[HN Gopher] Uber and Lyft competitors ready if service is suspen...
___________________________________________________________________
Uber and Lyft competitors ready if service is suspended in
California
Author : prostoalex
Score : 59 points
Date : 2020-08-21 04:10 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| mdorazio wrote:
| A lot of Uber and Lyft proponents don't really consider this. If
| both of them leave the market, the demand will still be there and
| will be served by other entrants that have more viable business
| models (including adherence to laws). This is exactly what
| happened in other markets where Uber and Lyft left for various
| reasons. Granted, the experience might be a bit worse for riders
| (Ex. waiting longer), but I'm 100% ok with that.
| bguillet wrote:
| And more expensive
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| It should be tbh. It's a car service. It's a luxury expense.
| dcow wrote:
| It may have started that way but not anymore. You can
| viably replace car ownership with ride-share and spend
| _less_ money each month than being a car owner. Many people
| do this, it not just luxury.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| I think that is only viable in places where car ownership
| is prohibitively expensive already. A short trip is
| easily $10, and then you still have to get back. Do that
| every day and you're spending ~$600/month. If you live in
| an area that isn't parking constrained (most of America!)
| owning a car can be much more affordable than that.
| dcow wrote:
| Uber and Lyft both have commuter arrangements that cost
| more on the order of $2.50-3.50 a trip. Mainly focused on
| the GGP claim that these services are strictly luxury.
| chillwaves wrote:
| That's what happens when you cannot rely on spending other
| people's money to prop up your business.
|
| It's honestly so destructive for these anti competitive
| business practices to pour VC money into a market.
| graeme wrote:
| Uber and Lyft aren't unprofitable at the margins in
| developed markets. They instead spend money expanding.
|
| Back in 2016 Uber says it was profitable in places like
| California. Why would VC spend billions to permanently give
| free rides to Californians? It just doesn't make any sense.
|
| https://fortune.com/2016/06/16/uber-profitable-markets/
| collinc777 wrote:
| In the consumer space in particular it's the service that
| offers the best combination of service and price that's going
| to win out. I understand you are willing to have a lower
| quality service with higher prices, but the market likely says
| otherwise.
| noirbot wrote:
| It's also not something I'd want to start a business on. Even
| assuming you think you can make the economics of it work out
| under the new regulation, you're gambling that CA doesn't
| change the law again later - either rolling back this
| restriction, or adding some new one because they decide that
| you too are being abusive. I'm not sure I'd want to invest in
| any company trying to get into this niche.
| graeme wrote:
| This is trivial. Ban the new thing, and a variant of the old
| thing will re-emerge. This is akin to observing that if you ban
| Wikipedia, the market for print encyclopedias will grow.
|
| That has no bearing on whether such a ban is a good idea.
| fakedang wrote:
| To counter your example, I doubt people would go back to
| print encyclopedia once wikipedia were to be banned.
| Wikipedia has fundamentally changed the way one looks up
| reliable information online, with simple computer-enabled
| features such as searching, cross-referencing,fact-checking,
| etc. We would likely see people getting dumber (due to the
| lesser and scattered number of sources) or relying on less
| reliable internet sources for information. Or outright
| piracy, which is of zero utility to the publishers.
|
| Ride sharing has fundamentally changed the way I travel in
| developing countries. It's much easier to rely on an app's
| set price rather than haggle with taxi drivers on offers far
| higher than Uber's. On the other hand, I have found less
| utility in developed countries where it's much easier (and
| cheaper in general) to rent/buy your own car, or rely on a
| cab meter. Likewise I don't really see people moving back to
| the old ways - on the contrary, a number of taxi companies
| and cities are already exploring/already begun app-based
| services.
|
| Maybe a few years from now, we might see Star Alliance type
| industry groups within the taxi industry.
| icelancer wrote:
| >> This is exactly what happened in other markets where Uber
| and Lyft left for various reasons.
|
| This is exactly the opposite of what happened in Austin.
