I don't know what you think can be done, because all the "solutions" you offer are just plain unworkable and unfeasible. Ride sharing, aka taxis, was a solution to that problem even though it may have not only just been a con job to take over the taxi industry in every single city and town, but it also surely led to people using Uber instead of walking a few blocks. That may have abated a bit since the introduction of scooters, but even though that also "hurts public transit", I will leave that be.
The reality is that public transit hurts public transit way way more than anything else, just like taxis not only destroyed themselves, but they alone made Uber/Lyft even possible. Just like without taxis being an utterly miserable experience in most cases (which clearly has now been normalized in U/L to some degree) made people flock to U/L even with efforts like Curb (and whatever they were called before that) in addition to some other efforts to organize taxis in an app; so is and did public transport sabotage itself too.
People who advocate for public transport (and I must assume that includes you) tend to not at all understand the true costs and issues with public transport beyond the obvious ones like subways/trams being stuck on rigid lines or busses that are limited in their route. What those people do not take into account is even just the full financial cost of operations, not even to mention future obligations due to unfunded liabilities/benefits for utterly unproductive/lazy government employees, and all the accompanying authoritarian/tyrannical gaslighting propaganda that comes with it, e.g., "how dare you point out or note the crimes and violence on BART. You are a horrible person for not subjecting yourself to it". But reality is that, e.g., the NYC subway system is HEAVILY subsidized, which makes it so "cheap", just like all the European public transit is even more subsidized and makes it even "cheaper".
Just for example because I was looking at the figures recently, the WashDC Metro system only receives half its operational budget from fares, and the other half is drained from surrounding counties and the city of DC. And that is at a cost of commuting to and from work into and out of the city of about $7.5 every single day, partially due to recent fare increases. That's ~$2,000 per year to commute to work when one is to believe that being jammed into busses/subways should produce some kind of savings over owning and operating a car, which would clearly not cost $2,000 in costs for commuting per year unless you are talking about a mid sized luxury vehicle.
You are wildly mistaken, at least regarding Europe, why U/L are doing poorly. They are doing poorly there because the people still care about maintaining a line against the very "disruptive" types that SV and YC for that matter is full of. People in Europe at least for the time being still have a shared common bond to maintain the line against pure capitalists that have demoralized and broken through that line in the USA in particular, where no such bonds of unity and common interest exist anymore to hold the line against the abuses and excesses of the pure capitalists like basically all the tech companies are. Uber is, ironically successful in the USA specifically through abuse, fraud, manipulation, deception, plunder, and degeneracy. Like I said, at least for the time being, that defensive wall has not yet been broken trough yet in Europe, even though it surely is coming, with the invasion of the same kind of foreign low wage serf labor that fuels U/L.
I find the far more interesting question/issue that this is somehow news or surprising or at all in any way not totally expected.
I sometimes feel like I am in the movie They Live or maybe Mars Attacks, where I know what the alien invaders are up to, but everyone is totally oblivious or they just don't want to see it because, e.g., they're so enthralled by aliens existing that they can't see, or they are just utterly naive and totally unable to apply the most basic risk assessment.
How is it at all a matter of "accused" when literally for the last 30 years, China has been raping, pillaging, sacking, and plundering the whole western world without abandon and with, essentially, unfettered impunity and even with the utterly blind with greed treason of our own corporations who could simply not resist the illusion and glistening cheese of the "Chinese market of a billion people" as they stupidly wandered right into the Chinese trap of handing over ALL their secrets and technologies, while on top of it, in the case of the USA, even totally gutting our own society and industrial capacity and therefore our very ability to defend ourselves and supply ourselves, and therefore making us totally and utterly dependent on China. It's like a mass psychosis has gripped our society, so blind with greed and personal enrichment that it has totally blinded our "smartest" and most "educated" and most vaunted "experts" who were all busy throwing open the gates to the enemy.
You are mistaken, the market is not at all in control and has not been for a very long time now. It's quite baffling even that anyone would say something like that considering the government not only guarantees most student loans and has flooded the market with every lower qualified loans and pushed every more people into ever lower quality schools while simultaneously also importing foreign national "immigrants" that drive down salaries as well as wages.
If the market actually worked, you would not be able to get a student loan for a nonsense degree at a nonsense school that dumped you out into a job market in which you could not recuperate the loan within the term.
It's quite literally and PRECISELY because the market is NOT allowed to function that the whole system is so perverted and distorted to insane and illogical and irrational levels, which is rather ironic considering Universities are where the smartest people are supposed to be.
But I guess when your salary depends on not knowing something...
It's really a rather typical characteristic of the abusive tech industry ... "the laws simply don't apply to us, none of them, one way or any other way, we just get to do what we want" they cry as they gut the whole economy under PR of being glorious "disruptors" that are "changing" things as they consolidate and centralize power and wealth in ever tinier, riskier power centers.
