8 ms·
Study Finds Uber Doesn’t Put Taxi Drivers Out of Work But Does Drive Down Pay
- nilved 10y agoWith any luck this will be 90% soon. Not 100% or those idiots will drive for Uber and we'll need to start over.
- brianwawok 10y agoYou can vote out bad Uber drivers. Can't do that with bad taxi drivers
- astrodust 10y agoCab drivers depend on their licenses to operate. If cities had a better way to provide feedback then revoking a license dould be a threat and bad drivers would shape up or get booted.
- brianwawok 10y agoBut they don't. At least Chicago doesn't. So the free market came up with a better solution.
- astrodust 10y agoThe "fuck laws and regulations market", which in other countries we call the "black market".
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- hueving 10y agoI've been screwed by taxi drivers more frequently than Uber drivers. I've had taxis take me on garbage routes, pretend their card reader machines are broken, and add destination fees when I was clearly in a hurry. They read me well because I bent over and took it rather than fighting it because I was busy. An entire industry that thrives on screwing people at inopportune times deserves to die IMO.
- benchaney 10y agoIn the situation where "laws and regulations" mean dysfunctional government enforced monopolies, in ok with a company saying fuck that. Even if people like you will characterize it as a "black market".
- astrodust 10y agoI'm just calling a spade a spade. People have legitimate grievances against the cab industry, I'm one of them, but that doesn't automatically legitimize what Uber is doing.
- nilved 10y agoCan you let me know those countries so I can move there?
- astrodust 10y agoGreece. Argentina. Venezuela. It's a long list.
- kasey_junk 10y agoYou can always call 311 and report a bad cab driver in Chicago. Your information will be taken down and you will receive a call back asking about the incident. I've done this several times. I do not know if there were any actual repercussions for the drivers but in talking to cab drivers they seem to believe there will be. This is almost exactly the same as the uber/lyft model except the uber/lyft model put that feedback mechanism front and center.
- pessimizer 10y agoYou can now. When Uber is the only choice, there will be no economic incentive to continue this.
- thinkloop 10y agoUber pool is becoming a real and separate disruptor that seems to compete more with public transport than taxis. I would like to see stats on what's happening with buses and subways. In Miami it's about the same price to take an Uber pool ($2.50-$3) as it is to take a bus ($2.25), while being significantly better. UberX feels like Netflix's DVD phase, a precursor to the real, defensible, network-effect dependent, technologically more challenging [1], core competency of pool. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortest_path_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortest_path_problem
- becarefulyo 10y agoThey should require larger vehicles. Cramming three people into the back of a compact sucks.
- twblalock 10y agoIf you don't like it, don't take the least expensive level of Uber service. Uber has already segmented the market to provide more space and luxury to those willing to pay for it. Take Uber X, or Uber, or Uber Black.
- MarkMc 10y agoI think becarefulyo's point was that Uber hasn't segmented the market enough. There needs to be a pool-without-cramming option. If Uber doesn't provide it, someone else will.
- legodt 10y agoInteresting, but the argument has always been that x is Uber's Netflix DVD phase. Uber black car was the DVD phase for UberX, UberX was the DVD phase for Uber pool, and, now, Uber pool is the DVD phase for fully automating the driver out of the picture. It's certainly an interesting strategy to watch unfold. It's reasonable to assume that Uber black car very deliberately was a stepping stone to the more accessible UberX, but what I want to know is if during the initial pitch meetings they had any idea that their game was to burn money/remain solvent as long as they possibly can in order to have an upper hand in the future self-driving market.
- twblalock 10y agoIf I were a taxi driver, I would sell my medallion while it still has some value and start driving for Uber and Lyft, doing deliveries for Prime Now and Grubhub, etc.
- qeternity 10y agoNone of the taxi drivers own their medallions...they are far too expensive. Big pools own them, and drivers pay a fee to them to lease the medallion.
