8 ms·

Uber isn’t the problem; taxi regulations are

74 points by heelhook 12y ago

Argorak 12y ago
The article concentrates on aspects that are certainly archaic - the expectancy that a taxi driver knows every street in a city. On the other hand, it totally ignores the benefits of the regulation: the client can have normalized expectations over all businesses. E.g. in germany, your insurance status if an Uber car crashes is unknown - it depends whether the driver is insured. On the other hand, it is clearly regulated what happens when a registered taxi crashes down to what fees you have (or do not have) to pay. I do agree that the regulation is probably outdated, but many of the aspects make sense if you see a Taxi network as an important piece of infrastructure.
- lukasm 12y ago
  Is that really a problem? If he's not insured you're just gonna sue him or Uber.
  - codingbeer 12y ago
    And who should pay for that lawsuit?
    - lukasm 12y ago
      You or lawyer takes the cut after winning. Case like that will make Uber to require insurance from all drivers. Problem solved without extra regulations and bureaucracy that will cause problem in the future, as we have now.
      - wowwhat 12y ago
        That's right, you won't find any regulations or bureaucracy in the court system!
  - gambiting 12y ago
    Suing takes time, and even if you succeed the person/company might not be able to pay. Insurance companies pay out immediately if there are medical bills to pay.
    - lukasm 12y ago
      We're talking Germany here. Free healthcare.
      - gambiting 12y ago
        Even with free healthcare you might be compensated for permanent injuries. In that case the insurance company still pays.
      - PinguTS 12y ago
        That means, the public should pay for one companies profit?
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
        Argorak 12y ago
        No, public healthcare makes sure you get on your foot again an then tries to get their money back as any other insurance would. So, the public makes sure the damage of you being hurt, unable to work and maybe turning out to be a case for social security because of being maltreated is avoided.
    - crag 12y ago
      "Insurance companies pay out immediately if there are medical bills to pay." That's not true at all. And it REALLY depends on which state (in the USA) you are in. Florida for example is a no-fault state. Which means, basically, insurance companies are on the hook for the first 10k. Which is about how much it coast to mend a broken leg. Anything above that requires a lawsuit. And you don't sue the insurance company. You are suing a person (or company). Lawsuits take time. Lots of time. A taxi driver in Florida has different requirements. So does the company he drives for. The amount they pay out is much higher. Also, not every issue requires a lawsuit. Sometime you just get a bad driver. With Uber, who you gonna complain too? Uber? In most states, complaining to the taxi commission is a serious offense and has to be answered by the driver and company he drives for. I don't have a problem with Uber itself. If people want to drive others around, fine. BUT totally unfair to require taxi drivers to be licensed and not the Uber drives. It's unfair to make the taxi driver (and company) have much higher insurance requirements than Uber and it's divers. And it's unfair to the rider. If you are in an Uber car and you have a wreck; you better hope that driver has more then "what's minimum" for insurance. Chances are, he doesn't. And you're fucked. PS: This is true for car services, and even courier services too, by the way.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    You can't sue Uber if a driver crashes, because drivers are independent contractors. You can sue the driver, but he has no money and can just dodge the judgment in bankruptcy.
    - themartorana 12y ago
      Are you sure? If I'm hit by a drunk driver I can sue the bar. All you need is one judge that thinks Uber has some culpability and you can sue away.
      - rayiner 12y ago
        There's two differences there: 1) those suits are the result of special laws ("dram shop laws") that extend liability to bars; 2) liability in those cases arises when the bar did something negligent (serve someone who appeared to be drunk, serve a minor, etc). Absent a special law, you can only sue a business for the negligence of its employees under the theory of respondeat superior: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respondeat_superior http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respondeat_superior. The essence of the theory is that businesses should be liable for the risks created by their employees acting within the scope of their employment. However, respondeat superior does not apply when the tortfeasor (the person who acted negligently) is an independent contractor. When it comes to employees, a business can reduce incidences of negligence through training, setting procedures, etc. They exert a great deal of control over how the employee does his work. That's not true in the case of independent contractors, like Uber drivers.
        themartorana 12y ago
        Thanks for that... I learned something today!
