tandempower

Ride-sharing services like Lyft and Uber are consistently presented in the media in terms of professional taxi services, with accusations of poor pay, management, etc. but the question is how else someone who wants to give a pedestrian a lift for monetary compensation as part of a regular drive can do so without becoming a professional taxi driver and competing with that industry.

Are we supposed to accept that only professional taxis are qualified to carry passengers besides personal friends and acquaintances and everyone else should just leave it to them? What if someone wants to supplement their automotive costs by giving a stranger a ride for a fee? Why do these ride-sharing companies have to be compared with professional taxi companies that provide jobs, not just ride-shares?

Also, when can we expect car-sharing and ride-sharing services to have connectivity so that we can simultaneously plan a car-share drive and receive a discount for carrying one or more passengers? It seems that this would be as simple as entering destination/route plans when reserving the car-share. Likewise, it would be nice to be able to go to one website and receive various options for either car-share or ride-share, depending on who else is driving/riding along a particular route at a particular time.

Survey Reveals Uber And Lyft Drivers Are Mostly Newbies Who Earn Very Little : LIFE : Tech Times

Ekdog

I remember back in the '70s, especially during the oil crisis, that the authorities touted carpooling as a way to fight air pollution and save gasoline. Now that technological advances have made it much easier to share rides, they are doing all they can to prohibit it.

TheLibrarian

Then why should taxi companies have to pay for licences and special insurance? Heard about the uber driver recently murdering someone, not that regular taxi drivers are the most trustworthy people but at least there is someone who has their name and address not just what he put on the computer. Why not just hitchhike and stick your thumb out? The world is no less safe than it ever was and most folk wont try to get ya, ask the long distance cross country people. Maybe something about someone going across america people can sense you're on an adventure and you're probably fairly outgoing and open to strangers yourself in that situation. Similar things going on with hotels and house sharing. I remember hearing be careful with roommates. Once they're in they can be hard to kick out and are under no obligation to leave in a timely fashion or pay you any back fees. It's one thing to get a judgement saying yes a person awes you it is another to get the government to go into their account or garnish their wages to pay you. You can report them to a credit agency for trashing your house and staying for 6 months but you will never see any money.

Ekdog

"A head full of fear has no space for dreams."

tandempower

I think these articles implicitly explain why taxi companies are different from ride-sharing. Driving a taxi is a job and taxi services are reliable rides you can order any time regardless of the driver's convenience or schedule. Ride-sharing, on the other hand, centers around people driving for themselves and taking passengers purely at their convenience. The moment someone attempts to use ride-sharing as a taxi-driving job, they find it's not worth it and they can better just apply to become a taxi driver.

In other words, if you're looking for a ride-share, you should be able to get a better deal than ordering a taxi but you may not be able to leave exactly when you want and you may have to arrange a return ride according to the driver's convenience, or another driver's. As for drivers, you don't have to take passengers when you don't want to and you are free to do other things with your time than be on call for fairs. It is different than being a taxi driver.

As for taking people in your house, that's an entirely different issue, though somewhat related. I agree that I wouldn't want to have a stranger staying with me, but if I could be protected against liability, I would allow people to camp in the yard, albeit only for a night or two probably. My main concern is that someone would camp outside, trip and hurt themselves and I would end up in court defending myself against an attorney holding a fist-full of medical bills.

TheLibrarian

Spare me.

"The moment they try to make a living at it they find it's not worth it."

Then why would it make more sense to operate a taxi and pay more insurance, more fees, taxes etc etc will not help them make more money. The only advantage is being better able to pick people up on the street waving you down. When i drove a taxi, there was one guy doing it on his own, answering his own phone, passing out business cards, all totally illegal back then, he'll have trouble being reputable but so it is. Plenty of car services too, they'd like to not pay taxes too. I saw you said on a regularly scheduled drive or commute and hey i'm fine with it. Put an ad on Craigslist, why pay uber or allow them to profit off this or pay uber i dont really care? Sure driving a taxi is not worth it period. they say there are much easier ways to make money than being a landlord, driving a taxi isn't hard but making much profit is.

