11 ms·

Uber Boston Has Been Served

158 points by sudonim 14y ago

jfb 14y ago
Oh, the rent-seeking. What are taxi medallions for if not graft and log-rolling?
- kungfooguru 14y ago
  Traffic and pricing control...
  - kemiller 14y ago
    That is true. But it was much more relevant in an age when the rider was more or less at the mercy of the driver who picked them up. The internet on your phone (not to mention the GPS) means you can much more easily tell if you're being cheated. And the fact that you contact Uber and then they send a car means that the sketchy kidnapper risk is mitigated.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
tptacek 14y ago
Two tickets were apparently issued: (i) For operating an unlicensed livery service (ii) For using a non-approved mechanism for metering the ride The C&D at issue here covers (ii). At its heart, the complaint is that Boston has standardized on a way of metering passengers, and Uber has replaced that standard with GPS. Presumably, cab drivers in Boston could not simply choose to replace their meters with GPS monitors, and thus, says Cambridge, neither should Uber. (I might be wrong, that's just my read of the complaint). I'm torn. Uber is pretty neat. Some (maybe most) of cab regulation is rent seeking. But not all of it is. Municipalities should find a way to make Uber lawful, but I'm not sure Uber should be able to make that happen by fiat.
- temphn 14y ago
  Boston has standardized on a way of metering passengers But more than a dozen other cities allow Uber to use their own way and the world hasn't ended. Why should passengers care about what the city of Boston has "standardized" on? Why not just let passengers vote with their wallets? If Uber is too expensive or the drivers gain a reputation for ripping off customers, they'll just choose another cab. But the real problem is that Uber is actually too much better than the competition, which is why you see this kind of harassment occurring. Regulation of this kind is about as corrupt an example of rent-seeking and resistance to technological innovation as you are likely to find in a lab. It's not a close call.
- andygcook 14y ago
  I think that pretty much sums it up correctly. The City of Boston placed a sting operation on one of the Uber drivers in the issuance of ticket (i), where once they saw the driver had used an unauthorized meter, they made him pull over where a police officer was already waiting. It's unfortunate that Boston has issued a cease and desist on the service though. I live in Boston, and Uber is great as it's almost impossible to find a cab at 4:00 in the morning after you work late, not to mention the fact that waiting around for one in sketchy neighborhoods is dangerous.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    As always in situations like this, my thoughts are simultaneously on how awesome Uber is, and how not awesome every other service/scam that takes advantage of this flexibility might be. It is very important that cities be able to provide visitors with a reliable way to get a ride from point A (usually: the airport) to point B (usually: the convention center hotel) at a predictable price. Obviously, Uber doesn't prevent visitors from getting to the convention center directly; Uber isn't taking up spots at the cab stand at LGA. But if the "Uber way of doing business" effectively drives regulated cabs out of business, that's a problem.
    - mindcrime 14y ago
      But if the "Uber way of doing business" effectively drives regulated cabs out of business, that's a problem. It's not a "problem," it's "a sign that the State should get out of the business of regulating cabs."
chimi 14y ago
I don't think being a startup should grant you immunity from the law or absolve the requirement to follow local regulations and licensing statutes. Lawyers, doctors, electricians they all have to follow the law too. Why is Uber a special case?
- tptacek 14y ago
  Two reasons (neither dispositive): (i) The cities in which Uber operates usually have dysfunctional cab systems. San Francisco, for instance, is notoriously underserved. (ii) Much of the regulatory overhead in running a cab/livery service really is an artifact of top-down market controls from the turn of the last century that have been exploited to lock the market to a privileged few operators.
  - jhcoaps2 14y ago
    Marijuana shouldn't be regulated as it is. Should startups be allowed to sell Marijuana? Of course not, either everyone should, or nobody should. Level playing fields and all that.
    - mbell 14y ago
