Comment on Uber's new shuttle service sounds a lot like a bus route

• MxM111@kbin.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Why not? The more the merrier, and you, the customer, have a choice.

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  • ilinamorato@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Until the city decides to get rid of the subsidized bus system because “Uber is a better service and covers the routes anyway” and then they jack the price sky-high.

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    • TheFriar@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Exactly. How people haven’t realized this yet is fuckin unconceivable. Trusting a for-profit company—with a history of the exact problematic behavior we’re worried about—is beyond stupid. They can operate at a loss for a long time. Just to fuck other businesses out of the market so they can charge as much as they want. It’s literally their business model.

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  • FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    What if you, the customer, are a poor person? Is Uber going to subsidize a bus pass for you to charter one of Uber’s buses to their job?

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    • MxM111@kbin.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Reducing public transportation is not a solution to fight poverty.

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      • catloaf@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Uber is not public transportation.

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    • blazera@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      no bus company subsidizes passes, local governments do

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      • FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Local governments… you mean the thing Uber hates and does everything they can to defy?

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    • Aux@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      From my own experience, if you’re poor, you use a regular bus. If you want to get somewhere faster, you pay more and catch a shuttle. If you want comfort, you pay even more and get a taxi. And all modes of transport are always full to the brim. The more the merrier, always.

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      • TheFriar@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        But…that’s our point. Uber taking over bus routes would ultimately void that choice. Public transportation is a public service. Letting a VC-funded for-profit company weasel their way into that space is never going to not fuck poor people. It’ll fuck everyone, but it’ll make “public transportation” unaffordable. And, really, when you’re poor, “if you want to get somewhere faster” isn’t really an option. That’s…the thing with being poor. You don’t have the extra money to spend to catch a shuttle and you don’t have the luxury of paying for comfort. Not to mention, even in the best case scenario, where busses would keep their existing schedule and routes (though the likelihood of this happening is slim) and we’d just get more busses? It’d clog the system, ultimately slowing bus routes.

        So, no. Not “the more the merrier” when it comes to private companies elbowing their way into public service, and especially not when we’re talking about fuckin traffic.

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    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’m hiring your job would be the one to do that. A lot of companies subsidize transit passes, the problem is usually there aren’t enough routes, so employees don’t use them.

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      • lemann@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        The hospitals in my nearby city have their own BRT which is open to public use, and joined to the city’s ticketing system. It shuttles between them and various key locations, and is of course wholly subsidized for the intended users.

        Despite being the only BRT here it pretty much goes everywhere it should, skipping the usual traffic, and as a result gets a lot of use.

        If the users were limited to the regular transportation I think they would just all drive - while there are a lot of routes here they’re not entirely pleasant to use IMO and almost always get stuck in traffic

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  • yildolw@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The private sector takes the profitable popular routes first, which the public system is already serving, meaning the public system would not longer be able to use the fare revenue from the popular routes to subsidize the geographical coverage unpopular ones which are nevertheless needed to get the full network effect

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• blazera@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  We need whoever is willing to provide them

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