        waps 12y ago
        There is the basic principle that anyone can be sued for the consequences of their actions. Uber arranged that drive. They didn't check for insurance status. That could be cause enough. Plus between you and the driver there exists no business relationship. So you can argue that there's nothing to sue about. Besides who would you sue ? "The driver" doesn't work too wel. You'd sue Uber to get the name of the driver in the first place. This go-between-suit is pretty common in legal cases. What should happen is this. Judge agrees Uber owes your medical bills/restitution/whatever applies. Judge also agrees that Uber can get this amount from their driver. Then Uber has to cough up the money, but if they ask for delay in payment until their suit of the driver is finished, 99% certain they'll get that. Then you get the choice of getting the money from Uber, or joining Uber's suit against the driver (not a hard choice with Uber).
  - Argorak 12y ago
    That's a common misconception. If I loose a leg, the driver will probably never be able to pay the sum, go through personal bankruptcy and leave me with a nice sum I sued for, but no actual money.
- blcknight 12y ago
  At least in Berlin, with an app that I can also use to pay like Uber (mytaxi), I can have a pristine regulated taxi (usually a newish Mercedes) to my door in five minutes. And it costs 30% less than Uber. But in the US, you have idiotic cities where taxis are expensive and some even charge per person, are dirty, dilapidated cars with rude drivers. Uber is nice there..
  - arethuza 12y ago
    I have a similar view of the taxis here in Edinburgh - I use the same taxi company both for work and personal trips and they are great, can use an app or IVR to book really easily. The taxis are always spotless and the drivers very pleasant.
- Aardwolf 12y ago
  In cities such as Bangkok or New Delhi, taxi's are very plenty, and not very expensive, so extremely useful important piece of infrastructure (except the traffic jams). However, in cities in Europe, the price of a taxi is simply way too high. Whether you can afford it or not, paying 20 Euros to be transported a few KM or 70 Euros if it's a few 10 KM's is just too insanely high. It is more something for abnormal occasions only.
  - Grue3 12y ago
    Taxis in Bangkok are really something. There is so many of them and they are constantly driving around the city, most of them empty (red light). The economics of this must be really strange. Don't they have to pay for gas? How much fuel is burned by keeping all these cars in motion (not that there's anywhere to park them anyway).
  - CaptainZapp 12y ago
    In Bangkok Taxis are dirt cheap. What I noticed, though, are more and more cabs with doctored meters. That can be rather small time. For example: manipulating the kilometers driven in order to get a higher fare at the destination, or it can be very, very blatant. I once took a cab from the airport to Silom. The initial fare was correct (35bt), but then the meter immediately went into cardiac arrest mode and just went ape shit. This shouldn't be the case. The 35bt entry fee (about $1) gets you about a mile (depending on wait times), before it slowly goes up in 2 bt intervals. That meter must have been doctored by a factor of 10 - 15 (which I thought stupid as hell, because instantly noticeable). A trip to my hotel at that meter rate would easily have been 3000 - 5000 baht. Instead of the normal 300 - 400 bt. However, this being Thailand, what you should never, ever do is directly accusing the driver. There's that face saving thing, that Thais take very, very seriously. Accusing him may get you into one of the less touristy areas in town, where you meet a number of the driver's friends wielding crow bars and baseball bats. And I'm not exaggerating here. I resolved the dilemma, by pretending to consult my watch, making a shocked face and mumbling something around the line of "oh, Friday; traffic very, very bad in Bangkok, please bring me to Skytrain station"). The interesting thing was he knew that I knew, but didn't make any problems and brought me there. While this example was extreme I experienced multiple rides that where slightly more expensive than they should have been in Bangkok. So: beware!
yeureka 12y ago
I am not a fan of the medallion system, but Uber does seem to impact the businesses of traditional, local cab drivers while raking in profits on a global scale. It looks like a perfect middle-class job destroying operation that centralizes profits in one multinational company. As someone put it, those with the more powerful computers will win the economic spoils.
- hershel 12y ago
  I think there should be an UBER competitor ,that really helps cities build their own clone effectively. If that's possible politically , it would be interesting : the cities would have regulatory power to win over UBER, this very critical business that's might just be the future of transport will be in public hands and hopefully will be guided to the good of the community, and drivers will be compensated fairly. But getting the politics right is very difficult.
- thret 12y ago
