJ to work in NYC / elsewhere - It's a pain to park at the train station and wastes a lot of time in the AM - It costs $4 to park in the lot currently - Uber will offer $2 each way rides to 100 residents within the city - Summit will reimburse Uber for the difference between the flat fares and the true cost of a ride, which drivers will receive up front - Summit NJ is about 6 square miles
* Did Uber influence the politicians somehow?
* Did Uber place or pay for the article?
* How many of the anecdotal cab complaints (EDIT: And anecdotal Uber raves) in every HN Uber story are part of that PR operation (my apologies to all the legit ones)?
Yes. They influenced them by convincing them that this was a better option than a major capital expenditure on a parking lot.
* Did Uber place or pay for the article?
Almost certainly not. This is a newsworthy story. They may have given the writer an exclusive, however.
* How many of the anecdotal cab complaints (EDIT: And anecdotal Uber raves) in every HN Uber story are part of that PR operation (my apologies to all the legit ones)?
Anecdotal cab complaints are probably real, and for verification, just be a person who has had to deal with cabs.
In fairness, I don't know Uber did the things I am concerned about in this case, but I do know that they've done them in other cases.
> Anecdotal cab complaints are probably real, and for verification, just be a person who has had to deal with cabs
I am, in several towns, and am a very satisfied customer. I've almost never had any of the problems described so regularly here. That doesn't make them impossible, of course. Also, I don't think anyone would say Uber was above astroturfing on HN.
Private enterprise relies on business failure and distribution of resources to those who can pay the most for them. Some things can't fail (police, fire, transportation, water, medical, etc.) and are needed by everyone regardless of income.
> What if their motive is to bankrupt public transport agencies and then raise prices when people have no alternative?
Uber prides itself, IME, on very aggressive business tactics, concerned only for profit and not, for example, its own workers, local laws, etc. I would be surprised if they did otherwise than what you say.
That said, I don't think the situation is as dire as you're describing. Getting around in smaller American cities is _already_ difficult for many people- as you mentioned, those living on very limited budgets, but also the elderly and other people that can't drive themselves around and must rely on family and friends.
So, in the end, I think it's less a matter of "replacing public transportation", and more a matter of "creating a realistic model for publicly-funded transportation in suburban and semi-rural America".
This is not to say that I'm super chuffed with Uber being the one to do it. But I can see a future where municipal governments become comfortable with the idea, which would open the door to competition, just as we've seen in major cities where there are plenty of alternatives to Uber.
My adjacent city just spent something like 2 years and who knows how much money putting in a new parking garage for one of the MBTA stations that have been notorious for insufficient parking for pretty much forever. With no parking at all during the construction. Assuming the numbers and logistics worked out, something like this would have been very interesting.
I'd be much less concerned if governing bodies created a non-profit that built and ran the technical infrastructure for ridesharing.
* Uber is not substituting for public transport. It's replacing the "last mile" of suburban commuters driving to the local NJTransit station with a pool of drivers who can keep rolling throughout the day.
* Uber replacing a mass-transit link (especially something like a train line into NYC) is unthinkable. The links for cars between NJ and NYC are already at or beyond capacity, and the planning is right now trying to drive commuters to use public transit when possible.
Anyway, the article mentions this is maybe ten to a hundred rides a day. This is either a PR thing or a prototype; time will tell.
I think mass transit needs to be rethought. On the one hand when I ride buses in Wilmington they are primarily empty. I can totally understand why over the past several years they have raised the fairs, decreased running times, and condensed lines and stops. On the other I can't get really get around without a car.
Due to the car first mentality uber is not heavily in demand, and prices seem higher than when I was in Philadelphia. Uber has not even entered the vocabulary of alot of people around Wilmington.
So which way do you go, the bus routes are expensive and require alot of man power. Yet there's limited demand. Do you put that in a private company? I really don't trust government to vendor relations. I know they easily get overcharged. I would literally toss money at a family subscription for uber or lyft. Locking in rides at a set rate. But that would require a subsidy. I've also seen as you said, rates start small then they raise and bankrupt another party.
[1] http://www.septa.org/media/releases/2016/05-25-16a.htm
For almost all routes, the cost per mile, carbon footprint, and convenience will all be better than a bus or train.
Major thoroughfares will still want to be subway/light rail/commuter rail/bus, for traffic alleviation purposes, and because high capacity is where public transit efficiency really shines. But think of it more like internet backbone—a way to quickly and efficiently get batched traffic through bottlenecks—not as the default mode of access.
Think commuters disembarking rail cars and boarding a swarm of continuously replenished self-driving vehicles, from 2-seaters (faster) to microbuses (cheaper), on the other side of the platform. Those two modes of transport, maximum efficiency and maximum convenience, will squeeze out almost everything in between.
Without centralized routes, there is no point to government involvement for the last mile (last five?) transit system, and Uber/Google/Tesla will coalesce close to cost plus 10% or whatever.