For example, there have appeared automated boxes for recipients to pick up packages.
You mean a mail box?
I wish that USPS would get into this service, because I'm not a fan of Amazon and package theft is rampant. It is nearly impossible to replicate the Amazon locker experience through USPS and other online retailers. If you want to order a package and pick it up at the post office, the best you can hope for is to beg the seller to send it to you via general delivery, which many do not allow. And even though renting a PO box lets you ship packages to the post office and pick them up, most retailers won't ship to PO boxes. A PO box costs about the same per year as a Prime subscription. Plus, you still have to wait in line to pick up your packages.
Yes, except (before COVID) if you were at work, and the mail carrier tried to deliver a package to your house unsuccessfully, they would take it with them again. Or they would leave it outside the house, where it could be stolen.
Then, starting the next day, you could go to the nearest pickup site (and depending on the carrier, this either means the post office, which might be a 20min walk, or a completely-out-of-town parcel distribution site, which could be a 1h15 train ride [based on my own location]) to get it.
There, you would take a number, and wait in line up to 15 minutes (because all working people would be there at that time of day).
The alternative is an automated postal box, which does not need an employee to operate it. It's just a huge wall of lockers with a central terminal. When you receive a package there, you get an electronic unlock code to unlock exactly that 1 locker with your package in it.
These postal boxes can be installed anywhere where spare space is available. Maybe that's platform 5 at your nearest train station, or outside the pharmacy in town. At least it's closer to your home, and open 24/7.
Step 2: Develop AI to automate the work using data generated in step 1.
Step 3: Convince investors that your AI is close to finished. Use the money to actually build a working version.
Step 4: Fire all the humans.
There is a factory at the edge of town which employs one human and one dog. The human's job is to feed the dog. The dog's job is to keep the human away from the machines.
This sort of thing would be unthinkable in central Moscow and most other large European city centres (the only European city I've ever felt unsafe in is Brussels, and that's still quite different from NYC).
Nothing ruins a good story like facts. That's also why you should always raise before you launch or enter a new market, etc. People are suckers for a story, and our brains are pre-wired to explain phenomena rather than to question them. Once you master that psychology (and manipulation) of people, you'll be better at fundraising - and apparently at journalism as well!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Russia [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
> Either way, it represents a significant decrease over the previous 15 years (in 2001, the homicide rate was 30.5). In 2018, according to Rosstat, there were 7,067 murders, and the homicide rate in Russia fell below the United States for the first time in recent history, falling to 4.9 per 100,000 compared to the US rate of 5.0 per 100,000 in 2018.
A common thing that happens in these comparisons is that people look at the Rosstat statistic that includes attempted murder.
Also, I'm specifically making my point about the major cities. Moscow sees a huge amount of investment of course, and I would expect the same from US cities like NYC or SF.
It's strange because it's exaggerated, and it's exaggerated because it has to be - otherwise nobody would care to read the article (and then nobody would pay for this poor reporter's salary who has to hit certain monthly pageview targets, etc).
If you read something in the news and it sounds really strange, don't take it at face value.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
It sounded strange, because all it takes is a few YouTube searches to witness the level of violence that exists in Russia that far exceeds anything you'll see in the US. Russia really is something else in that regard, and if a Russian felt safer at home than in the US, it's simply a product of exaggerated reporting.
If someone living in Munich said that NYC is more dangerous than what they are used to, I wouldn't disagree with them.
Just like you can't compare Western Europe to Japan (it is much more violent in comparison, but again, different demographics).
The US is maybe 50% Europe, 30% Latin America, 8% Asia, 12% Africa, and if you look at the UN intentional homicide tables and take the weighted average by continent, you'll end up with an expected intentional homicide rate of about 5 per 100,000, which is right where the US is.
So stop pretending we are Western Europe - we aren't.
If you combined murder rate + ICU entry rate for both countries due to violent crime, I think the stats would tell quite a different story.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/deliveroo...
My first time on jury duty in nyc the case was armed robbery of a delivery worker to steal his cell phone - this was pre smart phone era, so let's say the phone's value was <$200.
Was a very depressing case tbh. One person at risk of death and another at risk of a long prison term for what was really petty theft (armed robbery makes the punishment much much worse than just petty theft would be).