  As someone who regularly uses taxis in Melbourne, I don't care if it destroys the lives of taxi drivers. That's just another perk of switching to uber in my opinion.
  - girvo 12y ago
    And as someone who uses them on the Gold Coast and in Brisbane, I'm right there with you. A corrupt industry, where the drivers are being completely screwed over as-is, and a few people at the top rake in all the money... basically, the same as Uber, only Uber is cheaper and has nicer cars.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- Cakez0r 12y ago
  Are the taxi drivers allowed to use both Uber and the medallion system?
  - 12y ago
AndrewDucker 12y ago
I have no problem with regulation. I object to artificial limitation. If you want to set minimum standards for taxi drivers, to ensure the safety of drivers, I am absolutely fine with that. But anyone who wants to take the test should be able to, and there should be no artificial limit on the numbers.
- _delirium 12y ago
  One interesting aspect of limiting taxi numbers is that, as far as I understand the history, the first instance of doing so was imposed on taxi drivers by the public, rather than imposed by taxi drivers for guild-type reasons. London passed (one of?) the first taxi-regulation laws in the mid 17th century in response to popular outcry about the rapidly multiplying and unregulated hackney carriage operators; the law tried to bring order to the sector by both regulating the equipment & drivers, and putting a limit on the number that could enter the city.
  - 001sky 12y ago
    This is a fascinating piece of historical context. Regulation has a demand side, nut just a supply side. Worth keeping in mind. Likewise, the public tends to demand regulation when the cognitive overhead is prohibitive for an individual,[1] bur more economic at scale by a neutral party. The latter is especially efficient ex ante as opposed to ad hoc. Again, there are multiple views on what is rational, light and efficient depending only on abstraction and completeness. [1] Eg, when faced with too much choice, under too small a timeframe, with opaque or imperfect information, and costly information processing techniques.
  - SilasX 12y ago
    That might make sense for hailed taxis, in which there is a congestion risk, as drivers have to maintain visibility on dense roads. It has much less relevance for a purely call-and-wait service, which is why application to services like Uber is questionable.
gambiting 12y ago
>>Most notoriously, attaining “The Knowledge” required for a taxi license involves memorizing hundreds of routes, business locations, and places of interest throughout the city. Charming, but expensive — and quite unnecessary in the age of smartphones. Says a person who has never been to London and doesn't understand the enormous benefit of intimate knowledge of all the streets of London and how to navigate them quickly. No smartphone is going to help you there, even the best sat nav is not as good as simply knowing that if there is a match in the city some streets are best to be avoided hours before the event. I, for one, support wholeheartedly the requirement for London drivers to pass this difficult test.
- vertex-four 12y ago
  Last time I was in London, I mentioned the name of a grotty backpackers hostel, not even remembering what road it was on, and the driver immediately started off towards it. Compare this to having to mess about on Google Maps for five minutes to figure out where we're going and potentially end up on the wrong side of the city anyway, which has happened to me in other cities. There's definitely something in having your driver have knowledge of the city.
  - aianus 12y ago
    I think the vast majority of people would rather look it up on Google Maps for five minutes and save $5.
    - vertex-four 12y ago
      If they can look things up on Google Maps, they can take the tube or the bus or even cycle, reduce congestion, and hopefully save that £2.94.
  - jedc 12y ago
    I got into a black taxi once, and read off the text that my wife had sent telling me where to meet her. She didn't know the name of the restaurant and got the name of the street wrong. The taxi driver just said, "Do you mean [restaurant name] on [name of correct street]?" And sure enough, he was right.
001sky 12y ago
Taxi cabs are just one of the professions suffering from the problem of competition being in conflict with professional standards (ie, self-regulation). The only option that will be fully serviceable remains government regulation, but it will need to take on a new format.
- Schwoisser 12y ago
  How do you know? Is there a study that shows cabs need government regulation.
  - 001sky 12y ago
    If you're imagination needs broadening... se, eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7948931 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7948931 or the many parallels to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7935819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7935819
    - Schwoisser 12y ago
