Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large. 

You son of a beach, I'm in

I am officially in on the Waymo app. I can now hail a fully autonomous car to take me anywhere (?) in San Francisco. Bad news for me is unlike the early invitees, rides are no longer free. But, I am excited to see what it is all about. Hopefully there won’t be any crashing into emergency vehicles. There definitely will not be any sex.

Can we trust computers fully? This morning, my Apple Watch did its hourly thing of reminding me to stand up. Problem is: I was already standing for the past 20 minutes! Kind of disappointed it wasn’t completely foolproof to detect that. I guess the Apple Watch doesn’t use a proximity sensor to gauge how far it is from the floor? That makes sense, actually. Otherwise, you can fake standing by sitting on a bar stool.

Pilots trust autopilot programs on airplanes, and by transitive properly, so do we as passengers. Obviously, there are way less airplanes in the sky compared to cars on the road. Also, there aren’t pedestrians and other objects to potentially run into.

I think the so called robotaxis are perfect for the introverts like myself. I almost never (want to) talk to the UBER driver, and always sit in the back passenger space. (Are there UBER drivers out there using two-door coupes?) With robotaxis, even the subtle pressure of making conversation with the driver will be gone! It is a completely silent car ride - there’s nobody else but me. I would totally watch a Youtube video during a Waymo ride, if I weren’t prone to carsickness.

Will I get annoyed at how strictly a Waymo ride follows the rules of the road? Example: everybody’s going 10 above, while the robotaxi is pegged to the speed limit. Unlike a human driver taxi, there isn’t (yet?) a financial incentive for a robotaxi to get to the destination as quickly as possible.

The glow up.

Waiting more and paying more

Indeed it is true: it is tough to get an UBER/LYFT these days. Demand is high as people are back out and about, but there’s a shortage of drivers. A 10 minute wait before your ride even gets picked up is not uncommon. Oh yeah, you’ll be paying more than what you were used to before the pandemic.

My friend and I personally confirmed this during our four cities in 12 days tour of Southern California and the Pacific Northwest. Despite the wait times and the cost increases, hailing a ride-share is still more convenient and cheaper than renting a car. Because the same supply-and-demand skew happened to the rental car market: too many travelers, not enough vehicles. In major cities you’re looking at $80 and upwards per day - if there’s even a reservation to be had. And then you’d have to worry about parking the car. The places we stayed at all charged extra for parking.

With that in mind, we figured it is best to hail a ride share whenever we need it, instead of renting a whole car. Of course, splitting the costs two ways alleviate some of the hurt from the general price increase.

How would we have done this before the invention of ride sharing? Dialing up a taxi, perhaps. Easy enough at major transport hubs like a train station and airport, where there are dedicated taxi lines. Major hotel chains should also be able to call a cab for you when asked. The only problem I can see is on the return trip from a destination. Actually standing on the side of the street and raising a hand at a passing taxi? I’ve only done that in Asian countries.

For all their ills and of which there are plenty, I’m glad UBER/LYFT made it possible to get a ride at anytime with just your smartphone (and a credit card on file). The convenience factor is huge, and this recent vacation of our would not be as smooth without this ability.

Bougie van life.

What did we do before?

I recently read about the utter nightmare situation for travelers into LAX: the airport decided to move the pickup location for taxis and rideshare cars away from the arrivals level and to a separate lot some ways away. LAX offers around-the-clock shuttle service to the new pickup lot, from where passengers can wait for their UBER or LYFT drivers, or get in line for the traditional taxi. It’s a move similar to my home airport, SFO: pickups for domestic travel have been moved to a nearby parking garage, though it’s less draconian of a rule than LAX as taxis can still pickup passenger at curbside.

Of course, the decision made by SFO has cascading effect for UBER and LYFT drivers as it created a brand-new traffic queue right out into the northbound exit of highway 101. The congestion problem created by the enormous amount of rideshare cars is still there, it simply moved to a different location - away from the terminals. I do wonder if if that was the original intent by SFO.

It’s no surprise then that the same situation resulted in LAX. A dedicated lot for rideshare may sound good on paper, but the sheer passenger volume is so great that UBER and LYFT cars and taxis are stuck in line for more than an hour just to get in the lot. As it is in SFO, moving the pickup point doesn’t really solve the main issue - too many people waiting for rides - other than punting it elsewhere. Again, maybe that is LAX’s goal: at least the terminals are nice and free-flowing, a sort of quality tax on passengers who rely on rideshare to take get them to their final destination.

Whether that seems fair or not is up to you.

This newfound malaise in our airports caused by the advent of UBER and LYFT asks the question: what did we all do before? The people hailing rideshare cars: did they take taxis before UBER was a thing? Or was it a combination of that and calling in favors from friends or family for a ride? Personally, I’ve always been the latter, even with the convenience of rideshare making it super easy to call my own ride. That said, the emergence of rideshare definitely shifted the passenger load from other modes of transportation, modes that previous have not caused the insane level of congestion we are seeing now. Taking rideshare is such an attractive option for travelers, but the existing infrastructure was not meant to accommodate essentially everyone calling their own taxi.

And what happens when UBER or LYFT - some would say inevitably - go bust? What are people going to do for transport now that we’ve all become accustomed to rideshare? Both companies are losing over billion dollars every quarter, with no prospects of profitability in sight. These companies aren’t necessarily too big to fail, but would they be too ubiquitous to fail? I think we’ll find out this answer sooner or later.

What’s in the box!?