Bay Area transit system to subsidize Uber, Lyft rides

By Denis Cuff : mercurynews – excerpt

DUBLIN — In a first for California, a public transit agency next month plans to begin subsidizing fares of people who take private Uber and Lyft cars to local destinations rather than riding the bus.

Passengers ordering Uber or Lyft car trips within two test areas of Dublin will be eligible to get door-to-destination service at a big discount under a partnership between the ride-hailing companies and the Wheels public bus system in Dublin, Alameda and Pleasanton.

The Livermore Amador Valley Transit Authority, which operates Wheels, said the one-year pilot project could help pave the way for changes in how public transit agencies in the United States serve suburban areas hampered by far-flung bus routes, few riders and little money from fares… (more)

 

You’re More Likely to Accept Uber’s Surge Pricing When Your Phone’s About to Die

By Maya Kosoff : vanityfair – excerpt

Uber’s head of economic research tells all.

Surge pricing is Uber’s most detested feature, and it has landed the company in hot water before. During times of demand, Uber activates surge pricing, which charges customers a multiplier on their fare, to get more drivers on the road to keep up with demand. And in the wake of every major drinking holiday, irate Uber customers have taken to posting screenshots of sky-high surge-priced receipts from the night before, hoping for some recompense for their high fares. These same passengers may have been less likely to accept surge-priced fares in the first place if their phones were more fully charged, Keith Chen, Uber’s head of economic research, told NPR’s Shankar Vedantam on a recent episode of the Hidden Brain podcast.

“One of the strongest predictors of whether or not you are going to be sensitive to surge—in other words, whether or not you are going to kind of say, oh, 2.2, 2.3, I’ll give it a 10 to 15 minutes to see if surge goes away—is how much battery you have left on your cell phone,” Chen said… (more)

Uber Teams Up With Real Estate Developer To Replace Car Ownership

By Brian Solomon : forbes – excerpt

About 90% of U.S. households own a car–but Uber wants to change that.

On Wednesday, Uber announced what it hopes will be the start of many local real estate partnerships designed to encourage residents to ditch their cars for ride-sharing and public transportation. This first partnership brings Parkmerced, a real estate development in San Francisco with over 3,000 rental apartments, into the fold.

The details: new residents will receive a $100 monthly transportation subsidy from Parkmerced to use on Uber and public transit ($30 must be used on Uber, the rest can be put on a Clipper Card). In return, Uber will cap the fares of any UberPool shared ride between Parkmerced and the nearby BART and MUNI stations to a maximum of $5…

“Five years ago we didn’t know who Uber was and now they rule the world,” said Rob Rosania, CEO of Maximus Real Estate, the developer of Parkmerced. “They were the first ones to raise their hands and the most aggressive when coming up with a solution that worked for a long term partnership toward multi-modal transportation.”… (more)

CPUC delays vote on ride-hail regulations until next month

By Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez : sfexaminer – excerpt

State regulators announced late Wednesday they will delay a controversial vote on sweeping new regulations for ride-hail companies like Uber and Lyft.

The California Public Utilities Commission was poised to approve a major overhaul of its regulations for ride-hail companies statewide that would impact thousands of such vehicles on San Francisco’s streets. The vote, scheduled for Thursday morning, was delayed to April 7 amid disagreements over the regulations, including whether such companies can use rental cars to offer rides.

Such contentious issues include whether Lyft drivers can lease vehicles purely for ride-hail use, if Uber drivers should be fingerprinted for criminal checks, and whether unaccompanied children can legally travel in ride-hails.

New high-stakes financial deals, like a partnership for Lyft drivers to lease vehicles from General Motors, Inc. that was announced this week, added fuel to missives between the legal teams of the multibillion ride-hail dollar companies, their critics and the CPUC.

Now Uber, Lyft and others will have more time to hash out the legal ramifications.

The CPUC still plans to discuss the Phase II regulations Thursday but will not vote on them… (more)

 

Got something to share? Let us know! available on the iPhone AppStore Why Are There So Many Uber Drivers Sleeping In The Safeway Parking Lot?

by Jay Barmann : sfist – excerpt

The other night I had an UberX driver tell me, in detail, how he was attempting to crank out 25 rides that evening, no matter how long it took him, and that I was his ninth fare of the night at around 7:30 p.m. He was talking about the new 20 percent bonus that Uber announced for drivers who complete 100 rides in a week — a major incentive after Uber has systematically cut fares in order to boost revenue, at the expense of drivers’ take-home pay. My driver on Monday said he’d been driving taxis for a living for 26 years, and that he used to say anyone who couldn’t manage to make at least “three bills” a night was a sheer amateur.