      The first one is just promotion of mercantilism and the second seems more like obscurantism. Just use fancy words to hide the fallacy. Trust can be build by simple rating system and private certifications with mostly better standarts. The taxi regulations benefit mainly professionals at the cost of society as a whole because it cripples competition and that leads to higher costs for the consumers. I would like to have cheaper taxis at the expense of some security. Others could just go with a certificated taxi company.
splynch 12y ago
While i agree with the premise that many taxi regulations are outdated, this article seems to be either poorly informed, or so selective in its representation that it borders on PR, not independent journalism or OP-ED. Using london as an example of how things are broken is a terrible choice, and great example of how terrible this article is. London routinely ranks number one in the world in customer and tourist satisfaction for taxis. As someone who lives here, i think Uber has its place, but the taxi system is akin to a public good that needs regulation. The barriers to entry and designed to prevent abuse to the privileges that come with being licensed taxi. As a rider, the most important privileges to me are the ability to use bus lanes, and that i can hail a cab anywhere, anytime, knowing that the vehicle and driver will be safe. Without regulation, its impossible to obtain that standard. It would be much more helpful to start with an informed and complete view of the situation (which varies in every city), than build a straw man from which the author argues for a complete reform in governance and regulation in all marketplaces(really? thats the point here?)
forgottenpass 12y ago
Uber isn’t the problem; taxi regulations are Can't it be both? Because I'm pretty sure it's both.
DanielBMarkham 12y ago
I love the idea of rating services and customers as each business transaction happens. This allows both sides to quickly weed out bad actors. The more I see services like Ebay, AirBnB, Uber, Lyft, and so forth operate, the more I'm amazed at how much former regulation can be replaced with better information for all concerned.
alkonaut 12y ago
Of course regulation is needed. Insurance, car-standard, driver skill, all of that has to be known by the customer merely by the fact that you are stepping into a taxi. Can there be too much regulation, too archaic? Sure, but I can't see how that motivates sidestepping it entirely. In Stockholm, taxis (normal ones) are regulated in terms of insurance etc. but unlike most other cities, taxi prices are not regulated. This hasn't meant lower prices through healthy competition but rather hundreds of scam companies charging 10x the fares of the 2-3 largest companies that have 95% of the market. I miss the days of more regulation, but won't use Uber merely because they don't guarantee union wages etc like the other companies do.
- sirsar 12y ago
  > Can there be too much regulation, too archaic? Sure, but I can't see how that motivates sidestepping it entirely. Sidestepping lots of regulation is the only way to get around the archaic parts. There certainly won't be a referendum on taxis.
  - alkonaut 12y ago
    I think that is very much up to the local political climate, whether there are companies/groups that want to protect the status quo, and so on. Uber is a global thing, it may have started because of local taxi regulation in the US, but all I'm saying is that it isn't necessarily the same thing everywhere.
- mhb 12y ago
  Why do you conclude that the unregulated taxi prices aren't lower than they would be with regulation?
  - alkonaut 12y ago
    Empirical only, of course it isn't a perfect natural experiment as there is no control group. We can't know what the regulated prices would have been.
- jmckib 12y ago
jheriko 12y ago
its amazing how so many individuals can manage all this bureaucracy just fine... but trendy web startups can not. srsly. its embarassing.
mrweasel 12y ago
Maybe it's just that it's not really an issue where I live, but what problem is Uber trying to solve? The main issue is getting a taxi in really small towns in the middle of nowhere, but it seems unlikely that Uber would have someone in these places, simply because there isn't really a demand. I find it really hard to see Uber as anything but a taxi company that tries to underbid the competition by not following the same rules as everyone else.
sharemywin 12y ago
"The reason Uber could be expensive is because you're not just paying for the car — you're paying for the other dude in the car," Kalanick said. "When there's no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes cheaper than owning a vehicle. So the magic there is, you basically bring the cost below the cost of ownership for everybody, and then car ownership goes away."
victor27 12y ago
I spent a week in Paris. I felt cheated _every time_ I took a regular cab. The meter could be set to various modes (L1- Day in City, L2- Evening in City / Suburb, L3 - Late nights, etc.) and I was never sure if it was on the correct mode. Also, the drivers were rude and acted as if they were doing me a favor. Uber although slightly more expensive, was dramatically better. The drivers were polite, helpful and I never got scammed on the charge. Moreover, I didn't have to deal with foreign currency coins and notes.
adultSwim 12y ago
Who doesn't love a gypsy cab?

