But their lines of business have inherently low barriers to entry and inherent economic disincentives to artificially keep supply as high as these services do in outlying regions.
The minute they either pay drivers less, charge riders more, or reduce supply, it’s an immediate opportunity for another entrant. Diversifying into e-bikes won’t change that. It’s just an inherent property of the entire concept of a regional taxi service.
Self-driving cars won’t change anything either, as they will just be yet another commodity device that all those would-be entrants can lease and use all the same. The extreme sensitivity to price competition would remain.
The real reason for these auxiliary transportation acquisitions by Lyft or Uber and all the fluff about being “the Amazon of transportation” is simple: they don’t have anything close to a profitable business model. It’s wholly reliant on keeping ride supply artificially high in outlying areas and prices artificially low, through VC subsidy.
In the meantime, they need splashy new stories to tell to keep the hype train going. First it was going to be Uber Eats and other gig economy extensions. Not profitable either? OK, let’s do something with bikes or city travel guides.
“Ridesharing isn’t a profitable business” - this isn’t true. Uber and Lyft both have many cities that have positive unit economics. IIRC the North American market as a whole is profitable for both companies. Both companies are losing money because they are plowing into more and more growth (a la amzn), not because the business is bunk.
All available data so far has not shown what you claim, except I believe for the borough of Manhattan (not even all of NYC), and even that is questionable because of all the widely reported accounting shenanigans Uber has pulled with including full prices in their revenue numbers instead of subtracting out large fare discounts or government fares, etc., from top line revenue.
But regardless, nobody would question if a taxi operation is profitable in a small region with correctly calibrated ride supply in outlying areas.
Even if a single company banded together a few such profitable regions around the world, it wouldn’t be surprising.
However, it would be surprising if you claimed that company had a valuation of tens of billions of dollars while operating on annual losses of ~7 billion dollars.
At this point, with a sufficient fortune, the simplest, most drastic thing would be to buy all new infrastructure, hire 10,000 workers, and install it all over a couple months. The current system includes just over 6,000 trains, on 36 lines, traveling through 472 stations, on 245 miles of route track (not counting the other 597 miles of track), though the upgrade only requires a small percentage of those. A total shutdown would interrupt over 135 Million rides per month.
I'm sure it would be great until they captured the market then raised prices and started sharing your data with 3rd parties as an additional way to monetize.
Buys is the most suspect word in that. Seems more likely the kind of government that would do that is more the type to seize the company. I'm skeptical, like you, that this would end positively.
>started sharing your data with 3rd parties as an additional way to monetize.
Germany's national broadcaster Deutsche Welle produced an excellent documentary looking at the exact same scenario you described. [0]
It looked into the possibility of making short-haul transportation (focusing primarily on Hyperloop) virtually free with just one caveat: a precondition that users share all their private data that advertisers might find valuable -- free ride in exchange for ad-targetable data -- scary and intriguing at the same time.
Of course not, but the responsible part is what’s missing. Advertisers aren’t just showing you a product, they are trying to convince you to do what they want and they’re more than willing to exploit psychology and circumstances to get you to do it. Sometimes what they want you to do is good for you too, often it is not.
> Am I the only one who wouldn't mind a responsible way for people to target me with things I don't know about which I might be interested in?
Targeting is about maximizing profits for the advertisers, it's not about maximizing value to you. If they can use targeting to take value from you in order to give it to themselves, they will. For instance, you could be bombarded with targeted ads for product A when you'd really be happier with product B. You can contrive scenarios where ad targeting is a win-win, but those scenarios are misleading because they go against the underlying incentives.
I wouldn't mind a neutral, personalized product recommendation engine, but that's not what ad targeting is.
I want to add that I've gotten Facebook ads to attend free events before that have had very positive impacts on my life which found me through targeted advertising. While yes you are right most of the time, targeting still can provide positive outcomes.
People often miss the point on why tracking is dangerous, the two comments below included.
The point isn't if the companies behave responsibly or not. Google for example has behaved responsibly with user data, exemplary in fact and I'm sure they'll continue to do so. Yet companies like Google are and will continue to be a danger for everything you know and love.
It's not how you use the data that's problematic, although companies like Facebook should suffer for their blunders, but rather that the data exists in the first place.
Are you part of a minority? Do you have some weird sexual preference or an affair? Are you a woman or gay? Are your religious views mainstream? Have you ever traveled to an Arab country or to Israel? All of these, in the right context, can put your life at risk. It's all an issue of place and timing.
You can also imagine more benign usage, like insurance companies raising their rates or banks calculating your credit score based on where you travel or your movie preferences. Heck, that's already happening.
