Sunday, July 14, 2019

Ride Sharing

I am pleased that our provincial government is FINALLY letting ride sharing happen.  I've seen first hand the problems in getting a taxi in downtown Vancouver.  At Canada Place the lines can be huge and the wait can be over two hours.  Cabs in BC are licensed and the licenses are expensive.  The taxi association has tried to stop ride sharing.

On our trip to Let's Make a Deal, we landed at Burbank Airport.  We walked out and there were no lineups for a cab.  The supervisor flagged a cab and we told him we wanted to go to "Courtyard Marriott and gave him the address".  The cab driver didn't speak English!  The supervisor then told him in another language where we wanted to go.  I immediately put the address in Google maps to make sure he wasn't taking us on a joy ride.  We went directly to the hotel so it was fine.

At Let's Make A Deal, when we were finished we needed to get to the airport.  I was sitting beside another audience member and asked him for a local cab company phone number.  He said "why would you take a cab, use Uber or Lyft".  I explained to him they weren't available in our area and would he show me how to use it.  I installed the Lyft app and followed the instructions!   It picked up my address by my GPS on my phone.  That was a good thing because I had no idea exactly where I was!  I put in "Burbank Airport" and it gave me a screen that showed "Chris, driving a Red Chevrolet, with the license plate number and a picture of Chris, will arrive in TWO minutes"!  We went outside and watched him drive up immediately. 

He got out of the car and said "Hi, Linda!".  His car was new and immaculate.  He had a sign on his car that said "Lyft" and a phone we could see with a map app loaded on it attached to his dashboard.  He was pleasant, very well dressed and spoke English!  We had a thirty minute ride and knew before he came what the cost would be.  When the ride was over, I paid on my phone. 

This is in my Lyft history!
This service is excellent and when it comes to Vancouver, I'll will use it!  It's been a long time coming and hopefully there will be a lot of people who be able to use their cars and make some extra money.

Megalomaniac - ???

I love learning new words.  I'd never heard this one so I looked it up: What is a megalomaniac person? A megalomaniac is a pathological ...