Uber Closes in on Its Last Frontier: Airports

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/26/business/uber-closes-in-on-its-last-frontier-airports.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=0

by claywm • 11 years ago

83 77 11 years ago

nytimes.com

xyzzy1234• 11 years ago

It's not great that a private company is profiting off of crowdsourcing misdemeanours.

On the other hand where I live (Sydney), airport charges are a total rort. Trains to and from the city cost $17 (!) (versus $3 if you walk one stop). The taxi surcharge is $4. So... carry on.

NamTaf2• 11 years ago

If it's anything like where I live (Brisbane), the airport railway line is privately owned as opposed to publically funded like the rest of the network. The service (maintenance and operations) is then contracted out and given that there's only one player (cityrail) it goes to them. As a result, the fare is much higher.

NeutronBoy2• 11 years ago

At least you have airport trains (I live in Melbourne, where an airport train has been a political football for at least 20 years)

xyzzy1234• 11 years ago

Yeah, the "Airport Link Corporation" built and operated the line. Apparently it has paid for its capital costs and is now in its "revenue sharing" phase. NSW transport is keeping the surcharge to subsidise the rest of the network.

vonklaus• 11 years ago

Hopefully companies like Lyft, Uber & Sidecar will provide a substitute for the train. This competition could drive down rail prices.

icebraining4• 11 years ago

Here in Lisbon, after getting the courts to ban Uber, our local taxi association just started lobbying for having a minimum (not flat) fee of 20€ for any ride starting from the airport - enough to pay for a ride across the city.

Makes you feel really supportive of their plight!

fennecfoxen4• 11 years ago

The first time I landed in Atlanta (as a destination, not a connection airport) I took a taxi from the Atlanta airport to Sandy Springs (exactly on the opposite side of downtown, just outside the Perimeter). Shortly after leaving the airport, my driver diverted off the interstate (ostensibly to avoid a traffic jam) and promptly proceeded to drive around in circles, lapping the same parking lot twice (he was about to do it a third time before I intervened) because his GPS was telling him to turn around and get back on the highway and he didn't quite realize that was happening and kept missing the U-turn. (Also, the overall rate is close to twice Uber's.)

I don't really trust Uber any further than I can throw my smartphone, but anything is better than a generic airport taxi. (At LGA, I've taken cabs more often than Atlanta -- it's harder to wait for Uber in the cold of winter -- and while I've never had any real trouble with Uber ever I've had two different taxi drivers pulled over and issued a ticket while I was in the taxi, both of them for running a red light on a left-hand-turn signal...)

Anyway. In conclusion: fuck you, Atlanta airport/government.

hoopd2• 11 years ago

This seems to be how Uber's pulling it off: the costs of a worldwide Uber-dominated oligopoly are far away and intangible while the costs of the current atomized regulated oligoplies are present and clear.

When Google was picking up steam back in the early 2000's it seemed wonderful because there were so many immediate benefits. Now, 10-15 years later it's clear how much power we gave them and what opportunities we lost in doing so. Instead of "free" stuff we could have worked towards a model of privacy and reasonable subscription fees where user-tracking and advertising weren't the default business model of the internet. But we didn't look ahead, we just said "Give us that shiny new thing!"

I hope I'm wrong but Uber looks the same to me, it's that nagging feeling of somebody's gonna have to pay the piper.

blfr• 11 years ago

What opportunities have we lost to Google?

And how can you implement subscription without tracking? A subscription-based search engine, or a video hosting website, would need to connect your searches and watching habits with a credit card.

venomsnake2• 11 years ago

You are free to create google analog. No one is prohibiting you. And with the way google results have gone downhill in the last 5 years - it is way past due.

The page rank is not the only possible strategy for effective search.

aNoob7000• 11 years ago

I'm not sure how much you paid but taxi service to Sandy Springs from the Atlanta airport should have been a flat rate + extra miles.

Price to midtown Atlanta - $30 Price to Buckhead - $40

fennecfoxen4• 11 years ago

I paid like $70.

Thank the regulators for protecting me from unscrupulous taxi drivers' scams!!! :b

mythealias• 11 years ago

There is a direct MARTA train connection from Atlanta airport to Sandy Springs. And compared to NY and Chicago subways, I have found MARTA to be lot cleaner. It would have been more time and cost effective to take the train and then a hail a cab to your final destination. I doubt money was your primary concern if the cab driver was going round in circle. Also I believe that uber drivers are more tech savvy than regular cab drivers.

fennecfoxen4• 11 years ago

There is a direct MARTA train connection from Atlanta airport to Sandy Springs.

Not on a Sunday night, there isn't. The trains run less often, and you need to transfer from the Gold Line to the Red Line, and then you can transfer to a cab. So on evenings I'd take Uber to the hotel ($35ish) and it'd take about half an hour (airport to hotel, door to door). Friday evenings, now, taking MARTA would take an hour and traffic will take an hour or more and there was a convenient workplace-to-MARTA shuttle, so why not?