Yes, many companies can behave responsibly. They can do so today, but what happens tomorrow, or how about in 10 years from now? What happens when those companies are being bought by bigger, less responsible ones. It happened before and it will keep happening ;-)
Information not vetted by the user is often pretty inaccurate even with the best of intentions. If the user is allowed to vet it obviously it wont contain anything bad about the user including info people may ultimately desire to have.
All the information collected in service of figuring out what to advertise to you will ultimately be used for all sorts of things many of which could be to your disadvantage.
In the end you wont even know why you were denied that car loan, that job, that place to live, why you weren't deemed credible by the cops or why you were sentenced to the maximum instead of offered probation. The oracle just told the car company, the employer, the landlord, the cops, and the prosecutor what to do at different junctures based decisions that not even the people running the computer can fully explain.
The process was very controversial at the time, and still is, and its success is hotly debated – with the claimed benefits including a reduced cost to the taxpayer, lower fares, improved customer service, and more investment. Despite opposition from the Labour Party, who gained power in 1997 under Tony Blair, the process has never been reversed wholesale by any later government, and the system remains largely unaltered. A significant change came in 2001 with the collapse of Railtrack, which saw its assets passed to the state-owned Network Rail (NR), with track maintenance also brought in-house under NR in 2004. The regulatory structures have also subsequently changed.
Even the Financial Times, notoriously partisan backers of privatisation and markets, struggles to make the case for rail privatisation these days (although they do try, bless them).
>There is a growing consensus among both executives and industry experts as well as the public that Britain’s unique attempt to create competition on Britain’s rail network has not delivered.
>While it has led to more services, and encouraged more users to pay higher prices, it has not unleashed the productivity improvement necessary both to upgrade the network and stabilise the network’s finances.
>Over the same period, for instance, London’s state-owned metro network, Transport for London, has grown just as quickly and delivered much more state-of-the-art investment.
This happened with trains in the 19th century and it was an absolute disaster. Please learn your history on privatized public goods. It results in massive fragmentation in standards, extreme levels of corruption and an overall worse experience for most people.
We know about the downsides now. For example, the New York system was private and actually paid for itself. New York subsidized the system. Now it's inefficient, poorly maintained, and expensive due to excessive salaries. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPhC3-9mSb4
> For example, the New York system was private and actually paid for itself.
Which New York system? The New York MTA is the result of consolidating multiple, unprofitable systems (e.g. LIRR, New Haven, Staten Island). Most were snatched out of the jaws of bankruptcy by the government as commuter service just isn't profitable much of the time. Let's not forget that the private rapid transit (BMT and IRT) didn't work out so well either (bankruptcy and poorly thought out contracts) and eventually was acquired by New York city.
The New York system was never really "private." The IRT and BMT were designed by the city, mostly built by the city, and were leased to the private operators. The IND was always municipally owned and operated. The city bought all of the systems in 1940, about 35 years after the first one was built.
That is not to say you can't have private systems that work (Tokyo, Hong Kong). New York just isn't a particularly good example.
Suggest that you actually look at privately run transit infrastructure that exists today. Tokyo subway systems (JR, Tokyo Metro, Keisei) - all private. Or Hong Kong - MTR is private.
The real problem is putting operations and verification in the same hat - public or private. Private transit systems work well when government regulators have the power to set and enforce a strict SLA. They fail without oversight. Same with public systems. When the operational and regulatory agency are the same, it becomes hard to penalize failures.
Tokyo metro is one company of many that provide subway services in Tokyo. There’s also JR, Keisei, and several other companies. Some are fully private, some are joint ventures with the government - but key is that none of these companies have oversight power over themselves.
In theory there is separate oversight over public transit in the United States as well. In California the CPUC regulates, for example, Muni and BART while the CHP has oversight over agencies that use state and federal highways (the subset of the Muni fleet that runs down Van Ness and 19th Ave is under the purview of the CHP). In practice the regulators are feckless.
Not to nitpick. But JR is not really one company, even though you get the impression that it is, due to the homogenity of, for example signage, partially quite comparable rolling stock and a shared (extremely efficient) reservation system.
From Wikipedia: [1]
The Japan Railways Group, more commonly known as JR Group (JRグループ Jeiāru Gurūpu), consists of seven for-profit companies that took over most of the assets and operations of the government-owned Japanese National Railways on April 1, 1987. Most of the liability of the JNR was assumed by the JNR Settlement Corporation.
I think your point about operations and verification is spot on. However, it’s worth noting that Japan (less familiar with other countries) has tremendous cultural advantages over the US when it comes to privatizing infrastructure. Punctuality, cleanliness, attention to detail, engineering prowess, safety, collectivism — many things that lend themselves to a well-functioning transit system — are all deeply interwoven into Japanese history and culture in a way that is difficult to imagine being the case in America. Which isn’t to say that it couldn’t be successful here, but it’s not an equivalent set of circumstances.