Ekdog

I won't ask you to spare me your paranoia because this is a public forum and you're free to express yourself, but if I feel like making a comment about something you write, I'll do so. Deal with it.

Smallwheels

As a new resident in the Los Angeles area I have inquired about becoming a taxi driver by talking to several of them. The first thing they say is work for Uber. I don't know why because they were mostly not interested in having a conversation. The one guy whom I talked to whose native language is English said the same thing. He still wouldn't answer me when I asked if a cab driver could earn $35,000 per year after expenses. There is a company in Las Vegas that hires people to drive cabs and they advertise income in the range of $39,000 to $60,000 per year.

One thing that cab drivers can do that Uber drivers and others can't do on ride sharing platforms is pick up people at airports. Recently in Los Angeles they have been allowed to do so. Who knows when it will be allowed in other cities.

There are several companies in LA that offer to buy a Prius and lease it to people for a weekly fee. One wanted $350. Is it worth it for someone who only wants to work forty hours per week? I don't know. It would totally depend on how many rides one gets on the apps. Also there are several companies in this large metropolitan area that pay by the hour plus tips to deliver just about anything. Only one of them provides the vehicles. How many grocery deliveries would it take to earn $350 in a week?

Uber might have originally used the cover of ride sharing to explain their business model. Now they are a cab company that doesn't call themselves a cab company. On their web site they talk about earning money using your car when you have time to make some extra money. On the radio their advertisements are the same.

If people want to use their property to help others and at the same time earn some money then let them. California has mandated that the drivers and cars are covered by extra insurance by Uber. It wasn't that way originally. Now it is that way for any ride sharing company. I don't know if it also must be applied to people making delivers through apps.

Roody

+1.

As far as I'm concerned, Uber and Lyft are not ride-sharing programs. They are huge corporations out to make money by exploiting workers (drivers) who have no job security and no benefits, and make less than their counterparts who drive taxis. They even take on the risk and expense of providing their own car with no compensation from their profitable employers. Uber also competes unfairly because they don't pay the taxes, license fees, insurance, rent and other expenses of a real taxi company. Yet they intimidate and extort special privileges from the cities they operate in by threatening to leave if every last one of their demands isn't met.

I would love to see a real ride share service that just provides the app software for free or low cost to drivers and passengers, without circumventing dozens of local, state, and federal laws. But that's not what you have with Uber.

The courts will be sorting this over the next few years. I suspect (no proof) that Uber's business model is to make as much money as possible before they are eventually shut down.

tandempower

It seems to me what's going on is that in some areas, taxis are popular and therefore booming business. In such areas, it makes sense to limit competition for the sake of keeping fair-hunting at bey. In other areas, however, taxis are not as popular and there, ride-sharing would not be very popular as a profitable enterprise because drivers just couldn't get enough business to make it worth their time.

Now, the question is whether there is some way possible to prevent drivers from using ride-sharing services to compete as taxis instead of just sharing rides to destinations they would drive to anyway. For that to happen, I think there would need to be some disincentive for driving more than necessary.

What about a graduated taxi license fee based on the number of odometer miles accrued on a given vehicle (per month/year)? So, if someone accrues very few miles, whether driving for personal reasons or ride-sharing/taxi or both, they pay a lower taxi license fee than someone who drives more, either as a professional taxi driver, for personal travel, or both.

This would distinguish between occasional 'taxi-drivers' and professionals, and it would create an incentive to combine personal driving with taxi service, which is the whole point of ride-sharing to begin with.

Roody

As I understand it, in most cases there is no mistaking Uber services for a true ride-sharing service. A true ride share would be offered when the driver is actually going to the destination for his/her own purposes. The driver would not make an income from the ride share, just dfray expenses. IOW, a true ride share would charge only some amount reasonably close to half the expenses of the trip. The charges would be computed by the driver and negotiated directly between the driver and the passenger. The app would not collect a percentage of the money, determine the fees, or even know what the charge was.

