Uber Cuts Fares in 48 Cities, Raising Some Concern Among Drivers

There is nothing that prevents Uber&#x2F;Lyft from being a race to the bottom re driver revenue. I think that should&#x27;ve been obvious to anyone looking at the model from the beginning.<p>One of the first questions is to ask about a business is whether there are any barriers to competition. In the case of Uber or Lyft, they have network effects but the drivers themselves have no barrier.<p>Years ago some Subway franchisees sued Subway because they were selling franchises right across the street from existing franchises. Same issue. There will always be more drivers, Uber&#x2F;Lyft control the rate, so no limit to how far drivers can be squeezed.

In a 30 MPG car, the drop in gas from $3 to $2 is a 3 cent difference per mile. UberX charges from $1.50 to $2 or so per mile.<p>So gas price seems like a red herring to me.

The price cutting makes me <i>more</i> reluctant to use car services...and I realize I&#x27;m speaking from a position of privilege here in which I can say that I have enough expendable income to not be against paying a little more for the drivers. I feel that the wage is already so low that it&#x27;s impossible not to feel guilty using them, what with all the other costs they have to deal with. I try to be as conscientious of a user as I can be: I&#x27;ll watch the app and only request a ride if a driver is fewer than 3 minutes away from me. And if I have a driver take me from somewhere busy on a busy night to a more secluded area (thus denying him&#x2F;her the easier fares in the busy area), I&#x27;ll usually tip.<p>The car services are already such an improvement (in terms of technology) over taxi services that I&#x27;m happy to pay for the convenience. And I&#x27;m getting less and less enthusiastic about funding a race to the bottom, nevermind the impact it has on customer service.

Lower gas prices in most UberX cars is barely going to matter.<p>They really do need to replace casual car use&#x2F;ownership, but I think rather than continually drop effective wages for their drivers, they need to focus on how good a deal it already is. (compare to mileage on your car, fuel, parking time, parking cost, Parking location)

The quality of Uber&#x2F;Lyft drivers and the service in general has plummeted so much lately that I&#x27;ve just switched back to local car services. I just had a nice conversation with a car service driver, who also does Uber, and he said he prefers the car service over Uber because they pay better and only uses Uber when he isn&#x27;t getting anything else but the pay has dropped over the past year pretty significantly for him whereas when he had started it was pretty good. That&#x27;s an anecdote so take it for what you will but I just don&#x27;t see how lowering prices further helps anyone out long term.

If Uber drivers haven&#x27;t figured out yet that the company&#x27;s goals are to create a huge workforce of barely-employed &quot;contractors&quot; who each earn just barely enough to survive (probably have negative earnings in the long run, when car depreciation is factored in - Uber knows that humans undervalue the car depreciation and don&#x27;t take it into account when figuring their profits and losses), then I don&#x27;t know what to tell them. They should figure that out.

I would be happy to pay more, Uber is already very cheap but I&#x27;ve noticed the quality of drivers and cars has gone down lately.<p>That, or create another service tier like Uber XL but for better cars instead of bigger cars.

In my experience local car services (taxis) or a combo of public transport and taxi have always been cheaper.<p>Uber rides to downtown back to my house ~$100-150, Taxi ~$75-125, MARTA&#x2F;Taxi combo ~$40-75. I hope to see the prices decrease for Uber.<p>The things that Uber really has going for it that I absolutely hate about Taxis are getting the price up front and knowing when the driver is going to be there. Taxi&#x27;s will never update you to say if they are coming or not and many times I have been left out in the cold waiting for taxis that never comes.

When gasoline is down 30% or more, those savings should go towards growth and competitive pricing. Uber seems to understand this, but the drivers complain. My how things always seem to come full circle -- before we know it, Ubers will be rude, yapping on their phone in unknown languages, and the cars will have torn upholstery and reek of incense.

Instead of lowering the base fare why don&#x27;t they introduce the opposite of &quot;surge pricing&quot; and sometimes delight riders to offset the times they upset them with surge pricing?

Something tells me there&#x27;s a lot more Surge Pricing in our futures. And just when you thought the modifiers were high enough, or that surge hours already have become any-waking-hours...<p>Rather than the bait and switch, why not just raise the price rather than feign at lowering it? Kill the lie that the Surge Pricing brand has become. Just be honest.

Does anyone know what&#x27;s the percentage cut? The article (and all of the comments) don&#x27;t seem to say anything about that.

Uber and other similar type of taxi dispatching apps are facing new government regulations in countries like Singapore and India after the rape case involving an Uber driver in India last year.<p>It will be interesting to see what happens next.