Both offer wheelchair accessible cars. I'm not sure what the formal ADA rule should be on them, but offering these services seems to work out for everyone.
The relevant requirements are that the following must be equivalent for everyone regardless of disability.
(2) Response time (if the system is demand responsive);
(f) Reservations capability (if the system is demand responsive); (g) Any constraints on capacity or service availability; (h) Restrictions priorities based on trip purpose (if the system is demand responsive).
It still leaves much to interpretation. A taxi company is subject to the same rules, but only a small portion of their fleet is accessible. If you call a wheel chair accessible taxi, response depends on where those taxis are and if they are available.
At any rate, the ADA is a popular topic to sue over (see California drive by ADA lawsuits, for example). You can do everything right but still expect a few lawsuits at least. A lawsuit itself doesn’t prove anything until judgement has happened.
The response time requirement could create an interesting tension between ADA proponents and environmental advocates. That is, if Uber/Lyft need to have vehicles that are 2 minutes away for passengers with motorized scooters/chairs whenever they have vehicles that are 2 minutes away for ambulatory passengers, this will require having many larger vehicles. These vehicles pollute more (and if they're EVs some day, they'll draw more electricity).
In my experience, only about 5% of the rides I've had end up being on vehicles large enough to stow a motorized chair, so equivalent response time could mean a major shift in the type of vehicles used.
ADA already forces decisions to be made contrary to environmental concerns. Added construction being a key one.
IMO, ADA is a great example of overbearing government regulation. It doesn't leave much room for "reasonable" accommodations and dictates solutions. (Case in point, my condo building can't use a portion of trash rooms as recycle storage, which gives large environmental benefits, because of wheelchair accessibility rules.. but why does this matter on floors where wheelchair bound residents don't live?)
The fact that people consider it 'added' rather than the bare minimum is partly why the ADA is prescriptive. Also, because it would be incredibly burdensome for someone with a disability to have to figure out how each building does their 'accommodations'.
> why does this matter on floors where wheelchair bound residents don't live?
Because residents aren't the only people who could be using that trash room. Because a resident could be injured while living there.
I think it's weird how the default experience is apparently to be exclusionary.
Right, I agree on the intention of ADA. But buildings should be allowed to make reasonable tweaks.
My building was built before recycles and computer became a huge thing. Trash room only has a trash shoot. To dispose compost, I need to take an elevator 30 floors down to dispose compost, which takes a lot of time.
If the building could allocate a third of trash rooms to store recycles, rotate them if a resident became disabled, we'd be in a situation where able bodied people are better off and disabled people are no worse off. Instead ADA is too restrictive, so we're in a suboptimal spot
Many people with disabilities who actually rely on protections afforded under the ADA would disagree with you. The ADA actually requires employers and other public places to make reasonable accommodations: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/employee-...
Regarding your condo building: separate is never equal. Requiring people with disabilities to only live on certain floors is discriminatory. Disability is perhaps the only minority that anyone can enter into at any time, through no action of their own. You can't say that you don't need to worry about accessibility of floors where there are no wheelchair users, because you can't predict who could need one in the future, when or why they will need one.
It is perfectly acceptable for an apartment building to have accessible and non accessible units. The ADA isn’t that crazy, which is why wheel chair bars are probably not in your bathroom.
I'm not disagreeing with you there, the term "accessible" has a wide range. But it would be inappropriate for a building to have some units with e.g. steps and some without. I'm not sure what you been by wheelchair bars, but if you mean handle bars my building accommodates those through a reasonable accommodation request although I have lived in buildings before which had them in every unit.
It would be completely appropriate, and in fact that’s what happens. We had to turn down a nice one bedroom in a new downtown Bellevue building because it was a split level with a walk down (and we have a toddler so....). Most of the units were not like that, and this one was cheaper as a result.
It's not enough to offer wheelchair accessible cars, in short they also have to be as available and as responsive as the non-wheelchair accessible cars.
Negative. I'm physically disabled and not in one of their ~3 select cities (still a large city, mind you; ATL is hardly small) with that additional 'service' and the friction to get a workable vehicle is next to impossible.
Of course, it's obvious that's working as intended - providing disability services is often treated by businesses as nothing but a cost center. Never-mind the fact that the elderly would be the perfect early users for comparable services + autonomous vehicles.
