[johncessna]

This used to be very common in the US especially around airports where drivers wait for up to an hour to get a fare and want to make sure it's worth the wait. It may still be happening, but I just go straight for the cab to avoid the hassle.

[lxgr]

The US airport rideshare model (if you even want to call a largely emergent phenomenon that) must be one of the most wasteful things in transportation ever.

Why do I have to wait for, and find, my specific Uber/Lyft out of a sea of otherwise identical ones that are all in each other's way, all while idling and wasting tons of fuel? (I know that the legal answer is "taxi medallions"; that doesn't make it any less absurd.)

[gopkarthik]

Uber/Ola at Indian airports do not actually assign you specific driver/car. You are given a PIN & asked to go queue at the relevant counter (Premier, Electric, XL, Go etc). You just get into the car then, tell your PIN & the ride starts.

[mrgoldenbrown]

I think the answer is more that Uber has externalized the cost of all that waste.

Why do they care about increased traffic and increased pollution if they aren't the ones hiring extra staties to manage the chaos?

[paxys]

1. You pick the kind of car you want (sedan, SUV, luxury, with a child seat, pet friendly, EV).

2. The driver can choose the areas they want to drive in.

3. Cars can wait in an airport parking lot until they are needed and not crowd the terminal.

It is a perfectly efficient model.

[sshine]

What.

I've never heard anything this stupid.

I've only encountered the following two airport systems:

1) There's a queue of taxis and people coming out go to the first one.

2) There's a queue of people, and an airport person tells you when you can go to the next taxi.

Depending on whether there's too many people or too many taxis.