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After living for years in London, it’s hard to compare Ubers with black cabs. In the centre of town during the day black cabs are often ubiquitous, immediately

After living for years in London, it’s hard to compare Ubers with black cabs. In the centre of town during the day black cabs are often ubiquitous, immediately available, and skilled at getting you the hell out of dodge. Something for which I’m happy to pay a premium. Anywhere else they can be capricious and scarce. After 11pm this is the case with in fact almost all black cabs anywhere in the city, when a very different type of driver — “borrowing” their license from a friend, card machine with a “sorry not working” post it taped to it, no chat — starts working the night shift. Usually these are more often likely to be rental drivers — during the day it’s owner drivers. The difference between the two classes of driver is, if you will, day and night. By contrast, the semi robotic Uber will always come, eventually. They’ll drive past you. Go the wrong way to pick you up. Stop on the wrong side of the road and wait for you to cross because they don’t have a tight turning circle. Go the wrong way on your journey. It’s a fact of life that while not all black cab drivers meet the highest professional standards, it’s much rarer to find a good Uber driver. SF and the Bay Area — I mention them as the root source of Uber’s app and product culture — certainly aren’t a cakewalk to drive around but it’s not a patch on London’s warrens. You can absolutely see that in the navigation skills of those using the big map apps to get around, and those who did The Knowledge. My subjective viewpoint isn’t some romantic notion based on the old ways or traditions either: everyone I know in London has pretty much the same experience.

