Slashdot Mirror
Uber Launches 'Express Pool' To Get More Riders To Share Rides (recode.net)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Recode: Uber is beginning to roll out a cheaper version of its ride-sharing UberPool service, called Express Pool. The service, which was being tested in Boston and San Francisco, is now available in Los Angeles, San Diego and Denver, and will launch in Miami, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., tomorrow. The idea is that Express Pool, which requires riders to walk a little to meet their driver -- and then again to their destination after being dropped off -- will make shared rides more efficient. If it works, it should both increase the number of rides that drivers can give and also make those shared trips faster for passengers. The new service tests a thesis Uber has long had: Lower prices means higher utilization, and higher utilization means more money -- both for drivers and for Uber. Also that road congestion is bad and the solution is to share more rides. Those are the same theories that sparked the creation of the original UberPool service, which requires a little less walking. But the hope is that this will make it easier to match more passengers and therefore lose less money on each shared ride.
What a bus does?
JMHO, but if folks wanted to take the bus (walking to & from the bus stop), they'd take the bus. A big part of the reason Uber and Lyft are so successful is the pick you up at the door and drop you off at the door service - not to mention the low price of the ride (we'll see if that can be maintained after going public and they can't bleed money in huge amounts anymore).
"cheaper version of its ride-sharing UberPool service"
this has nothing to do with making the service cheaper. it's all about raising the price of the more premium product.
Half of my fun on these rides is talking gender politics with the drivers. They have to speak English well enough. They tend to be less east-coast college liberal than my work colleagues, and their much closer relationship with reality and having a real job is.... well, it's refreshing. And the foreign drivers from poorer countries, working essentially as refugees, are just *amazed* at the things Americans get up to.
And the Brazilians are great. They just wonder why we worry so much about it: here, they're way ahead of the US and have more fun in various ways.
Don't fall for it.
BeauHD is just a Russian bot trying to get you to give up your God-given right to be a capitalist and use Uber by yourself!
Uber is a taxi service plain and simple. Unless you, the driver and fellow passengers are actually splitting the cost of the trip equally it is not ride sharing....it's hiring a driver to take you somewhere.
So now Uber has figured out the Airport/Hotel Shuttle service and given it a new name...
Calling Taxi services Ride-sharing. Makes you wonder what other services they'll "invent" call new just by renaming them.
There are no buses in the US.
The last one was retired in 1974. We only use personal cars in the US.
It won't work because I need to drive 300 miles each way every day to the middle of a forest where there are no roads. Stupid Uber! What are they thinking???
Still not using it.
Getting a ride with a slightly dodgy looking driver in the front and me in the back is one thing, but getting into a car with a bunch of dodgy looking people that get to know where I'm coming from and going to isn't my idea of fun.
Also, if you're travelling for work, there's a very good chance your company wouldn't appreciate ride sharing either - they have a duty of care, and taking unnecessary risks to save a couple of quid doesn't sound like a good move.
Buses and subway in Europe generally aren't nasty and dangerous as in the US. Because everyone uses them, even the politicians and the fatcats, so there is a lot of focus in them. (Parking usually is a giant hassle, with tiny streets and barely any parking spaces. Often you only find a spot far away.)
In the US, they are nasty, because cities are designed for cars and everyone who can, has a car. So you end up with only those who can't, bad lines with a low frequency, and often compartively empty vehicles. Also, Americans have much less of a conscience IMHO, so theft etc is more of a problem.
To me it seems, like Uber will finally cause the US to end up with a proper public transport system. Because the stigma isn't there, and everybody uses such services.
And the people (let's face it: employees) who ride the cars will definitely switch to bigger vehicles to improve income.
Ergo, you will result with buses.
If they will be just as nasty will depend on whether this will bring back the stigma and how social the average American really is.
There, of course, are, but they refuse to implement a thing known as a "schedule." I live near a bus stop where the buses run "every 10 minutes" and I've seen - and I'm not kidding here - three buses show up a half hour after I arrived at the stop. I guess that's technically an average of one bus every 10 minutes, but - c'mon.
The reason Uber's plan could work when buses (at least in the US) wouldn't is because of crap like that. The bus routes are also incredibly stupid, with basically no "hub" routes, meaning that getting to downtown is easy but going across the town is a trip to the center and back out again. The difference between taking a bus and just driving tends to be literally orders of magnitude: we're talking two hours versus 15 minutes. And that's not an exaggeration.
Assuming Uber can keep walking distances and wait times to a minimum, this could work. It's the poor schedules and bad routes that prevent buses from working in the US.
Especially since we still give a bit of a shit about employee rights, like not letting people become bums or starve to death. (We still irrationally hate them for failing at not being destroyed by our abuse of them though.)
Most cities and countries here currently look into stopping their shit and declaring them a bog-standard taxi service.
You've reinvented the jitney.
The difference is, it's funded by venture capital rather than taxes! (Until the venture capital runs out)
If I wanted to walk I would walk.
Wait a minute. I thought the whole excuse they used to side-step regulation was that they aren't taxis, they are a "ride share". They have an explicit class of service now that is shares? and the non-share one is still somehow not taxis?
I only care a little bit because I think all the Fred Flintstones pedaling their way through their lives are just wasting their short time on this planet. Cars are stupid and pointless. Work from home. Ride a bike. Get some fresh air. Stop wasting hours of your life everyday staring at tail lights.
Bleeding cash, and in some areas having to stop UberPop since people have (finally) realized they can't make money doing it.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/b...
I don't believe the BS from the boss recently that they could somehow magically "tweak the knobs" and turn an annual cash burn of billions into profit. Launching another "even lower cost" service; how's that gonna help?
Note to boss: stop throwing away cash on self-driving cars that Google & others will do certainly do better, and strip your costs to a bare minimum. How many people does it take to run the cloud service?
Did you take your meds today?
This would work great up here in Alaska. No real competition and a huge pool of potential users.
And, and, maybe they can get the Uber drivers to get really large vans; and paint them in striking color schemes to make them easier to spot; and maybe run on a circular route on a schedule so people wouldn't have to book the Uber ride ahead of time, but just get on and pay.
Oh Wait.....