On average, in certain locations. In others, not so much. And let's not forget surge pricing. Or people living, or wanting to get to a place, along low-profit routes. Or people with disabilities.
> more predictable with pricing
Depends. Regular taxis tended to cost a bit more, but had much lower variance.
> Uber drivers make more money today than taxi drivers used to/or do today.
That seems implausible at best.
> There are also way more job openings in this than there used to be
These aren't jobs, though. They're gigs. And highly unpredictable ones, wrt. your take-home pay.
> The world is not a zero sum game. Technology made this a win-win long-term
Absolutely true.
The problem isn't technology, it's businesses - particularly businesses that purposefully play a negative-sum game, where the losing side is society at large. Externalizing risk, costs, performing regulatory arbitrage. Making owners much better off, customers a bit better off, at the cost of making everyone else slightly worse off. And much like with greenhouse emissions - a bit here, a bit there, barely measurable puff, up until it adds up to a global crisis - these companies are killing civilized society, one VC-subsidized shiny app at a time.
You can always take a regular cab. Low profit routes were pretty much impossible to get pre-Uber. I am almost certain that Uber is more likely to obey disability laws than "Joe's taxi" with a few cars.
> Depends. Regular taxis tended to cost a bit more, but had much lower variance.
My experience with cabs is calling a dispatcher while in route and getting a price. I was charged $30 for a two mile trip to the train station before. No reasoning. Also they were much less likely to pick up minority passengers, or people in poorer neighborhoods. Also "credit card machine was broken" very often. Also you don't know the route the driver will take. I guess my experience with cabs pre-Uber was different from yours, but it was incredibly high variance.
> That seems implausible at best.
Many places you had a gatekeeper. You can't just ride a taxi, and would have to purchase a medallion or sign on to an existing vendor where there's much less competition. They would also be much less flexible with hours
Knowing the lawsuits from people who've been refused rides from a regular Uber because they have a service dog, or their wheelchair 'probably won't fit' (I think I can tell you whether the wheelchair I usually put in the trunk of a car is likely to fit in your trunk, thank you), I am not.
But there are also specific accessible taxis. How do I call an Uber that will take a powered wheelchair?
No idea how it works in practice but it’s a thing in Toronto.
In cities, that's absurd - car services existed for decades serving just this part of the market, and they let you schedule in advance!
In the suburbs and exurbs, probably less so, but this is where everyone has a car as a prerequisite for living in a house with a multi-car garage.
You could schedule in advance. Now having them actually show up? That was debatable. lol
In cities, there were were either no taxis around in certain neighborhoods, or they simply would not come at all even if you called and asked the taxi company and the dispatcher told you they had sent a driver. Both of these I experienced personally.
Sure but that doesn't work very well for when you want to spend the weekends drinking. The cities in the US that have grown the most over the last 10 or 20 years are still very much suburban and lack good public transportation. The lack of low cost and convenient transportation services quite literally resulted in fatal accidents.
> When accounting for the ride-sharing company’s commissions and fees, vehicle expenses and a modest health insurance package, Uber drivers end up earning just $9.21 in hourly wages, according to a new study from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-much-uber-driv...
The problem with that is that there is a supply of cab drivers and demand for cabs that drives the price. If you put in a medallion system, the price of the medallion will be bid up such that the cab driver's wage is in line with the market wage. You can't just wave a magic wand and set prices without unintended consequences. So what happened was cab drivers had to take out massive debt to finance these medallions or work for some middle man that is essentially a financing arm. And when the price collapsed, they were stuck with this debt and some even got bailed out by taxpayers.
I wish Uber was around when I was younger. I had a car and a lot of spare time. I would have gladly accepted a low wage if I had a few hours to kill. No other job affords that flexibility which is probably why its so popular.
with that said, this is all supposition, i just find it a reasonable argument.
It maybe made sense though, as your payment was your license to work, and selling the medalion on was your retirement plan. Uber screwed this up - but my feelings are mixed.
More predictable as in you know the fair before you get in. I did have to take a taxi in Los Angeles from the airport earlier this year and the guy wouldn't tell me how much it would cost. Gave me a ballpark that was $22 less than what it ended up being.
There's a long, long, long list of reasons Uber has screwed over great many people, and continues to. From regulatory arbitrage, duping drivers into unprofitable deals, lack of proper insurance, privacy violations, harassing journalists, harassing employees... This has been covered non-stop on HN for pretty much a decade now. I invite you to do some searching, and you'll quickly see how Uber is one of the most ethically challenged companies of the 21st century.
> More predictable as in you know the fair before you get in.
Yes. And by higher-variance I meant that you never know what fare you'll have to either accept, or abandon the trip. With traditional taxis, the prices are variable, but it's easier to ballpark them (at least traveling in the city you know), and they have much tighter range.
I guess if you prefer being able to ballpark a taxi cost then that's cool! You can still use taxis. But most people prefer to see the price before they get in. Certainly the choice existing is better for the consumer and has helped keep taxi fares lower - even if you choose not to use an uber.