      Ironic example given that every medicinal marijuana dispensary in the country is operating in spite of Federal law. They only get away with it because the US government has decided to, at least for now, turn a blind eye.
      - tptacek 14y ago
        That's a little simplistic. They're also taking advantage of local and state laws that explicitly allow them to operate. There's no such arbitrage to be had in cab laws.
    - mindslight 14y ago
      You were able to use marijuana as an example because legalization of it is considered a reasonable opinion. This is only possible due to its existing prevalence, which is only due to the brave/stupid people risking their lives to distribute it in spite of the fiat against it. Reality drives the model, not vice-versa.
ktizo 14y ago
the Division of Standards is claiming that until the National Institute of Standards and Technology has guidelines in place for GPS location technology Is not as though GPS is some brand new thing that they have never heard of before. This whole tone of this makes me think of Central Services from the movie 'Brazil'. Uber should ask the Division of Standards for a 27b/6, just to keep things official.
- tptacek 14y ago
  That's not what they're saying. They're saying that under MA law, a cab driver couldn't replace their meter with the "equivalent" GPS system, and so neither can Uber.
  - schraeds 14y ago
    I know that in Chicago Uber does not replace the meter. The meter is run and used to calculate fare, Uber then pays that fare with a 20% tip.
theorique 14y ago
This hits close to home (literally). I've used Uber in Boston lots of times and while the service is pricier than conventional taxis, it's a nice way to guarantee yourself a ride at high-demand times. This is not competitive with existing taxi service but complementary: if I see a regular taxi coming, I'll take it; if I need to call for a guaranteed car at an odd time, I'll use Uber. I hope this gets resolved in a way that works for us customers. Innovation should be harnessed, not punished.
fxm4139 14y ago
This is especially sad considering a recent cab experience I had in Boston. I lived in Boston for a about 5 years before moving out to Seattle, where I recently started using Uber. Boston has one of the worst cab situations especially if you go out late at night. I was back in Boston a few weeks ago, and ended up running into a few friends and stayed up till 3AM. When it was time to go home, there were either cabs that had passengers, or ones that just didn't want to stop despite waiting for 10 minutes. I pull out the Uber app and get a ride in literally a couple of minutes. My friends hadn't heard of the service and they were just dumbfounded that something like this existed, and they all became customers on the spot. In Seattle, I use Uber only when I have to since cabs are easy to get. I can't imagine using Uber in Manhattan. But in a city like Boston with a shortage of cabs, and just generally grumpy cab drivers I can imagine Uber was just putting a serious dent in the cab business, more so than other cities.
- zacharycohn 14y ago
  (Hello fellow Seattlite!) I'm with you here. I rarely take cabs here in Seattle (I mostly bike/bus everywhere), but when I travel it can be indispensable. I can't tell you the number of times I've had to (look up a local cab service and) call a cab, wait for it for 10-20 minutes... and not have it show up. Or schedule a cab to be there to pick me up early in the morning and take me to the airport and... not have it show up. Three clicks on my phone and 2 to eight minutes later, there's an Uber.
- mamoswined 14y ago
  Yeah, regular cabs have their place. I take them when I can, because they are cheaper. But in Chicago many will give you a problem if you don't pay in cash and many neighborhoods are underserved. When it's 3AM and I'm in a far-out fairly sketchy neighborhood, I'm SO glad Uber exists.
picklefish 14y ago
For anyone wondering what uber is: https://www.uber.com/cities# https://www.uber.com/cities#
uuilly 14y ago
Uber, AirBNB and Food Trucks are interesting for two reasons: 1) They are on a collision course with the regulatory state. 2) Their employees are, by and large, young liberals. Cab medallions are not much different in concept than wind and solar subsidies. In both cases, the government is picking a winner. Our types of companies have been happily immune from the meddling of the regulatory state. As we crawl out into the real world we are dog-fooding the polices we voted for. Hopefully we will realize how bad they taste.