74 points by heelhook 12y ago

The article concentrates on aspects that are certainly archaic - the expectancy that a taxi driver knows every street in a city. On the other hand, it totally ignores the benefits of the regulation: the client can have normalized expectations over all businesses. E.g. in germany, your insurance status if an Uber car crashes is unknown - it depends whether the driver is insured. On the other hand, it is clearly regulated what happens when a registered taxi crashes down to what fees you have (or do not have) to pay. I do agree that the regulation is probably outdated, but many of the aspects make sense if you see a Taxi network as an important piece of infrastructure.

lukasm 12y ago
Is that really a problem? If he's not insured you're just gonna sue him or Uber.
- codingbeer 12y ago
  And who should pay for that lawsuit?
  - lukasm 12y ago
    You or lawyer takes the cut after winning. Case like that will make Uber to require insurance from all drivers. Problem solved without extra regulations and bureaucracy that will cause problem in the future, as we have now.
    - wowwhat 12y ago
      That's right, you won't find any regulations or bureaucracy in the court system!
- gambiting 12y ago
  Suing takes time, and even if you succeed the person/company might not be able to pay. Insurance companies pay out immediately if there are medical bills to pay.
  - lukasm 12y ago
    We're talking Germany here. Free healthcare.
    - gambiting 12y ago
      Even with free healthcare you might be compensated for permanent injuries. In that case the insurance company still pays.
    - PinguTS 12y ago
      That means, the public should pay for one companies profit?
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      - Argorak 12y ago
        No, public healthcare makes sure you get on your foot again an then tries to get their money back as any other insurance would. So, the public makes sure the damage of you being hurt, unable to work and maybe turning out to be a case for social security because of being maltreated is avoided.
  - crag 12y ago
    "Insurance companies pay out immediately if there are medical bills to pay." That's not true at all. And it REALLY depends on which state (in the USA) you are in. Florida for example is a no-fault state. Which means, basically, insurance companies are on the hook for the first 10k. Which is about how much it coast to mend a broken leg. Anything above that requires a lawsuit. And you don't sue the insurance company. You are suing a person (or company). Lawsuits take time. Lots of time. A taxi driver in Florida has different requirements. So does the company he drives for. The amount they pay out is much higher. Also, not every issue requires a lawsuit. Sometime you just get a bad driver. With Uber, who you gonna complain too? Uber? In most states, complaining to the taxi commission is a serious offense and has to be answered by the driver and company he drives for. I don't have a problem with Uber itself. If people want to drive others around, fine. BUT totally unfair to require taxi drivers to be licensed and not the Uber drives. It's unfair to make the taxi driver (and company) have much higher insurance requirements than Uber and it's divers. And it's unfair to the rider. If you are in an Uber car and you have a wreck; you better hope that driver has more then "what's minimum" for insurance. Chances are, he doesn't. And you're fucked. PS: This is true for car services, and even courier services too, by the way.
- rayiner 12y ago
  You can't sue Uber if a driver crashes, because drivers are independent contractors. You can sue the driver, but he has no money and can just dodge the judgment in bankruptcy.
  - themartorana 12y ago
    Are you sure? If I'm hit by a drunk driver I can sue the bar. All you need is one judge that thinks Uber has some culpability and you can sue away.
    - rayiner 12y ago
      There's two differences there: 1) those suits are the result of special laws ("dram shop laws") that extend liability to bars; 2) liability in those cases arises when the bar did something negligent (serve someone who appeared to be drunk, serve a minor, etc). Absent a special law, you can only sue a business for the negligence of its employees under the theory of respondeat superior: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respondeat_superior http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respondeat_superior. The essence of the theory is that businesses should be liable for the risks created by their employees acting within the scope of their employment. However, respondeat superior does not apply when the tortfeasor (the person who acted negligently) is an independent contractor. When it comes to employees, a business can reduce incidences of negligence through training, setting procedures, etc. They exert a great deal of control over how the employee does his work. That's not true in the case of independent contractors, like Uber drivers.