I've tried to request WAVs in various cities around the world (SF, NYC, LA, London, Portland, Paris etc) on both Lyft and Uber and the results are depressing. Overwhelmingly, if there are any WAVs available, they are only in cities where local ordinance requires them, and even then there are usually only a handful in the city. Wait times can be long at times.
I think the only place in the US where the experience was remotely good was New York, but even then wait times were closer to 20 minutes instead of 2 minutes as they would be for able-bodied people.
The only other thing I can say about this is that Uber/Lyft drivers are required to store a foldable wheelchair upon request. And unlike taxi drivers, they can't just drive by you when they see your chair. In that respect, the experience is better. But there are too many situations when a foldable wheelchair is not possible/desirable, and a true WAV is required.
Lyft is an order of magnitude worse at providing wheelchair accessible vehicles than Uber:
"Uber located a WAV in 27 of 49 different attempts (a 55% “success” rate). Lyft Access Mode located a WAV for only 3 of 65 attempts (a 5% “success” rate) rendering the app non-functional for wheelchair users."
Why so negative. I like how Europeans/Chinese/Everyone stands behind their companies and expect them to succeed globally. USA on other hand is bent on destroying/defaming their own.
Because these companies show a disdain for the law. And in this case, "succeed" is "fully control the market and reduce your choices". Maybe European/Chinese/Everyone has plenty of companies that flout the law and others are happy with it, but I would not be.
> Because these companies show a disdain for the law.
A disdain supported by people, i don't think they would have survived this long if they did something that people at large didn't approve. People who supported and fought for uber to be legal in their cities are to blame too for showing disdain for the law.
To quote the great philosopher Herm Edwards: "You play to win the game!" Right now it's unclear who will win between Lyft and Uber... and their investors certainly don't want to lose.
> Why so negative. I like how Europeans/Chinese/Everyone stands behind their companies and expect them to succeed globally. USA on other hand is bent on destroying/defaming their own.
Companies aren't national sports teams. You shouldn't "stand behind them" unless they deserve it.
I would say "earn" rather than deserve (but I live in the US). Once they pass the bar of providing value at a reasonable cost without driving their employees into the ground while simultaneously being ethical, I would say they have earned a small measure of respect.
No. Uber has enough ethical issues that I wrote them off long ago.
Both of them went through some foofaraw with the City of Austin (I live there) that, when they cancelled their services, I decided I could live without them.
Plus, I have a perfectly workable car and a dislike of being in something that "not my vehicle". It's a boundary thing.
Not the national teams in the Olympics/World Cup, which I think is the more relevant comparison when we're talking about "standing behind a nation's companies." Less relevantly, neither are college teams.
>>> Why so negative. I like how Europeans/Chinese/Everyone stands behind their companies and expect them to succeed globally. USA on other hand is bent on destroying/defaming their own.
> uber and lyft deserve it. I use lyft multiple times/week.
I don't. Why do you think I should stand behind them, and overlook their ethical lapses, because I'm an American?
> What are ethical lapses against lyft? I googled it and found something about spying.
I have an answer for that, but you're dodging the question so I won't provide it yet.
Why do you think I should "stand by" American companies like Uber, whose unethical behavior across many different domains is well documented, like you claim the "Europeans/Chinese/Everyone" do with theirs?
I'm trying to get you to unpack your sentiment that Americans should support Uber and Lyft for nationalistic reasons. If you're going to dodge that, we don't really have much to talk about.
> which i don't agree with( or I don't have the complete picture).
I'm thinking it's the latter.
>>>>> uber and lyft deserve it. I use lyft multiple times/week.
> I use lyft all the time and I have family who are uber drivers. Do you not use uber/lyft?
This idea of yours that use or personal utility justifies support of an company is pretty problematic. It's basically the ends justify the means, coupled with a thorough ignorance of and disinterest in the means.
> Americans should support Uber and Lyft for nationalistic reasons.
> why do you think I should "stand by" American companies like Uber, whose unethical behavior across many different domains is well documented
Is this the same question?
I will answer the first, Americans should support their local companies because their economic well being depends on it. Same exact reason Chinese support their companies. I want Indians using uber not ola because latter would be of no benefit to me.
They're still very expensive compared to subways and buses. In New York, subways are pretty dirty, but a good bus is usually better and faster than an Uber.
The article is talking about bikes though. Bike shares are definitely cheaper than subways and buses.
Case-in-point: in SF, Ford GoBike (by Motivate, soon to be part of Lyft) costs $15/month. A monthly bus (MUNI) pass runs at $73, clearly more expensive even if you use pre-tax money to pay it.