- Ralith 14y ago
  Damn liberals, screwing everything up for the rest of us!
- BadLogInMyAss 14y ago
  "Dog-fooding"? Come on. Don't try to verb a noun. We have legitimate words for whatever that was supposed to mean.
- andylei 14y ago
  > wind and solar subsidies > the government is picking a winner. Sometimes picking a winner is a good thing. Burning coal and oil pollutes air and exacerbates global warming. These are bad things. As a society, we should pay a little extra to avoid them. Wind and solar subsidies are probably less efficient than, say, a carbon tax, but probably better than nothing.
  - driverdan 14y ago
    Except it stifles innovation in other sectors. There may be alternatives that are better but aren't subsidized which makes it harder for them to succeed.
    - andylei 14y ago
      > Except it stifles innovation in other sectors this is intentional. the point is we want wind and solar to succeed because they have lower negative externalities. the competing sectors we want to not succeed are things like oil and coal. its a pretty reasonable assumption to make that even with innovations that increase the pollution efficiency of coal and oil, its still not going to be as good as solar and wind. of course, you might also be referring to alternative sectors like hydroelectric or nuclear or whatever. in that case, i agree with you. that's why a carbon tax is better than subsidies.
kine 14y ago
I love it how they wear it as a badge of pride. It's the first step to changing the game in Boston.
megakwood 14y ago
How absurd.
localhost3000 14y ago
i think the uber service is great. that said, we (collectively, the startup community) can't keep using this "we're an innovative tech company and the laws we're breaking weren't written with our great innovations in mind" argument. it doesn't hold water. it just sounds childish and pompous.
anulman 14y ago
TL;DR: Uber is innovative, but their approach (or lack thereof) to dealing with regulatory hurdles in each city disgusts me. It seems like HN has already picked up on the major issues Uber faces in Boston, as well as pretty much every city: a new style of relationships with drivers, and "metering" virtually-on-demand livery rides, which are intended to be both unmetered and pre-arranged. After seeing this same story repeated too many times now, and the resulting discussion, I feel the need to throw down. You don't need to trust me (IANAL, etc.), but based on my experience in the field -- I co-founded HireWinston (initially a Canadian, corporate-focused Uber competitor; we've since pivoted to competing indirectly by selling taxi fleets) -- I hope I have something to add. First, the relationships with drivers: Uber tends to work directly with drivers (many, if not all, of whom they hire legally from existing livery services). In order to boost their chances of availability, they spend some of their hard-raised cash to book drivers for entire days, taking a steep loss at first in the hopes of driving enough demand to better satisfy their capacity. In most cities, there are clear regulations that define a livery service. We found that, if you work as many commenters understand Uber working -- namely, as a network that has pre-arranged agreements with drivers or livery services to shuttle rides in their spare time -- you're in a sufficiently comfortable area not to get shut down. However, the way Uber works to juice supply (especially in newer markets) tends to clearly fall under the definition of a livery service, as they have their own "employees" that they pass rides to. Second, the meters. This one I'm much more in their favour on: the phones themselves are not metering devices as the laws define them (i.e. they do not themselves calculate the price). I haven't personally torn into their source code, but having heard from an insider and having built this tech myself, I'm fairly confident their Driver App simply sends GPS data back to the server, where the calculation takes place according to a pre-defined rate. The customer either implicitly or explicitly accepts this rate through the TOS and/or by virtue of using the service (assuming the rates are published somewhere). This setup guarantees they have something to show regulators if ever asked. From our research and testing, the integrity of the data from existing metering technology is similar enough to that from an iPhone or Android's GPS (ideally accompanied by accelerometer data). And, since the calculations happen on a server that records full route information rather than in a black box that discards it: way easier to share this with regulators. So A+. Third, and most importantly, is what you don't see: Uber's relationships with city regulators. In Toronto, the municipal government sent us an official notice that they were concerned with our business, and that they wanted us to come talk through our business model and underlying technology with them. They were genuinely excited that there was innovation happening in the field in their city, and really just wanted to make sure we weren't doing anything egregiously wrong. We sat down, and had an incredibly pleasant meeting. 