      - themartorana 12y ago
        Thanks for that... I learned something today!
        waps 12y ago
        There is the basic principle that anyone can be sued for the consequences of their actions. Uber arranged that drive. They didn't check for insurance status. That could be cause enough. Plus between you and the driver there exists no business relationship. So you can argue that there's nothing to sue about. Besides who would you sue ? "The driver" doesn't work too wel. You'd sue Uber to get the name of the driver in the first place. This go-between-suit is pretty common in legal cases. What should happen is this. Judge agrees Uber owes your medical bills/restitution/whatever applies. Judge also agrees that Uber can get this amount from their driver. Then Uber has to cough up the money, but if they ask for delay in payment until their suit of the driver is finished, 99% certain they'll get that. Then you get the choice of getting the money from Uber, or joining Uber's suit against the driver (not a hard choice with Uber).
- Argorak 12y ago
  That's a common misconception. If I loose a leg, the driver will probably never be able to pay the sum, go through personal bankruptcy and leave me with a nice sum I sued for, but no actual money.
blcknight 12y ago
At least in Berlin, with an app that I can also use to pay like Uber (mytaxi), I can have a pristine regulated taxi (usually a newish Mercedes) to my door in five minutes. And it costs 30% less than Uber. But in the US, you have idiotic cities where taxis are expensive and some even charge per person, are dirty, dilapidated cars with rude drivers. Uber is nice there..
- arethuza 12y ago
  I have a similar view of the taxis here in Edinburgh - I use the same taxi company both for work and personal trips and they are great, can use an app or IVR to book really easily. The taxis are always spotless and the drivers very pleasant.
Aardwolf 12y ago
In cities such as Bangkok or New Delhi, taxi's are very plenty, and not very expensive, so extremely useful important piece of infrastructure (except the traffic jams). However, in cities in Europe, the price of a taxi is simply way too high. Whether you can afford it or not, paying 20 Euros to be transported a few KM or 70 Euros if it's a few 10 KM's is just too insanely high. It is more something for abnormal occasions only.
- Grue3 12y ago
  Taxis in Bangkok are really something. There is so many of them and they are constantly driving around the city, most of them empty (red light). The economics of this must be really strange. Don't they have to pay for gas? How much fuel is burned by keeping all these cars in motion (not that there's anywhere to park them anyway).
- CaptainZapp 12y ago
  In Bangkok Taxis are dirt cheap. What I noticed, though, are more and more cabs with doctored meters. That can be rather small time. For example: manipulating the kilometers driven in order to get a higher fare at the destination, or it can be very, very blatant. I once took a cab from the airport to Silom. The initial fare was correct (35bt), but then the meter immediately went into cardiac arrest mode and just went ape shit. This shouldn't be the case. The 35bt entry fee (about $1) gets you about a mile (depending on wait times), before it slowly goes up in 2 bt intervals. That meter must have been doctored by a factor of 10 - 15 (which I thought stupid as hell, because instantly noticeable). A trip to my hotel at that meter rate would easily have been 3000 - 5000 baht. Instead of the normal 300 - 400 bt. However, this being Thailand, what you should never, ever do is directly accusing the driver. There's that face saving thing, that Thais take very, very seriously. Accusing him may get you into one of the less touristy areas in town, where you meet a number of the driver's friends wielding crow bars and baseball bats. And I'm not exaggerating here. I resolved the dilemma, by pretending to consult my watch, making a shocked face and mumbling something around the line of "oh, Friday; traffic very, very bad in Bangkok, please bring me to Skytrain station"). The interesting thing was he knew that I knew, but didn't make any problems and brought me there. While this example was extreme I experienced multiple rides that where slightly more expensive than they should have been in Bangkok. So: beware!

