This article is taken from an exclusive WIRED series, '41 Lessons from Uber's Success', featuring Tim Harford, Rachel Botsman, Nir Eyal, Clayton M Christensen, Josh Elman, Carlo Ratti and Richard Branson. You can find the other articles here.
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Relationships between customers and service providers are becoming ever more transparent. In the past, taxi drivers weren't accountable -- if they were rude you couldn't do anything about it. Now that's changing. For instance, hotels are so concerned about a negative TripAdvisor rating that they will go out of their way to treat you better. Uber is bringing that experience to private hire vehicles.
Uber is generating very useful data about mobility, which enables us to understand cities better. And services such as UberPOOL offer a realistic car-sharing model. If New Yorkers were willing to share a taxi with just one other person, around 70 per cent of the city's cab rides could be shared, relieving traffic, reducing air pollution and speeding up travel for everyone.
Platforms such as Uber and Airbnb demonstrate that people are willing to leverage their assets. And the sharing economy is just the beginning. We use our cars five per cent of the time, and the other 95 per cent they're parked and occupying precious space in our cities. If we can make better use of infrastructure with systems such as Uber -- and tomorrow with autonomous vehicles -- our cities will become more efficient and better to live in.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