In the DC area, an annual Capital Bikeshare membership is only $85. I recently started mixing some biking into my commute and thought about purchasing a bike, but the $400-500 I was looking at for something durable and well reviewed was hard to justify for my fairly chill, all-trails, 1-4 times a week biking home from the office. Particularly when I compared it to the dramatically lower personal overhead associated with the bikeshare. Of course, my living and working situations are fortuitously situated with respect to existing docks, but I really enjoy not worrying at all about "my" bike.
I doubt Google removed that ability; Uber probably decided that it was worth the increased friction to require users go to their app (and thus collect better data).
The headline reminded me of once reading the McDonald's investor relations website, where they claimed there was so much upside to investing in them because they were hoping to eventually deliver "just one meal per day" to each of the World's 7 billion inhabitants.
Now to be fair, they claim to feed 68 million people each day right now, so they are on their way.
But there is a reason that in a free market, they are unlikely to ever create the pseudo-monopoly they desire.
And with public transport, Uber and Lyft have even more of a hurdle to clamber over.
Firstly, in many parts of the World the public transport system is government-owned in some capacity. You can buy Citibike, sure, but it's not actually possible to buy the London equivalent: it's operated by the Mayor through the public sector entity Transport for London (TfL).
And this is in in the UK where there is extensive privatisation in the bus and train markets, so you'd think there would be opportunity there. Maybe now: the free market experiment on these quasi-monopolies has been widely considered at least a partial failure and the appetite for nationalisation of the train network has never been higher.
Developing cycle networks is reasonable. I despise the "leave anywhere" bikes, because they are already cluttering up London in reaction to the government owned scheme. However, I can see how this is super attractive for some classes of customer, and the cost base is low enough it wouldn't surprise me to see the mayor follow suit and mimicking their platforms.
But a wholly integrated stack? I'm sceptical.
A system where I could book a point-to-point journey from say my home to my girlfriend's mothers (180 miles away) that incorporated car from my home to the train station, the train itself and then a car at the other end would appeal, but only if it was significantly price competitive with me doing that myself right now, which ideally requires advance booking, a model that Uber is specifically uninterested in.
It's also not obvious Uber/Lyft needs to own or operate most of that stack, and owning it may actually make it less attractive.
Given an Uber or Lyft app that did this, and a third-party app that used APIs to integrate and give me wider options and more competitive pricing, I'm not likely to go with Uber or Lyft.
Uber's & Lyft's only option then is to try and eliminate in its entirety any sense of competition. This rarely ends well.
So you then end up with a race to the bottom on price, and that's unlikely to lead to profitable businesses, unless they try and borrow budget airline business models, which again, models itself on advance booking price/yield management, a model Uber and Lyft seem to be trying to avoid.
I don't quite see the big picture here. CityMapper might be the people to watch in this space...
> There are already apps like Citymapper that help commuters figure out the best way to navigate between two points in a city. But Lyft and Uber have the advantage of actually running some of the transport networks that can be used to make those trips happen, and would like users to never leave their platforms.
Citymapper is starting to run it's own transport in London. It has/had a smart bus and now operates a smaller version
Indeed and it's a great experience, comes up as a
recommendation when searching for a route and acts like a hybrid between a bus and an Uber. CityMapper also shows dockless bikes now and it would be extremely surprising if they didn't get into the bike/scooter space too.
Customer wishes to go from A to B. Ride-sharing app will plan the trip and charge for each leg, because they own them all.
Personally, I don't think it's ever going to work that way, at least not on a single locked-in platform, and I think this is all hot air, fed by hot quantitative-easing cash.
Humans are good at dreaming and imagining things. We're not so good at understanding the nitty-gritty details, especially if they deal with possible future states.
Yeah, I think it's more likely to work like there's some psuedo-integration and more standard data-sharing between Uber/Lyft and transport hub owners. An added check-box to schedule an Uber or Lyft when you're purchasing your train/plane ticket, with U/L paying a percentage of each ride to the rail company/airport. That also allows U/L to better predict how many vehicles they would need to have on standby for arriving passengers, even being able to update on the fly as they receive info on delays and routing changes. I doubt they're at all interested in owning a airline.
Walk 5 min to BART Station --> Ride to Montgomery Station --> Catch a timed transfer via Uber Pool to work
with all of the details figured out at the time of booking, I'd consider replacing the last leg of my journey with Uber rather than waiting for a MUNI bus or train like I currently do. The draw for me would be in the convenience of solving the variables of my commute for me.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 178 ms ] threadThe minute they either pay drivers less, charge riders more, or reduce supply, it’s an immediate opportunity for another entrant. Diversifying into e-bikes won’t change that. It’s just an inherent property of the entire concept of a regional taxi service.
Self-driving cars won’t change anything either, as they will just be yet another commodity device that all those would-be entrants can lease and use all the same. The extreme sensitivity to price competition would remain.
