The reason why I don't use taxis in Australia is partly because the experience is far better with Uber and the cost is cheaper, but also because Uber is the most reliable. Without drivers and such reliability, I can't use Uber even if I want to.
Does demand drive supply? Yes. But does supply drive demand? Yes too. With a two sided marketplace, you can't just focus on one.
Often, when I'm in public, I'll choose an auto-rickshaw instead of an Uber because the rickshaw is right there. I don't have to wait for it, don't have to give it directions to find me.
The service is worse - I have to haggle about prices, endure bumpy rides and dangerous driving - but the easy availability makes me choose them.
Uber, in these cases, is a breath of fresh air. Upfront pricing, reasonably friendly drivers, decent customer service in case of issues etc. is very welcome, even if it involves waiting for 2-5 mins. I'd rather wait for a cab than have insults hurled at me for not wanting to get ripped off. :/
Actually, I absolutely do. I've gone on many trips that I simply wouldn't have gone on pre-Uber. On a regular basis I'll decide to go somewhere (ex. a party in Brooklyn) which I wouldn't have bothered with if it meant a slow and unreliable taxi (or an even slower subway ride).
In the Bay Area and New York City, for me, this is untrue. Distances feel smaller when you can cross them with the press of a button. That, in turn, makes peripatetic schedules realistic.
Case in point: I took a Lyft Line from Berkeley to Mountain View yesterday. If that wasn't an option, I would have (a) taken the train or (b) not gone that far.
If getting from A to B is time consuming and expensive then I might not bother unless it's really important. By lowering the costs of getting from A to B I might do it more often than I would otherwise.
My demand for travel is somewhat elastic, not completely set before I know the cost of travel.
Personally, I just don't have many situations where I would make a trip but my available alternatives are just a bit too costly/inconvenient--while Uber wouldn't be. But I understand they exist.
Incredibly opinionated. It's a pretty disputed claim that more single passenger traffic improves a city.
In general major cities are trying to reduce automobile traffic and are giving more space to pedestrians and cyclists.
In the future as cities consider mobility pricing to control congestion and further limit car use, it's quite likely that ride hailing services like Uber will have caps placed on them much like how taxis do now.
When he was 9, he fled the Iranian Revolution, and became a refugee in the U.S.
I have more respect for Uber today.
For instance, his brother Kaveh Khosrowshahi is a managing director at Allen & Co., the investment bank best known for its ultra exclusive Sun Valley conference. A few cousins are Google execs. His cousin Amir Khosrowshahi is at Intel after Intel bought the AI company he co-founded, Nervana, last year for $400 million. His twin cousins Ali and Hadi Partovi sold their startup to MySpace back in 2009 for $20 million and went on to become power angels backing Airbnb, Dropbox, Uber, and Facebook and cofounding Code.org.
Some of them are VCs. If you are raising funding, don't tell them anything confidential.
>The worse things look, the easier it is for it to get better
And i think Uber has been dealing with their own version of an incident pit lately.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-28/tender-of...
Uber's success has been about evolving a core product in an emerging category whereas Expedia is all about maximizing revenue from the existing mess of travel product categories.
If uber starts to retain customers with miles or try to diversify revenue sources, I think it'd be a bad sign. But, who knows.