BurningFrog 7y ago
Takeaway: Maybe London should spend some effort becoming more naviagatable, instead of demanding professional drivers acquire a PhD level education (the Knowledge) to find their way.
- urbanjunkie 7y ago
  My takeaway is that you're a moron.
- 72deluxe 7y ago
  No offence, and I can see that you've been downvoted but how do you actually propose solving this "unnavigable" problem? By bulldozing existing property that is owned by multitudes of private landowners and building new roads or something else?? Honestly, what's your solution?
  - VBprogrammer 7y ago
    I doubt there is a good solution to the problem in general but having ridden a motorcycle aimlessly around central London on my own little sight-seeing trips I can certainly get on board with the idea that London has been designed to be minimally navigable without knowing exactly where you are going (or having a GPS which does the same). This is at least partially due to one way streets, turning restrictions, traffic restrictions (bus / cycle only routes), no entries etc.
    - 72deluxe 7y ago
      It's the same for most cities and even towns, I'd imagine, eg. Sheffield (baffling one-way system to visitors), Birmingham (one way streets, central road by New Street actually leads to an underground car park if you're not a bus), Coventry (roads that go nowhere in the city centre, bus lanes that appear and then disappear after only a few hundred metres, cut across roundabouts etc). Try Redditch with its unnavigable ring road system - how do you actually get to the Vue cinema in the central shopping centre, even with a GPS??? Even towns with a grid layout (eg. Leamington) have no right or left turns across the grid so you have to follow a certain route around the town. I think it's just symptomatic of hundreds of years of town growth.
    - UncleEntity 7y ago
      Probably because its been "designed" over a couple thousand years and they don't have cars for the majority of that.
      - VBprogrammer 7y ago
        I doubt many donkey and cart owners encountered the no right turn onto Piccadilly! All of the things I mentioned are very much 20th century additions.
  - jotm 7y ago
    If this was a real thing, I'd say building bridges/roads above the city would be the only viable (yet extremely difficult) solution. Maybe underground in some places. Would look pretty dystopian probably
- acallaghan 7y ago
  Okay mate, let's put nice straight roads and wide junctions through middle of London just to make it easier for cars? Cars are an extremely modern invention for London - the city is almost 2000 years old, and has some really fancy, really old, really precious stuff in the way.
- Engineering-MD 7y ago
  Or perhaps we should use this as a reason to swap more to public transport and walking?
Consultant32452 7y ago
Sounds like Uber provides valuable service to the poor who are more likely to work night shift and also less likely to be able to afford the premium for the nicer black cab service during the day.
- aguyfromnb 7y ago
  >Sounds like Uber provides valuable service to the poor who are more likely to work night shift On what planet are "the poor" commuting back and forth to work via Uber?
  - smileysteve 7y ago
    Anecdotally, I've seen this for wait staff; Most public transit services have reduced service on nights and weekends; so, in a world where you don't have a car; you can take the train/bus to get to a shift in the day, but must take a cab or uber home. It seems obvious that Ubers or Taxis would serve this purpose wherever vehicle ownership is cost prohibitive and public transit is at all available. Likely, this isn't "the poor" but inclusive of much of the working class in modern cities.
    - vertex-four 7y ago
      London has night buses, and trains running up to midnight and starting again around 4:30am, every day. The working class does not in general commute by Uber in London.
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    I can't speak for the rest of the planet, but in America it happens quite a lot. I drove for Uber for almost a year when I was between jobs. The hours I chose were generally 3am-noon (early because I like mornings, but late enough to dodge most of the drunks). The majority of my passengers were people going to and from factory jobs. A large number of those passengers were people who didn't speak English whose English-speaking children would order the Uber for them. I didn't notice it at first, but after a few pick-up confusions where the passenger handed me a phone to talk to the person who actually ordered the ride, one of them explained it to me. I live in a transit-sparse city, and a surprising number of poor people use Uber as their main means of getting around. It's simply cheaper than owning a car, especially if you don't have money up front, a steady job, or exceptional credit (Notice how car ads on TV are now disclaiming their advertised interest rates to indicate those rates are only for people with the best credit). Even for me, now being an office-dwelling developer, if I factor in the cost of just a car payment and fuel, Ubering to work would be cheaper than owning a car. And that's before factoring in insurance, repairs, maintenance, etc... If I didn't enjoy weekend road trips, I'd ditch the car altogether.
roflchoppa2 7y ago
of all the jerks i see causing traffic delays, 90% of them are lyft/uber drivers. next time your in SF and you see someone blocking the bus-lane with their hazards on as if its some excuse, you'll see the uber/lyft tag.
- beefalo 7y ago
  Uber eats is even worse. One neighborhood I fequent will typically have 4 cars lined up blocking the street, cars empty while the drivers go in to pick up someone's food delivery.
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
  They're a blight on the already tight, difficult, and crowded streets of Boston. If you're traveling down Tremont St in the South End, for example, just give up on trying to use the right lane for travel. There'll be multiple ubers/lyfts suddenly stopping for long periods of time on every block. Cities need to designate pick-up/drop-off spots away from heavily-trafficked streets for these pseudo-taxi services, UX be damned.
  - gizmo385 7y ago
    Or make it so that people can't drive on major city-center/core roads. Make them pedestrian and bus lanes. Encourage people to take public transportation and away from using their own personal vehicles.
- vkou 7y ago
  It's almost as if there is some sense in limiting the number of taxis that can be on the road at one time. Maybe some form of limited-supply, transferrable crypto-token[1][2]... Could be used to prevent these sorts of situations. [1] I am, of course referring to medallions. [2] I am, of course, fishing for karma, by introducing a blockchain when one is not necessary.
  - cardiffspaceman 7y ago
    I thought you made a modest proposal.
V-2 7y ago
If it's indeed so hard to find a good Uber driver, you'd expect them to be driven out of the market by customers themselves. And if they compensate for that by eg. lower price, then how is it different from any other market. You want premium quality, you pay extra - you're fine with compromising on it, you go for the cheaper option.
- acallaghan 7y ago
  The market is skewed as Uber runs huge losses and is operating at a loss, that's how it's different to other markets. Also, Uber are paying under the minimum wage in the UK, or at least the regional minimum living wage in London. Uber don't pay taxes in the UK like a London minicab company would, then they underpay their drivers and expect our welfare system to pick up the slack on their crummy wages. Minimum wages should apply to gig type working like Uber/Deliveroo etc as much as it does to everyone else. This is the market failure. Without a minimum wage, sick pay, materity/paternity leave pay, of course you can make the ride cheaper. Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uber-verdict-loses-drivers-workers-rights-minimum-wage-a7384921.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uber-verdic...
  - andy_ppp 7y ago
    If Uber had to buy the vehicles, service them and pay full tax and fines it would be nearly as expensive as black cabs. I take my fair share of Uber rides but I can see the next dot com bust happening now when this unprofitable business model all washes out. See also WeWork.
    - Jommi 7y ago
      Yes if a company does something that is not in the core specialisations, they would be expensive. Who guessed?
      - andy_ppp 7y ago
        I'm talking about the gig economy ripping off their workers. I think you've misunderstood and been rude and sarcastic with it.
remote_phone 7y ago
I was in London recently. I took Uber 15 times in 2 weeks. I never had a single issue. The only problem I had is that the culture in London appears to be to give 4s as default instead of 5s. Other than that I felt it was better than SF Bay Area.
- erentz 7y ago
  I wish the culture was to give an honest star rating everywhere. A 4 is an excellent rating to get and should be treated as such. Instead we’ve set everything up so that if you aren’t getting 5 stars you’re a failure. What’s the point of stars 1 through 4 then? We should just ditch this system for a 0 or 1 star system instead since that’s how it’s treated. Same problem has infected everything from rating your apartment maintenance guy to the support person at the call center.
  - googleisevil6 7y ago
    4* = No problem at all 5* = I actually enjoyed it.
  - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
    A pet peve of mine, surely the average rating should be the average of the scale, and 5 starts ought to be reserved for something truly exceptional
akrymski 7y ago
By far the main advantage that London's black cabs have is the use of dedicated bus lanes. This often has a huge effect in rush-hour and translates in substantial time savings vs uber.

