There is very thin line, alas. And it goes to same old "were you really happy to use taxi before uber". In 2 countries where I did live and in many where I used just them, I wasn't happy.
Taxis were as unreliable and untrusworthy and they could be - unpredictable prices, you never know if it will actually come even if company accepted your request, shady city navigation when pay by meter etc.
So I'm all for company like Uber to be able to cut such bad actors very fast to be able to provide good service for customers. But that ability seems like quickly and universally degrades to "we own you and your schedule" attitude by ubers of the world
Probably everyone who has used a Taxi in Germany in the past can tell you how professional, knowledgeable, and safe Taxis were there, and that came through very strong regulations.
Getting a taxi concession was no joke. You literally had to study on the layout of the city. And given that those are European cities, there is no grid system. You also had to know about safety and take first aid courses.
Additionally, taxis require special inspection on top of the rigid inspections necessary for cars in Germany (you wouldn’t want to endanger people with a rust bucket on the autobahn). So yes, they were exceptionally safe.
Taxis are mostly Mercedes in Germany, as traditionally Mercedes had the most experience with taxis, and the proper programs in place for taxi use. When I see a Mercedes E wagon on a freeway, I still think "taxi" (like some think police car when they see a Crown Victoria).
Source: There was a time where I took a taxi almost every day in Germany, and a close family member owns a German taxi concession for many decades now.
Lyft+Uber are an absolute joke in comparison.
(I talk mostly in the past tense, because I haven’t lived in Germany for long now. I don’t know whether the gig economy damaged the enormous quality of taxis over there.)
100% this. I used to love to go to NYC and ride in the taxis. Such interesting people. Now, I get into a car and have to pretend I'm happy there are mints because they don't want to be poorly reviewed. When no one had to care about reviews, people could be real, and occasionally uncomfortable, but always authentic. Those days are long gone and fuck Uber for destroying that.
All my pre-uber memories of taxis in NYC are negative. The drivers drive super crazy, accelerating and breaking a ton because the meter pays them a higher rate if they hit a certain speed. I enjoy uber much more and still meet interesting people.
I think you misunderstood the commenter. Having a genuine conversation with a stranger doesn’t really ever mean that you’re going to turn that into a friendship. It’s quite normal to connect with someone in passing and leave it at that.
"make friends" is a saying. It doesn't literally mean to make actual friends.
Regardless. If I'm taking an uber/taxi/etc, I want to get to my destination safely in a reasonable time, in a clean vehicle. If the driver strikes up a friendly conversation that's fine. But its definitely not what I am in the car for. If the driver is silent for the entire trip, that is also fine as long as they get me where I need to go.
> Probably everyone who has used a Taxi in Germany in the past can tell you how professional, knowledgeable, and safe Taxis were there, and that came through very strong regulations.
If you required taxi drivers to have a PhD, they would be even better!
I don’t know how to read this comment. Assuming it’s about regulations potentially impeding the ability to scale, the (million people) city I grew up in did not seem to have problems providing enough taxis in any way.
As far as I’ve heard from my family member, taxi concessions were highly sought after, but from my experience there were always more than enough to serve the population well. Some taxi drivers were employees of actual owners of the taxis, some (like my family member) owned their own taxi(s).
Taxi medallions in New York used to be traded for more than a million dollars in 2013.
Taxi customers effectively had to pay for the labour of the driver, the actual cost of running a car, and for the cost of capital to finance the medallions.
Taxi medallions set a cap on the available supply of taxi services. Demand was driven by the market. Cost of labour was driven by what drivers could earn in other industries. We can treat the actual cost of running the car as approximately fixed.
Because of the fixed supply of taxi services and high demand, prices were high. But the extra profit went all into inflating the cost of the medallions, because labour costs were essentially determined by competition for labour from other industries.
After Uber and friends entered the market, the cap on supply was effectively lifted. Prices of medallions crashed, because with extra supply and approximately the same demand curve, the market price for taxi services dropped to just above the cost of labour and car.
> [...] but from my experience there were always more than enough to serve the population well.
Whether you interpret the pre-Uber era of New York's taxis as 'enough to serve the population well' is up to you. But keep in mind that the drivers themselves did not benefit at all, since the cost of capital for the medallions ate up all the excess income.
(Many medallions were rented out by investors, but some drivers were also medallion owners. So in the latter situation they benefited in their capacity as medallion owners, but were 'exploited' in their role as drivers.)
I don't know anything about the taxi industry in New York, or how well it is regulated. I have no idea whether NY medallions are traded in a similar manner to Germany's taxi concessions, or whether they are really related in any way. I was not bringing up New York at all, and whatever problems NY has with medallions either do not seem to apply to Germany, or at least do not seem to translate into customer effects, given that I was talking about how good, reliable, and safe taxis are in Germany. From what I can tell, they seem to be able to make a living.