(Yes, it was on an expense account, so saving money wasn't my primary object, but that doesn't mean no one leans on you to keep expenses down. The cab-driver-in-circles was more an episode in hilarity than an expense that impacted me, though the ride still came to like $70.)

1414441222• 11 years ago

On the other hand, I've had a nearly identical experience with an Uber driver relying on GPS. In fact, it's been my experience that Uber drivers rely on their GPS far more often than taxi drivers, who generally give me the impression that they actually know the city that they drive in.

I wonder how long the average Uber driver has been driving professionally. I would be interested to see some stats on that subject, especially compared to regular taxi services.

URSpider94• 11 years ago

This. I rarely have issues with Uber Black, but with UberX, I routinely have to keep one eye on the road so the driver doesn't get lost. It's one thing when we are headed to my house, but when I'm going to SFO, I expect any for-hire driver to just know how to get there. Especially now that Uber has nav built into the app!

fennecfoxen4• 11 years ago

Well, as long as we're hating on Uber a little too, I'll put under Full Disclosure that there've been a number of times when the driver accepts my hail then proceeded to drive in the opposite direction for ten minutes... that's my main complaint honestly. :b

ryguytilidie• 11 years ago

My hack for taking Ubers from an airport is to simply get in the first rental car shuttle, go to their lot, and call an uber to their lot while you're in the shuttle. Get off the shuttle, get into Uber. Win.

tomsun• 11 years ago

Uber usually utilizes the phone GPS which the driver always puts on the dashboard. Makes it a lot harder to trick the riders.

drzaiusapelord2• 11 years ago

I don't really trust Uber any further than I can throw my smartphone, but anything is better than a generic airport taxi.

What happens when all the taxi drivers just become Uber drivers? This is happening in Chicago, where taxis double-dip as both Uber and standard taxi drivers. Its the same shitty service, same filthy cabs, and same dumb as rocks shenanigans. With uber there's fixed pricing and no tipping, which is nice, but it doesn't solve the issues you have with crazy/bad drivers.

I keep hearing how Uber is going to change everything, but it seems like 'meet the new boss, same as the old boss.' The labor willing to drive all day in car/cab aren't going to be our brightest and best. They're going to be marginal people who, for whatever reason, can't get a better job.

I think uber-x has had an early halo effect drawing in some casuals between jobs, but now it seems to be hardcore drivers and the types of people drawn to that kind of work. Its shit work, stressful (traffic sucks), etc. I just don't see a solution here. Uber drivers aren't some magical breed of person. Uber just hasn't been in business long enough to have the same amount of horror stories.

nl2• 11 years ago

In many cities (Florence comes to mind) there is a tacit understanding where street vendors sell good on the streets, but have to be able to put them away quickly enough to "hide" them when the police car comes past on one of it's periodic circuits.

The variable enforcement of laws (like my example, and also like the laws around taxi pick-ups) is something I'm very interested in from a formal economics view. Are there any studies showing the how the loose enforcement impacts different groups?

bmmayer1• 11 years ago

In a system where nearly everything is forbidden are burdensomely permitted, enforcement ends up targeting the most vulnerable in society (the poor, minorities, etc).

I think most Americans would be shocked if, overnight, every law on the books in the US, from income tax on cash income to street vendor permitting, to casual, personal drug usage, to hair salon certification laws, to laws against home poker games, were stringently and consistently enforced across the board. Half of Americans would be in prison or in court before the end of the year.

jonlucc• 11 years ago

And the courts would be quickly overwhelmed.

LLWM3• 11 years ago

Shocked in a good way, sure. Locking up half of all Americans would be uncontrovertible evidence that these bullshit laws need to be rewritten.

kaolinite• 11 years ago

Unrelated but I always found it shocking the number of street sellers peddling counterfeit designer goods in Italy, seeing as luxury goods are such a huge industry in the country. I would have assumed that, of all places, Italy would have a zero-tolerance approach to counterfeits.

CaptainZapp3• 11 years ago

They do.

You pay massive fines (3'500 EUR or so) when you're caught smuggling a fake Louis Vuitton (or whatever) handbag into the country.

ufmace• 11 years ago

Reminds me of this quote from Atlas Shrugged:

“Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with.”

In turn, that makes it feel odd that the prevailing opinion in these parts is often that the police enforce things too harshly, but the cure for every economic and social ill is always more Government micro-managing...

jordanthoms2• 11 years ago

Absolutely - you don't want laws to be enforced too completely, but you also don't want to have lots of laws on the books which nobody obeys and are usually not enforced, but can be enforced selectively.

pas• 11 years ago

In turn, that makes it feel odd that the prevailing opinion in these parts is often that the police enforce things too harshly, but the cure for every economic and social ill is always more Government micro-managing...

Show a principle that is broader than introducing new micro-regulations but would result in better outcomes. Considering the complexity of our reality, I doubt it's possible. Edge cases, functional requirements of life are numerous, and sure, there are a lot of old policies on the books, simply removing them would also cause too much perturbations. And no one cares enough about abstract efficiency, elegance and such to propose and fight for a plant to gradually deprecate them. (Minor examples are various tax exemptions, major example is the whole social security problem looming on the horizon. And the whole problem of healthcare economics fits here. People are rational, but have nasty time-dependent preference inversions, just to point out a problem with going with a simple and general solution.)