But making $300 in a 24-hour period for a rideshare driver could take upwards of 14 hours, and thus you have drivers who come into San Francisco from Fresno, Napa, Stockton and elsewhere sneaking in naps in places like the Market Street Safeway parking lot, as SF Weekly explains — and unlike regular taxis, which cap hours at 12, and Lyft, which disables the app for six hours after 14 consecutive hours of driving, Uber has no such cap. (And there’s nothing to stop a driver from simply switching between apps, as a number work for both Uber and Lyft.)

The paper talks to one driver, a married mother of one from Stockton who’s writing a memoir about her Uber-driving experiences, who takes home around $1,100 after five days — and 60+ hours — of driving, which she does by pulling over for naps where she can, and pulling 12- to 14-hour shifts.

Is this leading to a lot of under-rested Uber drivers on the road? Maybe, though there’s no data to back that up yet.

But this also only add fuel to the argument to make drivers employees, and to offer overtime pay… (more)

An Uber Labor Movement Born in a LaGuardia Parking Lot

By Adrian Chen : newyorker – excerpt

Last Tuesday afternoon, at LaGuardia Airport’s Lot 7, fifty Uber drivers logged out of the app and staged a strike. Lot 7 is where drivers typically wait to pick up arriving passengers, and it was full of rows of black and gray sedans and S.U.V.s. The protesters stood at the entrance to the lot, holding hand-drawn signs that read, “Support us we have family too” and “Bring back rates to where they were!” Any car leaving to take a job had to pass through the gauntlet. If the crowd determined that the driver was working for Uber, it slapped signs against the driver’s windows, blew plastic whistles, and shouted, “Shame!” and “You work for Uber; you are a slave!”

On January 29th, Uber had reduced fares in more than eighty cities in the U.S. and Canada. Drivers in some of those cities, including San Francisco, San Diego, Tampa, and New York City, have reacted with strikes and protests. One of the many barriers to sustainable organizing for those working for sharing-economy apps like Uber and Lyft is that the flexible, cloud-based nature of the service creates a relatively tenuous connection to other workers. Uber drivers have protested policy changes in the past, but this round appears to be more widespread and intense than before… (more)

Add this to the fact that Uber was one of the Super Bowl sponsors that was supposed to be the driver of choice for the audience, and they could not pick people up after the Super Bowl because they couldn’t get there. All the traffic was moving against them.

How To Save Money on Your New Year’s Eve Uber Ride

wspa – excerpt

As you go out to celebrate New Year’s Eve, don’t let a higher than expected Uber receipt ruin your morning.

Here are some tips to avoid the surge and maybe even get some free rides… (More)

Take a cab!

We’d like to know if Lyft has surge pricing. We know that cabs don’t. And how much do the CEOs and other Uber employees spend during surge pricing? Do they even take Uber? Someone should find out and report back how the Uber executives travel tonight. Any spies out there?

The True Sharing Economy

By Zoe Oja Tucker : eastbayexpress – excerpt

Hint: It’s not Uber, Lyft, or Airbnb — and it’s been quietly thriving in the East Bay for years.

…Uber promotes its service as a liberating alternative to taxi driving, its traditional economy counterpart. The company claims that 73 percent of its drivers would rather have a job in which you “choose your own schedule and are your own boss” than a 9-to-5, salaried job with benefits. In 2014, the Uber news blog quoted an Uber driver and former taxi driver from Denver who proclaimed, “I feel emancipated.”.

But over the past year, Mario’s job satisfaction has declined, along with his income and the number of customers he has each day. He thinks the Bay Area market has become saturated with Uber drivers. As it gets harder to find passengers at any given time, he spends more time driving or sitting outside an airport with his app turned on, waiting for a “ping.”…

Mario is also acutely aware that his pay could erode further or disappear completely without notice. Every so often, he receives a curt notice from Uber about the company lowering rates in his area, which directly lowers his income. Mario also has driver friends whose accounts have been abruptly deactivated because of a low customer rating — even if that customer happened to be drunk or having a bad day when grading the driver. Although driving for Uber provides some helpful income right now, Mario said he hopes he can find a new job soon. “There’s no security,” he explained, “because it’s not something you get paid hourly for.” (The precarious nature of working for Uber is also why the Express has agreed to requests by Uber drivers that we only use their first names in this report.).