| noirbot wrote:
| Well, they did get more alternatives, but a worse UX and more
| fragmented driver base that was smaller due to the added
| regulation meant that I just ended up driving more places
| myself. It became too expensive to take to go out drinking,
| so I just didn't go out as often. It became cheaper to park
| at the airport, and I didn't have to schedule a ride hours
| ahead, so I started doing that instead,
|
| It turns out price/availability is pretty important, and
| adding regulation that hurts both often makes it hard to run
| the business at all.
|
| It's like if a city demanded that all restaurants only served
| organic foods. It might be better in the abstract, but it's
| likely going to put a lot of places out of business and raise
| the costs of what's left over. Maybe that's ok, but it's not
| without cost.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I mean you could say this about any regulation and any
| sector. I'm sure a lot of businesses went out when we
| banned child labor, introduced weekends, the 40-hour week,
| etc.
|
| We've always set a bar for a minimum societal contribution
| that companies need to be making. There's no indication
| that the current bar is anywhere close to perfect.
| yibg wrote:
| We had that before with taxis. It wasn't good. Dirty cars, long
| wait times (if they come at all), "broken" credit card
| machines.
|
| Granted for the most part that was with medallions, and maybe
| with more open competition things will be better. But with
| employees only I don't see how you can get the elasticity of
| supply.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I want to believe this is possible, but experience also says
| it's not worth it.
|
| This happened in Austin, TX. When Uber and Lyft left Austin due
| to a driver fingerprint ordinance, RideAustin, a local non-
| profit with the backing of an Austin tech mogul, sprung up.
| Ride Austin paid drivers better, had a round-up option to
| support local charities, and though there were some early kinks
| with the app most of those went away after a couple months. I
| was a big fan and supported them as much as I could.
|
| The _second_ Uber and Lyft came back (state legislature
| overrode Austin 's ordinance), Ride Austin's ridership
| plummeted. I tried to still take them whenever I could, but
| over time it became harder and harder (fewer riders meant fewer
| quality drivers). After 3 bad pickup experiences at the airport
| I said forget it. Covid was the final nail in the RideAustin
| coffin and it closed in June.
|
| Of course California is a much bigger market so any competitors
| may have better luck, but I still think a lot will be wary if
| it's just a matter of time before the big boys come back in one
| form or another.
| satya71 wrote:
| I guess if Uber and Lyft had to compete fairly, RideAustin
| might have stuck around.
| noirbot wrote:
| I'm not actually sure. I lived in Austin during the time,
| and it was nice, but it also meant I needed to have 2-3
| Austin-specific rideshare apps, Uber and Lyft, and then
| Juno for when I was in NYC. It was just cumbersome.
|
| I wasn't using any of them regularly, mostly just on
| trips/to and from the airport, so a lot of the time when I
| tried to open any of them, they'd need me to re-enter my
| payment info. It's just not a good UX to have 5 different
| apps that all do the same thing, because you can't be sure
| exactly which ones will work when you need them.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| What do you mean "compete fairly". I don't see how they
| competed unfairly when they came back. There is no way a
| small, single-locale-focused ride share company can provide
| the levels of service and quality people have come to
| expect from Uber and Lyft.
| jen20 wrote:
| RideAustin did not work unless you had a US-registered credit
| card which cut off a huge group of people from being able to
| use it (not to mention they only published it in US app
| stores). I rented cars instead.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I highly doubt the international market would have made a
| lick of difference for a service only accessible in a city
| in the middle of Texas. Not saying there weren't some
| international visitors who may have used it, but in the
| grand scheme of things that's a drop in the bucket.
| jen20 wrote:
| Ok then - not sure I agree during SXSW, ACL, the many
| downtown conventions etc, but fine, let's go with that.
|
| It was during SXSW 2017 that RideAustin failed for 5
| hours one night, and the alternatives (Fasten etc) also
| did not work. How many qualified customers never even
| opened the app again after being burned by that?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I mean, if anything you are exactly making my point.