If this is a known crime hotspot, shouldn't police just be hanging out there?
American police also stole $2.5 bn in cash and killed 1,100 people in 2020.
I used to hang around some trucking forums and found that in the 70's-80's into the 90's Hunts Point was legendary among truckers as a war zone. From the stories and anecdotes the route between the ports and the expressway was a gauntlet of armed highwaymen. It was so bad truckers would not stop for red lights or stop signs for fear of being hijacked in broad daylight. It was customary to lean on the horn and try to roll through. A few even admitted to illegally carrying a pistol for protection.
I think a ban on guns, and eg., an extreme historical scarcity of them in the UK means we aren't in the same position at all.
Yes there may be gangs. Yes there may be murders. But I think people delivering food on bikes arent in danger basically anywhere.
> Americans often project this "no-go areas" type thinking onto europe. I'm not aware of any "no-go" areas anywhere in the country.
This just comes off as more flame bait. What kind of discussion do you expect to have with this sort of comment?
The political system of these major Democrat dominated cities is entirely dysfunctional. The only thing the public sector unions, and their political puppets, offer as a solution, is more social spending:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long...
The US is just ahead of the pack in unraveling.
(That link only covers through 2019, but if you look at the official CompStat data the two year trend for 2019–2021 is also negative: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statist...)
Some crimes are down, some (e.g. murder) are up.
"Safe" is also very hard to define. Safe for who? Safe in what sense? It's a giant grey area and no one has ever been able to "solve" the crime problem. Getting tough on crime doesn't work, nor does endless social programs, nor does sweeping it under the rug.
Hopefully Adams will take a pragmatic approach and do what he can without making it worse. I wish him well.
I wonder if we’re seeing history repeat itself? Cities grew in the 50’s, then saw people leave in the 60-70’s, then return in the 90’s.
On the other hand, this latest round seems to be the result of poor policy choices.
Our threat vectors are a bit different in that the bikes are more likely to be snatched when the rider is dismounted and in a building for a pickup or delivery. We’ve been experimenting by keeping a GPS in the frame and triggering something akin to a car alarm when the bike starts moving too significantly while the rider’s phone isn’t in the vicinity of the bike.
Our primary challenge has been finding the ideal way to lock the bikes while dismounted. The best chain locks are too unwieldy to use for the pace our couriers move at. Wheel locks were interesting but would end up breaking spokes when couriers would inevitably ride them while still locked. We’re currently giving folding locks a go. Open to suggestions if anyone has ideas or experience with other solutions.
Possibly something like the Velo Guard steering locks? They lock the steering in a fixed position (making the bike impossible to ride).
Crime in Montreal is actually quite a bit higher than in NYC. In 2019, with data from Statistics Canada (for Montreal) and the FBI (for NYC)...
Montreal's violent crime rate (1140 per 100k people) is double that of NYC (571 per 100k people). The property crime rate in Montreal (2,222 per 100k people) is similarly higher than NYC (1,460 per 100k people).
Sources: https://www.areavibes.com/montr%C3%A9al-qc/crime/ and https://www.areavibes.com/new+york-ny/crime/
Have a look [1].
'Murder' is a straight forward thing to define. Someone gets killed.
But 'assault' is a very vague thing.
According to that list 'Iceland' is a crime ridden country with overall crime 4x more than the US, even though murder in the US is more than 10x greater?
More like reporting, charges, definitions, data collection is different.
That said: Montreal is slightly sketchy for petty crime, and some places getting drunk and fighting is normal (UK/Nordic) and in some places, they use knives (i.e. Wales, Scotland).
[1] https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Total-...
The motor controller could do electric braking if the rider's phone isn't in the vicinity of the bike. This would mean you can't push the pedals, but the wheels will still turn without resistance. If you forget to unlock it, you won't break the spokes, and there's no sudden halt, so you can still manually and safely break.
You could still run off with the bike on foot of course. But maybe if the pedals are blocked by the motor, you can use the standard lock without breaking the spokes?
One of the big risks is that the cargo bikes are worth stealing with a truck or pickup. The resell value is great and even if the bike is inoperable, the parts can be easily dismantled and sold off. I worry that the tactics will shift more towards that direction as the bikes themselves get harder to ride off on.