And this not too surprisingly has nothing to do with too harsh enforcement of some laws. (You just guessed the war on drugs. And general over-militarization of the police and the hostility of the criminal justice system.)

lobe• 11 years ago

When I was in Europe last I assumed the cops just let all of that slide. That was until I got to Florence, where I saw undercover cops arrest a group selling prints outside the Uffuzi, complete with crash tackling those that tried to run away.

monkeyprojects• 11 years ago

Having witnessed the destruction of a street vendors stock when he failed to run quick enough the last time we were in Florence I don't think there is any tacit understanding.

Its a game of cat and mouse. And when the cat arrives the mouse loses out... But there are an awful lot of mice and very few cats...

nl2• 11 years ago

I assume that without occasional enforcement the stalls get more and more elaborate.

The knowledge of the costs associated with being too slow to clear your stuff away acts as an incentive to stay small scale.

Frompo• 11 years ago

Do you mean this in a sense different from corruption? The loose enforcement of regulation is a very common goal of bribes, as famously depicted in mafia movies for instance.

Or do you talk of instances more like where the "good citizen" gets off with a warning despite breaking a rule that the "bad citizen" would be punished for?

The latter case seems more like sociology or ethnography to me, economists tend to not think so much of people as people after all.

ionwake2• 11 years ago

Can someone explain to me how Uber took off? Why did a company like it exist 5 years ago?

Thriptic• 11 years ago

They took on an industry in which existing players were poorly serving consumers and have been providing a good product. Other potential competitors avoided the market due to the regulatory environment in the industry. Uber dealt with this by stating that they are exempt from the existing regulations.

dylanjermiah3• 11 years ago

Travis said they tried it 6 months earlier and the battery life of the current gen phones couldn't handle what was required, even while plugged in.

Only one of the reasons however.

ionwake2• 11 years ago

Thank you for the insight =]

jacalata• 11 years ago

Its last frontier will be wheelchair accessibility, surely.

webwanderings• 11 years ago

I'm not a savvy nor a regular traveler. When recently I had to travel, back and forth airport to home in a suburb, I compared the uber and regular taxi prices. I didnt find any difference so I opted for regular taxi's flat rate. A regulated service gives a sort of confidence compared to anything else.

AVTizzle• 11 years ago

Interesting new application of the phrase "deadhead trips" here...

In the 1970's, that would have meant something else entirely :)

turbostyler• 11 years ago

Last frontier? I was just traveling around Europe, and most cities had limited/no service. Outside of London/Paris, no one knows what Uber is.

MrSourz• 11 years ago

I believe it is a last frontier from a legal perspective.

cm2187• 11 years ago

I find it interesting that most comments from people using uber are about price. To me it is rather about convenience. I have never been in Atlanta's airport but most airports and train stations I use in Europe have a 30min+ queue for taxis. To me the revolution was to be able to book on my smartphone, not have to carry cash and worry about whether I have enough to go back home, not having to wait outside of a bar looking for a cab but rather booking it from my table and only leaving the bar when the taxi is there, etc.

I remember a taxi ride with some colleagues in Paris. That was even before uber. The driver (a licensed taxi) was ranting about the fact that there were too many taxis. And to make his points he said something like "a few years ago, a client could call a taxi company and taxis were so rare that he wouldn't even be sure he would get a taxi, these were the good days". We were not very sympathetic.

In all the places I live in, taxis had a toxic monopole that needed to be challenged.

icebraining4• 11 years ago

Yeap. Here in Lisbon, just a month ago, after I told him my destination (which would come to ~5€), the taxi driver started ranting how they should raise the minimum ride to 15€. What a nice way to greet your customer /s

tim333• 11 years ago

I once got a regular taxi from terminal 4 to terminal 2 at Heathrow because the tube had packed up and I needed to get a flight but the taxis hate that. They have to queue for 3 or 4 hours to get a fare because the fares being so marked up it pays for them to do so. Heathrow to Harpenden, ~40 miles is about £120 by regular black cab, £50 by Uber for example. The system seems dumb - they should drop the regular cab fare to something more like the market rate.

amyjess• 11 years ago

not have to carry cash and worry about whether I have enough to go back home

I was so thankful when the City of Dallas passed laws requiring all cabs to accept credit cards and install credit card readers. That made riding in a cab much less painful... until I discovered Lyft, and now I'm too used to doing everything on my phone to ever go back.

blueskin_• 11 years ago

Free: https://archive.is/hfbkz

I tried to catch an Uber ride from Heathrow before, and it was a total nightmare in terms of not knowing where to go, having come out of the wrong exit, and the driver ending up in a car park. Really, the airports benefit from allowing them too, as they reduce traffic congestion and the number of confused people milling around looking for where their ride is...

Uber Closes in on Its Last Frontier: Airports

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