Apparently, by requesting it from the state, and fulfilling a whole laundry list of requirements. Including exams, background checks, disclosing financial information, adding an alarm system to the car, and more: https://www-bussgeldkatalog-org.translate.goog/taxikonzessio...
This also mentions that a concession cannot be sold, but if an entire taxi business is sold, the concession can be sold with it. It expires after 5 years however.
I still don't understand how what is going on in New York has anything to do with taxis in Germany. Whatever Germany is doing seems to work, and whatever New York is doing apparently not? I don't know, I'm not familiar with NY taxis.
I just looked it up on Wikipedia. Apparently, in Germany Uber only dispatches to local rental car and taxi providers, so it effectively seems to be a frontend to German taxis.
They also mention the rather strong transport laws, that most likely prohibit them from offering the same model as in the US. (But I really don’t know.)
> They also mention the rather strong transport laws, that most likely prohibit them from offering the same model as in the US. (But I really don’t know.)
You are correct. Uber tried their usual model here and we threw the law at them. Then they tried to ignore it (cause, why not, it worked in various US cities). And got hit over with the law again and again. Then they changed it to their current model.
> [Ubers] are as unreliable and untrusworthy and they could be - unpredictable prices, you never know if it will actually come even if company accepted your request etc.
Seriously, the number of times I've seen cancellations because the Uber didn't want to go in that direction or that neighborhood... or had unreal surge pricing applied, etc.
And that's today, so I doubt the Seattle change will make much of a difference. Many (not necessarily most. I don't have that data) drivers game the system in its current state.
Sure, but that's somewhat unavoidable. It's not as if cab drivers didn't discriminate on their fares before Uber, or inflate/make up prices via all kinds of underhanded means.
Uber and the like are getting worse, but they're just coming down to the level the taxi industry has been at for most of the last century.
> Sure, but that's somewhat unavoidable. It's not as if cab drivers didn't discriminate on their fares before Uber, or inflate/make up prices via all kinds of underhanded means.
In many places (e.g. New York City) taxis are regulated and this behavior is illegal.
The main improvement of Uber in NYC was that actually hailing a cab can be difficult in remote areas or during busy hours, and Uber solved that problem.
I've had the opposite experience. Exactly once I had a cab driver try to mess with me about fare (I told him to turn on the f'ing meter or you're going to have some big problems).
For going to an odd location, once in a while I've had a problem in Manhattan where the drivers are all heading home for the evening and they won't do trips that are "out of their way". But it was about the same frequency as Uber canceling (or hovering nearby waiting for you to cancel).
Sure, if you're somewhere where Uber is as available as a Taxi and charging more, then you should be hiring taxis if that's your experience. In my experience, Uber is still a bit cheaper than the taxis I've hired and a better experience.
I find it hard to believe that most people find Uber to be a equal or worse experience that they're paying "dramatically more" for, but still buy it anyway. It's also not as if the Taxi companies aren't taking home the bulk of the profits in the old system. It's bad all the way around.
Yes, Uber drivers are constantly canceling rides or just sitting in one spot until I’m forced to cancel myself and then dispute the charge. Thankfully Lyft still exists, I’ve switched to them and haven’t looked back. I can get to where I need to go much faster and more reliably, at roughly the same price or often less.
Yes because Uber didn’t have to actually compete with taxis. They offered a nicer service at a cheap cost and both of these things were an illusion. The price was subsidized and the drivers weren’t required (at the time) to meet any of the regulations that apply to drivers or third party passengers (for good reasons.)
So they replaced one crappy service with another that has a better UX. All other benefits seem to have vanished when forced to actually make money and we’ve seen a ton of rationale for the existing regulations in the process. Similar to Airbnb
I don't disagree with most of that, and I generally try not to use Uber or Lyft these days, but "replace a crappy service with a crappy service with better UX" is... not a bad business model. Almost every time I've taken a normal cab, the car was worse than every Uber I've ever been in, they tried to bully me into paying cash, and half of the time there was a screen in the car showing me ads non-stop, and it still cost more.
I had essentially sworn off of taxis, or even visiting cities where I would need to get a taxi. For all of their supposed regulation, there was almost no other industry I wanted to interact with less.
Uber had a really low bar to clear, and even at increased prices, I'm unsure if it would drive me back to cabs.
Surprising to some, perhaps, but the average Uber ride did not end in violence or a vehicular accident injuring people that had to be prevented by regulation. To the dismay perhaps of taxi/limousine commissioners, the average driver was a relatively decent human being who - given the preexisting apparatus in place to license drivers - did a good job, and cared about his car and his rating on the app to continue to do so. What happened for decades in cities like New York where taxi medallions were so expensive you could retire on their sale was big tech disrupting a dysfunction at its best. As for the cost, I didn't lose any sleep at night worrying that I was subsidized by Saudi Royal Family money. When the prices went up, it was never at a rate much worse than a cab.
> ride did not end in violence or a vehicular accident injuring people
That is not why registries and medallions existed. The point of it was to prevent a race to the bottom that crowded the streets with empty taxis all honking at each other.
