10 ms·

Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

78 points by velmu 9y ago

deanclatworthy 9y ago
This reads more like a promotional piece for Whim - rather than a neutral article - as well as no reference for the regulation change (although it is happening).
- Mad_Mac 9y ago
  They mention Whim twice + a pic of the app. I don't really see how that's too promotional. Even Fixutaxi is mentioned more.
illuminati1911 9y ago
Uber left Finland last summer due to the harassment from the government and police, but it still made huge difference to the Finnish taxi system. Before the taxi rides were expensive, service was mediocre and there was no apps nor anything else. After Uber started mixing the market, many new companies have started operating in the field offering travel packages etc. and almost all taxis can now be ordered with an app and people can see their location in real time. Only thing that hasn't changed is the pricing (taxis are extremely expensive in Finland) but thankfully that's about to change soon.
- Spacemolte 9y ago
  Uber seems really shady, but their impact competitionwise seems like a great development. 1. Uber sucks, everything is great as it is now. 2. Uber sucks, but the competition is great. 3. Uber is great I'm at 2.
- dyyni 9y ago
  Taxis aren’t that expensive in Finland compared to other Nordic countries or countries with similar living costs as Finland. Swedish taxis are unregulated and there fares have risen faster than in Finland. And Uber as a ride hailing service was perfectly legal in Finland. The issue was they were hiring drivers that didn’t have taxi permits (and didn’t pay taxes).
  - jpatokal 9y ago
    C'mon. Getting a taxi permit in Finland requires taking a bunch of mandatory courses on highly Uber-relevant topics like "how to use your taxi meter" (185 EUR) and "local navigation without a GPS" (260 EUR), then passing an exam with questions like "from memory, name all roads between random location X and random location Y", meaning you're looking at a bare minimum of 700 EUR and several weeks of full-time study to get licensed: https://taksikoulu.net/kurssit/#hinnasto https://taksikoulu.net/kurssit/#hinnasto And Uber was way (as in, 30-50%) cheaper than taxis while it operated in Helsinki.
    - foepys 9y ago
      Uber is cheaper because Uber's investors subsidize each ride. Don't let this fool you. Uber will get a lot more expensive when those investors want to see returns.
      - Reason077 9y ago
        Uber's prices will remain competitive so long as there is healthy competition. If Uber is able to establish a quasi-monopoly in a particular market, then prices will rise.
    - dyyni 9y ago
      You’re confusing taxi driver’s permit (which requires exams, not courses) with a taxi licence/permit. Uber drivers didn’t have either and the latter is where the law is very strict. Licenced taxis pay much higher insurance and the cars have to be inspected more often, meaning the costs of a legitimate taxi business are much higher than unlicensed Uber drivers.
      - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
        > Licenced taxis pay much higher insurance and the cars have to be inspected more often I have yet to visit a city where these inspections and insurance premiums seem a reasonable cost-benefit trade-off for the median rider. The long-term competition from ridesharing, and lack of prevalent organized rider (versus driver) opposition to it, corroborates that observation.
- pluma 9y ago
  I can't speak for Finland but to me Uber seems similar to Facebook in many ways (though it currently doesn't seem like Uber is as successful internationally): Taxi apps started out in 2007/2008 according to Wikipedia, most apps I'm personally aware of (in Western Europe) seem to have popped up at some point in 2010, roughly the same time as Uber launched in the US. I remember using a taxi app in 2011 but the signup was too much of a hassle compared to just dialing the local taxi dispatch number for the city. Currently taxi.eu seems to be the most successful brand in Germany but it's still far from ubiquitous. Uber isn't available (except for UberX, which is using a third-party limousine service, and UberTaxi, which is using regular taxis) for obvious reasons. Facebook expanded beyond English-speaking students in late 2006. Prior to its launch in Germany there were a number of competitors, most prominently StudiVZ (later MeinVZ) which started in late 2005 and targeted German-speaking students exclusively (StudiVZ was obviously drew inspiration from Facebook at several points but I recall similar networks popping up -- and dying -- even earlier than that). There were also more general social networks like Lokalisten (founded mid 2005) and Werkenntwen (launched in late 2006) that also had similar features to Facebook and attempted to build similar online communities. Many of these sites were initially far more popular than Facebook. Because Facebook wasn't initially available in German, Facebook was simply not relevant at the time. It was just one network among many and it didn't have much appeal. Over time more people joined Facebook for various reasons and eventually the alternatives faded into obscurity. Many of the networks that were widely known at the time don't even have a Wikipedia article and didn't get much news coverage at the time, so it's easy to forget they even existed. Instead Facebook is credited as having been revolutionary in ways that simply don't hold up to scrutiny. It seems the perception of Uber is similar to that of Facebook, except the competitors are still around. I don't think Uber was a necessary nor sufficient factor in popularising taxi apps. I'm not familiar with the situation in Finland but considering what is happening elsewhere, I'm not convinced Uber caused taxi apps to become a thing, taxi apps were already becoming a thing alongside Uber and maybe you're just seeing a causation where there's only a correlation at best.
  - orangehour 9y ago
    It doesn't help that StudiVZ is based off of Facebook, so it's not really revolutionary either.
- wott 9y ago
  I lived 8 years in Finland. Taxis were not expensive, they were also easily available and convenient, and an incredible lot of people used them. I mean, you could easily get taxis in the middle of the night in small towns (below 5000 inhabitants) or even more remote villages, and regular low to middle income people would use them with no second thought. Also drivers would not even complain if they called for a short distance trip. It was a shock for me, coming from France, where nobody 'normal' would ever use a taxi in a 'normal' situation. And if you ever try, you generally do not try again: no availability, extremely expensive price, and generally, as a driver, a moron who complains about you or anything. So most French people only use a taxi every other year to get a ride to the airport, and that habit was so ingrained in me that I never got to initiate taxi rides in Finland because it does not fit in my mental model when I want to get somewhere. But Finns had no such problem :-)
mandelken 9y ago
Taxi's don't scale in an urban environment. Their use is exactly for night or irregular use. Go to Mumbai, Jakarta, or any low income country and you'll find yourself stuck for hours in a cheap taxi. We need regulation because the market will not build railroads and metro's. "A developed country is not where the poor drive a car, but where the rich take public transportation". Visit and compare Switzerland with Egypt/India/... and you'll see.
- jpatokal 9y ago
  This argument seems like a non-sequitur. Helsinki already has a well-developed public transport system, particularly considering its size, and nobody's about to abandon it and switch to taxis, regulated or not. Jakarta and Mumbai have crappy public transport because of a toxic mix of poverty and incompetent governance, and in both taxis are a luxury for the richest of the rich. I always figured the primary point of taxi regulation in Finland was to ensure that the service would be available even in remote areas that couldn't otherwise sustain it -- but Uber makes it far easier to service those as well.
  - qplex 9y ago
    The overall quality of the taxi service _will_ go down with the price cuts. There isn't any way around this. It was obvious already when Uber was testing their service in Helsinki without adhering to any of the legal requirements. But it's not just Uber - many other taxi companies operate in Finland already with comparable smartphone apps etc. And they also manage to do it without breaking the law ...
    - tinus_hn 9y ago
      Monopolies are hardly a recipe for quality service.
- TomMarius 9y ago
  The market would build railroads and metros given the chance.
davnn 9y ago
I thought Finland was one of the few places where taxi prices were high enough that taxi drivers could make a fair living off it. Those days are probably gone.. I don't see the great innovations that ride hailing services bring to the table at this point. Having another person drive you around should expensive in my opinion.
- indubitable 9y ago