The real reason for these auxiliary transportation acquisitions by Lyft or Uber and all the fluff about being “the Amazon of transportation” is simple: they don’t have anything close to a profitable business model. It’s wholly reliant on keeping ride supply artificially high in outlying areas and prices artificially low, through VC subsidy.
In the meantime, they need splashy new stories to tell to keep the hype train going. First it was going to be Uber Eats and other gig economy extensions. Not profitable either? OK, let’s do something with bikes or city travel guides.
But regardless, nobody would question if a taxi operation is profitable in a small region with correctly calibrated ride supply in outlying areas.
Even if a single company banded together a few such profitable regions around the world, it wouldn’t be surprising.
However, it would be surprising if you claimed that company had a valuation of tens of billions of dollars while operating on annual losses of ~7 billion dollars.
That would make no sense at all.
maybe if they became competitive rapid transit operators as well, the world could become a better place
Germany's national broadcaster Deutsche Welle produced an excellent documentary looking at the exact same scenario you described. [0]
It looked into the possibility of making short-haul transportation (focusing primarily on Hyperloop) virtually free with just one caveat: a precondition that users share all their private data that advertisers might find valuable -- free ride in exchange for ad-targetable data -- scary and intriguing at the same time.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER9vlfPSBa8
Targeting is about maximizing profits for the advertisers, it's not about maximizing value to you. If they can use targeting to take value from you in order to give it to themselves, they will. For instance, you could be bombarded with targeted ads for product A when you'd really be happier with product B. You can contrive scenarios where ad targeting is a win-win, but those scenarios are misleading because they go against the underlying incentives.
I wouldn't mind a neutral, personalized product recommendation engine, but that's not what ad targeting is.
The point isn't if the companies behave responsibly or not. Google for example has behaved responsibly with user data, exemplary in fact and I'm sure they'll continue to do so. Yet companies like Google are and will continue to be a danger for everything you know and love.
It's not how you use the data that's problematic, although companies like Facebook should suffer for their blunders, but rather that the data exists in the first place.
Are you part of a minority? Do you have some weird sexual preference or an affair? Are you a woman or gay? Are your religious views mainstream? Have you ever traveled to an Arab country or to Israel? All of these, in the right context, can put your life at risk. It's all an issue of place and timing.
You can also imagine more benign usage, like insurance companies raising their rates or banks calculating your credit score based on where you travel or your movie preferences. Heck, that's already happening.
Yes, many companies can behave responsibly. They can do so today, but what happens tomorrow, or how about in 10 years from now? What happens when those companies are being bought by bigger, less responsible ones. It happened before and it will keep happening ;-)
All the information collected in service of figuring out what to advertise to you will ultimately be used for all sorts of things many of which could be to your disadvantage.
In the end you wont even know why you were denied that car loan, that job, that place to live, why you weren't deemed credible by the cops or why you were sentenced to the maximum instead of offered probation. The oracle just told the car company, the employer, the landlord, the cops, and the prosecutor what to do at different junctures based decisions that not even the people running the computer can fully explain.
The process was very controversial at the time, and still is, and its success is hotly debated – with the claimed benefits including a reduced cost to the taxpayer, lower fares, improved customer service, and more investment. Despite opposition from the Labour Party, who gained power in 1997 under Tony Blair, the process has never been reversed wholesale by any later government, and the system remains largely unaltered. A significant change came in 2001 with the collapse of Railtrack, which saw its assets passed to the state-owned Network Rail (NR), with track maintenance also brought in-house under NR in 2004. The regulatory structures have also subsequently changed.
The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/07/britains-rai...
Citylab
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/09/why-britains-...
Science Direct
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S015599821...
https://www.ft.com/content/d82848ca-f7ba-11e7-88f7-5465a6ce1...
>There is a growing consensus among both executives and industry experts as well as the public that Britain’s unique attempt to create competition on Britain’s rail network has not delivered.
>While it has led to more services, and encouraged more users to pay higher prices, it has not unleashed the productivity improvement necessary both to upgrade the network and stabilise the network’s finances.
>Over the same period, for instance, London’s state-owned metro network, Transport for London, has grown just as quickly and delivered much more state-of-the-art investment.
Which New York system? The New York MTA is the result of consolidating multiple, unprofitable systems (e.g. LIRR, New Haven, Staten Island). Most were snatched out of the jaws of bankruptcy by the government as commuter service just isn't profitable much of the time. Let's not forget that the private rapid transit (BMT and IRT) didn't work out so well either (bankruptcy and poorly thought out contracts) and eventually was acquired by New York city.
That is not to say you can't have private systems that work (Tokyo, Hong Kong). New York just isn't a particularly good example.
