The Bleak Future of Open Mobility

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier – that’s the general idea, right? Not if Uber and Lyft get their way. In this week’s roundup, senior RSG contributor John Ince highlights a story about how Uber and Lyft are trying to create ‘walled gardens’ around their mobility tech services, and what this means for drivers and passengers. That and more below.

Uber’s Newest Way To Make A Buck: A Pet Surcharge [Jalopnik]

Sum and Substance: Uber is rolling out a new trip mode called Uber Pet. Unfortunately, this does not mean Uber will be bringing a pet to you, as I initially hoped. Instead, it’s a trip mode for when the rider is also transporting a pet, which will now include a small additional fee of $3 to $5, according to The Verge. The pilot will roll out in Austin, Denver, Nashville, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Tampa Bay for now.

Like many of Uber’s app tweaks and pricing changes, Uber Pet simultaneously addresses a real concern while also giving Uber a chance to slap on a surcharge for something that used to be free.

In the past, if a rider was transporting a pet, any (decent) person would, hopefully, message or call the driver before they arrived and let them know, then give them a nice big tip for being so accommodating. If the driver was allergic or preferred not to have a pet in their car, one of them cancelled and hailed another.

Of course, this process probably happened far less often in practice than one would hope in a functional society with manners and norms…

My Take:  Don’t know what “a significant portion” of the Uber Pet ride means but it sure looks to me like this is just another way of getting a few more cents out of the ride.  We can expect to see more of this kind of thing, as the bottom line takes precedence.

Uber Copter goes public in New York — here’s what it’s like [CNET]

Sum and Substance: New York City is served by not one, but three major airports. You’d think that kind of choice would make it blissfully easy to fly into or out of Manhattan. In reality, trying to get to any of those airports results in a painful decision between the lesser of many evils, including costly hired cars or affordable but inconvenient trains.

Increasingly, New York’s business travelers are turning to Uber to get them to their airport of choice, hoping that the traffic and surge-pricing gods smile in their favor. Today, Uber launches a new service that will free you from mundane earthly traffic — if you’re an efficient packer and can afford the cost. The service is called Uber Copter, and it might just be the new best way to get to JFK. The program launched earlier this summer, but initially only to Uber’s top-tier customers. Today it’s open to everyone, and the company was kind enough to invite me for a quick spin…

My Take:  Well Uber is returning to its roots.  Rich clients using a service that isn’t cheap.  Seems okay to me, but ….

Uber’s next stop: Delivering food and pills to needy patients [Yahoo Finance]

Sum and Substance: Uber (UBER) is planning to use its dominance in the fast-growing food delivery industry to carve a toehold in the vast and complex health services sector. At the CB Insights Future of Health conference this week, the ride-sharing giant’s health chief explained how the company is moving to leverage Uber Eats to address very specific needs of patients that lack access to reliable transportation, or simply can’t get around on their own.

According to Dan Trigub, the head of Uber Health, the idea has been brewing for years at the company, which launched a drug store delivery platform around the same time as Uber Eats. The latter clearly took off faster than the former, which meant resources were diverted to building up its food delivery business.

My Take:  I don’t see this.  Perhaps at some point down the road this makes sense, but right now it seems more like a way to get publicity than a serious market.

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Audio Clips And Flashlights Won’t Fix Uber’s Problems [Forbes]

Sum and Substance: By nearly all accounts, Uberhas been having a tough year. The company has faced steady criticism over its privacy, labor, and spending habits, its IPO and market performance (which hit a new lowTuesday), its reaction to California’s recently passed AB5, and perhaps most notably its safety practices.

Like its smaller rival Lyft, which was named in multiple lawsuits this summer by riders who were allegedly assaulted by drivers and saw little recourse, Uber has responded to rising safety concerns about ride-hails by rolling out new features in this area (while also launching other plans, and putting out separate fires, on the side).

The platform’s most recent additions include last year’s Uber Spotlight, which lets riders display lit-up phone screens in different colors for easier pickups, and has featured in its NYC ads for months; its nationwide roll-out of RideCheck, which includes real-time toolsfor contacting help or detecting crashes; and a new audio-recording feature being tested in the app, which Uber user Jane M. Wong revealed on Twitter this week…

My Take:  I agree with the thrust of this story, but there is not a whole lot here to make this interesting.

‘Walled Gardens’ vs. Open Mobility: The Battle Begins [Vox]

Sum and Substance: If you’ve ever scowled in frustration as you toggle between apps searching for the nearest e-scooter or cheapest ride-hail trip, keep an eye on the skirmish currently brewing in New York City over access to the Citi Bike bikeshare system: It’s a fight that is poised to spill into other cities, with major implications for how Americans plan and book urban trips.

The conflict pits ride-hail behemoth Lyft against a startup called Transit, whose app allows users to plan and book trips across a variety of urban modes. Last year, Lyft acquired a company that owns and operates Citi Bike, and earlier this year Lyft began allowing users to unlock bikes from within the Lyft app itself. In response, in September Transit began allowing its users to rent Citi Bikes within the Transit app—only to see Lyft swiftly kill that functionality.

The battle is about more than one company’s efforts to drum up a little more business: It’s about fundamentally different visions of how people should access the growing number of modes available to navigate cities. Uberand Lyfteach want to be your go-to mobility solution, and they recently overhauled their apps to position their core ride-hail service alongside e-scooter and bikeshare offerings, often with public transit…

My Take:  It’s an interesting issue here.  Does Lyft use its clout to keep third parties like this out of the game? I’m not sure. What do you think?

Readers, what do you think of this week’s roundup?

-John @ RSG