| RideAustin was a local nonprofit, run on essentially a
| shoestring budget, that failed during a surge that was
| probably many times the load they normally get in any
| single night, and your response is "How many qualified
| customers never even opened the app again after being
| burned by that?"
|
| I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just saying why would
| some small startup that really could only address a
| single, relatively small market (CA is big but pales in
| comparison to the world at large) be able to attract the
| capital necessary to eventually compete against Uber and
| Lyft? The service levels you've come to expect from Uber
| and Lyft don't come cheap, and they've already had years
| to scale their operations.
|
| It's a weird dichotomy I sometimes see on HN: "Why aren't
| there more competitors in this space?" and "Why doesn't
| this other startup provide the same levels of service and
| low low prices as this other enterprise that got billions
| in VC funding?"
| [deleted]
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Posted it in an other thread [0] but do we really want to go
| back to the medallion system?
|
| Pre-Uber, either the driver rented the car to a middleman who
| rented the medallion from a rich owner, or said owner was
| selling and financing (most banks won't touch these
| medallions!) a medallion at a ridiculous interest rate to a
| driver that planned to use it as his retirement savings (an
| extremely volatile asset and not very liquid).
|
| The more I spoke to cab drivers the more it seemed their
| industry was a pyramid schemed aimed at helping established
| rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber
| brought a breeze of fresh air: Someone could simply buy a car,
| calculate the depreciation and it's value on the market (since
| unlike medallions cars are relatively liquid assets!) do
| rideshare and calculate their profits or loss. They can get out
| of the game at anytime, and they know exactly how much they are
| going to get for the car they have should they sell it.
|
| Also, the argument on Uber/Lyft drivers not being contractors
| since they can't set their own rates and decide which ride they
| take strikes me as weird since medallion drivers were
| contractors, had to charge the price set by the city and could
| only pick-up customers in the (arbitrary) zones covered by
| their medallions.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24225648
| thewebcount wrote:
| > Posted it in an other thread [0] but do we really want to
| go back to the medallion system?
|
| No, but that doesn't preclude us from stopping Uber and Lyft.
| We can have a different system where there are no medallions,
| the number of cars aren't artificially constrained, but the
| companies running them need to obey existing laws.
| wtvanhest wrote:
| It could be interesting to artificially constrain the
| number of cars and auction the slots on a rolling 12 Month
| basis so that the tax payers get the full value of the
| licenses rather than speculators
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > the companies running them need to obey existing laws
|
| Well let's not act like "existing laws" are the most
| important factor. The laws were changed here, after all!
|
| I'd like to see a system where drivers have a lot of
| control over when they work, and can be in both apps at
| once, but also have healthcare and the ability to access
| unemployment insurance. Even though as far as I'm aware
| it's not feasible under existing law.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| In most places, the existing laws are the medallions.
|
| Which laws? Do they exist now?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Well, TFA is about how Uber and Lyft are leaving
| California because AB5 makes them pay drivers minimum
| wage, so I would hope they are leaving California because
| of a real, existing threat.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > We can have a different system where there are no
| medallions, the number of cars aren't artificially
| constrained, but the companies running them need to obey
| existing laws.
|
| The only reason why the laws changed at all was because of
| Uber and Lyft.
|
| Nobody would have changed the system if they didn't come
| in.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Hmm this makes it sound too easy to be so easy.
|
| I agree with disrupting the medallion system but the cost of
| rides fell dramatically and by most accounts I can find if
| drivers actually did their taxes correctly, they would be
| making less than minimum wage[0]
|
| [0]https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-
| now/2018/03/02/ub...
