Can a Worker-Owned App Pull Drivers From Uber and Lyft? (Curbed)
Drivers Cooperative hopes to compete with Uber and Lyft in NYC, but recognizes it will be difficult
Sharing an interesting piece published in Curbed about Drivers Cooperative plan to use the co-op business model (i.e. driver-owned platform) to compete against Uber and Lyft in NYC. Pasted one of the more interesting excerpts from article below.
“Lyft cannot catch up to Uber, with all of their venture-capital money,” said Bhairavi Desai of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a union for yellow-cab, black-car, and rideshare drivers in the city. Taking on major rideshare companies, she added, “would take a tremendous amount of capital. And the only way you balance against that is with a conscientious ridership.” For a co-op to succeed, consumers would have to turn on Uber and Lyft — out of principle or because they found lower fares somewhere else.
Right now, Desai said, that enlightened ridership simply doesn’t exist. “I think that’s a real disadvantage,” she explained. “It doesn’t mean it’s impossible to create enough of a market share where co-op holders can make a decent living. But it does seem impossible to reach the level of market share that Uber and Lyft have at this point.”
Link to the story
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