30 minutes, back-and-forth Q&A, with some regulators who have spent years in the space. They appreciated that we knew the laws, had worked to abide by them, and were comfortable with all but one aspect of our business model (cancellation fees). No C&Ds were sent out. At the end of the meeting, they asked us what we thought of Uber. Apparently, for months, the Uber team was dodging any request for a meeting the office sent them. While I definitely cannot attest to Uber Boston's actions on this front, I can't imagine that Uber Toronto was taking their plays from a different playbook. In summary: Uber has done a tremendous job pushing the industry forward, and I'm confident that our approach -- selling the underlying software to existing taxi fleets, who truly want to better service their customers but have no idea what to do with technology -- is a more sustainable and dependable iteration on the model. I'm thankful to them, and I truly love a lot of the folks I know who work there. That said, I have no sympathy whatsoever for these C&Ds whenever I read about them. The company relies on deep pockets and public sympathy for the "underdog technology company" to change laws, rather than working with the existing system. And, frankly, normally I'd even be fine with that... if it weren't the taxi drivers -- the most marginalized members of the entire taxi ecosystem -- who were getting the shortest end of the stick. DISCLAIMER: I do not, and have never, worked for Uber. Most of my knowledge comes from a mix of an outsider's view and third-party testimony of the approach that Uber has taken in Toronto and NYC. I'm not sure if Uber Boston took a different approach than Uber Toronto or Uber NYC, so take all specifics with a grain of salt. (edit: formatting errors)
marshray 14y ago
I'm not impressed with Uber. I read the entire article twice and many of the comments, then went to their home page. I still have no idea what they do other than it somehow relates to taxicab service.
- jeffdavis 14y ago
  * Reliable pickup in about 10 minutes by hitting a button on your phone or a text with your address -- no need to call or tell someone the address. If you've ever had the experience of waiting 30-45 minutes for a cab to ride a couple miles, or maybe the phone line is just busy, you'll know why reliability is important. * Clean car with friendly and helpful driver (who you can rate). Seems minor, but it opens up possibilities. If you're on a date or business meeting, and for whatever reason need a ride somewhere (e.g. after drinking), uber will enhance the experience rather than cheapening it. * No money changes hands (taken from your card on file at uber, including tip). Receipt with lots of details (including your route on a map) is emailed immediately. * I'm pretty sure it's cheaper if you are above $15 fare, or about the same maybe. I don't have any affiliation with uber, but I have had a great experience so far (only twice, once for me and once for someone else). I plan to use it a little more often. I guess, in retrospect, I could probably have been happy using cabs more instead; but they just always seemed more awkward, unreliable, and just less pleasant. If I can get this for the same price, why not? Cabs might still be better for areas where they are easy to get and you're going short distances, e.g. Manhattan or Las Vegas.
- rprasad 14y ago
  Uber is a taxi/livery service that magically uses technology to do things that shuttle/livery services in major cities have already been doing for years. The difference is that: (1) Uber is a startup, (2) Uber is backed by YC, (3) Uber lets anyone be a driver, (3) Uber ignores the laws and/or regulations in the cities that it operates until it gets caught and threatened with major lawsuits/fines, and (4) Uber promises 10-minute pickups (sub-hourly timeframes between reservations and pickup are the defining line between livery services and cab services in many cities).

