Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Slashdot Asks: Your Favorite Ride-Sharing App?

Posted by BeauHD on from the point-A-to-point-B dept.

There are many ride-sharing applications on the market but only two get all the media attention: Uber and Lyft. As many of you know, Uber has had a tumultuous year marked by a high-stakes legal fight with Alphabet over Google self-driving car trade secrets, a investigation by the U.S. government into the company's use of a software tool that helped its drivers avoid detection in parts of the country where the service wasn't allowed to operate in, and a sexual harassment investigation that resulted in 20 employees being fired. Uber's CEO Travis Kalanick resigned due to many of these scandals and investor pressure. Despite all of this, Uber continues to do well. Last week, the company announced it hit 5 billion rides across 6 continents, 76 countries, and 450+ cities.

Meanwhile, Lyft, which is only available in the U.S., just announced it hit one million rides a day. The company also says it's seen 48 consecutive months of ride growth and is on track to hit an annualized ride rate of 350 million. Our question to you is this: what ride-sharing app is your favorite? Have you found yourself gravitating more towards Lyft due to Uber's messes, or does that not matter much to you? Bonus: do you have a favorite ride-sharing app that's not Lyft or Uber?

6 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. ride-sharing? by vux984 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Uber? Lyft? Get real. That's not 'ride sharing'.

    Those are just taxi apps.

    You summon a car with a driver to your location, they pick you up and take you where you want to go, and you pay them. How is that anything but a taxi service?

    An apps to setup and coordinate carpools... now THAT would be a ride sharing app.

    1. Re:ride-sharing? by vux984 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You mean the cab company I actually have to call to talk to a human being that doesn't know when the cab will arrive, or if it will arrive at all?

      Actually the local cab companies all have apps now, automatic dispatch systems, sms notifcations when your cab is close etc. Oooo.... does that make it a ride sharing company?

      The innovation in ride sharing apps is not in the app itself

      Again. That's innovation in taxi dispatch. Nothing to do with ride sharing.

      but in the controls they've put on the drivers to stop some of the frequent scams that almost everyone hates,

      So they could replace them with new scams that everyone hates? like surge pricing
      Or reinventing old scams that were regulated out ... like discrimination against minorities or the handicapped.

      In any case uber etc may well have improved certain parts of the taxi experience in certain cases; but that just makes them an innovative taxi company.

    2. Re:ride-sharing? by vux984 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Which service do you prefer?

      See here's the thing... the local taxi company has a perfectly serviceable app and I use it more than anything else. As I see no real difference between it and uber or lyft, I guess I'll go with that.

      The app my friend had me using in Melbourne last time i was there was also fine.. again for some local cab company.

      Or am I only supposed to cheer for big silicon valley taxi companies that pretend they aren't?

      Or did you just write a comment to make yourself feel superior?

      I did it just to provoke you.

  2. No. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I will not fund unlicensed cab companies.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:No. by Baron_Yam · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The only thing worse than an unlicensed cab company is a licensed cab company.

      You're seeing two groups of people in the same bottom-end job fighting over which master should rule the land. Neither master is kind or generous, but the workers know they have scraps from their current master and won't if the other master's workers take over.

  3. Uber/Lyft NOT Rideshare by sdinfoserv · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Stop calling this miserable business model a ‘ride share’
    Sharing your ride is like taking a co-worker who lives on your route, to work. Or taking someone to the store with you who needs to go shopping
    Accepting money to drive someone you don’t know to a destination you wouldn’t normally go is a taxi service, NOT a ride share. period.
    Corporate Uber extracts it’s revenue off the lowest common and weakest link in the chain- the driver. Instead of wages and benefits of being an employee for a taxi server, Uber drivers get all the costs, taxes and maintenance on their shoulders. After everything is calculated, drivers would be dollars ahead flipping burgers for $10/hr.