- Spooky23 10y agoIf I had cash, I would buy those mediallions at fire sale prices. The NYS trial lawyers are doing a good job holding Uber hostage. Once they get what they want, Uber is fucked.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago> NYS trial lawyers are doing a good job holding Uber hostage Citation?
- Spooky23 10y ago> "This year, both houses of the state Legislature were poised to pass a bill allowing the app-based transportation networks to operate upstate and on Long Island. The measure was approved by the Republican-led Senate on June 17th, but the Assembly version was amended at the last minute to include excessively high insurance limits. Soon after, the press revealed that the New York State Trial Lawyers Association was behind the push for higher insurance limits." http://www.lohud.com/story/opinion/contributors/2016/08/24/trial-lawyers-halt-push-uber-lyft-view/89260254/ http://www.lohud.com/story/opinion/contributors/2016/08/24/t... >"Ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft spent nearly $1 million combined during the first six months of 2016 to lobby for a bill that would have allowed them to expand to upstate." >"But the spending didn‘t pay off as the lawmakers ended the state legislative session in June without taking action on the bill. The bill died, according to sources, after the powerful state trial lawyers pushed for more comprehensive insurance coverage that Uber opposed." http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/uber-lyft-spent-1m-nys-lobbying-2016-article-1.2741680 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/uber-lyft-spent-1m-...
- johnnyg 10y agoAnother way to title this would be "Taxi Services Now 10% Cheaper Because of Uber" or more aggressively "The 10% Taxi's Used To Take Now Returned To Customers In The Form Of Lower Prices". Of course, for those to be all the way true and fair, Uber would need to be making money and not leveraging a sea of VC money. None the less, why is pay down immediately bad? It's only bad if it is down and things cost the same. Shouldn't purchasing power be the relevant metric?
- Spooky23 10y agoNot really. Taxi cost doesn't directly map to driver pay. A more accurate alternate headline would be "VCs and institutional investors contribute $10 to each Uber ride, taxi use drops"
- specialist 10y agoSeems illegal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing Silly me wonders if Uber will run out of cash before (enough) taxis companies go under.
- malinens 10y agoSome will go under but some new will appear. In long-term uber like companies can't win and make monopolies as tax business is not that hard to get into
- Spooky23 10y agoThat's the big bet. The "don't look at the man behind the curtain" answer is that Uber will magically become profitable at some future date, soon, when robot taxis are invented for use on the road, Uber procures thousands of them and they take over.
- spangry 10y agoIndeed. In quite a few places (Australia, for instance) the taxi industry is basically a government protected cartel. State governments charge insane amounts for taxi licencing (to get their cut of the cartel rent) and then restrict supply of taxi plates (to maximise their cut). Consequently, it was recently not uncommon (in Australia) for resold taxi plates to go for mid six figure sums on the open market. It was nuts. I think Uber has changed this, although they're basically using predatory pricing as their market strategy. I must admit I have mixed feelings about all of this... Who knows? With two anti-competitive colliding like this, maybe we'll somehow end up with a competitive market at long last...
- Gimpei 10y agoA brief scan of the article suggests this relies on a difference in difference identification strategy. Not normally the most convincing approach... But it does shift my prior a little bit.
- _andromeda_ 10y agoUber has provided enormous value to consumers everywhere. The efficiency Uber has brought to consumers greatly outweighs any perceived inefficiencies. I attribute it to the great leadership style of Travis Kalanick. I think Travis receives a lot of backlash because of envy. Many a people think Uber is a stupidly simple idea that they themselves could have done and as such hate on Travis for doing it first, fast and well.
- angry-hacker 10y agoIt is 'easy' if you have money to break the law. Most of the people don't. I have thousands of good ideas that would bring in a lot of money and in many cases would be beneficial to people if I could break the law and call it disruption or whatever is the buzzword they are using.
- vingt-2 10y agoWhich amounts to the same thing. The market is more crowded with taxi drivers, the competition being fierce, eventually, some taxi drivers will be force out of work if they cannot keep up.