yeureka 12y ago

I am not a fan of the medallion system, but Uber does seem to impact the businesses of traditional, local cab drivers while raking in profits on a global scale. It looks like a perfect middle-class job destroying operation that centralizes profits in one multinational company. As someone put it, those with the more powerful computers will win the economic spoils.

hershel 12y ago
I think there should be an UBER competitor ,that really helps cities build their own clone effectively. If that's possible politically , it would be interesting : the cities would have regulatory power to win over UBER, this very critical business that's might just be the future of transport will be in public hands and hopefully will be guided to the good of the community, and drivers will be compensated fairly. But getting the politics right is very difficult.
thret 12y ago
As someone who regularly uses taxis in Melbourne, I don't care if it destroys the lives of taxi drivers. That's just another perk of switching to uber in my opinion.
- girvo 12y ago
  And as someone who uses them on the Gold Coast and in Brisbane, I'm right there with you. A corrupt industry, where the drivers are being completely screwed over as-is, and a few people at the top rake in all the money... basically, the same as Uber, only Uber is cheaper and has nicer cars.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Cakez0r 12y ago
Are the taxi drivers allowed to use both Uber and the medallion system?
- 12y ago

AndrewDucker 12y ago

I have no problem with regulation. I object to artificial limitation. If you want to set minimum standards for taxi drivers, to ensure the safety of drivers, I am absolutely fine with that. But anyone who wants to take the test should be able to, and there should be no artificial limit on the numbers.

_delirium 12y ago
One interesting aspect of limiting taxi numbers is that, as far as I understand the history, the first instance of doing so was imposed on taxi drivers by the public, rather than imposed by taxi drivers for guild-type reasons. London passed (one of?) the first taxi-regulation laws in the mid 17th century in response to popular outcry about the rapidly multiplying and unregulated hackney carriage operators; the law tried to bring order to the sector by both regulating the equipment & drivers, and putting a limit on the number that could enter the city.
- 001sky 12y ago
  This is a fascinating piece of historical context. Regulation has a demand side, nut just a supply side. Worth keeping in mind. Likewise, the public tends to demand regulation when the cognitive overhead is prohibitive for an individual,[1] bur more economic at scale by a neutral party. The latter is especially efficient ex ante as opposed to ad hoc. Again, there are multiple views on what is rational, light and efficient depending only on abstraction and completeness. [1] Eg, when faced with too much choice, under too small a timeframe, with opaque or imperfect information, and costly information processing techniques.
- SilasX 12y ago
  That might make sense for hailed taxis, in which there is a congestion risk, as drivers have to maintain visibility on dense roads. It has much less relevance for a purely call-and-wait service, which is why application to services like Uber is questionable.

gambiting 12y ago

>>Most notoriously, attaining “The Knowledge” required for a taxi license involves memorizing hundreds of routes, business locations, and places of interest throughout the city. Charming, but expensive — and quite unnecessary in the age of smartphones. Says a person who has never been to London and doesn't understand the enormous benefit of intimate knowledge of all the streets of London and how to navigate them quickly. No smartphone is going to help you there, even the best sat nav is not as good as simply knowing that if there is a match in the city some streets are best to be avoided hours before the event. I, for one, support wholeheartedly the requirement for London drivers to pass this difficult test.

vertex-four 12y ago
Last time I was in London, I mentioned the name of a grotty backpackers hostel, not even remembering what road it was on, and the driver immediately started off towards it. Compare this to having to mess about on Google Maps for five minutes to figure out where we're going and potentially end up on the wrong side of the city anyway, which has happened to me in other cities. There's definitely something in having your driver have knowledge of the city.
- aianus 12y ago
  I think the vast majority of people would rather look it up on Google Maps for five minutes and save $5.
  - vertex-four 12y ago
    If they can look things up on Google Maps, they can take the tube or the bus or even cycle, reduce congestion, and hopefully save that £2.94.
- jedc 12y ago
  I got into a black taxi once, and read off the text that my wife had sent telling me where to meet her. She didn't know the name of the restaurant and got the name of the street wrong. The taxi driver just said, "Do you mean [restaurant name] on [name of correct street]?" And sure enough, he was right.

001sky 12y ago

Taxi cabs are just one of the professions suffering from the problem of competition being in conflict with professional standards (ie, self-regulation). The only option that will be fully serviceable remains government regulation, but it will need to take on a new format.

