It’s been increasingly difficult finding a taxi for my commute in Hyderabad. Usually I stick to Uber. I tried Ola but I found that the fares were consistently ~1.5x more than Uber’s fares. I have a hunch that the fares are correlated with the demand for taxis, and that the demand is correlated with the time of the day (obviyusly).
Here’s the result of an idle morning whence I sat, waiting for a taxi, and decided to write a few scripts that would query the Uber API getting the fares to my office.
Hyderabad: Home → Office
The following plot shows the mean fares for the last 30 days, fetched every 5 minutes:
I find it interesting how the fare of Uber Moto (their two wheeler offering) remains constant throughout the day.
Around 11:30 seems to be the worst time to start looking for a ride, it seems. There’s a spike that lasts ~3 hours.
Bangalore: Airport → Koramangala
Interestingly enough, “Uber Executive” remains the same throughout the day. There’s regular spikes in prices here and there, It seems to me that the peak timings are around 07:00 and 14:00.
I generally consider this the worst commute I have to make. I fly regularly between Hyderabad and Bangalore and very often; my ~600KM flight takes half the time that my ~30KM taxi ride takes.
Conclusion (?)
Fun project! I think I’ll keep the scripts running for alternate routes as well as and when people request more. I’ve attempted to change my commute timings and it seems to have softened the blow a bit. However, it’s not completely smooth sailing yet.
For now, I’ll go back to waiting for a taxi.