The real problem is putting operations and verification in the same hat - public or private. Private transit systems work well when government regulators have the power to set and enforce a strict SLA. They fail without oversight. Same with public systems. When the operational and regulatory agency are the same, it becomes hard to penalize failures.
Tokyo Metro is owned by... the national and local government.
From Wikipedia: [1]
The Japan Railways Group, more commonly known as JR Group (JRグループ Jeiāru Gurūpu), consists of seven for-profit companies that took over most of the assets and operations of the government-owned Japanese National Railways on April 1, 1987. Most of the liability of the JNR was assumed by the JNR Settlement Corporation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Railways_Group
Granted, that not every experience is abyssimal, but in my experience most train riding experiences in the UK are pretty terrible.
Filthy trains with partially massive undercapacity at sky high prices. Delays, cancelled trains and you - the passenger - is just left out to dry.
Infrastructure is also problematic, like an underabundance of ticket machines, let alone ticket selling staff at stations, etc.
It's also interesting to note that Japan rail companies can keep prices reasonable by making major parts of their income via real estate.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/nyregion/uber-disabili...
https://www.transit.dot.gov/regulations-and-guidance/civil-r...
The relevant requirements are that the following must be equivalent for everyone regardless of disability.
(2) Response time (if the system is demand responsive);
(f) Reservations capability (if the system is demand responsive); (g) Any constraints on capacity or service availability; (h) Restrictions priorities based on trip purpose (if the system is demand responsive).
At any rate, the ADA is a popular topic to sue over (see California drive by ADA lawsuits, for example). You can do everything right but still expect a few lawsuits at least. A lawsuit itself doesn’t prove anything until judgement has happened.
In my experience, only about 5% of the rides I've had end up being on vehicles large enough to stow a motorized chair, so equivalent response time could mean a major shift in the type of vehicles used.
IMO, ADA is a great example of overbearing government regulation. It doesn't leave much room for "reasonable" accommodations and dictates solutions. (Case in point, my condo building can't use a portion of trash rooms as recycle storage, which gives large environmental benefits, because of wheelchair accessibility rules.. but why does this matter on floors where wheelchair bound residents don't live?)
> why does this matter on floors where wheelchair bound residents don't live?
Because residents aren't the only people who could be using that trash room. Because a resident could be injured while living there.
I think it's weird how the default experience is apparently to be exclusionary.
My building was built before recycles and computer became a huge thing. Trash room only has a trash shoot. To dispose compost, I need to take an elevator 30 floors down to dispose compost, which takes a lot of time.
If the building could allocate a third of trash rooms to store recycles, rotate them if a resident became disabled, we'd be in a situation where able bodied people are better off and disabled people are no worse off. Instead ADA is too restrictive, so we're in a suboptimal spot
Regarding your condo building: separate is never equal. Requiring people with disabilities to only live on certain floors is discriminatory. Disability is perhaps the only minority that anyone can enter into at any time, through no action of their own. You can't say that you don't need to worry about accessibility of floors where there are no wheelchair users, because you can't predict who could need one in the future, when or why they will need one.
Of course, it's obvious that's working as intended - providing disability services is often treated by businesses as nothing but a cost center. Never-mind the fact that the elderly would be the perfect early users for comparable services + autonomous vehicles.
I think the only place in the US where the experience was remotely good was New York, but even then wait times were closer to 20 minutes instead of 2 minutes as they would be for able-bodied people.
The only other thing I can say about this is that Uber/Lyft drivers are required to store a foldable wheelchair upon request. And unlike taxi drivers, they can't just drive by you when they see your chair. In that respect, the experience is better. But there are too many situations when a foldable wheelchair is not possible/desirable, and a true WAV is required.
"Uber located a WAV in 27 of 49 different attempts (a 55% “success” rate). Lyft Access Mode located a WAV for only 3 of 65 attempts (a 5% “success” rate) rendering the app non-functional for wheelchair users."
http://www.nylpi.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Left-Behind-...
Why so negative. I like how Europeans/Chinese/Everyone stands behind their companies and expect them to succeed globally. USA on other hand is bent on destroying/defaming their own.
The ones that are known to engage in behavior detrimental to their workforce don't fit in that class.
A disdain supported by people, i don't think they would have survived this long if they did something that people at large didn't approve. People who supported and fought for uber to be legal in their cities are to blame too for showing disdain for the law.
Companies aren't national sports teams. You shouldn't "stand behind them" unless they deserve it.
Both of them went through some foofaraw with the City of Austin (I live there) that, when they cancelled their services, I decided I could live without them.