That won’t stop anyone stealing it, but it should vastly increase the chances of recovery.
I think market is very close to a solution. I'm waiting for shipment on a Boomerang, which is an anti theft GPS that secures to the frame's water bottle attachment points. It's designed enough around connectivity that I could imagine motor lockdown in the next iteration.
Unfortunately one of the most competent motor builders, Bafang, just moved to a more closed CANBUS interface to penetrate markets that heavily regulate speed. Bosch has anti theft logic in their systems but there seems to be a smaller ecosystem for modding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs8uyPsDaw0
I think that bike theft should be handled the way that horse theft was handled in the wild west.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ela_Bhatt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_Employed_Women%27s_Associ...
From a systemic perspective (which may run counter to your goals), I believe the best solution, which I know won't soon happen in a nation like the US that values comfort and convenience over health and nature, but it's to return to home cooking over deliveries. While it would decrease these jobs, it wouldn't hurt the economy. People who saved delivery money would still spend it, just not on these dangerous jobs.
It makes sense from a systemic perspective. We say we need immigrants to do the jobs Americans don't want to do, but I believe that view reverses cause and effect. Rather than having job vacancies first and need people second, when people divorced from the actual work see lots of cheap labor, they find ways to use it that no one would choose for themselves.
We once had butchers, grocers, and tailors. Then big box stores drove them out of business and replaced them with slaughterhouses and such, incredibly dangerous jobs increasing the disparity of wealth. I see reversing that trend as helping restore safety and dignity to the work and a middle class to the nation.
My result: I don't think I've ever had something home delivered besides the post office, UPS, and Fedex, which don't have these time limits. Shopping for myself and cooking save time and money, plus I meet and form relationships with my counterparts at the coop, farmers market, and CSAs. I pollute a lot less too, taking two years to fill a load of garbage since I avoid packaging.
What you're doing is quite interesting as someone else in the Montreal area :)
The same technology that can propel a Tesla to 100km/h in under 5 secs is also the same technology in new cordless powertools. And the theives steal those too!
Your only real defense is for them to have something better to steal. Make your bike uglier!
Not easy to retrofit though.
We gotta find some way to stop companies from repeatedly settling the same claims to avoid a ruling against them. The system is set up so they can pay to sweep individual cases under the rug while maintaining the systemic problem.
The real innovation is in skirting labor laws and shifting risks/costs to workers.
The day to day running of the system for each particular market could be handled by an NGO, a cooperative or something of the sort.
How did something like this even get funded? I mean, I could understand if the development costs were being funded by VC money, but actual deliveries? Even if one company were to actually dominate the market, it would still need to continue subsidizing variable costs and there is no moat to protect them from competition.
(And, as eru points out, they might be able to establish a regulatory moat to prevent any new entrants from arising once they're established, like the drug and medical device companies. Did you know the first clinical implantation of a cardiac pacemaker was in 01958, only two years after the transistor was invented? The patient died—in 02001, 43 years later. How long do you think it takes an incrementally improved new pacemaker design to get regulatory approval today? Much less a totally new kind of medical device?)
Keep in mind, though, that "VCs are betting" doesn't mean that the VCs think this is the most likely outcome, even the ones who did invest. It just means they think it's sufficiently plausible that if it does happen they want to own a piece of it.
I think it might happen via ghost kitchens. Distributed food preparation and couriers picking from small restaurants is inefficient. Larger kitchens, optimized for quick pickups, same people preparing food under many different brands.
Maybe one can also rethink how the apps work, to bring bit more efficiency (if you control the larger part of the production chain). Most of the time when using these apps I'm hungry and I just want to eat. I would be actually quite happy, if the app could provide some decent recommendations on what could be delivered quickly.
The moat might come: there's always pressure for more regulation. Once a company is established, it can yield to that pressure and even actively invite more regulation.
Thanks to regulatory capture, regulation often acts as a moat for incumbents.
I believe that it's "too much money sloshing around".
Which seems to miss that even if they succeed at doing that to the incumbents, they're then vulnerable to the next investor's subsidised business doing the same to them.
Who would benefit from that? Delivery companies offer a simple and practical way to process orders and payments. Restaurant chains can and do provide their own in-house delivery services. The added-value is not the software infrastructure but the service that's provided.