  You have to keep in mind that prices are, generally, not magical. The price is a balance between what people are willing to sell something for and what people are willing to buy it for. Of course that's elementary, but thinking about this will explain why drivers, in general, will not be well paid. Driving is a low value skill that the vast majority of people have, and if they don't have - they can learn it rapidly. Let's imagine now being a driver was lucrative. Well you'd have a ton of people racing to become drivers, no pun intended. But with so many people willing to drive people around, it'd mean a shortage of work for all the drivers. And so somebody would offer to drive people for a little bit less. And that'd repeat on downward until we reached the equilibrium point at which not enough drivers were willing to go below. There are some exceptions like truck driving where people spend hours and hours on the road driving vehicles that do require some degree of skill to manage. And so the wages there are still pretty decent. It's not just driving per se, but unpleasant work that requires some degree of skill. Ride sharing apps bring market efficiency. If you're willing to drive for $x and people are willing to pay $x, well - why shouldn't you be able to? They're still centralized of course, but I think it takes us one step closer to decentralizing the entire industry which would be amazing, as it entirely removes the middle man and let's people simply directly offer and purchase each others' labor. Of course this ideal is pointless in this particular case as automation is imminent and will super-centralize the industry. Although there prices will likely be lower than even a decentralized market could offer.
- jimmywanger 9y ago
  > I thought Finland was one of the few places where taxi prices were high enough that taxi drivers could make a fair living off it. Please explain why taxi drivers, or any occupation should be able to make a "fair living" (ill defined term) off of it. In the majority of cases, the only thing regulation of an industry does is raise artificial walls and lower overall use of the good/service. Or maybe you think the DPRK, Venezuela, and Cuba are good examples.
staticelf 9y ago
Finland is just killing it lately, I wish Sweden could be more like Finland.
- dagw 9y ago
  In what sense? Sweden has had a deregulated taxi market for ages
- stevekemp 9y ago
  Could you be more specific? Sure Finland has a lot of great things, despite its small size, but it seems odd that you'd say "lately".
- deanclatworthy 9y ago
  It’s funny the outsiders perspective of Finland. I can assure you there are plenty of problems here. The government being broke for one and making obscene cuts across the board.
  - sol_remmy 9y ago
    i.e. The government is reducing taxes and reducing services. That's precisely WHY some people like Finland. The government is stepping out of the way (as we can see in this article)
  - ersii 9y ago
    That actually sounds perfect in my book, where they are supposed to be as broke as possible and do as little as possible or nothing. :-) (Yes yes, I'm well aware that most other HNers are of another opinion than I am.)
  - fulafel 9y ago
    By the numbers Finland looks like one of the not-so-broke governments in EU: https://www.statista.com/statistics/269684/national-debt-in-eu-countries-in-relation-to-gross-domestic-product-gdp/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/269684/national-debt-in-... A common neoliberal political strategy is to kick up drama about state finances to justify tax cuts and reductions in public services in spite of popular support for welfare, maybe the same here?
joncrane 9y ago
I wonder where Finland draws the line between "taxi" and "ride sharing" (stuff like the Waze commute thing).
- alkonaut 9y ago
  If they deregulate it’s not unthinkable that they are looking across the water to Sweden. In Sweden there is no difference between different operators, Uber is a Taxi company. You can’t drive anyone for money without being a taxi company. Actual ride sharing where no one makes money is obviously not taxi. What Waze commute will count as I suspect is still up in the air so long as neither of the people in the car makes any money.
kisstheblade 9y ago
Taxi service has been great in finland. Competent drivers (they know their way around the city) and clean cars. Pretty good availability, except for the one hour when the bars close when you have to fight for your life at the taxi stop :) And you could actually make a decent living driving cabs. This will probably change and the foreigners who now deliver our food (Foodora et.al.) will start driving taxis. So drivers getting lost and crashing in the winter months because of lacking skills in snow driving. And of course not speaking finnish so handling the eldery and school transports which are a big service taxis provide here might get more difficult. We'll see... But in my opinnion it is not possible to operate taxis much more cheaply (and with the same quality) as we have now.
AnsemWise 9y ago
Finland doesn't exists.
- AnsemWise 9y ago
  Exist

