I spent some days in the city of Austin, where Uber and Lyft had closed their operations one year ago. A post came to my mind which was about nothing had changed in the city in spite of the fact that two leading ridesharing service providers had gone.

  A number of other service providers like Ride Austin, Fasten and Fare have started their operations here since the two giants left last may. Their apps also provide the service and experience just like Uber and Lyft, you just need to show your location and the car appears.

 

All the new service providers follow Austin’s background-check law. Some even charge drivers and riders less than what Uber and Lyft used to charge.

 

A thought came to my mind that Uber and Lyft may have made a serious mistake by not complying with city’s fingerprint-based background. This gave a clear sign that a large city of United States can survive without their presence.

 

It rained the last night and it was the biggest night of SXSW (south by south west), rain meant that everyone was in search of a ride. But the apps failed to deliver due to overload right at the time of big stage. Ride Austin and Fasten were almost non responsive—people were disappointed to face either nonresponsive stuck screen or the app came with a reply of “no more cars” when actually there were.

 

People were stuck and drivers circled whole city to pick up their riders, but most of them in vain.

 

Some non-taxi drivers offered rides in return for cash and Venmo. It was a recollection of thoughts that went to the time when Uber and Lyft had just left the city and no one could replace them for days. In those days a 30,000-member Facebook group was used to organize rides where drivers pleaded for rides in return of cash.

 

Ride Austin in a post claimed that there service was down periodically from 7:15pm to midnight. The cause behind this closure was said to be “an undiscovered database problem which wasn’t spotted during the scale testing”.

 

Fasten representative confirmed that the rain coupled with SXSW led to the crash of their app because they received 12 times more the requests that were finalized on normal days.

 

Both of the companies seemed to be blaming SXSW for their disruption meanwhile according to drivers the apps more often than not go offline on nights when there is high demand of rides like the New Year’s Eve, and also on Austin City Limits.

 

People often complained about the duopoly which was created by Uber and Lyft, but you can’t deny the fact that their platforms were much more stable and didn’t experience these kinds of technical faults.

 

The situation is totally different today and everything seems to be fine, but surely Austin has failed to prove that large cities can survive without the presence of Uber or Lyft.