In Vancouver,

If going out downtown, it's a 80$ cab ride each way atleast.

Transit would take atleast an hour but good luck taking it back at 2am when service is very limited.

I could drive after drinking and spend 30-40 minutes.

There is no ride sharing allowed here yet.

I usually don't go out if I don't have a designated driver as it's just not affordable or takes too long.

Many friends, and I admit myself when younger, would have just drove home drunk as it was cheapest quickest option

We have actually found it cheaper to drive downtown, find a cheap decent hotel on priceline and drive back home after a good sleep.

I can't wait for ride sharing here, I use it everywhere else when traveling.

Ride sharing makes it affordable convenient and quick... Can definately see how it attributes to less drunk drivers.

Without great public transportation, it seems rather unlikely for suburban folks to enjoy a lifestyle where you can drink downtown and safely get back home at a decent rate. Ridesharing might be cheaper for now, but I'm not sure what it will be like when the prices truly represent the market value; currently, most ridesharing companies seem to be operating at loss. The ultimate solution might come when autonomous driving becomes possible, I really can't see it another way.

BTW even with public transportation, if you're drunk enough to think it unsafe to drive, you're probably gonna want to use the restroom more often.

I've gone over this issue a LOT, and right now I'm planning to move to the city center and just take the hit of higher rent for now. Luckily, I am single so this is a lot more convenient than if you have a family with kids and stuff.

I wish the US and Canada would relax zoning restrictions. I've spent the last decade or so in Japan and the UK and it's just so much better. Admittedly, when you are young and going out clubbing then you want access to the big city. But for quieter/older people, just having access to a decent restaurant or pub within walking distance of your house is amazing. These days my wife and I might go out to the big city maybe once a month or two, but at that frequency booking a hotel is feasible. Every other time we go out we stay in our neighbourhood because there are really great places to go -- even though I live in a tiny town. In Canada, you really do need to live downtown if you want any kind of social life outside of your house.

The zoning restrictions are one of the most startling things to be about the US. Especially since the US is in general very pro market but in this case is incredibly anti market.

The major my suburb recently sent out a survey asking people what kind of building projects people would like to see. The granularity of what was being asked for was shocking. It should not be the government's task to decide if we need to build single family homes or multi family homes and if they are allowed to be town houses etc. I felt like I was in the Soviet Union.

I don't see zoning as black-and-white as you do. We have pretty strict zoning requirements in most of Germany too... with some exceptions of course, and you can immediately see that the quality of life in lesser regulated areas goes downhill.

The point is that you have to apply common sense to zoning, which given the countless comments about US zoning seems to be the difference.

I would like to see more of this in the US.

Common sense (zoning, and other things):

Japanese Zoning :: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540845

http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

Cities could easily dezone. Most areas have only had zoning for 60 to 80 years, prior to that there was just fire & building code constraining you. What was added by zoning was height restrictions, parking minimums, building type eg. single family detached, and lot/building size minimums.

The value that zoning provides is to segregate and disenfranchise the bulk of the populace, while spreading them out during the Cold War so as to make the US more resilient towards bombings supposedly. This is the same culture that thought sidewalks were bad.

I dunno- Houston is notorious for its lack of zoning, yet it still grew the same sprawling manner. The fact is most of our cities did most of their growth after WWII. A baby boom, affordable automobiles, the interstate highway system, advertising, and FHA subsidies made mass suburban developments like Levittown profitable and desirable.

Houston pretty much has zoning they just don't call it zoning.

https://urbanedge.blogs.rice.edu/2015/09/08/forget-what-youv...

>Matthew Festa [is] a land use professor in Houston...

>For all that’s been made of Houston’s infamous lack of zoning, Festa said it increasingly seems that reputation isn’t deserved or even accurate.

>“We do have a lot of land-use regulations,” Festa said. “We still have a lot of stuff that looks and smells like zoning.”

>To be more precise, Houston doesn’t exactly have official zoning. But it has what Festa calls “de facto zoning,” which closely resembles the real thing. “We’ve got a lot of regulations that in other cities would be in the zoning code,” Festa said. “When we use it here, we just don’t use the ‘z’ word.”

Got a source for the Cold War stuff?

One nice thing about ride sharing is that it can make a somewhat sparse public transit great. I frequently will take a Lyft to a nearby train stop and then go downtown from there. The entire thing still takes ~20m to get downtown. It's a third to a quarter of the price of taking Lyft all the way

When new cheaper thing comes to the market, I have heard a lot of sayings along the lines you're saying - they only doing it for now and after they have established themselves they'll jack up the prices. I can't remember any case when it actually happened. I don't mean things like "introductory pricing" when you get short time cheap and then the price rises - you know the deal upfront there. I mean some service company - not protected by some monopoly enforcement from state - jacking up the prices after they decided they have enough market share. Has it happened?

It won't be an explicit money grab. Once they have pushed out other competitors, they will IPO. Then, they will come under pressure from Wall Street to turn a profit (eventually...unless they do a la Amazon and keep creating/expanding into new markets). Then all Uber customers/drivers will see an email like: Dear Customers, Thanks for being a great part of our "community". Due to rising costs/regulations/some_generic_reason, we have to regretfully increase prices by $X.

That's what I am asking - the only companies I see such scenario playing out are in deeply monopolized and regulated industries (healthcare, ISPs, cable TV providers). I'm not saying Uber won't ever raise the prices ever, but I am yet to see a plan like this - capture the market, then drive up prices - actually happen and be sustainable. Amazon is surely not an example of it, even though it did capture the market, no sign of dramatic price increase.

It's one thing to increase your profit margin after becoming established, it's another thing if you aren't able to even have a profit margin at current pricing.

I agree Vancouver needs ride sharing! Although when I was there it didn't seem any more expensive for cabs than Seattle. From the downtown Hyatt to Kingsway & Commercial Dr was about $20 CAD. How far out do you live?

The problem with cabs is that the drivers aren't sure if they will get another ride, so they are less likely to service more remote areas.

Wasn't there an article here a few days ago that said Uber drivers were doing exactly the same thing?

Uber drivers don't get a choice. Some do and try and skirt that system, but it's more obvious and they get in more trouble.

I take a short fare from my work to the train station near daily. If I am contacted by my driver, I never tell them where I am going. I have had MANY drivers, both Uber and Lyft, cancel because it was a sub-$10 fare. This is in Fort Lauderdale, so it isn't like its out in the boonies.

That being said, I might have waited longer, but I always got service when I did live in rural Broward. I was 20+ minutes from everything though, so it was a guaranteed high fare ride for the driver.