158 points by sudonim 14y ago

jfb 14y ago

Oh, the rent-seeking. What are taxi medallions for if not graft and log-rolling?

kungfooguru 14y ago
Traffic and pricing control...
- kemiller 14y ago
  That is true. But it was much more relevant in an age when the rider was more or less at the mercy of the driver who picked them up. The internet on your phone (not to mention the GPS) means you can much more easily tell if you're being cheated. And the fact that you contact Uber and then they send a car means that the sketchy kidnapper risk is mitigated.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

tptacek 14y ago

Two tickets were apparently issued: (i) For operating an unlicensed livery service (ii) For using a non-approved mechanism for metering the ride The C&D at issue here covers (ii). At its heart, the complaint is that Boston has standardized on a way of metering passengers, and Uber has replaced that standard with GPS. Presumably, cab drivers in Boston could not simply choose to replace their meters with GPS monitors, and thus, says Cambridge, neither should Uber. (I might be wrong, that's just my read of the complaint). I'm torn. Uber is pretty neat. Some (maybe most) of cab regulation is rent seeking. But not all of it is. Municipalities should find a way to make Uber lawful, but I'm not sure Uber should be able to make that happen by fiat.

temphn 14y ago
Boston has standardized on a way of metering passengers But more than a dozen other cities allow Uber to use their own way and the world hasn't ended. Why should passengers care about what the city of Boston has "standardized" on? Why not just let passengers vote with their wallets? If Uber is too expensive or the drivers gain a reputation for ripping off customers, they'll just choose another cab. But the real problem is that Uber is actually too much better than the competition, which is why you see this kind of harassment occurring. Regulation of this kind is about as corrupt an example of rent-seeking and resistance to technological innovation as you are likely to find in a lab. It's not a close call.
andygcook 14y ago
I think that pretty much sums it up correctly. The City of Boston placed a sting operation on one of the Uber drivers in the issuance of ticket (i), where once they saw the driver had used an unauthorized meter, they made him pull over where a police officer was already waiting. It's unfortunate that Boston has issued a cease and desist on the service though. I live in Boston, and Uber is great as it's almost impossible to find a cab at 4:00 in the morning after you work late, not to mention the fact that waiting around for one in sketchy neighborhoods is dangerous.
- tptacek 14y ago
  As always in situations like this, my thoughts are simultaneously on how awesome Uber is, and how not awesome every other service/scam that takes advantage of this flexibility might be. It is very important that cities be able to provide visitors with a reliable way to get a ride from point A (usually: the airport) to point B (usually: the convention center hotel) at a predictable price. Obviously, Uber doesn't prevent visitors from getting to the convention center directly; Uber isn't taking up spots at the cab stand at LGA. But if the "Uber way of doing business" effectively drives regulated cabs out of business, that's a problem.
  - mindcrime 14y ago
    But if the "Uber way of doing business" effectively drives regulated cabs out of business, that's a problem. It's not a "problem," it's "a sign that the State should get out of the business of regulating cabs."

chimi 14y ago

I don't think being a startup should grant you immunity from the law or absolve the requirement to follow local regulations and licensing statutes. Lawyers, doctors, electricians they all have to follow the law too. Why is Uber a special case?

tptacek 14y ago
Two reasons (neither dispositive): (i) The cities in which Uber operates usually have dysfunctional cab systems. San Francisco, for instance, is notoriously underserved. (ii) Much of the regulatory overhead in running a cab/livery service really is an artifact of top-down market controls from the turn of the last century that have been exploited to lock the market to a privileged few operators.
- jhcoaps2 14y ago
  Marijuana shouldn't be regulated as it is. Should startups be allowed to sell Marijuana? Of course not, either everyone should, or nobody should. Level playing fields and all that.
  - mbell 14y ago
    Ironic example given that every medicinal marijuana dispensary in the country is operating in spite of Federal law. They only get away with it because the US government has decided to, at least for now, turn a blind eye.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      That's a little simplistic. They're also taking advantage of local and state laws that explicitly allow them to operate. There's no such arbitrage to be had in cab laws.
  - mindslight 14y ago
    You were able to use marijuana as an example because legalization of it is considered a reasonable opinion. This is only possible due to its existing prevalence, which is only due to the brave/stupid people risking their lives to distribute it in spite of the fiat against it. Reality drives the model, not vice-versa.

ktizo 14y ago

the Division of Standards is claiming that until the National Institute of Standards and Technology has guidelines in place for GPS location technology Is not as though GPS is some brand new thing that they have never heard of before. This whole tone of this makes me think of Central Services from the movie 'Brazil'. Uber should ask the Division of Standards for a 27b/6, just to keep things official.

tptacek 14y ago
That's not what they're saying. They're saying that under MA law, a cab driver couldn't replace their meter with the "equivalent" GPS system, and so neither can Uber.
- schraeds 14y ago
  I know that in Chicago Uber does not replace the meter. The meter is run and used to calculate fare, Uber then pays that fare with a 20% tip.

theorique 14y ago

This hits close to home (literally). I've used Uber in Boston lots of times and while the service is pricier than conventional taxis, it's a nice way to guarantee yourself a ride at high-demand times. This is not competitive with existing taxi service but complementary: if I see a regular taxi coming, I'll take it; if I need to call for a guaranteed car at an odd time, I'll use Uber. I hope this gets resolved in a way that works for us customers. Innovation should be harnessed, not punished.

fxm4139 14y ago

This is especially sad considering a recent cab experience I had in Boston. I lived in Boston for a about 5 years before moving out to Seattle, where I recently started using Uber. Boston has one of the worst cab situations especially if you go out late at night. I was back in Boston a few weeks ago, and ended up running into a few friends and stayed up till 3AM. When it was time to go home, there were either cabs that had passengers, or ones that just didn't want to stop despite waiting for 10 minutes. I pull out the Uber app and get a ride in literally a couple of minutes. My friends hadn't heard of the service and they were just dumbfounded that something like this existed, and they all became customers on the spot. In Seattle, I use Uber only when I have to since cabs are easy to get. I can't imagine using Uber in Manhattan. But in a city like Boston with a shortage of cabs, and just generally grumpy cab drivers I can imagine Uber was just putting a serious dent in the cab business, more so than other cities.

