[mathgladiator]

This blows my mind. I used to use Uber a bunch, and I built relationships with drivers such that I could just text them and get a ride at a certain time for a discount.

Ultimately, I wonder if Uber is prime to be disrupted if drivers got together and funded a few engineers to build a city-scale service for the hailing and payment aspect.

[nobody9999]

>Ultimately, I wonder if Uber is prime to be disrupted if drivers got together and funded a few engineers to build a city-scale service for the hailing and payment aspect.

Apparently a whole bunch of folks are trying to do just that.

I was going to provide just one example, but a web search[0] shows a whole bunch of these efforts in a variety of locales. As such, I just provided the web search results here.

[0] https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=ride%20share%20cooperativ...

[noirbot]

Austin had that for a while when they went and banned Uber/Lyft. They were... ok? The issue ends up being that it's hard to be a one-city service that's mostly used by people who don't live in the city. If I arrive in a random city, the last thing I want to do to get to where I need to go is have to search for which app I need to install and give my CC info to in order to get a cab.

NYC used to have Juno, but it went bankrupt in 2019. I feel like if you can't run a single-city rideshare app in NYC, you're gonna have a hard time doing it anywhere else.

[nobody9999]

>NYC used to have Juno, but it went bankrupt in 2019. I feel like if you can't run a single-city rideshare app in NYC, you're gonna have a hard time doing it anywhere else.

I haven't used it (I always pay cash, as the drivers are charged ~3-5% per fare for "CC processing" when a card is used), but every NYC taxi has a feature where you can pair with the onboard system and pay with your phone.

Not sure what "pairing" requires, perhaps someone else has used this feature and can comment.

[DeathArrow]

But that can be done at a scale where legal and financial regulations do not change.

For most of Europe that means country level, for the US and other federal states, that probably means at the state level.

[gruez]

>If I arrive in a random city, the last thing I want to do to get to where I need to go is have to search for which app I need to install and give my CC info to in order to get a cab.

Searching and installing a random app introduces a slight amount of friction, but I don't think payment necessarily has to be that much of a hassle. Just use apple/google pay.

[noirbot]

That assumes the app supports on-phone payment options like that. Obviously it's gotten more ubiquitous now, but most of the non-Uber/Lyft apps I've used in the past didn't. They often will require me to make a full account as well, give them name, address, email... I think one of them tried to make me upload a picture of my Driver's License, even thought I was very sure I wasn't signing up to be a driver.

Obviously this all could be easy, but it's amazing how many apps fail to make things easy to onboard. When I've just gotten done traveling for hours and just want to get to some place to relax, the last thing I want is to wrangle new account creation in some app where they're trying to be cheap and haven't hired any UX designers to smooth out the process because "you can rebuild Uber with 3 smart devs" as everyone on HN says.

[dopidopHN]

2 city unions did that in France. In marseille and Lyon.

Last time I tried the Lyon app it was barebone and not really up to par with Uber by a large margin. But still.

[nerdponx]

My impression is that this is what the Curb and Arro apps were supposed to be. I don't know anybody who uses them.

[robertlagrant]

Some cab companies are doing this. Oxford has Royal Cars and a couple of others.

And they're...okay. I think they all use the same white label technology to make their apps.

[janejeon]

Already happening in NYC w/ Curb, though many (like me) are staying the fuck away from it and sticking w/ Uber/Lyft. It's a matter of trust and operational complexity (that's not easily "solved" from the ground up), imho