78 points by velmu 9y ago

This reads more like a promotional piece for Whim - rather than a neutral article - as well as no reference for the regulation change (although it is happening).

Mad_Mac 9y ago
They mention Whim twice + a pic of the app. I don't really see how that's too promotional. Even Fixutaxi is mentioned more.

illuminati1911 9y ago

Uber left Finland last summer due to the harassment from the government and police, but it still made huge difference to the Finnish taxi system. Before the taxi rides were expensive, service was mediocre and there was no apps nor anything else. After Uber started mixing the market, many new companies have started operating in the field offering travel packages etc. and almost all taxis can now be ordered with an app and people can see their location in real time. Only thing that hasn't changed is the pricing (taxis are extremely expensive in Finland) but thankfully that's about to change soon.

Spacemolte 9y ago
Uber seems really shady, but their impact competitionwise seems like a great development. 1. Uber sucks, everything is great as it is now. 2. Uber sucks, but the competition is great. 3. Uber is great I'm at 2.
dyyni 9y ago
Taxis aren’t that expensive in Finland compared to other Nordic countries or countries with similar living costs as Finland. Swedish taxis are unregulated and there fares have risen faster than in Finland. And Uber as a ride hailing service was perfectly legal in Finland. The issue was they were hiring drivers that didn’t have taxi permits (and didn’t pay taxes).
- jpatokal 9y ago
  C'mon. Getting a taxi permit in Finland requires taking a bunch of mandatory courses on highly Uber-relevant topics like "how to use your taxi meter" (185 EUR) and "local navigation without a GPS" (260 EUR), then passing an exam with questions like "from memory, name all roads between random location X and random location Y", meaning you're looking at a bare minimum of 700 EUR and several weeks of full-time study to get licensed: https://taksikoulu.net/kurssit/#hinnasto https://taksikoulu.net/kurssit/#hinnasto And Uber was way (as in, 30-50%) cheaper than taxis while it operated in Helsinki.
  - foepys 9y ago
    Uber is cheaper because Uber's investors subsidize each ride. Don't let this fool you. Uber will get a lot more expensive when those investors want to see returns.
    - Reason077 9y ago
      Uber's prices will remain competitive so long as there is healthy competition. If Uber is able to establish a quasi-monopoly in a particular market, then prices will rise.
  - dyyni 9y ago
    You’re confusing taxi driver’s permit (which requires exams, not courses) with a taxi licence/permit. Uber drivers didn’t have either and the latter is where the law is very strict. Licenced taxis pay much higher insurance and the cars have to be inspected more often, meaning the costs of a legitimate taxi business are much higher than unlicensed Uber drivers.
    - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
      > Licenced taxis pay much higher insurance and the cars have to be inspected more often I have yet to visit a city where these inspections and insurance premiums seem a reasonable cost-benefit trade-off for the median rider. The long-term competition from ridesharing, and lack of prevalent organized rider (versus driver) opposition to it, corroborates that observation.
pluma 9y ago
I can't speak for Finland but to me Uber seems similar to Facebook in many ways (though it currently doesn't seem like Uber is as successful internationally): Taxi apps started out in 2007/2008 according to Wikipedia, most apps I'm personally aware of (in Western Europe) seem to have popped up at some point in 2010, roughly the same time as Uber launched in the US. I remember using a taxi app in 2011 but the signup was too much of a hassle compared to just dialing the local taxi dispatch number for the city. Currently taxi.eu seems to be the most successful brand in Germany but it's still far from ubiquitous. Uber isn't available (except for UberX, which is using a third-party limousine service, and UberTaxi, which is using regular taxis) for obvious reasons. Facebook expanded beyond English-speaking students in late 2006. Prior to its launch in Germany there were a number of competitors, most prominently StudiVZ (later MeinVZ) which started in late 2005 and targeted German-speaking students exclusively (StudiVZ was obviously drew inspiration from Facebook at several points but I recall similar networks popping up -- and dying -- even earlier than that). There were also more general social networks like Lokalisten (founded mid 2005) and Werkenntwen (launched in late 2006) that also had similar features to Facebook and attempted to build similar online communities. Many of these sites were initially far more popular than Facebook. Because Facebook wasn't initially available in German, Facebook was simply not relevant at the time. It was just one network among many and it didn't have much appeal. Over time more people joined Facebook for various reasons and eventually the alternatives faded into obscurity. Many of the networks that were widely known at the time don't even have a Wikipedia article and didn't get much news coverage at the time, so it's easy to forget they even existed. Instead Facebook is credited as having been revolutionary in ways that simply don't hold up to scrutiny. It seems the perception of Uber is similar to that of Facebook, except the competitors are still around. I don't think Uber was a necessary nor sufficient factor in popularising taxi apps. I'm not familiar with the situation in Finland but considering what is happening elsewhere, I'm not convinced Uber caused taxi apps to become a thing, taxi apps were already becoming a thing alongside Uber and maybe you're just seeing a causation where there's only a correlation at best.
- orangehour 9y ago
  It doesn't help that StudiVZ is based off of Facebook, so it's not really revolutionary either.
wott 9y ago
I lived 8 years in Finland. Taxis were not expensive, they were also easily available and convenient, and an incredible lot of people used them. I mean, you could easily get taxis in the middle of the night in small towns (below 5000 inhabitants) or even more remote villages, and regular low to middle income people would use them with no second thought. Also drivers would not even complain if they called for a short distance trip. It was a shock for me, coming from France, where nobody 'normal' would ever use a taxi in a 'normal' situation. And if you ever try, you generally do not try again: no availability, extremely expensive price, and generally, as a driver, a moron who complains about you or anything. So most French people only use a taxi every other year to get a ride to the airport, and that habit was so ingrained in me that I never got to initiate taxi rides in Finland because it does not fit in my mental model when I want to get somewhere. But Finns had no such problem :-)