The recent announcement by Uber that it will expand its global headquarters to the old Sears building in Uptown Oakland has been accompanied by a heightened interest in the company and its business practices, as well as those of other companies in the sharing economy. Many local political and business leaders have hailed the arrival of Uber as a sign of the city’s long-sought revitalization. But from the perspective of critics and labor activists, the term “sharing economy” is grossly misleading, because companies like Uber are just offering a new form of unstable, unregulated employment — and there isn’t much actual sharing going on.

The word “sharing,” of course, connotes generosity and fairness — of equal access to something. It appeals to more than just convenience and immediate gratification — to a type of transaction that ideally might be more sociable and less wasteful than the regular economy. The idea of sharing is also attractive because it seems to address real problems in the current economy: unemployment and underemployment, the insufficiency of the minimum wage, consumer waste and environmental impact, and even social alienation…

But critics say that, in reality, Uber does little to address these issues. Moreover, as politicians and business leaders have celebrated the arrival of Uber, they’ve overlooked the local organizations and cooperatives that have been engaged in actual sharing for years. In fact, Oakland and the East Bay have long been home to innovative businesses that have established equitable structures and share risk, decision-making, ownership, and profit.

These small cooperatives and socially minded businesses, including Arizmendi Bakery and the Missing Link Bicycle Cooperative, have not generally been recognized as part of the new “sharing economy.” In fact, in many ways, they’re the polar opposite of Uber.

They make up what some advocates call “the true sharing economy.”… (more)

Report: More than 750 jobs could be eliminated if Uber expands in central New York

auburnpub – excerpt

Hundreds of jobs will be cut if Uber expands to central New York and the Syracuse area, according to a new report released Monday by a group representing the taxi industry.

The report unveiled by the Committee for Taxi Safety says Uber’s expansion would lead to the elimination of 751 limousine and taxi industry jobs in central New York. The cuts would affect non-driver positions, such as dispatchers and mechanics.

Uber, a ride-sharing service which already operates in New York City, is looking to expand to Long Island and cities in upstate. The company says expanding to areas outside of New York City would create 13,000 jobs.

But the Committee for Taxi Safety claims many of those jobs would be part-time positions.

“This report makes it clear that Uber’s expansion outside of New York City will be a job killer for central New York,” Committee for Taxi Safety President David Beier said in a statement. “Before lawmakers create a statewide license for Uber, they should consider the destructive impact of losing these full-time jobs.”

Uber released an economic impact report in October that showed the company’s drivers would earn an estimated $80 million in net fares during the first year of operations if expansion to Long Island and upstate New York is permitted… (more)

There is something fishy about these numbers. How can you shift 750 taxi jobs into 13,000 Uber jobs?

SF Has More Surge Pricing Than NYC…And Other Findings From a New Uber Study

By Jeremy Lybarger : sfweekly – excerpt

A new study of Uber’s surge pricing found that it doesn’t lure Uber drivers to high-demand areas, although it does discourage many passengers from requesting rides.

As the Chronicle reports, the study, “Peeking Beneath the Hood of Uber,” looked at surge pricing in San Francisco and New York. Researchers collected data from December through May, but really focused on two weeks this past spring.

Here’s what they found:

• Surge pricing compels many seasoned drivers to seek business in less active areas.
• San Francisco has more surges than New York.
• San Francisco’s surges peak at double the normal rate during morning rush hour, from 6:00 to 9:00 a.m.
• Triple surge pricing sometimes occurs in San Francisco around 2:00 a.m., when bars close.
• Surges in San Francisco can reach as high as 4.1 times the normal rate, although 1.5 times or less is more typical.
• Because surges are short-lived, passengers willing to wait five minutes will probably see rates drop.

As expected, Uber disputes the study’s findings and methodology. Keith Chen, a UCLA professor currently working with Uber, told the Chronicle, “[Researchers] missed a lot of what surge pricing does with respect to supply,” noting that drivers were actually more likely to seek high-demand areas.

Uber plans to update its app so drivers will know whether they can make it to a surge area in time to cash in… (more)