zacharycohn 14y ago
(Hello fellow Seattlite!) I'm with you here. I rarely take cabs here in Seattle (I mostly bike/bus everywhere), but when I travel it can be indispensable. I can't tell you the number of times I've had to (look up a local cab service and) call a cab, wait for it for 10-20 minutes... and not have it show up. Or schedule a cab to be there to pick me up early in the morning and take me to the airport and... not have it show up. Three clicks on my phone and 2 to eight minutes later, there's an Uber.
mamoswined 14y ago
Yeah, regular cabs have their place. I take them when I can, because they are cheaper. But in Chicago many will give you a problem if you don't pay in cash and many neighborhoods are underserved. When it's 3AM and I'm in a far-out fairly sketchy neighborhood, I'm SO glad Uber exists.

picklefish 14y ago

For anyone wondering what uber is: https://www.uber.com/cities# https://www.uber.com/cities#

uuilly 14y ago

Uber, AirBNB and Food Trucks are interesting for two reasons: 1) They are on a collision course with the regulatory state. 2) Their employees are, by and large, young liberals. Cab medallions are not much different in concept than wind and solar subsidies. In both cases, the government is picking a winner. Our types of companies have been happily immune from the meddling of the regulatory state. As we crawl out into the real world we are dog-fooding the polices we voted for. Hopefully we will realize how bad they taste.

Ralith 14y ago
Damn liberals, screwing everything up for the rest of us!
BadLogInMyAss 14y ago
"Dog-fooding"? Come on. Don't try to verb a noun. We have legitimate words for whatever that was supposed to mean.
andylei 14y ago
> wind and solar subsidies > the government is picking a winner. Sometimes picking a winner is a good thing. Burning coal and oil pollutes air and exacerbates global warming. These are bad things. As a society, we should pay a little extra to avoid them. Wind and solar subsidies are probably less efficient than, say, a carbon tax, but probably better than nothing.
- driverdan 14y ago
  Except it stifles innovation in other sectors. There may be alternatives that are better but aren't subsidized which makes it harder for them to succeed.
  - andylei 14y ago
    > Except it stifles innovation in other sectors this is intentional. the point is we want wind and solar to succeed because they have lower negative externalities. the competing sectors we want to not succeed are things like oil and coal. its a pretty reasonable assumption to make that even with innovations that increase the pollution efficiency of coal and oil, its still not going to be as good as solar and wind. of course, you might also be referring to alternative sectors like hydroelectric or nuclear or whatever. in that case, i agree with you. that's why a carbon tax is better than subsidies.

kine 14y ago

I love it how they wear it as a badge of pride. It's the first step to changing the game in Boston.

megakwood 14y ago

How absurd.

localhost3000 14y ago

i think the uber service is great. that said, we (collectively, the startup community) can't keep using this "we're an innovative tech company and the laws we're breaking weren't written with our great innovations in mind" argument. it doesn't hold water. it just sounds childish and pompous.