Plus, I have a perfectly workable car and a dislike of being in something that "not my vehicle". It's a boundary thing.
Not the national teams in the Olympics/World Cup, which I think is the more relevant comparison when we're talking about "standing behind a nation's companies." Less relevantly, neither are college teams.
> uber and lyft deserve it. I use lyft multiple times/week.
I don't. Why do you think I should stand behind them, and overlook their ethical lapses, because I'm an American?
I have an answer for that, but you're dodging the question so I won't provide it yet.
Why do you think I should "stand by" American companies like Uber, whose unethical behavior across many different domains is well documented, like you claim the "Europeans/Chinese/Everyone" do with theirs?
I am not. Your premise for opposition is based on this.
> unethical behavior across many different domains is well documented
which i don't agree with( or I don't have the complete picture).
I use lyft all the time and I have family who are uber drivers. Do you not use uber/lyft?
> which i don't agree with( or I don't have the complete picture).
I'm thinking it's the latter.
>>>>> uber and lyft deserve it. I use lyft multiple times/week.
> I use lyft all the time and I have family who are uber drivers. Do you not use uber/lyft?
This idea of yours that use or personal utility justifies support of an company is pretty problematic. It's basically the ends justify the means, coupled with a thorough ignorance of and disinterest in the means.
> why do you think I should "stand by" American companies like Uber, whose unethical behavior across many different domains is well documented
Is this the same question?
I will answer the first, Americans should support their local companies because their economic well being depends on it. Same exact reason Chinese support their companies. I want Indians using uber not ola because latter would be of no benefit to me.
Is that a satisfactory response?
Case-in-point: in SF, Ford GoBike (by Motivate, soon to be part of Lyft) costs $15/month. A monthly bus (MUNI) pass runs at $73, clearly more expensive even if you use pre-tax money to pay it.
Now to be fair, they claim to feed 68 million people each day right now, so they are on their way.
But there is a reason that in a free market, they are unlikely to ever create the pseudo-monopoly they desire.
And with public transport, Uber and Lyft have even more of a hurdle to clamber over.
Firstly, in many parts of the World the public transport system is government-owned in some capacity. You can buy Citibike, sure, but it's not actually possible to buy the London equivalent: it's operated by the Mayor through the public sector entity Transport for London (TfL).
And this is in in the UK where there is extensive privatisation in the bus and train markets, so you'd think there would be opportunity there. Maybe now: the free market experiment on these quasi-monopolies has been widely considered at least a partial failure and the appetite for nationalisation of the train network has never been higher.
Developing cycle networks is reasonable. I despise the "leave anywhere" bikes, because they are already cluttering up London in reaction to the government owned scheme. However, I can see how this is super attractive for some classes of customer, and the cost base is low enough it wouldn't surprise me to see the mayor follow suit and mimicking their platforms.
But a wholly integrated stack? I'm sceptical.
A system where I could book a point-to-point journey from say my home to my girlfriend's mothers (180 miles away) that incorporated car from my home to the train station, the train itself and then a car at the other end would appeal, but only if it was significantly price competitive with me doing that myself right now, which ideally requires advance booking, a model that Uber is specifically uninterested in.
It's also not obvious Uber/Lyft needs to own or operate most of that stack, and owning it may actually make it less attractive.
Given an Uber or Lyft app that did this, and a third-party app that used APIs to integrate and give me wider options and more competitive pricing, I'm not likely to go with Uber or Lyft.
Uber's & Lyft's only option then is to try and eliminate in its entirety any sense of competition. This rarely ends well.
So you then end up with a race to the bottom on price, and that's unlikely to lead to profitable businesses, unless they try and borrow budget airline business models, which again, models itself on advance booking price/yield management, a model Uber and Lyft seem to be trying to avoid.
I don't quite see the big picture here. CityMapper might be the people to watch in this space...
Citymapper is starting to run it's own transport in London. It has/had a smart bus and now operates a smaller version
The convergence is fascinating.
Customer wishes to go from A to B. Ride-sharing app will plan the trip and charge for each leg, because they own them all.
Personally, I don't think it's ever going to work that way, at least not on a single locked-in platform, and I think this is all hot air, fed by hot quantitative-easing cash.
I don't think uber will ever make it's own metro lines, but I can really see how it could be made to work well together.
Never used Uber but I have on occasion hailed a taxi or taken a local ride share alternative in a pinch.
Walk 5 min to BART Station --> Ride to Montgomery Station --> Catch a timed transfer via Uber Pool to work
with all of the details figured out at the time of booking, I'd consider replacing the last leg of my journey with Uber rather than waiting for a MUNI bus or train like I currently do. The draw for me would be in the convenience of solving the variables of my commute for me.