y other reasons I like Lyft better than Uber.)

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__Joker
How does customer need to counteract if he needs a time sensitive ride? Lets
say, I need to go to Airport at time x. Neither I can book earlier to
guarantee a ride nor can I wait out the surge.

~~~
monort
Use a transfer service, which offers pre-orders. Uber is losing all my airport
rides because they don't have it.

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TeMPOraL
They probably don't want it anyway. It's more profitable for both Uber and the
drivers to not take such rides; in the time to and back from airport they
could take several within the city.

~~~
monort
If it's profitable for a generic limousine transfer services, why it's not
profitable for Uber? Blacklane seems to be profitable too.

~~~
skimpycompiler
Logistics of planning all those orders and rides is expensive.

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Retric
Sounds like a job for software.

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skimpycompiler
It'd be interesting to see how someone handles vehicle routing problem on a
large scale, quickly and optimally.

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TeMPOraL
Isn't that a solved problem since like the early 70s? Even computing power is
not a limiting factor now, only those pesky humans bickering about "central
planning" and "democratization".

~~~
skimpycompiler
Haha, solved?

Put in the time windows, put the capacity limits, put the pickup and delivery
(this isn't same as just delivery).

It's far from solved, and far from efficient. Field isn't even mature as
theoretical computer science, not even rigorous enough :D

You have papers talking about their newest hybrid genetic memetic evolutionary
deep simulated annealing bullcrap algorithm getting hundreds of citations.

You have services like Routific, Routyn, Viamente, WorkWave, and others
struggling with it. No one in this world has the technology powerful enough to
optimize at scale. Example. WorkWave is talking about exploiting 45Billion
dollar market of optimizing thousands of technicians and their routes, but
they can't even scale that on a daily basis for large number of delivery
points, given how slow their optimization engi