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Comment by johnbellone | Hacker News Reader

First, I hate having to have multiple apps to do the same thing. That would drive me crazy for every city. I would pay a premium not to do that.

Second, none of these apps I have seen thus far even attempts to make it easier for the user to add payment methods. Each time I need to put in my credit card information? Twice if I am on business? Nobody has taken advantage of Apple or Android pay integration.

I don't consider myself a heavy cab user, but I probably take at least ~200 rides a year, and unless the city is regulated (credit cards) I am using Lyft.

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> That would drive me crazy for every city

Most people only go to another city once or twice a year, so it's not a significant issue for them.

But is that true for most people who use Uber, or even taxis? I wouldn't be surprised if a large portion of Uber/taxi users were in fact people traveling to a different city.

I would be surprised. At least in New York, people use taxis very often, and thus use Uber very often. I'd wager the vast majority of Uber usage is in people's home towns/cities.

Personally, I use other apps when in NYC, but fall back to Uber when I'm somewhere else and can't find a local app.

I'd definitely like to see some numbers on this. A lot of the people I know don't travel and use Uber frequently.

This is exactly what got me to use Uber initially. I can show up in San Francisco, or London, or my tiny hometown where cabs take 45 minutes to arrive, and Uber will work the same way for about the same price. Having a robust, universal way of getting places really does matter to a lot of people.

> Most people only go to another city once or twice a year

Is that so? I'm not aware of anybody that never goes to another city multiple times per year and that includes infants and the elderly.

Where I grew up, the vast majority of people I knew very rarely left the county they lived in - even though it was only a couple of hours to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC. By the time I moved to Philadelphia, my social circle was much more likely to travel - but on the whole, the greater population of the city tends to stay within the city ("I have everything I need here, why would I bother with the hassle of going somewhere else?")

There, now we've both shared our experiences!

Hm, ok. We'll here in Europe things are a bit different. Most people travel, it is pretty easy to do so and even the 'poor' (students, people that only have bikes) move from city to city regularly.

I've got acquaintances from all over the planet though, and even there most people travel with some regularity to other cities. Holidays, family visits and so on, and then of course there is business travel which I would assume is one of the larger customer groups for Uber/taxis.

You must have only well-to-do acquaintances then... Or I'm misreading all the negatives in your statement.

No, it's a small country and relatives usually live in other towns.

The first point is key, especially when you're not familiar with the city. I rarely use either Uber or Lyft in my home city, but now Lyft is the first thing I launch when landing in a new place, and that's all domestic US travel, forgetting international. It can't really be discounted how important the multi-city, single app feature is to these services for travelers.

My first ever use of Uber was in another country, after about 40 hours awake and traveling. Even with the hurdles of setting up an account, it was vastly easier than getting local transit for my route. (As checked later when I was functional.) That's a huge benefit that none of the proposed alternatives (bar Lyft) can offer.

>First, I hate having to have multiple apps to do the same thing

Don't worry, once there are enough apps someone will figure out how to scrape and aggregate the info. The same thing happened when airlines and hotels started putting booking info online except at the time it was websites instead of apps.

Scraping and aggregating airline info is not really comparable. Airline data is based on predetermined schedules and is relatively static.

Ride hailing is extremely fluid. Must be real-time. Must be able to provide GPS coordinates of the user to the service in question.

I don't think you'll see an aggregation app until there is some ride hailing standard that is adopted by the various providers.

Google Maps is already starting down this road a bit (admittedly only with the big companies). That's the likeliest path in terms of companies that have the leverage as well as the existing technology to make this happen.

You don't need a standard, the taxi companies just all need some API. Apps like "Transit App" will just integrate them all.

> You don't need a standard, the taxi companies just all need some API

But what does that API look like? What are the MVP operations required to make a successful ride hailing API? Will that API provide realtime location info of the driver, or allow payment, or <insert myriad of questions here>.

Without a standard, the Taxi API landscape will be a mess.

> Apps like "Transit App" will just integrate them all

This is a pretty major oversimplifications of this issue. Sure, this is technically possible, but it sounds like a horrible solution.

Bringing in the considerations about the actual API design, this also means that user experience may vary wildly depending on which service they're interacting with.

Can != should. If aggregating many systems is the future, we should push for a technical solution that doesn't suck.

You're overcomplicating the issue - a lot. The important thing is that the ride sharing systems provide APIs that show the time and the price, to allow users to compare. The next step is that the service providers and apps can work together on payment, which is really the complicated part. Following the booked cars in real time is simple in comparison.

Not having some API standard is usually how it's done with many services nowadays, and the market/comparison apps have to integrate multiple APIs. Big deal.

Guess we just have to agree to disagree. API design matters. A lot. "As long as they provide some API" doesn't really cut it if you want a system that functions well. Having spent close to 10 years of my career gluing systems together through APIs, I've encountered too many "Oh we have an API!" vendors only to find out how horrible that API is. The consumer facing product is often a direct reflection of the underlying APIs powering it. If you have many APIs powering it, the app will take on all of the negatives of the sum of those APIs. Good app design can help smooth over the rough edges, but that only goes so far.

Again, I should reiterate: I'm not arguing that it can't be done or that it's not possible. I'm arguing that the result will be subpar. Let's remember that the parent discussion is about the creation of a system that rivals the Uber/Lyft experience. If you want to do that, someone (probably someone big like Google as suggested in another comment) is going to have to influence the design of these APIs so the end user experience is a consistent/good one.

So? Then there will be a standard of sorts.

Perhaps so. The point was: scraping/aggregating/etc for car services is not comparable with what sites like Kayak do for the airline industry.

There very well may be one ride hailing app to rule them all, but implementing it will be an entirely different beast.

That's exactly what I predict the market will move to

I agree with the multiple apps and not knowing which ones to use where.

However, as an example, when Uber and Lyft left Austin, one of the companies created locally (RideAustin) to replace the gap does allow payments via Apple Pay. Very convenient, and they also give you the option of rounding up to donate to a charity of your choice.

I guess it's just up to all the other options to realize what people want.

Except... The negative reviews on RideAustin are pretty much all about people having horrible payment-method issues.

Apple Pay is great if you're immersed enough in that ecosystem, but otherwise? Uber and Lyft store CC info, allow for easy deletion, and take PayPal. I'm glad Ride Austin exists, but they still seem to be several laps behind on letting you give them money.

Ah, I was in Austin last year, but ended up renting a car for autonomy. I vaguely remember seeing signs for RideAustin - is that the only app?

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