Ride Share

Ride Share is everything from car-pooling, to traditional taxi service, to free-lance services such as Uber and Lyft. Ride Sharing is distinguished from Car Sharing in that the vehicle's owner or proprietor generally drives the vehicle or is at least present for the entirety of the trip.

Legal Ride Share Services

• Port City Cab Company of Grand Rapids, 1245 Division Ave S, Grand Rapids, MI 49507, (616) 243-5314
• Yellow Cab: 1412 Kalamazoo Ave Se, Grand Rapids, MI 49507, (616) 459-4646
• Calder City Taxi, 146 Pleasant St Sw, Grand Rapids, MI 49503, (616) 454-8080
• Metro Cars, 4678 Danvers Dr Se, Grand Rapids, MI 49512, (616) 827-6700
• United Taxi LLC, 3666 Camelot Dr Se, Grand Rapids, MI 49546, (616) 855-4777
• Runabouts, 120 Monroe Center St NW, Grand Rapids, MI, (616) 644-7202

News

• 2015-03
  • Uber is 'out of control,' says Michigan senator looking for reforms
• 2016-02
  • Uber defends background checks, lack of 'panic button' on apps, MLIVE
  • Kalamazoo shootings: Uber rider describes family's brush with 'Cold-blooded murderer', MLIVE
  • Uber's PR nightmare after Kalamazoo shootings, MLIVE
  • Kalamazoo shooting suspect won top ratings from his Uber riders
  • Uber won't say how it handled complaints about Kalamazoo shooting suspect
• 2016-05
  • Rideshare app debuts Wednesday, GRBJ
• 2016-06
  • Entrepreneur's plan to outdo Uber locally wins Hispanic Chamber's first pitch contest, MLIVE
• 2016-07
  • Taxi-only zones pop up downtown amid fuss over Uber, MLIVE,

• 2016-08

  • Uber Hasn't Had Any Impact on Drunk-Driving Deaths

    • A common claim by Uber is that it reduces drunk driving by offer a better option than taxis. This claim is false.

      In fact, Uber hasn’t had much of an impact at all. A new study released by the American Journal of Epidemiology finds that Uber’s deployment in the nation’s 100 most-populated metro areas has no association with traffic fatalities—not in aggregate, not those caused by drunk driving, and not during weekends or holidays.
      

• 2017-01

  • Lyft will donate $1M to ACLU after Trump immigration ban
• 2017-02
  • Former Obama aide fined $90,000 for illegally lobbying Emanuel on Uber's behalf
• 2017-11
  • Uber driver accused of pointing gun at GR passengers

Commentary

• Apps Are Not Transforming the Urban Transport Business

  Public transportation out performs the Ubers of the world by a cost effectiveness ratio of ~200:1.
  

• The Receding Fantasy of Affordable Urban Transit "To Your Door", 2017-05

  Uber’s UberPool service, which attempts to gather multiple people on a single vehicle going the same way, is undergoing some tinkering that will make it even more like fixed route transit. 
  ...
  All the new apps have helped smooth out inefficiencies of communication, but they will never change the math.  Technology never changes geometry.
  As UberPool gradually discovers this, the question becomes: Did Uber, and similar companies, really invent anything at all?  They invented apps, and algorithms, but do they have any new answers for the geometry problem that is urban transportation?
  

• 5 reasons ridesharing is on the rise, 2017-02

• Is the Tide Turning Against Techno-Libertarian Transport Planning?, 2016-10
• Speech Has Consequences, or Why I Called Out Uber Yesterday, 2016-10

• Cities Need More Public Transit, Not More Uber and Self-Driving Cars, 2016-08-02

  Cities should also be very cautious about supporting new technology that is inaccessible to the poor, such as ride-hailing services, which are usually more expensive than public transportation, are not required to accept cash, and almost always require smartphones and credit cards. For example, The New York Times uncritically touted the UberPOOL carpool service as cheap and environmentally friendly, but most of these benefits were illusory. The trip highlighted in the story was from the Tenderloin to Noe Valley in San Francisco, took somewhere between 25 to 55 minutes, and if split evenly, cost around $10. The same trip on the San Francisco Muni's J-Church light rail line would have taken 18 minutes and cost only $2.25.