I have written before in these pages about shared-ride services (See: here). But in advance of the upcoming IPO planned by Uber later this year, I share with you today an article by Nikil Saval from the current New Yorker, titled “Uber and the Ongoing Erasure of Public Life.” I hadn’t really thought about it in exactly this way before, but it does sound reasonable: Urban traffic congestion is a thorny issue. Diverting trips from public transit into individual cars makes the problem worse, not better. And that’s true regardless of any rosy corporate PR about “first mile, last mile” spun by the guys with the cool ride-sharing app.
What doesn’t compute for me is how Uber can bleed so many billions in losses each year and still make investors salivate. Maybe the potential upside in the people-moving market is so huge that the current unprofitable business model is merely a blip on the radar, easily ignored by venture capitalists and the investing public generally? Even so, it does lead you to wonder…
“Caveat Emptor” (Buyer Beware) has always sounded like good investment advice to me. As long as traffic in Manhattan shuffles along at something above a snail’s pace, then hailing an Uber with your SmartPhone makes perfect sense. But once things on the street stall out completely? Might be time to look around for a train station – assuming there still are any.
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Which of these Uber logos do you like best?