mandelken 9y ago

Taxi's don't scale in an urban environment. Their use is exactly for night or irregular use. Go to Mumbai, Jakarta, or any low income country and you'll find yourself stuck for hours in a cheap taxi. We need regulation because the market will not build railroads and metro's. "A developed country is not where the poor drive a car, but where the rich take public transportation". Visit and compare Switzerland with Egypt/India/... and you'll see.

jpatokal 9y ago
This argument seems like a non-sequitur. Helsinki already has a well-developed public transport system, particularly considering its size, and nobody's about to abandon it and switch to taxis, regulated or not. Jakarta and Mumbai have crappy public transport because of a toxic mix of poverty and incompetent governance, and in both taxis are a luxury for the richest of the rich. I always figured the primary point of taxi regulation in Finland was to ensure that the service would be available even in remote areas that couldn't otherwise sustain it -- but Uber makes it far easier to service those as well.
- qplex 9y ago
  The overall quality of the taxi service _will_ go down with the price cuts. There isn't any way around this. It was obvious already when Uber was testing their service in Helsinki without adhering to any of the legal requirements. But it's not just Uber - many other taxi companies operate in Finland already with comparable smartphone apps etc. And they also manage to do it without breaking the law ...
  - tinus_hn 9y ago
    Monopolies are hardly a recipe for quality service.
TomMarius 9y ago
The market would build railroads and metros given the chance.

davnn 9y ago

I thought Finland was one of the few places where taxi prices were high enough that taxi drivers could make a fair living off it. Those days are probably gone.. I don't see the great innovations that ride hailing services bring to the table at this point. Having another person drive you around should expensive in my opinion.

