My personal experience recently. Needed a taxi to the airport. Opened uber, it said about £90, which seemed a bit expensive. Tried a local minicab company, there were no cars. Opened uber again, the price had gone up to about £150. Tried another local company, they were there within 10 mins and wanted £60. Opened uber again, the price had gone up to about £250.
All these stories make me glad I live in a city with a dedicated train to the airport for 4 euros. If it costs 60 bucks to get from the airport to downtown, I would blame the city planners more than anyone.
You know, after breaking the taxi mafia my city started to create transport lines to the airport... Now we have buses (we didn't), and an specialized "road train" system is on the way.
Sounds like free market is working. Demand goes up so does the price. Everyone wins. Hopefully the drivers get better price and the consumer can choose if they want a ride or not.
The problem is not necessarily the principle, it's that surge pricing is opaque, governed by algorithms which attempt to maximise profit for Uber, not by simple supply and demand.
Surge pricing is not about profit for Uber. Uber wants to minimize surge pricing as it implies the market place is unbalanced. I.e. not enough drivers. Obviously with demand spikes you cannot magically produce more drivers so surge pricing does happen. But it is not a good user experience. In the ideal state drivers are busy all the time maximizing their earnings and riders can get a reliable ride.
Yeah, except that Uber and Lyft just keep most of the surge for themselves and obfuscate that fact from the riders and the drivers
You end up with a surly asshole driver and a surly asshole rider who both think the other is screwing them, when in fact it was the silicon valley douchebags
How do you propose dispensing a limited number of drivers to a larger number of customers? There are really only two solutions: get more drivers or get fewer customers.
Surge pricing can incentivize more drivers to come online. I don’t see how you can reduce the customers in a short timeframe.
True, there should be no need for automated system, but instead it should be auction for next available driver slot. So those who pay more get the ride faster.
