Ride-hailing in Metro Vancouver: Uber, Lyft, Sidecar - emerging technologies

[Sheba]

Can someone put together a list of what companies are approved for Region 1 (here) only vs who is approved for more areas of BC.

[jollyburger]

Parhar, Garrindar Singh (Apt Rides) is a former taxi dispatcher.

Kabu is a Chinese ride sharing service.

GoKABU used the KABU App to provide ride hailing services primarily in the
Lower Mainland from 2016 to September 14, 2019. During that period, GoKABU provided more than 1.3 million rides to more than 70,000 customers.

InOrbis got denied a license from Alberta running a Tesla rideshare. And Tappcar from Edmonton also got denied.

Also, all ride share trips contribute $0.30 from each trip to accessibility programs.

[casper]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

If you're in Collingwood then why not just take the Skytrain? Sounds like it might have ended up being faster after all the booking attempts. I think we're very fortunate to live in a city that has rapid transit right to the airport.

It is about a 15 minute walk to either Joyce or 29th St Station with bags. If I did not have bags I would have walked to one of the stations.

Coming back from the airport this evening the wait was 10 minutes.

[Tvisforme]

I wonder if the other, smaller ride share companies will have the technical means to be listed in Google Maps, as with Uber and Lyft.

[Mac Write]

I would love to see HandyDart get an over-haul and have walk on only buses/vans to improve service and also routes to help people to get to the SkyTrain door to door with a 1hr ahead booking.

Those of us with "TaxiSaver" will ever be stuck with cabs.

[jollyburger]

Originally Posted by Tvisforme

I wonder if the other, smaller ride share companies will have the technical means to be listed in Google Maps, as with Uber and Lyft.

I think they choose larger ride sharing platforms and they all have to be using Google Maps as their mapping backend.

[Sheba]

City of Surrey paid almost $42,000 to fight losing legal battle with Uber

We now know that it cost the City of Surrey nearly $42,000 to fight Uber earlier this year.

Mayor Doug McCallum has repeatedly made his opposition to ridesharing clear, and especially since the company and its rival, Lyft, were granted licences back in January to operate in the Lower Mainland and Whistler.

McCallum vowed to keep ridesharing out of his city, refusing to grant municipal licences, and said drivers would be ticketed if they operated without a permit.

Bylaws officers issued dozens of $500 tickets to Uber drivers over a two-week period in January.

Under provincial law, municipalities do not have the power to block ridesharing.

In the end, a B.C. Supreme Court Judge ordered Surrey to stop, and the service continued to move into the area.

Councillor Linda Annis called the $42,000 legal bill, obtained through a Freedom of Information request, a waste of money.

“I’m shocked. That’s not what taxpayers’ money should be going for,” Annis told Global News on Monday.

“Clearly, the residents of Surrey have been waiting for Uber and other ridesharing services for a long time and now they’re faced paying legal fees. That’s just not on.”

[logan5]

Tesla announced it will be beta testing full self driving on a few of its cars (starting last Tuesday). Meanwhile, Cruise (GM) will be testing it's driverless cars in San Francisco, sans safety driver, which is a big step forward. That's expected to commence by the end of the year.

GM has plans to mass produce the Cruise Origin, which will be a shared driverless taxi. I believe this type of service will replace buses as it is likely to be cost competitive with buses, while being much faster and far more comfortable )than buses).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3E7p4S_1m4&feature=emb_logo

[libtard]

Originally Posted by logan5

Tesla announced it will be beta testing full self driving on a few of its cars (starting last Tuesday). Meanwhile, Cruise (GM) will be testing it's driverless cars in San Francisco, sans safety driver, which is a big step forward. That's expected to commence by the end of the year.

GM has plans to mass produce the Cruise Origin, which will be a shared driverless taxi. I believe this type of service will replace buses as it is likely to be cost competitive with buses, while being much faster and far more comfortable )than buses).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3E7p4S_1m4&feature=emb_logo

But people on this site love buses. What will happen to the transit fantasy thread?

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by logan5

Tesla announced it will be beta testing full self driving on a few of its cars (starting last Tuesday). Meanwhile, Cruise (GM) will be testing it's driverless cars in San Francisco, sans safety driver, which is a big step forward. That's expected to commence by the end of the year.

GM has plans to mass produce the Cruise Origin, which will be a shared driverless taxi. I believe this type of service will replace buses as it is likely to be cost competitive with buses, while being much faster and far more comfortable )than buses).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3E7p4S_1m4&feature=emb_logo

Any self driving applied to buses will trade convenience for cost, the same way taxis and buses do today. Nothing changes economies of scale.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by logan5

GM has plans to mass produce the Cruise Origin, which will be a shared driverless taxi. I believe this type of service will replace buses as it is likely to be cost competitive with buses, while being much faster and far more comfortable )than buses).