One of Uber's big cons is that they don't carry their driver's on the books as employees. They pass the drivers off as "independent contractors". This is being challenged by the IRS, and I'm reasonably certain that Uber will lose. Another con is that they make false claims to the drivers about how much money they will be making. Driver compensation is like spinning a roulette wheel. Someties thay can have a big shift, but the odds are stacked against them and mostly their hourly incomes are very low. Some of the drivers are clearly trying to pay for an automobile addiction with their Uber jobs.

tandempower

I think the solution is to license them locally according to odometer mileage accumulation. That way, you don't have to distinguish between actual ride-sharing, as you describe it, and people using 'ride-sharing' as a guise to make money as a taxi driver. You just allow anyone a certain number of miles as a taxi driver and then you start charging them a license fee if they put more miles on their vehicle.

The problem would be for rental cars and car-sharing. Ideally, someone leaving an airport or rental car location should have the option of carrying a passenger along their planned route for a fee-reduction. Presumably, no one would try to make a job of renting/sharing cars and using them as a taxi, since you'd have to pay more for the vehicle than you'd make on the faire. So, in the case of ride-sharing vehicle and rental cars, I don't think there should be a license fee to ride-share above a certain odometer increase, because many different drivers could all be using the same vehicle for ride-sharing.

I don't think it's smart to tax Uber too much since a potential consequence would be deterring ride-sharing apps/services from entering the market, which would result in a return to the traditional taxi model. Uber could play a role in managing license fees for drivers, though, and manage the fee by skimming off revenues as they come in instead of requiring drivers to pay large fees up front. I assume these taxes/fees would have to paid to local governments, though maybe the irs could be involved. I think Uber could offer the option to drivers of getting a salary and thus W2 or working as a franchisee/independent contractor and paying Uber a fee for its services while managing their own revenues as drivers independently. Ultimately, Uber is really not doing anything more than ebay+paypal, so it wouldn't be right to make everyone submit to corporate management to participate.

Still, I agree with you that there's a difference between true ride-sharing and taxi services. As I said, I think the solution is to allow a certain number of odometer mile increase per month or year and charge taxes/fees above that in order to allow anyone to drive for Uber without facing regulation/taxes until they exceed the mileage limit.

Ultimately I'm looking forward to reserving a zipcar and getting different price-quotes according to whether I'm willing to take one or more passengers along for all or part of the ride. That way, you could choose between driving alone and paying more or taking passenger(s) and paying less.

Roody

Good ideas perhaps, but there is no way that Uber is going to comply with any of them. They will use their enormous corporate power to get their own way, and the American financial and legal systems are rigged in their favor.

enigmaT120

This site is a place for people to find rides, set up car pools, whatever:

Drive Less Connect : Online Ride Matching

I've seen sections of Craigslist for that, too.

Walter S

Watch out. Soon Uber will be too big to fail!

tandempower

Uber's market dominance will also ensure the quality of service and public trust. Walmart is huge and ubiquitous and, as a result, people can count on low prices and consistent quality, despite all the criticism and hate. A market consisting of myriad small businesses is hard for consumers to navigate except on a very local level. How do you know which small business to trust if you don't know anyone with experience with any of them? With Uber, at least you might be able to know what to expect when traveling to someplace unfamiliar.

Dahon.Steve

The reason the cab companies told you to work for Uber is because you don't have experience. They want someone with years of experience on the road who is efficient. They know already you're probably not going to make alot of money with Uber because you'll be slow.

Dahon.Steve

I don't know if they are going to be shut down. Uber has deep pockets and are still in business is because they paid of numerous government officials all over the nation. They have some of the best lawyers and won a number of court cases.

It used to be that one needed to call a taxi car service because you did not have access to car radios and a dispach office. You also did not have access to quality cars or drivers willing to work for little pay. Today, the smart phone and internet made it possible to eliminate the dispach office and car radios altogether. There are now tens of thousands of workers across the nation willing to use their new vehicles for little money after expenses.