Do you have any evidence, for any taxi network in any city on the planet, of that taxi network doing anything even remotely as illegal or antisocial as Uber has been (and still is) doing? Uber's transgressions are well documented, there is great many of them, and quite a few were done at scale.
For the "deserving" part - they were there. Good or bad, I don't think any business deserves being steamrolled by an aggressive foreign multinational corporation, with practically infinite budget to undercut competitors and keep law enforcement at bay. Local businesses don't get to break the law without impunity.
For being better to their employees, I honestly don't know. But in all the rides with traditional networks I took over two decades of my life, I don't remember any driver actually complaining about their job. Ironically, the drivers of Uber-like[0] services keep complaining all the time - mostly about constantly changing terms of contracts, and constantly testing new kinds of customer acquisition schemes, that tend to take away money from the drivers.
> But most people prefer to see the price before they get in.
I never said I didn't want it either. I like this feature - and guess what, I had that, way before Uber was a thing, thanks to a private company that fought for improvement in transport regulations. That's how I know sociopathy wasn't necessary to disrupting the taxi market.
--
[0] - I don't use Uber itself, it's a matter of principle.
Stop defending Uber. Even if you work for them it is incumbent on you as a citizen to be honest about what they were doing.
According to Uber?
> Additionally, it has enabled millions of people in cities to skip buying a new car/any car which saves tons of emissions.
Citation needed. I believe the last analysis I read showed that most people used Uber etc to replace transit or walking, which means it adds to emissions.
I've used taxis in multiple cities that I booked through an app and got a fare ahead of time. At this point Uber is "a taxi, but with no guarantee of quality* and no cap on how many of them are creating traffic"
*GPS routing does no good when the driver clearly can't read a map and doesn't know where they are or how to follow directions.
- Taxi drivers (outside of NYC) in the US are going to get less rides per hour than uber drivers
- Taxi drivers traditionally have to give a larger share to the taxi company than uber drives give to Uber. If they are independent then they have identical car expenses as an uber driver.
I 100% believe that a lot of Uber drivers barely break even. I guess I'm fine with that - I bet if you try to do that 9-5 and can't do your own car maintenance you are going to be inefficient at it. I had a friend in Los Angeles who would only work nights, was fine working 2am, and could do basic tire/oil/car repair. He made 2x what he had been making as a busboy at a restaurant. I don't see why this is considered a bad option for people, especially since he enjoyed the flexibility.
I'm happy the services exist but they are not cheap, at least not here.
Can confirm. Arrived at SFO late the other night (1130pm-ish) and Uber wanted $80 to take me from Passenger pickup, to my longterm parking lot which was probably 3 miles away.
I ended up taking a Taxi for $12 + tip.
I occasionally used to try these services (I have thousands of rides so this used to be relevant). Lyft/Uber are way better.
I am also still extremely skeptical they contribute to higher prices though. If Uber and Lyft did not exist I believe (just a theory) that taxi prices would be much higher.
Perhaps someone who lives in a city where ubers are banned could state if taxi prices have grown over the years.
What we have is slightly higher pay until your car breaks. No retirement plan.
The drivers lose out.
The customer rides in someone's personal car pays a little less sometimes but a lot more (demand pricing) when they really need it.
Uber/Lift lose money on each ride but will rise prices as soon as they can once you have fewer choices.
Zero sum indeed..
The relationship between public mass transit, and private taxis (and private mass transit) was cooperative. The relationship between city transportation systems and Uber is hostile.
Hmmm, That must depend on the market as it's not necessarily the case based on discussions I had with both in Ottawa.
(note, when Uber first started, that was the perceived story - almost "free money!" for bored white collar workers with a car and few hours to spare here and there. I've had people in $50k, $60k cars drive me around, to "meet new people and have fun". However, once full-time professionals joined the ranks, and did math on maintenance and insurance and fuel etc, the story RAPIDLY changed).
I'm not surprised its gone down - probably a sign that it used to be very profitable even if not as much so now. I do know plenty of people that can repair cars themselves (one of whom has been uber driving foe years) so perhaps it will only work out for those people. Which seems like a 100% decent outcome.
There's an implicit assumption there that taxi driver gets less rides and I don't see why that is necessarily true.
More broadly, I think both Uber and Taxi drivers have significant distribution, and it appears there are both Uber & Taxi drivers who are better or worse at maximizing their rides and income. I've seen both drivers who just "do what app/dispatch tells them" (and are constantly complaining about their income level or nature of rides), and drivers who actively seek out timing, areas and locations that give good rides. This is not the same as parking in front of hotel and hoping for a long drive - it's a fairly active dynamic work.
Overall though, active engaged Taxi drivers seemed to find it a more predictable, profitable engagement that sufficed as main income for their family; whereas I have not gotten that sense from Uber drivers in the 12-18 months prior to Covid.
