Taxi-sharing at CES was a huge disappointment
Fresh off my flight from San Francisco to Las Vegas for the annual CES tech conference, I opened my phone and tried to order a taxi.
Yes, a traditional cab like from the movies. But this wasn't just any old cab ride — I was trying to share a taxi with strangers going my way using an app called Bandwagon.
My go-to ride-hailing apps are Lyft and Uber, but the top tech wranglers from CES — the massive tech trade show that brought me to Las Vegas — were pushing a taxi-share service, so I felt compelled to give it a try.
On the CES website and official mobile app, the transportation options include Bandwagon in a prominent section.
Image: screengrab/ces website
Bandwagon is mostly available in the New York City metro area and its airports. That's where it started in 2013. It has a focus on airport taxi lines and convention centers. It's partnered with the crowded CES conference since 2014, so this seemed like the perfect place to give it a whirl.
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Maybe I got to Vegas too early for the crowds clamoring for a ride. Or maybe this would work better at the crowded convention center rather than the airport. Maybe no one else was taking a cab to the Paris Las Vegas hotel or anywhere nearby on the Strip.
Whatever the reason, "no one going your way right now" was what I lamely realized after manually adding my credit card info and registering for yet another ride service on my phone.
Image: screengrab/bandwagon
I only wasted about 10 minutes waiting and hoping someone else would order a similar ride before I fell back on my usual, dependable ride-hailing apps, Uber and Lyft. And it seems like everyone else is doing the same. In the designated "ride-share" area of the Las Vegas airport, all sorts of people were waiting for cars. A loudspeaker announcement reminding us to wait in the waiting area only named Uber and Lyft.
Just this week, the Pew Research Center found that ride-hailing apps are more popular than ever. The number of Americans who have used one of the ride services has more than doubled since 2015 — up to 36 percent of U.S. adults. More than half of Americans between 19 and 29 have used a ride-hailing service, based on a survey of more than 10,000 adults from recent months.
As I rode in my Lyft, which arrived about five minutes after I ordered it, my driver gave me the low-down on how Las Vegas is essentially a testing ground for ride-hailing planning with designated pick-up and drop-off areas all over the city and hotel district. He said it mostly works and keeps traffic flowing. We just hope that the newer taxi-sharing services are taking notes for next year.
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