BurningFrog 7y ago

Takeaway: Maybe London should spend some effort becoming more naviagatable, instead of demanding professional drivers acquire a PhD level education (the Knowledge) to find their way.

urbanjunkie 7y ago
My takeaway is that you're a moron.
72deluxe 7y ago
No offence, and I can see that you've been downvoted but how do you actually propose solving this "unnavigable" problem? By bulldozing existing property that is owned by multitudes of private landowners and building new roads or something else?? Honestly, what's your solution?
- VBprogrammer 7y ago
  I doubt there is a good solution to the problem in general but having ridden a motorcycle aimlessly around central London on my own little sight-seeing trips I can certainly get on board with the idea that London has been designed to be minimally navigable without knowing exactly where you are going (or having a GPS which does the same). This is at least partially due to one way streets, turning restrictions, traffic restrictions (bus / cycle only routes), no entries etc.
  - 72deluxe 7y ago
    It's the same for most cities and even towns, I'd imagine, eg. Sheffield (baffling one-way system to visitors), Birmingham (one way streets, central road by New Street actually leads to an underground car park if you're not a bus), Coventry (roads that go nowhere in the city centre, bus lanes that appear and then disappear after only a few hundred metres, cut across roundabouts etc). Try Redditch with its unnavigable ring road system - how do you actually get to the Vue cinema in the central shopping centre, even with a GPS??? Even towns with a grid layout (eg. Leamington) have no right or left turns across the grid so you have to follow a certain route around the town. I think it's just symptomatic of hundreds of years of town growth.
  - UncleEntity 7y ago
    Probably because its been "designed" over a couple thousand years and they don't have cars for the majority of that.
    - VBprogrammer 7y ago
      I doubt many donkey and cart owners encountered the no right turn onto Piccadilly! All of the things I mentioned are very much 20th century additions.
- jotm 7y ago
  If this was a real thing, I'd say building bridges/roads above the city would be the only viable (yet extremely difficult) solution. Maybe underground in some places. Would look pretty dystopian probably
acallaghan 7y ago
Okay mate, let's put nice straight roads and wide junctions through middle of London just to make it easier for cars? Cars are an extremely modern invention for London - the city is almost 2000 years old, and has some really fancy, really old, really precious stuff in the way.
Engineering-MD 7y ago
Or perhaps we should use this as a reason to swap more to public transport and walking?

Consultant32452 7y ago

Sounds like Uber provides valuable service to the poor who are more likely to work night shift and also less likely to be able to afford the premium for the nicer black cab service during the day.

aguyfromnb 7y ago
>Sounds like Uber provides valuable service to the poor who are more likely to work night shift On what planet are "the poor" commuting back and forth to work via Uber?
- smileysteve 7y ago
  Anecdotally, I've seen this for wait staff; Most public transit services have reduced service on nights and weekends; so, in a world where you don't have a car; you can take the train/bus to get to a shift in the day, but must take a cab or uber home. It seems obvious that Ubers or Taxis would serve this purpose wherever vehicle ownership is cost prohibitive and public transit is at all available. Likely, this isn't "the poor" but inclusive of much of the working class in modern cities.
  - vertex-four 7y ago
    London has night buses, and trains running up to midnight and starting again around 4:30am, every day. The working class does not in general commute by Uber in London.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  I can't speak for the rest of the planet, but in America it happens quite a lot. I drove for Uber for almost a year when I was between jobs. The hours I chose were generally 3am-noon (early because I like mornings, but late enough to dodge most of the drunks). The majority of my passengers were people going to and from factory jobs. A large number of those passengers were people who didn't speak English whose English-speaking children would order the Uber for them. I didn't notice it at first, but after a few pick-up confusions where the passenger handed me a phone to talk to the person who actually ordered the ride, one of them explained it to me. I live in a transit-sparse city, and a surprising number of poor people use Uber as their main means of getting around. It's simply cheaper than owning a car, especially if you don't have money up front, a steady job, or exceptional credit (Notice how car ads on TV are now disclaiming their advertised interest rates to indicate those rates are only for people with the best credit). Even for me, now being an office-dwelling developer, if I factor in the cost of just a car payment and fuel, Ubering to work would be cheaper than owning a car. And that's before factoring in insurance, repairs, maintenance, etc... If I didn't enjoy weekend road trips, I'd ditch the car altogether.