You're completely missing out on the economies of scale advantage of fixed route mass transit. In normal times Translink sees well over 300,000 boardings every day. There's no way that literally hundreds of thousands of small autonomous vehicles can do the job as cheaply as thousands of buses and hundreds of rapid transit vehicles. And there isn't road space for them, either. Driverless taxis face a self-imposed limit when the roads get so congested that service becomes slower and less reliable than conventional transit with reserved lanes or grade separation.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Let's take a less-used line, e.g. the 100 from Marpole to New West. Over the last three years, it's had an average load of 33 riders per bus. The Cruise Origin carries 6.
That's five-and-a-half AVs, and all the operational costs involved (let alone the extra spatial footprint), to replace just one bus. You could add an extra bench and get the Origin up to 12 riders, but then without the legroom it's just a crappier bus.

Autonomous taxis are indeed the future... of taxis, shuttle buses, and suburban feeder routes. Regular transit routes are here to stay.

[SpongeG]

China is well into self driving taxis

• Video Link

[SpongeG]

they are testing busses

• Video Link

[logan5]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

You're completely missing out on the economies of scale advantage of fixed route mass transit. In normal times Translink sees well over 300,000 boardings every day. There's no way that literally hundreds of thousands of small autonomous vehicles can do the job as cheaply as thousands of buses and hundreds of rapid transit vehicles. And there isn't road space for them, either. Driverless taxis face a self-imposed limit when the roads get so congested that service becomes slower and less reliable than conventional transit with reserved lanes or grade separation.

Where are you getting literally hundreds of thousands? A busy bus serves about a hundred passengers per hour, so what you re saying is that it would take a hundred driverless taxis to match that? No way.

A bus has more capacity, but it is much slower. A 4 passenger vehicle would have much quicker turnover, so it would take far less vehicles to match bus capacity than you would think. It would take 5 4 passenger vehicle to do 100 passenger per hour. And you have to take into account the extra capacity gained in the curb lane by not having buses in it. You might actually have more capacity in this set up.

[Tvisforme]

Originally Posted by logan5

Where are you getting literally hundreds of thousands? A busy bus serves about a hundred passengers per hour,

Where do you get that estimate from? It seems quite low, especially for routes such as the 99.

Originally Posted by logan5

A bus has more capacity, but it is much slower.

I'd say that most studies would not find the bus to be "much" slower, especially in downtown traffic.

Originally Posted by logan5

A 4 passenger vehicle would have much quicker turnover

If this were the case, wouldn't we see taxis and Uber/Lyft dominating bus volume?

Look, no-one's saying that there will not be a role for driverless cars. I would suggest, though, that you are mistaken if you think they are a replacement for large-scale people movers such as buses.

[logan5]

Originally Posted by Tvisforme

Where do you get that estimate from? It seems quite low, especially for routes such as the 99.



I'd say that most studies would not find the bus to be "much" slower, especially in downtown traffic.



If this were the case, wouldn't we see taxis and Uber/Lyft dominating bus volume?

Look, no-one's saying that there will not be a role for driverless cars. I would suggest, though, that you are mistaken if you think they are a replacement for large-scale people movers such as buses.

https://public.tableau.com/profile/translink#!/vizhome/2018TSPR-BusSeaBusSummaries/TheWorkbook

The table shows boardings per hour. It also shows average speed. Average speed for a car during rush hour is 32.5 km/h, which is twice as fast as a bus. Likely faster during rush hour as the transit study calculates average speed for the whole day. Aa bus moves very slowly during rush hour.

Bus routes in the suburbs outside of rush hour run mostly empty, and would actually be better served by a 4 person shuttle. That's how the transition will start.

[Migrant_Coconut]

5 taxis x 4 riders/taxi = 20 riders.
100 riders/hr requires taxis 5x faster than a bus, not 2x.

Even if that were the case (it isn't), that's a fivefold increase in electricity/fuel, maintenance, operator salaries, insurance and other costs that cancels out any savings in getting rid of the driver. So either the government subsidizes it, or fare prices go up, or our taxi startup decides not to try and fail to replace busy bus routes. We're also assuming that the suburbs won't densify and transit demand won't grow; ride hailing cannot scale up to address that without creating the same congestion we're trying to minimize.

Again, the niches we're looking at replacing here are cab companies (good riddance), HandyDARTs and hospital or tourist shuttles. The FTN's not going anywhere.

[dreambrother808]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

The FTN's not going anywhere.

Yes, and I'm confused as to why anyone is cheering on more road congestion and a crappy experience for drivers all around.

I guess its the "own the libs" mentality, practicality and common sense be damned.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

The Cruise Origin carries 6.

That makes the very big assumption that everyone who uses a self-driving taxi would be willing to share it with 5 other strangers. That pretty unlikely to me.