[HN Gopher] Demand and ETR Forecasting at Airports
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       Demand and ETR Forecasting at Airports
        
       Author : riadsila
       Score  : 19 points
       Date   : 2023-05-17 11:11 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.uber.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.uber.com)
        
       | jethkl wrote:
       | The post lacks performance metrics, so it is impossible to know
       | if their effort was worth it. It would be improved by explaining
       | how performance is assessed and why their method is better than
       | an existing or much simpler (e.g., rules-based) baseline.
        
       | zamnos wrote:
       | > One way to tackle this undersupply/oversupply issue
       | 
       | ...is to pay the drivers while they are working for you. While
       | waiting for fares, they're not free to do whatever, and should
       | thus be compensated. That Uber won't pay their drivers while
       | they're working seems criminal.
        
         | rippercushions wrote:
         | Are there _any_ taxi-like systems anywhere in the world that
         | pay drivers for idle waiting time?
        
           | zokier wrote:
           | In finland taxi drivers are regular salaried workers earning
           | hourly wage during working hours regardless if they have
           | customers or not and they may earn additionally provision of
           | sales. Caveat here is that some taxies are self-employed
           | which makes the situation bit more complicated
        
           | 2Gkashmiri wrote:
           | uh, pay them a monthly wage for doing 9-5 and the drivers
           | would drive as much or as less, what the app makes them work
        
             | tsimionescu wrote:
             | The question stands: are there any taxi-like systems that
             | work like that? Traditional taxies certainly did not employ
             | their drivers and pay them a wage, they were still very
             | much working for their fares.
        
               | bombcar wrote:
               | Hired cars sometimes pay their employees that way (the
               | driver gets $/hr no matter what), hence you have to
               | schedule well in advance.
        
         | zokier wrote:
         | Hypothetically if drivers were salaried, wouldn't uber have
         | even greater motivation for implementing this sort of system?
        
         | oh_sigh wrote:
         | If that were the case, droves of drivers would just head to the
         | airport to relax in their car and watch youtube videos.
         | 
         | It would require uber to actually tell drivers where to go,
         | which it doesn't do right now. Basically, completely change the
         | model currently used.
        
       | bombcar wrote:
       | How useful would it be to Uber for me to tell them I'm arriving
       | at X and will use Uber? Enough for a small discount?
        
       | drewg123 wrote:
       | How about getting estimated wait times for pickup for _riders_
       | even remotely correct? That helps drivers too:
       | 
       | Recently I had a severely delayed flight that didn't land until
       | after 1am, and was by far the last flight into my podunk airport.
       | My apps showed a 3 minute pickup time from Uber and a 20 minute
       | time from Lyft, so I booked a ride with Uber. After 3-5 minutes
       | of "this is taking longer than expected", it finally found a
       | driver, and the pickup time wound up being 20 minutes (just like
       | Lyft). So I cancelled and got into a waiting cab and was home by
       | the time the Uber would have picked me up.
       | 
       | If Uber would have just been honest about the pickup time, I
       | would have never booked a ride and would not have wasted some
       | poor driver's time when he got the ride request. This also
       | delayed me by 3-5 minutes (the matching time on the app), which
       | irritated me. I'm gradually being conditioned to not trust Uber,
       | and to just use Lyft and Taxis..
        
         | totoglazer wrote:
         | This is such bullshit. I'm sure they A/B test and find that
         | outright lies helped with whatever metrics. However I too don't
         | trust the apps, including Lyft, to represent pickup times at
         | all accurately. That's assuming good faith on the drivers,
         | which I've found to be very dubious.
        
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       (page generated 2023-05-20 23:02 UTC)