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| That sounds like an oversupply problem.
|
| Why keep driving if the wages are so low? Also, in the
| medallion days it wasn't uncommon for drivers to end up in
| the red after a bad day, when factoring the costs of
| renting the medallion in the first place.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Because drivers, generally speaking, are not well-
| informed of their costs. Generally speaking when
| considering their wages they don't count the costs of the
| maintenance and depreciation on their vehicles, because
| this is not something that a normal driver has to think
| about very hard, and they all used to be just normal
| drivers. But it's not very hard to hit 100k miles on a
| car when rideshare becomes your new profession.
| addicted wrote:
| Then the medallion system needs to be improved. But the
| medallion system served a purpose of limiting the number of
| cars. Traffic in big cities has become much worse precisely
| because of Uber and Lyft. The cost of that to everybody is
| orders of magnitudes higher than the slightly higher cab
| fares people were paying.
| svrb wrote:
| Yes, yes, but medallions are _regulated_! By the
| _government_! That makes them obviously superior, and a more
| ethical choice.
|
| Imagine if we had unregulated doctors, or engineers, or
| software developers! It would be chaos, just like Uber/Lyft,
| and result in unfairness that never happens with the
| medallions.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| You are totally right. Medallion owners wouldn't try to
| lobby local governments to restrict the supply of
| medallions. Just like the AMA doesn't lobby at all to set
| an artificially low number of residency spots for aspiring
| doctors.
| iaw wrote:
| > "Last week, top executives at Uber and Lyft said that, if
| forced to comply with the ruling, they'd likely have to suspend
| service in the state while reworking their businesses around the
| law."
|
| >"[The law] once passed, Uber and Lyft claimed it shouldn't apply
| to them, prompting California's attorney general and three city
| attorneys to sue the firms for misclassifying workers."
|
| So instead of taking the time to prepare to meet the new
| requirements of a law that to some extent was directly aimed at
| them, the current ride-sharing incumbents decided to play legal
| chicken and not prepare re-tooling for the change.
| tomdell wrote:
| Uber and Lyft's sole "innovation" is in driving down the value
| of driving by reclassifying drivers as contractors and not
| having to pay benefits while the drivers barely earn more than
| they spend to keep working, so I don't think they're going to
| give in easily. It's a shame the initial investors already got
| away with IPOs and foisting the consequences off onto general
| investors before the underlying business models collapse.
| caturopath wrote:
| > Uber and Lyft's sole "innovation" is in driving down the
| value of driving by reclassifying drivers as contractors and
| not having to pay benefits
|
| This is supremely untrue: a huge part of Uber and Lyft's
| value proposition is not cost related at all. (Also, cab
| drivers generally aren't employees most places.)
|
| They are more faster in most places. Other than some urban
| cores and transit hubs, it is much faster to get a pickup by
| Uber/Lyft than it ever was a taxi.
|
| They are more reliable in most places. When you call a taxi,
| it may or may not show up, and you won't be told whether
| they're going to no-show after you call them.
|
| They are more convenient. Ordering an Uber/Lyft is really
| easy. Most places, if you want to call a taxi, you have to
| use the telephone or use an inferior smartphone app. When
| they started growing, it was almost always the former.
|
| They are a more pleasant experience. My worst experience in
| an Uber/Lyft ride is day-to-day in a taxi. I've had truly
| terrifying experiences with taxis.
|
| Many of these factors are actually irrelevant to their labor
| practices. Some of them do relate (for instance, drivers are
| very vulnerable to rider low-ratings, in part since firing
| them is easier than firing employees), to be sure.
| graeme wrote:
| Good list. Some more:
|
| * You can predict when it will show. In a lot of cities you
| had to call a cab 10-15 min in advance
|
| * You don't need to pay. This says 2-3 min at the end
|
| * It's all above board. This varies by location but taxis
| always wanted cash, to hide earnings, and they would create
| incredible fuss over giving receipts for business expenses
|
| * Not only is it above board, it's automatic: business
| receipts from uber go straight to my accountant. Expensing
| is much easier.
| mamon wrote:
| Ok, so it seems that taxi service in US sucks.
|
| In Europe traditional taxi companies caught up pretty
| quickly, you can now order taxi ride via app that has UX
| similar or even nicer than Uber, and you get licensed taxi
| driver, car with taxi signs, so that you no longer need to
| stare weirdly at all black Priuses approaching you, and the
| driver can speak your language, and knows his way around
| the city. To recap: traditional taxi service is of much
| better quality than Uber, and only slightly more expensive,
| therefore much preferred.
