Uber Plans to Expand its Services in the Suburbs

Uber Plans to Expand its Services in the Suburbs

Uber started to expand its business across New York State, in account of which, the company plans to help the suburbanites to make use of their rides. This can help the commuters who travel everyday from their home to the workplace.

Uber’s General Manager of the New York branch, Mr. Josh Mohrer, said that, one of their major intentions is to eliminate the car ownership. It is mandatory for some people owning the cars, but the number can be reduced from three to two or depends on the situations.

People in some states, make use of the Uber app to get a ride to assist the last mile of transit. He said that 29% of the trips that is about 30,000 trips in Connecticut were the rides to Metro-north railroad station.

At New Jersey, out of 1.3 million trips in a month, 300,000 trips were to transits or the PATH stations, which is 23% of the overall trips. People use the public transport for the long travel, most of the people refuse to park their car at the train station and they take Uber for the last mile, because the parking charges are heavy, and Uber is cost effective.

While, at each month, customers take about 200 Uber trips to the Yonkers train station, and about 360 trips to the New York City subway. This happens to the Yonkers residents.

From the survey, 25% of the Lyft customers said that, they prefer Lyft to connect it to public transit and about 46% of people said that, because of Lyft they have no idea of owning a car.

Uber trips in Westchester will continue as long as there are trips to New York City. The manager of the Central Taxi of Scarsdale, Mr. Peter Blier said that, most of the times Uber cars are found at the train stations. Some people said that, they love to use the Raid-sharing services which are based on technology, because of their reliability and affordability, and the opportunity to rate the drivers.

In most of the American cities, it is easy to get a ride from Uber. But to get a ride in the suburbs is difficult. It will be difficult for the drivers to operate in the suburbs because; they have to wait for the longest time to get another ride after dropping the passenger at the destination.

In the TED conference held in 2016, Travis Kalanick, the CEO of Uber, said that, to have a vision to make every suburbanite as an Uber driver, if the regulation permits him.

In 2015, Uber launched a new program called UberCommute, which is a carpooling service. This service allows the Uber car to pick up passengers who are along the way of the car. Passengers can book for the UberCommute through the uber app.

The company launched this service in Chengdu, China, instead of launching it in U.S. the reason for this is, the regulations of U.S makes difficult to launch the service. Kalanick says that, the rules of the country make the drivers to earn only up to the certain amount.

According to the U.S government, the cost of owning a car per mile is 54 cents. The drivers can take the passenger from any part of the U.S and drop them at any part of the country for 54 cents per mile or even less than that. In U.S if the driver charges 60 cents per miles he is treated as the criminal.

UberPool, the Uber service, which allows the passengers to share their rides who are going on the same route. Even, this service reduces the amount of carbon emissions in the country.

Uber in suburbs

However, Uber introduced the suburbs program in Summit, a city in New Jersey. Uber plans to help people of summit who travel to and from the local train station. It is a multi million effort of Uber to reach to the suburbs. The population of summit is about 22,000 and it takes 45 minutes from the New York Penn station to reach the NJ transit rail station.

The administrator of the Summit, Mr. Michael Rogers, said that, most of the complaints he received are about the parking. Parking near the Summit train station is a challenging one. People who travel regularly buy the parking permits, but they won’t get the required spaces, so they waste 15 to 20 minutes every day on this.

Rogers said that, building a new parking space takes more time, so they approached Uber’s General Manager of New Jersey, Ana Mahony, to start the Uber rides to the town’s train station and it would cost about $2 each way, which will be less than the parking charges the commuters pay each day. And also it will reduce the demand for the Summit’s challenging parking spaces and it will eventually increase the demand for Uber.

Rogers said that, they are working on to provide the commuters the efficient alternative to driving and also to provide a solution for the problem of parking spaces.

If one hundred parking spaces are cleared, it will be very much helpful to reduce the demand for the parking spaces. Uber was interested in this and Uber’s came to a conclusion to six month pilot program for about 100 Summit commuters.

The spaces of the Summit are about 6 square miles and it keeps the raid-sharing fares inexpensive within its boundaries. The residents of Summit have to opt for the Uber’s pilot program.

Residents who have purchased the parking permits in advance, which cost $4 per day, need not pay anything to Uber for taking the rides to the train station. People who did not get the parking permits in advance, have to pay $2 each way to get the rides to the train stations. Summit will pay Uber for the difference between the true cost and the flat fares of the ride. This solution is a benefit for both the Uber and also the Summit. Summit is the first town to launch this program in the United States.

For Uber’s, the Summit pilot is the way to stretch out the unconquered US raid-hailing market. Uber and Lyft are being operated in major American cities, but a survey found that, only 15% of the Americans have used these services and 33% of people are not familiar with them, whereas, 21% of the urban Americans have used these services.

Having partnership with the local governments helps Uber to show that the raid-hailing services are better alternatives to driving, it isn’t going to cost more than the parking charges.

Uber’s partnership with Summit is one of the best partnerships that Uber had with small cities and towns. Uber’s Summit partnership is different from the other partnerships, because other partnerships were aimed to increase the ridership for the public transportation, whereas, Summit uses Uber to help the commuters in the parking space problem and also to introduce Uber in the town.

The main reason for the Uber’s growth is its high level customer service, wherever it may expand its business, people get attracted to its customer service that is the fact behind its success, Uber is expected to provide the same customer service in Summit also, so that it will achieve success in the new region.