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.
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.
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.
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.
UPDATE: Jan. 15, 2019, 9:34 a.m. PST Bandwagon got back to me and said it wasn't in operation at CES this year, hence the issues ordering a taxi. Bandwagon CEO David Mahfouda said in his message that the CES team didn't update its transportation info on its website or mobile app from previous years.
Topics CES
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