Of course, while I took taxi or uber twice a day for several years in Ottawa, this is still anecdata and limited sample - absolutely! But that's largely my point - we discuss Uber and Taxi as if the situation in London and San Francisco and New York and Ottawa and so on is the same - and it absolutely is not.
One thing that seems to often be missed in these discussions as well is edge cases; even if in a place Uber is a great alternative for 80-90% of folks, I find it is far less dependable if you're in a less active area, during less active time, and/or need Uber planned for a specific time.
They have also become very unreliable, with no available drivers in some areas or 40+ minute wait times, and then the driver cancels. The majority of drivers switched to food delivery it seems. Pre-pandemic you could get a driver within 5 minutes no problem in some areas, and now may be waiting 30+ minutes.
I took a trip to Asheville and Uber/Lyft service was virtually non-existent, you had to rely on local cab companies to get around.
Now that we're talking about public companies, there are a lot of them. Any concern about price gouging you might have should extend to all these companies.
If not, why not?
So it feels that they'll have to change something big to meet expected returns.
And the fear is that, as they succesfully managed to kill the incumbent, they are free to change the most obvious parameter, the pricing.
I heard the same thing about amazon. That the inevitable huge price increases are coming. Hasn't happened yet.
Due to a decade of massive losses. This isn’t their real long term cost. It is a scam to make people think it’s cheaper and run normal taxis out of business
Their full impact is not yet decided
But to the larger point: medallions made NYC yellowcabs more expensive than the market demands, and they’re still cheaper than ridesharing.
Cab drivers have lost job stability, but others have benefitted.
Uber was a god-send. You call up the driver, watch him approach on your phone, step out when he's there. Regardless of where you were, you could get a ride from there to wherever you were going. Rides for which auto-rickshaws used to charge upwards of Rs. 300 (~$4), can now be had for Rs 150 or less ( < $2 ).
Just because some countries don't value competition - and prefer to cater to existing entrenched lobbying groups - is not compelling evidence to the average American that Uber is bad.
Technological progress disrupts markets.
The only thing that changes are the cast of winners and losers.
Society sometimes prefers the greater good (fairness) by reigning in the powerful.
No it's no longer cheaper "to get a ride to an airport/bar than it was before." Especially if one considers "before" being before the pandemic. This increased price of Uber/Lyft has actually been quite a common news story of late[1][2][3]. Incidentally "why is uber so expensive right now 2021" on Google search has over 15 million results.
What evidence is there that an Uber is safer than a taxi? Also how can a model with surge pricing be more predictable than a taxi which has regulated rates per mile and per minute?
>"Uber drivers make more money today than taxi drivers used to/or do today. There are also way more job openings in this than there used to be, with less friction to get involved."
Do you have a citation for Uber drivers making more money than taxis drivers? What is the true earning per mile for an Uber/Lyft driver when you factor in auto insurance, maintenance, repairs and vehicle depreciation?
The "friction" to becoming a taxi driver is pretty minimal. One just needs obtain a hack license the requirements of which are pretty nominal.[4] Especially so if you don't already own a car. Uber/Lyft seem to be having great difficulty staffing up right now[5]. I'm not sure that would be the case if it really was such the great(100% win) opportunity you make it out to be.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/article/uber-lyft-surge.html
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/09/uber-ly...
[3] https://www.curbed.com/2021/06/uber-lyft-expensive-new-york-...
[4] https://nycitycab.com/HackLicense.aspx
[5] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/7/22371850/uber-lyft-driver-...
This is no longer true. In my town, now that the firehose of VC subsidies has dried up, Uber costs more than taking a cab, even without surge pricing.
Is it? Or are venture capitalists just footing the bill?
Whatever model of "price" you use needs to take into account the fact that not only are Uber and Lyft lighting enormous piles of Saudi money on fire to "gain marketshare" but that the actual drivers are being paid peanuts. This isn't pure win, it's more like Nestle handing out free baby formula in Africa to destroy the "domestic market" so to speak.
The US should be blessed that Saudi is so bad with its money and so willing to subsidize Americans.
It destroyed the money of people who had bought up medallions. That's it. Having medallions was not a long term solution when the city can now charge rideshare services for miles/minutes/rides on the road without any hard cap for politically connected incumbent players.
The financially-sustainable transportation market. Companies without endless amounts of capital that actually have to break even or make a profit to keep the lights on.
It's not just the medallions, they're literally selling the service itself at below-cost in many places and have been for years.
Same reason they pretended to work on flying taxis and self-driving cars. The multiple for high tech companies is greater than the multiple for taxi companies or even basic Web2.0-style one-trick app companies.
Since they're public, its any shareholder and the public market. But that also means they're probably not still raising rounds like they were.
- It is now cheaper for the average person to get a ride to an airport/bar than it was before. It is safer, more predictable with timing, and more predictable with pricing.
- Uber drivers make more money today than taxi drivers used to/or do today. There are also way more job openings in this than there used to be, with less friction to get involved.
The world is not a zero sum game. Technology made this a win-win long-term although there were already some people caught in the middle with old business models. However, that really cant be a reason for us not to move on.