|
| The only time I used Uber was in the US, once I came back I
| don't miss it at all. I don't know what exactly is wrong
| with US taxi market, but Uber and Lyft aren't the only
| solution.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Medallions drivers were also contractors, despite not being
| able to set their rates.
| SilasX wrote:
| Cab companies had long been classifying drivers like that.
| Also, the bidding process for cab rental generally drove net
| wages to the bare minimum, so Uber/Lyft weren't new in either
| respect.
|
| Edit: reword to be easier to read.
| stevehawk wrote:
| weren't they contractors before? where the taxi driver rented
| the car and the medallion from the company that owned them?
| pengaru wrote:
| When Uber first started destroying the cab business there
| were numerous interviews of NYC cab drivers talking about
| how far in debt they were to buy the medallion that enables
| them to work in the city.
|
| That left me with the impression that cabbies rented the
| money to buy access to the market, and were paid enough to
| afford it.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| It degenerated to medallions being expensive enough that
| cabbies had to work extremely long hours to make the
| payments on them. Wasn't uncommon to have two cabbies,
| one for the night and one for the day, drive the same car
| just to break even.
|
| That and the financing for medallion often came from the
| seller. Not a lot of banks would touch these assets so
| the interest rates were horrendous on these.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" the drivers barely earn more than they spend"_
|
| When figuring in all the costs, like car depreciation and
| maintenance, they actually earn less than they spend.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| That can't possibly be true surely, a whole industry of
| people can't have failed to notice that they are losing
| money over time.
| aeturnum wrote:
| There was a study which suggest this is the case about
| 30% of the time[1], though they have also been criticized
| by Uber and others as under-counting the amount of money
| gained from ridesharing[2].
|
| I think it's fair to critique the ridesharing companies
| for using a business model that requires their workers to
| do far more complicated calculations than most workers in
| order to ensure that they are working in a financially
| beneficial way.
|
| [1] https://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/P
| DFs/Zoe...
|
| [2] https://www.vox.com/2018/3/3/17074782/uber-mit-study-
| less-th...
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Found this [1] in the Twitter thread linked in the Vox
| article. MIT revised upward their estimation of taxi-app
| drivers' income significantly after taking into account
| some criticism of their methods:
|
| 1. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
| way/2018/03/07/591430857...
| amelius wrote:
| Can someone please give me one example where a "business
| model" was actually an innovation?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Walmart is the canonical recent example. They're just
| stores, and lots of people have stores, but Sam Walton's
| specific business model allowed his stores to sell a wider
| variety of goods at lower prices than any of his
| competitors' stores could.
| amelius wrote:
| What business model are you referring to? As far as I can
| tell they reduced prices mostly by (1) keeping wages as
| low as possible, and (2) by using their gatekeeper
| position to put their suppliers under pressure. I
| wouldn't call this an innovation. Also they improved
| their logistics, but I wouldn't consider this part of a
| business model.
| ghaff wrote:
| Low-cost supplier is absolutely a classic business model.
|
| If you want another one in retail compare and contrast
| with Costco. Which limits its number of SKUs (and
| actually has a reputation for paying workers relatively
| well by retail standards).
| _Microft wrote:
| _Competitor uses 'Compliance'. It's super effective._
|
| They do not want to comply. They want to 'strike' until the
| populace demands that they are allowed to operate again. I wish
| the competitors good luck in capturing as much market share as
| possible before Lyft and Uber notice that it might not work
| out.
| treis wrote:
| >So instead of taking the time to prepare to meet the new
| requirements of a law that to some extent was directly aimed at
| them, the current ride-sharing incumbents decided to play legal
| chicken and not prepare re-tooling for the change.
|
| That's not true. They've implemented changes in CA to give
| drivers more power to set their prices and choose their
| customers. Also have given more power to customers to choose
| their preferred drivers.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| That sounds more like putting lipstick on a pig. It's trying
| to inch towards the idea that these are legitimate business
| transactions rather than an essentially comoditiesed
| transactions.
| caylus wrote:
| Could you clarify your definition of "legitimate",
| especially given that you used "commoditized" as an antonym
| to it?
|
| Purchasing gasoline from a gas station is a highly
| commoditized transaction; what makes it more or less
| "legitimate"?