anulman 14y ago

TL;DR: Uber is innovative, but their approach (or lack thereof) to dealing with regulatory hurdles in each city disgusts me. It seems like HN has already picked up on the major issues Uber faces in Boston, as well as pretty much every city: a new style of relationships with drivers, and "metering" virtually-on-demand livery rides, which are intended to be both unmetered and pre-arranged. After seeing this same story repeated too many times now, and the resulting discussion, I feel the need to throw down. You don't need to trust me (IANAL, etc.), but based on my experience in the field -- I co-founded HireWinston (initially a Canadian, corporate-focused Uber competitor; we've since pivoted to competing indirectly by selling taxi fleets) -- I hope I have something to add. First, the relationships with drivers: Uber tends to work directly with drivers (many, if not all, of whom they hire legally from existing livery services). In order to boost their chances of availability, they spend some of their hard-raised cash to book drivers for entire days, taking a steep loss at first in the hopes of driving enough demand to better satisfy their capacity. In most cities, there are clear regulations that define a livery service. We found that, if you work as many commenters understand Uber working -- namely, as a network that has pre-arranged agreements with drivers or livery services to shuttle rides in their spare time -- you're in a sufficiently comfortable area not to get shut down. However, the way Uber works to juice supply (especially in newer markets) tends to clearly fall under the definition of a livery service, as they have their own "employees" that they pass rides to. Second, the meters. This one I'm much more in their favour on: the phones themselves are not metering devices as the laws define them (i.e. they do not themselves calculate the price). I haven't personally torn into their source code, but having heard from an insider and having built this tech myself, I'm fairly confident their Driver App simply sends GPS data back to the server, where the calculation takes place according to a pre-defined rate. The customer either implicitly or explicitly accepts this rate through the TOS and/or by virtue of using the service (assuming the rates are published somewhere). This setup guarantees they have something to show regulators if ever asked. From our research and testing, the integrity of the data from existing metering technology is similar enough to that from an iPhone or Android's GPS (ideally accompanied by accelerometer data). And, since the calculations happen on a server that records full route information rather than in a black box that discards it: way easier to share this with regulators. So A+. Third, and most importantly, is what you don't see: Uber's relationships with city regulators. In Toronto, the municipal government sent us an official notice that they were concerned with our business, and that they wanted us to come talk through our business model and underlying technology with them. They were genuinely excited that there was innovation happening in the field in their city, and really just wanted to make sure we weren't doing anything egregiously wrong. We sat down, and had an incredibly pleasant meeting. 30 minutes, back-and-forth Q&A, with some regulators who have spent years in the space. They appreciated that we knew the laws, had worked to abide by them, and were comfortable with all but one aspect of our business model (cancellation fees). No C&Ds were sent out. At the end of the meeting, they asked us what we thought of Uber. Apparently, for months, the Uber team was dodging any request for a meeting the office sent them. While I definitely cannot attest to Uber Boston's actions on this front, I can't imagine that Uber Toronto was taking their plays from a different playbook. In summary: Uber has done a tremendous job pushing the industry forward, and I'm confident that our approach -- selling the underlying software to existing taxi fleets, who truly want to better service their customers but have no idea what to do with technology -- is a more sustainable and dependable iteration on the model. I'm thankful to them, and I truly love a lot of the folks I know who work there. That said, I have no sympathy whatsoever for these C&Ds whenever I read about them. The company relies on deep pockets and public sympathy for the "underdog technology company" to change laws, rather than working with the existing system. And, frankly, normally I'd even be fine with that... if it weren't the taxi drivers -- the most marginalized members of the entire taxi ecosystem -- who were getting the shortest end of the stick. DISCLAIMER: I do not, and have never, worked for Uber. Most of my knowledge comes from a mix of an outsider's view and third-party testimony of the approach that Uber has taken in Toronto and NYC. I'm not sure if Uber Boston took a different approach than Uber Toronto or Uber NYC, so take all specifics with a grain of salt. (edit: formatting errors)

marshray 14y ago

I'm not impressed with Uber. I read the entire article twice and many of the comments, then went to their home page. I still have no idea what they do other than it somehow relates to taxicab service.

jeffdavis 14y ago
* Reliable pickup in about 10 minutes by hitting a button on your phone or a text with your address -- no need to call or tell someone the address. If you've ever had the experience of waiting 30-45 minutes for a cab to ride a couple miles, or maybe the phone line is just busy, you'll know why reliability is important. * Clean car with friendly and helpful driver (who you can rate). Seems minor, but it opens up possibilities. If you're on a date or business meeting, and for whatever reason need a ride somewhere (e.g. after drinking), uber will enhance the experience rather than cheapening it. * No money changes hands (taken from your card on file at uber, including tip). Receipt with lots of details (including your route on a map) is emailed immediately. * I'm pretty sure it's cheaper if you are above $15 fare, or about the same maybe. I don't have any affiliation with uber, but I have had a great experience so far (only twice, once for me and once for someone else). I plan to use it a little more often. I guess, in retrospect, I could probably have been happy using cabs more instead; but they just always seemed more awkward, unreliable, and just less pleasant. If I can get this for the same price, why not? Cabs might still be better for areas where they are easy to get and you're going short distances, e.g. Manhattan or Las Vegas.
rprasad 14y ago
Uber is a taxi/livery service that magically uses technology to do things that shuttle/livery services in major cities have already been doing for years. The difference is that: (1) Uber is a startup, (2) Uber is backed by YC, (3) Uber lets anyone be a driver, (3) Uber ignores the laws and/or regulations in the cities that it operates until it gets caught and threatened with major lawsuits/fines, and (4) Uber promises 10-minute pickups (sub-hourly timeframes between reservations and pickup are the defining line between livery services and cab services in many cities).