Schwoisser 12y ago
How do you know? Is there a study that shows cabs need government regulation.
- 001sky 12y ago
  If you're imagination needs broadening... se, eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7948931 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7948931 or the many parallels to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7935819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7935819
  - Schwoisser 12y ago
    The first one is just promotion of mercantilism and the second seems more like obscurantism. Just use fancy words to hide the fallacy. Trust can be build by simple rating system and private certifications with mostly better standarts. The taxi regulations benefit mainly professionals at the cost of society as a whole because it cripples competition and that leads to higher costs for the consumers. I would like to have cheaper taxis at the expense of some security. Others could just go with a certificated taxi company.

splynch 12y ago

While i agree with the premise that many taxi regulations are outdated, this article seems to be either poorly informed, or so selective in its representation that it borders on PR, not independent journalism or OP-ED. Using london as an example of how things are broken is a terrible choice, and great example of how terrible this article is. London routinely ranks number one in the world in customer and tourist satisfaction for taxis. As someone who lives here, i think Uber has its place, but the taxi system is akin to a public good that needs regulation. The barriers to entry and designed to prevent abuse to the privileges that come with being licensed taxi. As a rider, the most important privileges to me are the ability to use bus lanes, and that i can hail a cab anywhere, anytime, knowing that the vehicle and driver will be safe. Without regulation, its impossible to obtain that standard. It would be much more helpful to start with an informed and complete view of the situation (which varies in every city), than build a straw man from which the author argues for a complete reform in governance and regulation in all marketplaces(really? thats the point here?)

forgottenpass 12y ago

Uber isn’t the problem; taxi regulations are Can't it be both? Because I'm pretty sure it's both.

DanielBMarkham 12y ago

I love the idea of rating services and customers as each business transaction happens. This allows both sides to quickly weed out bad actors. The more I see services like Ebay, AirBnB, Uber, Lyft, and so forth operate, the more I'm amazed at how much former regulation can be replaced with better information for all concerned.

alkonaut 12y ago

Of course regulation is needed. Insurance, car-standard, driver skill, all of that has to be known by the customer merely by the fact that you are stepping into a taxi. Can there be too much regulation, too archaic? Sure, but I can't see how that motivates sidestepping it entirely. In Stockholm, taxis (normal ones) are regulated in terms of insurance etc. but unlike most other cities, taxi prices are not regulated. This hasn't meant lower prices through healthy competition but rather hundreds of scam companies charging 10x the fares of the 2-3 largest companies that have 95% of the market. I miss the days of more regulation, but won't use Uber merely because they don't guarantee union wages etc like the other companies do.

sirsar 12y ago
> Can there be too much regulation, too archaic? Sure, but I can't see how that motivates sidestepping it entirely. Sidestepping lots of regulation is the only way to get around the archaic parts. There certainly won't be a referendum on taxis.
- alkonaut 12y ago
  I think that is very much up to the local political climate, whether there are companies/groups that want to protect the status quo, and so on. Uber is a global thing, it may have started because of local taxi regulation in the US, but all I'm saying is that it isn't necessarily the same thing everywhere.
mhb 12y ago
Why do you conclude that the unregulated taxi prices aren't lower than they would be with regulation?
- alkonaut 12y ago
  Empirical only, of course it isn't a perfect natural experiment as there is no control group. We can't know what the regulated prices would have been.
jmckib 12y ago

jheriko 12y ago

its amazing how so many individuals can manage all this bureaucracy just fine... but trendy web startups can not. srsly. its embarassing.

mrweasel 12y ago

Maybe it's just that it's not really an issue where I live, but what problem is Uber trying to solve? The main issue is getting a taxi in really small towns in the middle of nowhere, but it seems unlikely that Uber would have someone in these places, simply because there isn't really a demand. I find it really hard to see Uber as anything but a taxi company that tries to underbid the competition by not following the same rules as everyone else.

sharemywin 12y ago

"The reason Uber could be expensive is because you're not just paying for the car — you're paying for the other dude in the car," Kalanick said. "When there's no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes cheaper than owning a vehicle. So the magic there is, you basically bring the cost below the cost of ownership for everybody, and then car ownership goes away."

victor27 12y ago

I spent a week in Paris. I felt cheated _every time_ I took a regular cab. The meter could be set to various modes (L1- Day in City, L2- Evening in City / Suburb, L3 - Late nights, etc.) and I was never sure if it was on the correct mode. Also, the drivers were rude and acted as if they were doing me a favor. Uber although slightly more expensive, was dramatically better. The drivers were polite, helpful and I never got scammed on the charge. Moreover, I didn't have to deal with foreign currency coins and notes.

adultSwim 12y ago

Who doesn't love a gypsy cab?