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| If the gas station claimed their pump attendants were
| self employed then it would be equally dubious. They have
| no really ability to differentiate themselves in the
| market place, availability trumps all else and the
| station sets the pricing.
| thewebcount wrote:
| Really? How can I choose a driver on Lyft? I've never seen
| this functionality offered before (but I admit I don't use
| these services too often). I'd love to be able to choose a
| driver I know and trust. That sounds really cool!
| asperous wrote:
| My prediction is that in the cities, things mostly won't change.
| In rural or suburban areas, cost and wait times will explode, if
| service is offered at all.
|
| With minimum wage enforced, waiting in areas where drivers don't
| make minimum wage on average will vanish since scheduled services
| are risk adverse and have lots of information. Before drivers
| might service those areas hoping to get a ride taking them to
| urban areas. Drivers don't have good statistics on where to wait.
| Coordinated services do.
| ghaff wrote:
| I live in Boston exurbs and the once or twice I've needed a
| "taxi" I was able to get an Uber (from not a lot of choices
| during the day) but there weren't any Lyfts available. So, yes,
| ride-share can get pretty thin on the ground once you get out
| of cities.
|
| In normal times, I don't even try to use them for airport
| trips; just book a private car.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| > In rural or suburban areas, cost and wait times will explode,
|
| Utilization of ridesharing in rural areas is low[1]. It's a
| mode of transportation mostly used by urban affluent
| individuals with plenty of expendable income and as far as
| other reasons are concerned internet and credit card access
| trump any sort of supply problem.
|
| _" Suzanne Ashe was once the only Uber driver in Haines,
| Alaska -- population 1,374 -- and said she kept getting kicked
| off the platform because there weren't enough people asking for
| rides. She also found that some places weren't on Uber's maps,
| so clients couldn't enter their destination, and internet could
| be spotty. For these reasons, Ashe quit Uber and started her
| own ride-hailing business called Red Cab, named for her 2010
| Red Chevy HHR, the only car in her "company." She charges a
| flat rate of $10 per ride and $30 per hour. "In order to cater
| to rural areas, especially areas where there isn't a saturation
| of network, then a cab company makes a lot more sense," she
| told Chilkat Valley News."_
|
| It seems to have become fashionable to rush to Ubers defense by
| framing it as some sort of necessary mode of transportation for
| the undersupplied when instead every piece of data suggests the
| opposite. It's luxury transportation for the upper middle-class
| on the back of disenfranchised metropolitan army of reserve
| labour.
|
| [1]https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/1/11/18179036/uber-
| lyft-r...
| ghaff wrote:
| That's mostly true. Around where I live, most people own cars
| and parking isn't an issue. That said, if you don't own a
| car/can't drive public transit is essentially non-existent
| with a small regional bus system that is pretty much the
| option of last result.
|
| Uber's probably nice for the people who need to be
| transported to medical appointments and the like. On the
| other hand, there were other options including taxis/helpers
| of various types/family/etc. before Uber came along and the
| on-demand/convenient nature of Uber isn't as big a deal under
| those circumstances.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| That and drivers refusing rides to certain neighborhoods, or
| customers.
| dmode wrote:
| Can you clarify how this will change from the current situation
| ? Even now drivers in suburbs know they won't get rides and
| often are there because they are starting the day, or they
| dropped off someone
| JMTQp8lwXL wrote:
| Minimum wage isn't really that expensive. Suppose a driver
| makes $12/hour. That's $96 per day. If they do just 10 rides in
| 8 hours -- and they could do much more -- riders need to pay
| just $9.60 per ride. Sure, the rideshare company needs their
| cut, so add a 15% premium. It doesn't sound all that expensive.
| A 3 mile trip through town isn't going to become a $30 affair
| just because the driver makes minimum wage.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Does that include fuel, maintenance and depreciation?
