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.

Would you be annoyed?

Scenario: you are driving me and another person. That person is up front in shotgun, while I am sitting in the backseat. You drop off the person first at his or her location. I then refuse to move up front for the remaining portion of the trip, still sitting at the back. Would you be annoyed by this?

Apparently more than one friend is annoyed by this! One so much so that he insists I sit up front to begin with.

The argument I’m hearing back is that it looks like I’m taking an UBER ride from the outside. “We are not your chauffeurs!” said one friend. It’s also slightly disrespectful because I’m suppose to move up front to keep conversation with the driver. To navigate if necessary, be on a lookout for danger in traffic. By staying in the back it shows I’m refusing to take on those obligations. The driver - presumably a good friend - is left on their own.

My argument is I don’t want to move! I’m not so large in size; the backseat is perfectly comfortable. I concede it does look like an UBER ride on the outside. But in terms of having a conversation and keeping a secondary watch, I can totally perform those duties from the rear of the car. Yes, the left side of my face is my best side, but you - the driver - should be focusing on the road anyways!

Of course, being a good friend I will henceforth move forward to the front after the shotgun passenger departs. Or perhaps this is my sly way of claiming the front seat no matter what…

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.

Bad news good news

It’s been a tough few days for the tech world: yesterday, AirBnb announced it’s cutting a massive 25% of its workforce, and today, UBER said it will be eliminating over 3,700 positions. It appears the tech sector won’t be immune to the job crunch caused by the coronavirus, especially if the business relies on people being out and about, and traveling to places. It's tough seeing other people lose their jobs, because it seeps in some doubt and anxiety about my own job security. You think you’ll safely weather through this and then suddenly, you get release papers; surely, many at AirBnb and UBER got such a shock.

The personnel cuts at these two companies have direct consequence to where I live, because both are headquartered here in San Francisco. This many high-paying jobs disappearing means people will leave, and that should cause downward pressure on rental prices, if classic supply and demand is to be followed. Not to be a shark smelling blood in the waters about this - you’d hope to be empathetic during these times - but that would be excellent news for me. If I’m lucky enough to still have employment out of this lockdown, I plan to finally move out of the house.

Talk about good timing.

The cost of rent in the San Francisco Bay Area is notoriously one of the highest in the nation, and before COVID-19 happened, there was no end in sight to those absurd prices because the city/region is super slow to build new housing to meet demand. The standard one-bedroom apartment costs nearly as much as my entire take-home pay, which is just insane because I make a solidly middle-class income. Those of us outside of the tech sector have somewhat low-key wished for a recession so that these people would move away from the area, and rent would go back down to slightly more affordable.

Again, the assumption is that I myself doesn’t get swept along with those job losses during the imagined recession. Well, the downturn is very real right now, and I’m lucky to still be afloat above the waters. Fingers crossed that continues.

Early evening grocery shopping in Guangzhou.

Second car and ride-sharing

Periodically, I surf on the Craigslist classifieds to look for a cheap car to buy. Mind you I don’t exactly need another car: I already have a sports car for the weekends, and I commute to work using public transportation. I guess I’m merely looking for a challenge: buy a cheap used car to drive and fix it up along the way as needed. It’s certainly far cheaper than buying a brand new car, and the repair skills I would learn along the way can totally justify the few thousand dollars spent.

But that’s only for the price of the car and future repairs; it’s easy to forget that there’s other costing components to car ownership, such as gas and insurance. When I include those things into the total equation, I cannot square with the comparative low cost of taking the bus to work, which buying a second car would replace as the commute method. I’m lucky to live in a city where public transportation is decent, and on the rare occasions when the next train isn’t due to arrive for more than a half hour - fairly common for late evening hours - the convenience of calling an UBER of LYFT is hard to beat.

Because parking is also a great pain in San Francisco, and buying another car would add that headache as well.

The occasional 20 bucks to get me home via ride-sharing is way less expensive than the fixed cost of owning a car, even one bought on Craigslist for a thousand dollars. UBER and LYFT have so infiltrated our regular everyday function that sometimes I wonder if both companies have reached the mythical “too big to fail” status. Indeed, neither UBER nor LYFT have ever made an annual profit in their existence, but the ride-sharing has become so ubiquitous that people’s livelihoods are wholly dependent on it, be it a driver that needs the income, or a car-less person who needs it to get to work.

A lot of people would be really hurt if UBER and LYFT were to collapse and go away - as money-losing companies are typically wont to do. I guess it’s that prevailing force of preservation that is somehow keeping both companies in business, even though there’s not a cent of profit made. Ride-sharing has become a subsidized method of transportation for the public good, and it’s not far-fetched to imagine one day the government stepping in to provide that subsidy.

I mean, it sure is nice to be able to quickly get home from anywhere, at any hour of the day, without needing my own personal car.

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.

Uber and Lyft drivers go on strike

In major U.S. cities today, Uber and Lyft drivers went on strike in protest of their low pay and terrible working conditions. Frequent users of those ride-sharing services are advised to find alternate methods, such as (ironically) the standard taxi, or public transportation. Well, jokes on them because I always take the bus to work so, you’re welcome, Uber and Lyft drivers: I’ve joined in honoring your protest through no change in my commuting habit.

Jokes aside, I am completely behind those drivers fighting for a decent wage and other ancillary benefits for their job. However, from a macro perspective I’m not sure how Uber and Lyft can provide what they are asking for – profitably, anyways. Indeed, Lyft has recently gone public, and Uber will be doing so this coming Friday; according to each respective company’s S1s, both of them have yet to make a single dime of profit since inception, with the possibility they might never make a profit.

How is Uber and Lyft going to pay their drivers better when they are already deeply in the red, to the tune of over a billion dollars a year in Uber’s case. Surely both companies are seeking to achieve profitability as soon as possible (if you’re not cynical), so an increase in labor costs is not exactly friendly to those ambitions.

Paying drivers more money would mean the prices of rides will have to go up as well, because Uber and Lyft aren’t simply going to eat that cost – again, neither company is currently profitable. Higher ride costs will deter people from hailing a car; the main attraction for ride-sharing on the customer side is it’s less expensive than a cab and only slightly more expensive than public transportation so that the comfort of a private car is worth the extra cost. That equilibrium falls apart if price of a ride creeps to par or beyond a taxi.

So what we have here is a stalemate of sorts, and sadly I think ultimately the loser will the drivers. I am a big fan of ride-sharing; I think it has done a positive service to bring mobility to people that were underserved by traditional taxi companies. Uber and Lyft have forced them to step up their game, and despite the cab driver suicides and low wages for ride-share drivers, both companies have been a net positive to society.

It’s just too bad they can’t make money, other than the initial IPO bonanza for their investors and founding members.