indubitable 9y ago
You have to keep in mind that prices are, generally, not magical. The price is a balance between what people are willing to sell something for and what people are willing to buy it for. Of course that's elementary, but thinking about this will explain why drivers, in general, will not be well paid. Driving is a low value skill that the vast majority of people have, and if they don't have - they can learn it rapidly. Let's imagine now being a driver was lucrative. Well you'd have a ton of people racing to become drivers, no pun intended. But with so many people willing to drive people around, it'd mean a shortage of work for all the drivers. And so somebody would offer to drive people for a little bit less. And that'd repeat on downward until we reached the equilibrium point at which not enough drivers were willing to go below. There are some exceptions like truck driving where people spend hours and hours on the road driving vehicles that do require some degree of skill to manage. And so the wages there are still pretty decent. It's not just driving per se, but unpleasant work that requires some degree of skill. Ride sharing apps bring market efficiency. If you're willing to drive for $x and people are willing to pay $x, well - why shouldn't you be able to? They're still centralized of course, but I think it takes us one step closer to decentralizing the entire industry which would be amazing, as it entirely removes the middle man and let's people simply directly offer and purchase each others' labor. Of course this ideal is pointless in this particular case as automation is imminent and will super-centralize the industry. Although there prices will likely be lower than even a decentralized market could offer.
jimmywanger 9y ago
> I thought Finland was one of the few places where taxi prices were high enough that taxi drivers could make a fair living off it. Please explain why taxi drivers, or any occupation should be able to make a "fair living" (ill defined term) off of it. In the majority of cases, the only thing regulation of an industry does is raise artificial walls and lower overall use of the good/service. Or maybe you think the DPRK, Venezuela, and Cuba are good examples.

staticelf 9y ago

Finland is just killing it lately, I wish Sweden could be more like Finland.

dagw 9y ago
In what sense? Sweden has had a deregulated taxi market for ages
stevekemp 9y ago
Could you be more specific? Sure Finland has a lot of great things, despite its small size, but it seems odd that you'd say "lately".
deanclatworthy 9y ago
It’s funny the outsiders perspective of Finland. I can assure you there are plenty of problems here. The government being broke for one and making obscene cuts across the board.
- sol_remmy 9y ago
  i.e. The government is reducing taxes and reducing services. That's precisely WHY some people like Finland. The government is stepping out of the way (as we can see in this article)
- ersii 9y ago
  That actually sounds perfect in my book, where they are supposed to be as broke as possible and do as little as possible or nothing. :-) (Yes yes, I'm well aware that most other HNers are of another opinion than I am.)
- fulafel 9y ago
  By the numbers Finland looks like one of the not-so-broke governments in EU: https://www.statista.com/statistics/269684/national-debt-in-eu-countries-in-relation-to-gross-domestic-product-gdp/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/269684/national-debt-in-... A common neoliberal political strategy is to kick up drama about state finances to justify tax cuts and reductions in public services in spite of popular support for welfare, maybe the same here?

joncrane 9y ago

I wonder where Finland draws the line between "taxi" and "ride sharing" (stuff like the Waze commute thing).

alkonaut 9y ago
If they deregulate it’s not unthinkable that they are looking across the water to Sweden. In Sweden there is no difference between different operators, Uber is a Taxi company. You can’t drive anyone for money without being a taxi company. Actual ride sharing where no one makes money is obviously not taxi. What Waze commute will count as I suspect is still up in the air so long as neither of the people in the car makes any money.

kisstheblade 9y ago

Taxi service has been great in finland. Competent drivers (they know their way around the city) and clean cars. Pretty good availability, except for the one hour when the bars close when you have to fight for your life at the taxi stop :) And you could actually make a decent living driving cabs. This will probably change and the foreigners who now deliver our food (Foodora et.al.) will start driving taxis. So drivers getting lost and crashing in the winter months because of lacking skills in snow driving. And of course not speaking finnish so handling the eldery and school transports which are a big service taxis provide here might get more difficult. We'll see... But in my opinnion it is not possible to operate taxis much more cheaply (and with the same quality) as we have now.

AnsemWise 9y ago

Finland doesn't exists.

AnsemWise 9y ago
Exist