by afavour on 6/7/25, 12:33 PM
> Meanwhile, the federal government is cutting support for public services, including transit systems — many of which still haven’t fully recovered from Covid-era budget crunches. Though ridership nationwide is up to 85 percent of prepandemic levels, Bloomberg News recently estimated that transit systems across the country face a $6 billion budget shortfall.
The gameplan is clear. Take the high value, richer customers from the public transit system as it declines and ensure its complete demise. Then you’re free to jack up the prices to whatever you want them to be.
by _Algernon_ on 6/7/25, 12:29 PM
It's basically a law of nature at this point that any attempt at revolutionizing public transit will end up reinventing the train.
by raincole on 6/7/25, 1:13 PM
by mrweasel on 6/7/25, 1:16 PM
> “But it’s more like they’re reinventing a worse bus.”
Okay, but if their customers where not taking the bus before, it's still better. What I think Uber gets right is that these are probably smaller than your regular busses, which makes them more appealing, bring a bigger sense of safety to some users.
Uber and Lyft are still weird, wasn't the whole point of ride sharing that you'd jump in a car with someone going in the same direction as you? Not that people would operate their own cars as a taxi.
by tuyguntn on 6/7/25, 1:45 PM
I wonder what's the purpose of collecting tax from citizens, if there is no properly run public transportation system, medical system and education.
Why should anyone pay extra from their income, if private companies are going to profit from providing a service to the public which was intended to be built using taxes by the government?
by kj4211cash on 6/7/25, 1:14 PM
I worked on the earlier iteration of this at Uber. I was curious why more people didn't call it out at the time. Yes, using cell phones and Uber's market share to make demand responsive microtransit is an interesting idea. Yes, it can work relatively well in areas where there isn't enough demand for fixed route bus service but there is sufficient demand for this type of service. On the other hand, every public transit nerd will tell you that microtransit has serious limitation and is often used to negative effect in areas that would be better served by fixed route bus service. The sad thing for me was that almost no one at Uber knew anything about public transit or transportation in general. The claim that it's just a bunch of tech bros reinventing the bus (again) sadly rings very true to me. As someone that was there.
by dmurray on 6/7/25, 1:45 PM
> During Uber’s big announcement, Kansal showed a video of one possible Route Share ride in the Big Apple. It covered about 3 miles from Midtown to Lower Manhattan, which would take about 30 minutes and cost $13.
Definitely a weird choice for the presentation: the best-served part of the best-served city in the US for public transport. Why not pick literally anywhere else?
by r721 on 6/7/25, 12:51 PM
by xnx on 6/7/25, 12:36 PM
by tptacek on 6/7/25, 1:10 PM
People love this "reinvented the bus" line, but: aren't they just saying "Uber has started a bus service"? The connotation is always somehow that Uber or its customers are too dumb to realize that busses exist. There's a reason people take private shuttles instead of the number 66 bus cross-town.
by aga98mtl on 6/7/25, 2:00 PM
I do not understand why Wired exist. Who wants news about technology from a techno-pessimist angle?