roflchoppa2 7y ago

of all the jerks i see causing traffic delays, 90% of them are lyft/uber drivers. next time your in SF and you see someone blocking the bus-lane with their hazards on as if its some excuse, you'll see the uber/lyft tag.

beefalo 7y ago
Uber eats is even worse. One neighborhood I fequent will typically have 4 cars lined up blocking the street, cars empty while the drivers go in to pick up someone's food delivery.
ilikehurdles 7y ago
They're a blight on the already tight, difficult, and crowded streets of Boston. If you're traveling down Tremont St in the South End, for example, just give up on trying to use the right lane for travel. There'll be multiple ubers/lyfts suddenly stopping for long periods of time on every block. Cities need to designate pick-up/drop-off spots away from heavily-trafficked streets for these pseudo-taxi services, UX be damned.
- gizmo385 7y ago
  Or make it so that people can't drive on major city-center/core roads. Make them pedestrian and bus lanes. Encourage people to take public transportation and away from using their own personal vehicles.
vkou 7y ago
It's almost as if there is some sense in limiting the number of taxis that can be on the road at one time. Maybe some form of limited-supply, transferrable crypto-token[1][2]... Could be used to prevent these sorts of situations. [1] I am, of course referring to medallions. [2] I am, of course, fishing for karma, by introducing a blockchain when one is not necessary.
- cardiffspaceman 7y ago
  I thought you made a modest proposal.

V-2 7y ago

If it's indeed so hard to find a good Uber driver, you'd expect them to be driven out of the market by customers themselves. And if they compensate for that by eg. lower price, then how is it different from any other market. You want premium quality, you pay extra - you're fine with compromising on it, you go for the cheaper option.

acallaghan 7y ago
The market is skewed as Uber runs huge losses and is operating at a loss, that's how it's different to other markets. Also, Uber are paying under the minimum wage in the UK, or at least the regional minimum living wage in London. Uber don't pay taxes in the UK like a London minicab company would, then they underpay their drivers and expect our welfare system to pick up the slack on their crummy wages. Minimum wages should apply to gig type working like Uber/Deliveroo etc as much as it does to everyone else. This is the market failure. Without a minimum wage, sick pay, materity/paternity leave pay, of course you can make the ride cheaper. Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uber-verdict-loses-drivers-workers-rights-minimum-wage-a7384921.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uber-verdic...
- andy_ppp 7y ago
  If Uber had to buy the vehicles, service them and pay full tax and fines it would be nearly as expensive as black cabs. I take my fair share of Uber rides but I can see the next dot com bust happening now when this unprofitable business model all washes out. See also WeWork.
  - Jommi 7y ago
    Yes if a company does something that is not in the core specialisations, they would be expensive. Who guessed?
    - andy_ppp 7y ago
      I'm talking about the gig economy ripping off their workers. I think you've misunderstood and been rude and sarcastic with it.

remote_phone 7y ago

I was in London recently. I took Uber 15 times in 2 weeks. I never had a single issue. The only problem I had is that the culture in London appears to be to give 4s as default instead of 5s. Other than that I felt it was better than SF Bay Area.

erentz 7y ago
I wish the culture was to give an honest star rating everywhere. A 4 is an excellent rating to get and should be treated as such. Instead we’ve set everything up so that if you aren’t getting 5 stars you’re a failure. What’s the point of stars 1 through 4 then? We should just ditch this system for a 0 or 1 star system instead since that’s how it’s treated. Same problem has infected everything from rating your apartment maintenance guy to the support person at the call center.
- googleisevil6 7y ago
  4* = No problem at all 5* = I actually enjoyed it.
- ClumsyPilot 7y ago
  A pet peve of mine, surely the average rating should be the average of the scale, and 5 starts ought to be reserved for something truly exceptional

akrymski 7y ago

By far the main advantage that London's black cabs have is the use of dedicated bus lanes. This often has a huge effect in rush-hour and translates in substantial time savings vs uber.