What exactly is the value proposition of open-sourcing a platform?
I can imagine some kind of federated system where restaurants put out a contract in response to a customer order, workers bid on it. Maybe there's even blockchain based reviews.
It seems that efficiently connecting buyers and sellers in the delivery labor market, without an middle party to collect huge fees, would be beneficial to everyone.
Secondly you suggest a co-op, which could maybe work if this were actually a profitable sector. Currently it's still loss-leading
However I think setting up something like a worker-owned cooperative to replace various gig economy companies would be a really cool project. Honestly if such a service existed, and my friends continued to use the (cheaper) VC-subsidised option, I'd ostracize them for it.
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-po...
The odd thing is that many PDs around the country are doubling down rather than re-examining their mission and culture.
Gorillas especially has been hit hard with literal revolt by riders, which let to some pretty amusing press conferences by their CEO.
The end user could authorize their own new devices unless they lost access to both devices and info needed to do so and the manufacturer could handle same if and only if you were the original registered owner or ownership had been transferred in a verifiable way.
See why phone theft isn't as big a deal anymore they aren't worth anything if they can't easily be used anywhere.
The other ridiculous conditions are solved by making them threat their employees as employees and pay them a minimum wage for time spent including spent idling + millage.
If this plus vc money eventually exiting makes some portion of the work uneconomical so be it.
"He reported both to the police, but the cases went nowhere, an experience common enough that many workers have concluded calling 911 is a waste of time."
Is so frustrating. The theft of thousands of dollars worth of equipment with the threat of violence in a known location and the police aren't interested?
These are somehow strange and inexplicable societal values concerning crime.
A cycle blog here in Sweden recently had an article on several really simple measures that could be taken to help curtail bike theft (which is epidemic) but neither the police, insurance companies or reselling sites were interested in their suggestions. Bikes can be worth the equivalent of thousands of dollars.
Last week I was walking into a grocery store when 4 police were arresting a guy who looked very dejected, and I asked an assistant what had happened she said he was caught stealing a piece of meat.
"...food-delivery workers returning home after their shifts have been violently attacked there for their bikes: by gunmen pulling up on motorcycles, by knife-wielding thieves leaping from the recesses..."
Those are crimes that carry multi-year prison sentences.
My adopted home of Singapore seems to handle this really well.
There's always stories of people leaving there wallets and phones to reserve tables at the food court. Without any issue.
It seems like the root issue isn’t the catching but the recatching. If you want to nearly eliminate it, punish it like Singapore does. I don’t think we have the will to do that (in fact, seem to be heading in the opposite direction), so police will continue to catch the heat for how much property crime continues to happen.
Frustrating, still, but improvement seems at least possible.
Agreed with the treating of employees properly though, these guys go through the ringer just from regular customers and order systems I can't imagine adding thieves to the mix.
You just need to make stealing the bike annoying enough for would-be thieves to find something better to do with their time.
(Compare how flimsy most people's front door locks are, yet, they still help compared to no lock.)
I mean look at cars; just taking the wheels or radio out is already worth the effort. The radio is less viable these days though, since they're built in so more difficult to remove, and there's a lockout if it's disconnected from power (for which you need a code).
I mean theoretically you could, but not in a safe way.
It could broadcast I'm a stolen bike with cords with the electrical pathway to the transmitter being also wired to something else more vital.
You could pass an encoded unique to device signal over the rest of the system with chips elsewhere expecting that signal and noping out if they don't get it to foil rewiring.
You could require a periodic modifier received over the air encoded in chip2 .. chip n but not available in chip 1 like a series of codes for your key fob to unlock your car.
You could absolutely make it as hard to defeat as defusing a bomb and lunatics who wave glass bottles are no longer stealing your bikes.
This has got to be 90% of the problem.
The problem is that you would need to reach mass adoption of the technology, so that the fact of that specific item not being worth stealing would become common knowledge.
Compare https://www.idiosyncraticwhisk.com/2019/10/california-wants-... and https://www.idiosyncraticwhisk.com/2019/05/uber-and-wages-in...
Basically, there's not much binding riders to a specific delivery app. Many cities have multiple competing apps that riders relatively easily switch between.
