The fact that a 2.9 mi car ride costs $50 with a tip is fucking insane. This country is absolutely backwards when it comes to transportation. Everything is nearly car centric. Minimal options for alternatives.
this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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People who have never experience good public transport don't know what they're missing tbh. When I lived in Japan for a few months I could get around the whole city without much planning. It was so freeing not having to think about transportation. I think public transportation + last mile assistance (e-scooters, e-bikes etc.) is by far the most efficient an free transportation experience out there.
I recently got a folding e-bike in a city with great public transport (a folding bike can be carried along at any time, regular bikes only outside rush hours). Now I can be anywhere in the city within about 20mins, which is very liberating. I'm actually faster than going by car due to being able to bypass traffic jams, and not even including the 20mins+ needed for finding a parking spot.
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In a faint way, I might almost frame this as a positive thing.
The gig workers driving Uber vehicles are generally the sort of people that absolutely need it. And, especially in a hub like New York City, $50 fares should be the sort of thing that pushes people into making use of either the bike share system or subway, rather than promoting increased traffic congestion at peak times. And yes, I am aware in many cases that results in increased trip times; which should be a motive to invest further in these systems to make them faster and more convenient.
I don't think it's just Uber - America will at some point have to wake up to the expected costs of its heavily service-focused industries, the value of an individual person's time, and of one's own personal vehicle for a trip.
Actually I live in NYC and often public transportation, especially bikes, are faster to get around Manhattan than car services. Outer boroughs need more infrastructure though. Places like Queens and Brooklyn as you get away from the city become harder to navigate without a car or car service and taxis can be rarer
As someone from rural Scotland, hearing Brooklyn described as 'getting away from the city' is unintentionally hilarious!
Ha, it is definitely a local slang. People in outer boroughs will say "I'm going into the city for the day" if they are going into Manhattan, even though all the boroughs are "New York City" and mostly high density
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I visited NYC this spring with my wife and we took precisely one Uber ride, from the airport to our hotel. It was $80. We then proceeded to spend less than $80 total the rest of our several day trip crisscrossing all over Manhattan on public transit, including back to the airport to leave. Public transit was faster, cheaper, and easier than the Uber, for sure.
Uber jacks up prices in "airport zones" to an insane degree. For example an Uber from Seattle to Sea-Tac is about $75. I rented a car in Portland, drove up to Seattle for the weekend, and drove myself to the airport for $60. An Amtrak ticket from Portland- Seattle is around $40 usually.
This doesn't work everywhere, but when I'm flying back into PDX (the best airport) I'll take the light rail public transit two stops and get a ride share from the Target parking lot. Ends up being about half the price once you're far enough away.
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Does a CEO even know the value of $20 or $51? Isn't that the same as $0 to them?
It's one banana Michael. What could it cost, $5?
$10*
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Went to a concert at an arena about 3 miles from my house, to get there was about eight bucks to go home was 60.
Yep. Went to Disneyland a year ago and the trip there was very affordable. The trip home was 3-4x higher since it was closing time.
I mean that's how the market works isn't it? It's the best way to attract more drivers to those sort of locations.
That said public transport should be in place for situations like this so we don't have 50 cars leaving but 1 bus instead...
It’s almost like we should regulate the industry to ensure that no one party in the deal is abusing the other. Taxis are regulated and can’t charge surge rates for a reason, when you are stuck somewhere and there are only a couple options to choose it isn’t a balanced market and therefore needs the state to ensure fairness
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Fuck the market.
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Uber’s net profit for the twelve months ending March 31st, 2023 was $-3.36bn. That’s negative 3.36 billion dollars. They posted their first ever operating profit today. August 1st, 2023.
So yeah, really cool company. Not at all some sort of horrifying demon of modern capitalism…
Pretty sure Uber’s sole existence is owed to cheap debt and a bubble in venture capital. Them and WeWork soaked investors for all they were worth and never gave a flying fig about profitability because there was always some one willing to float a cheap loan
They got investment because they were building a monopoly first. It really just tells you how valuable monopolies are if it wasn't obvious enough already. It's more reason why we can't let monopolies happen.
Like Amazon, which only had net losses for several years (from 1994 to 2002) in order to focus on aggressive growth and outcompeting other similar services by setting excessively low prices on books and media.
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“from downtown New York City to the West Side”
$50 is what you’d expect if you lived in nyc, or been there enough
Not from the area, what’s the deal/context?
I’m assuming it’s a traffic cluster fuck?
It’s one of the densest, most populated 2.9 miles in the world. The route takes you through the core of manhattan/nyc.
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It's 5 to 7 miles, possibly in traffic. 20 to 50 minutes, depending on the time of day. It's like $30, but could double during rush hour or any popular time of day.
So yeah, $50 whenever you want to go. $30 in the middle of the night.
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Next ask him how much a $10 meatball sub delivered from 2 miles away should cost.
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I always thought Uber was supposed to be like carpooling.
That's ~4.74 kilometers, by the way.
That was the original idea. Pick people up going the way you're going. Minimal extra mileage, and get paid for the small inconvenience.
But now people are driving just to drive.
These prices are set via algorithm, and time of day seems to be a huge part of it. My 2.5 mile trip in Washington DC on a Thursday morning at 7:30 was $55.
There was speculation that the algo takes several features into account not just time. Things like battery life, distance from frequent locations, etc. So for instance: profile is a young lady, she is on 10% battery and is several miles from home at an entertainment hub like a nightclub/concert so jack the fare up cos she’ll take it regardless, type stuff.
I used to have a very unreliable Jeep that would break down for weeks at a time. I bit the bullet and ubered to work. I have screenshots showing the fare climbing over the course of a week to six times the original price for the same trip as the algo learned that I needed to work and did not have a car.
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I had to use this service one time, to pick up my wife from the hospital in the middle of the night. The guy never even picked her up and I still had to pay 50 goddamn dollars. Fuck this company.
Did you try to sue them or get a refund?
Sue? For $50?!
It could easily cost $5000 in legal fees just to take them to court!
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"It was 10 am on a sunny weekday"... supply and demand. Take the number of people wanting a ride and divide by the number of drivers available, and in some way that number will be the multiple.
Area will matter (Apparently NYC), but Uber is a gig economy, people use it as a side hustle, so during the day, many of them are probably working another job. Not to mention 2.9 miles in NYC isn't like 2.9 miles in Champaign Illinois, that can be a long ride.
But there are a ton of factors, maybe there was no drivers in the area, maybe everyone was busy, but you still took the ride, so obviously it wasn't too crazy. Uber will continue to charge what they can, but I'm sure the number of available drivers willing to take a fare for that price (The price Uber offers them, not the end user price), will always matter.
Infinitenonblondes in the comments talks about a 3 mile ride, 8 bucks to go there, 60 bucks to leave, because it was a concert. The demand for a ride right after a concert is going to be at record level peaks... of course it's going to go through the roofs.
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