I hope you have the correct thoughts to have a gig job in the future, when there are 5 monopolistic cartel corporations that control everything from you ability to work for them, to housing and feeding your family.
"Uber is effectively trying to have it both ways,". I realize people here are not going to want to hear this, so maybe a "trigger warning" is supposed to be provided here, because folks may have dreams of unicorns they don't want shattered. That phrase pretty much sums up the whole tech/startup sector that has been pumping out abusive "disruptors" that are simply exploiting unfair competition as they ignore laws and regulations, let alone even fundamental principles of social compact that keep the peace that law and regulation abiding companies stick to at their own peril.
Uber is a great example of this process, even though Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, and all others are equally guilty of this abuse. As Uber was "competing" against a taxi industry that has been hogtied with regulations, Uber just simply ignored the regulations and laws and used corruption to hoodwink corrupt officials into ignoring violations of law and regulations by claiming they don't apply.
The "having it both ways mindset" ... a kind of ultimate entitlement ... that drives the tech industry is not really all that different actually than the "sovereign citizen" argument ... "i'm immune to laws, but I have the right to use the commons to my heart's extent". The only difference being that the unfortunate sovereign citizen psychopaths don't have the money to corrupt the system that the tech industry has accumulated.
Not to mention that Europeans have no idea how much they are actually being pillaged of in order to maintain the immensely inefficient systems, or just how corrupt they are because they are political cesspools between industry and government, where the politicians are largely held hostage by industry and unions and therefor squander the funds they pillage through taxes. It's not their own money after all, what do they care.
It's actually rather sad how Europeans are so fleeced and have no idea because it's so obscured and obfuscated through so many different shell games, essentially. One indication of just how messed up it is, are the immensely lower salaries in Europe for the same jobs in the USA, while also being bilked and essentially turned into slaves through taxes that take up about 50% of income for the average European. And even after they were bilked of thousands ever year in taxes on lower salaries, they STILL have to pay rather high prices for that wonderful "public transportation" ... unless of course you are a "refugee", then the government is quick to hand out the pillaged taxes they stole from their citizens in order to provide free transportation to foreign nationals.
I recall reading a report that somewhere on the order of $200-$250 MILLION had been paid to "consultants" alone so far with not a single foot of track laid.
And that's without all the other massive issues related to security, ACTUAL cost of construction and TRUE cost of operation, and bifurcation of the landscape, etc.
If it's such a wonderful and amazing project, why aren't people just falling all over themselves to invest in making it happen? Why do these glorious, wonderful projects always seem to take authoritarian government squandering other people's money to bring about?
The reality is that public transit hurts public transit way way more than anything else, just like taxis not only destroyed themselves, but they alone made Uber/Lyft even possible. Just like without taxis being an utterly miserable experience in most cases (which clearly has now been normalized in U/L to some degree) made people flock to U/L even with efforts like Curb (and whatever they were called before that) in addition to some other efforts to organize taxis in an app; so is and did public transport sabotage itself too.
People who advocate for public transport (and I must assume that includes you) tend to not at all understand the true costs and issues with public transport beyond the obvious ones like subways/trams being stuck on rigid lines or busses that are limited in their route. What those people do not take into account is even just the full financial cost of operations, not even to mention future obligations due to unfunded liabilities/benefits for utterly unproductive/lazy government employees, and all the accompanying authoritarian/tyrannical gaslighting propaganda that comes with it, e.g., "how dare you point out or note the crimes and violence on BART. You are a horrible person for not subjecting yourself to it". But reality is that, e.g., the NYC subway system is HEAVILY subsidized, which makes it so "cheap", just like all the European public transit is even more subsidized and makes it even "cheaper".
Just for example because I was looking at the figures recently, the WashDC Metro system only receives half its operational budget from fares, and the other half is drained from surrounding counties and the city of DC. And that is at a cost of commuting to and from work into and out of the city of about $7.5 every single day, partially due to recent fare increases. That's ~$2,000 per year to commute to work when one is to believe that being jammed into busses/subways should produce some kind of savings over owning and operating a car, which would clearly not cost $2,000 in costs for commuting per year unless you are talking about a mid sized luxury vehicle.
You are wildly mistaken, at least regarding Europe, why U/L are doing poorly. They are doing poorly there because the people still care about maintaining a line against the very "disruptive" types that SV and YC for that matter is full of. People in Europe at least for the time being still have a shared common bond to maintain the line against pure capitalists that have demoralized and broken through that line in the USA in particular, where no such bonds of unity and common interest exist anymore to hold the line against the abuses and excesses of the pure capitalists like basically all the tech companies are. Uber is, ironically successful in the USA specifically through abuse, fraud, manipulation, deception, plunder, and degeneracy. Like I said, at least for the time being, that defensive wall has not yet been broken trough yet in Europe, even though it surely is coming, with the invasion of the same kind of foreign low wage serf labor that fuels U/L.