| neltnerb wrote:
| Doesn't seem to, but they pointed out that they were being
| conservative in saying that an employee that makes 10 rides
| in a day charging $9.60 per ride covers their salary. If
| they made 15 that would probably cover fuel, maintenance,
| depreciation, and their salary.
|
| Of course this would be a company owned car and they'd be
| reimbursed for fuel and stuff so at least the company is
| the one taking that risk. But if they're real employees,
| firing ones that can't make fifteen rides happen in eight
| hours is just kind of the obvious result.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Pizza drivers don't generally use company cars, I don't
| see why Lyft or Uber would necessarily do so.
| ghaff wrote:
| Add in about $0.50/mile for the cost of their car. (People
| can argue the exact numbers but that's about the number the
| IRS allows for deductions.) Which isn't a lot for a 3 mile
| ride but in spread-out areas, the ride is more likely to be
| 10 or 20 miles. Then double for round-trip.
|
| Though, to the general point, a minimum wage driver is
| probably not as big a proportion of rental vehicle costs as
| many assume.
| dalfonso wrote:
| The cities need to step up and set up their own ride sharing
| services e.g. https://www.metrolacampaigns.net/ in LA
| marcell wrote:
| I'm sure the institution that brought us the Los Angeles public
| school system and the thriving Los Angeles public transit
| system will surely succeed in building an Uber competitor.
| meow1032 wrote:
| I have a feeling that the lack of faith that Americans have
| in their government ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy.
| I work closely with a lot of government employees, and it
| really seems like 95% of the work is about avoiding
| "boondoggles" -- i.e. highly visible failures. This is
| because boondoggles can be used as political tools, and
| ultimately, politicians are more concerned about getting
| reelected than getting anything done. The upshot of this, is
| that they would rather risk low visibility failures way more
| than high visibility failures. As an example, about 10 years
| ago, they were looking to install wifi in one of the
| buildings that I work in so they bought a bunch of routers.
| One of the higher ups wanted to assure that this wouldn't
| cause any security issues so they ordered audit after audit
| after audit. Eventually they just stopped trying and the
| building still doesn't have wifi, and they wasted all the
| money on those routers and audits. The problem is that they
| don't even have any sensitive data or data to be secured on
| that network. It's like this for _everything_. I think a
| better system would be to tolerate some very visible failures
| vs basically guaranteed non-visible failures.
| romski wrote:
| The occasional failure scenario is well captured by private
| companies.
| geofft wrote:
| How is that different from saying saying "I'm sure the
| programmer who brought us StumbleUpon and the venture
| capitalists who invested in WeWork will surely succeed in
| building a public transit competitor"?
| monadic2 wrote:
| It's the fallacy that market success implies competence.
| monadic2 wrote:
| I'd like to see Uber provide anything close to the value that
| the public school or transit system does to LA.
| prepend wrote:
| Lucky you, just take an Uber and witness its superiority to
| the LA transit system.
| dmode wrote:
| I am not saying LA public transit will ever be able to
| produce something like Uber, but the way they grew public
| transit in the last 10 years is way more complex than an app
| based business funded by unlimited VC capital. This includes
| building transit lines connecting a city of 400 sq miles and
| has a ton of hilly terrain with the worst traffic congestion
| and always constrained by tax dollars
| tehjoker wrote:
| Sounds like an extension of buses.
| thewebcount wrote:
| Woah! Thanks for this! I had no idea this was a thing.
| Definitely going to check this out. Sounds way more ethical
| than Uber or Lyft. I'll be interested to see what the
| experience is like (wait times, cleanliness, driving
| reasonably, etc.).
| notananthem wrote:
| Great! Uber and Lyft are going to stop stealing from social
| security, unemployment etc
| _red wrote:
| No doubt the competitors will be closely connected to politician
| families?
| notassigned wrote:
| This is the usual with these 'compassionate' government ideas.
| If you can't compete with a company, lobby the government to
| force your competition out of business, while calling it a
| kindness to the public.
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