Artkansas 

Yeah, I imagine that going between The Strip and McCarran airport is quite a cash cow. A high volume of clueless people with more money than time.

Artkansas 

And perhaps because he does not know how to navigate L.A. yet.

Walter S

Some people accuse Uber of paying drivers as independent contractors instead of giving them employee benefits. I side with Uber on that. They don't dictate schedules and don't even have a minimum number of hours you must work. It's in the courts. We'll see.

Seems like there is a lot of resentment of Uber. Also seems like they've found an innovative business model.

How would money be exchanged with the ride share you envision?

Roody

The passenger gives the money to the driver. If it's a ride-"share", by definition they should only be sharing expenses. The amount of money should be small. This has been done for many years, especially on college campuses and military bases, using a real bulletin board to advertise that rides are wanted or offered. Craigslist has expanded on this more recently.

tandempower

When ride-sharing operates as an informal, piece-meal, patchwork system of drivers and riders coordinating their own scheduling and routes, free market pricing effects don't come into action. People just negotiate a price based on cost. When there are multiple drivers and riders interesting in giving/getting a ride on a particular route at a particular time, competition comes into play with pricing. This is where things get tricky, because let's say I want a ride on such and such a route at 6pm on a friday. Now let's say there is no one driving that route at that time but there is someone willing to postpone their commute drive home for an hour to give me a ride IF I'm willing to pay a little extra. Now it is up to me to decide whether that's worth it to me or not. If there's a standard cost, then the driver may just decide it's not worth their time and drive home after work at 5 instead of waiting until 6 to give me the ride.

On the other hand, let's say there are multiple people wanting rides at the same time as me, and the driver wants to take advantage of that situation to charge us all a standard fee instead of reducing our cost since we're all sharing the same ride. Here it helps to have supply side competition where some other driver will be willing to provide rides to all of us at fees that share the costs more fairly; but let's say one of us doesn't want to wait for all the others to get picked up and dropped off, then we should pay more to have a more direct route or less scheduling flexibility of when we want to go. All these types of intricacies can be better handled by a centralized network than a decentralized one where riders and drivers have to gather information and negotiate ideas for combining routes and rides on their own, not to mention costs.

The big difference between ride-sharing and taxi services should be that the driver is also a ride-sharer and thus a bearer of the cost. All these articles talking about competitive salary and benefits for Uber drivers implies that the driver of a ride-share should be entitled to the same compensation as someone who is sacrificing their time to provide others with rides. That's not what ride-sharing is supposed to be. Drivers are going somewhere and subsidizing their driving costs by taking riders. This is why I'm hoping for car-share and ride-share to be combined so ride-sharing becomes an option you select when planning a car-share, which cuts down on the cost.

Smallwheels

I went to a cab company and they wanted to hire me. All I had to do first was transfer my license. Which I haven't done yet. The others who talked to me and suggested I go to Uber were drivers.

The native English speaking driver said I would do well because I spoke and understood English. He said that 99% of the drivers for his group are from somewhere else.

On Halloween night the traffic was very heavy until after 1 A.M. There was a gigantic party in West Hollywood that the radio announcers said had 250,000 people in attendance. I saw many drivers from Lyft passing by. Many of them use illuminated blue mustaches on their dashboards. I wonder if that night was profitable for them. Does anybody know if they also get paid for time or is pay solely based on distance? Inching along at 1/4 miles per hour would drop the mpg of economy cars quite a bit.

Smallwheels

Uber, Lyft, and probably others have something called surge pricing. That is the Uber term. If there aren't enough cars in an area at a certain block of time the companies will jack up the guaranteed income for each trip they provide. This entices more drivers to work at that time. That is why there are drivers who only work at midnight to about four o'clock in the morning.

Once there are enough drivers in an area for a while Uber will lower their surge pricing. This surge pricing is also passed on to the customers.

With the big companies the riders pay using a credit card in advance. They already know what the price of the fare is before they select the button to call a driver. If they cancel they will pay a small fee which goes to the driver.