Just got an ad that was like "tired of shuttling your kids to all their friends' houses and extracurriculars? Try Uber for Teens!" and hear me out but what if we just had good public transit instead
Growing up in Baltimore, we had the whole city at our command for the price of a bus ride, 15 cents each way. And even a trolley. My family had no car and didn’t need one.
i got this earlier in the week and it was the “we actually make sure your driver isn’t on record as a sex criminal” bit that got me.
i didn’t even originally think of the public transit shit, but there is no part of that ad that didn’t make me bonkers, down to the writing and how it was acted.
if your company has to specify that it’s got a smaller division for teens where the employees have passed background checks & are less likely to molest your teens than their other employees, maybe you’ve already failed at everything & your whole corporate board should self immolate in contrition.
Yeah the "trusted drivers" bit got me. Oh, so the ones you let go out to the bars to pick up wasted college kids at 2 AM are *not* necessarily trusted? Good to know...
the number of “i peed on my skirt” drunk 21 year olds i saw leave the bar in an uber while tending in a college town was less alarming than the thought of them driving. but the thought that the company is like, “we just now thought about background checks for at risk passengers” is something.
My kid was commuting on public transit every day as soon as he hit the teens. It's great! But when it comes to sports, these are just going to happen in out of the way places. A car is essential, sorry.
Or we could also have public transit that goes out to those places?
And idk, I was an orchestra nerd in high school and took the bus with my violin case.
Though an Uber is pretty bad for delivering kids to sports, especially those with big equipment needs. That's "at least one parent who has a van" territory at minimum.
Sounds like districts should shell out for a couple school busses. That's how every rural school in my conference did it, since no way did everyone want to drive 2 hrs from one school to another.
It’s a city team and they don’t have much money. In general, with good enough transit you will barely need a car. Eventually, I’m sure we could do virtually everything with public transit but it will take awhile and a lot of planning.
We're not wealthy. The kids on the team do not come from wealthy families. My car cost $4,000 and I bought it 6 years ago (yeah, it was an amazing bit of luck).
It's a great idea sports should include transportation but except for the driving, city team is cheap. This would add a huge amount to the cost. It's hard to do some stuff without a car. We should change this as much as possible, but we do need to know facts about why people live as they do.
In the meantime I have purchased an e-bike for my teen. He had no interest in a car, this (and a Clipper Card) gets him the independence he wants. Seems to be the preference of more and more teens.
The number of "creepy Uber" stories I have heard...I actually refuse to take them solo these days after getting stuck in one with a driver who really wanted to complain about "groomers" the whole ride from the airport
When I was a kid living on the south shore MA I would hop on my bike, ride down to the bus stop at the town center, ride the bus to the T station, and take the Red Line in to Park Street @ Boston Common or Harvard. Today you could do that, or catch the commuter rail or ferry. So it's not everywhere.
People putting their kids in cars driven by people who have no advanced training or any accountability for their actions is terrifying to me. Women alone already have issues.
Well obviously Uber wouldn't run those ads, but the fact we have so little reliable public transit here that this service would seem to be a viable business is in itself an indictment of the situation