> race to the bottom that crowded the streets with empty taxis all honking at each other
Which is, to your point, exactly what has happened with Ubers and Lyfts in Seattle.
In any popular neighborhood on any popular evening, public transport becomes even more difficult to use because Uber and Lyft drivers absolutely do not respect bus lanes or bus stops. They turn, even more than they already are, into fare pickup zones for these private companies. If a bus driver does manage to make it close enough to honk but far enough to not pick up someone safely, the gig worker does not do anything.
I'm starting to see this at the new train station that opened on the north end of Seattle. There is a "kiss and ride" area and it is routinely covered up with people driving vehicles festooned with the logos of the app companies. Some have even figured out that, apparently, they can get even better ratings by dropping their fares off at the bus stops in the bus-only lanes.
Meanwhile, there's nothing any of us can do because there is no public registry or complaint process for the public to gripe about app gig workers, and if you ask for one you are pilloried as wanting to "take away good pay from hard-working immigrants" or some other trope.
Automated fines for driving on bus lanes was already done at scale in Moscow more than 10 years ago. I assume there's no budget to do this immediately in Seattle?
In any case I guess one could try to organize and write to the police / local councils etc...
The point was to build a cartel, keep artificially high prices for a very poor quality service, and it worked, all over the world, but for cartels, not the consumers! Until UBER delivered the whole world from this universal established cartel-taxi-model for the benefit of all.
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but from my pov the quality of the service has gone down. Uber started paying drivers less. Drivers left. Uber is now less aggressive when it comes to taking drivers off the app. Now, Uber costs the same as a taxi, or more, and is just as shitty as taxis.
The nyc medallion system needed disruption, sure, but I’m not sure if the current state is a net benefit to very many people, excepting some entrepreneurs who made the right bets.
Regardless they knowingly broke laws and incentivized that business model[1]. Also just because the average ride didn’t end badly doesn’t change the fact that some of them definitely did.
Uber still provides a better service for me in areas where I can use it. It's not as cheap, but in the cities I live and travel to taxis are still sketchy and unreliable compared to Uber.
Edit: honestly what is the rationale for the existing regulation?
I see the arguments for regulation around employee protection. But a lot of the licensing regulations seem designed to enforce artificial scarcity and restrict competition. The medallion system in NYC comes to mind. The value of an NYC medallion was insane pre Uber, there's no good reason for that.
Some of the licensing was clearly regulatory capture by existing taxi companies.
> Yes because Uber didn’t have to actually compete with taxis.
Taxis in many cities were/are horrible, Uber is a godsend in cities like Manila where the option is to (a) get ripped off (for sure) by a taxi or (b) use the Uber app and don't get ripped off. It is honestly an improvement. Likewise for didi dache in many Chinese cities where getting ripped off is common.
In Denmark we sort of made it illegal for gig drivers, not for food delivery (unfortunately) but what the “scare” did to taxis was it made them get the same Apps that Uber has.
So now taking a taxi comes with most of the benefits of having Uber, while also having all the benefits that come with the rather highly regulated industry of taxi services.
I guess it’s more expensive, but then, does Uber make money? Because if they don’t, then when will it disappear?
Pre-Uber, I would use taxis when visiting NYC all the time. It was fine; taxis were all over the place, and hailing one was easy. Hotels and some higher-end restaurants would even help line one up for you. Drivers were all over the map, though: some were quiet, some loud, some annoying, some offensive. Most drivers drove aggressively. Some cars were clean, some dirty. The credit card machine was usually "broken" (wink, wink). No good way to get any of this feedback acted on.
In SF (where I've lived since pre-Uber times), taxis were useless. There was pretty much nowhere in the city where you could reliably flag one down. You could call a dispatcher, but the standard answer was "a taxi will pick you up in 20 minutes", and then at least half the time they'd never show up. The rest of the time it'd take at least twice that amount of time.
So I walked or took transit when I had the extra time in my schedule, or I drove. Which sucked in many ways, as parking is annoying in SF, and if I'm going out to drink, it means either carefully controlling how much I drink, and leaving some buffer time at the end of the night to sober up, or leaving my car wherever it is, and hoping I don't get a parking ticket in the morning (a hope that failed often enough to get expensive).
Nowadays I still walk or take transit as much as possible, but I hardly ever drive in the city. Uber/Lyft have completely filled this void. As much as their business practices have been terrible, there's nothing else that fills their niche.
> So I'm all for company like Uber to be able to cut such bad actors very fast to be able to provide good service for customers.
The problem with this is that there's no due process. Some disgruntled rider can be an asshole and rate a driver with 1 star, with a comment about feeling unsafe, and that's it, even if the driver didn't do anything wrong. How is that fair?
Meanwhile, taxis have always had predictable pricing based on tariffs.
Honestly, I think the answer usually is in robust competition.
thing is, with this brave new world of purchasing services through apps and websites, competition is not assured. You will have a very difficult time fighting through the gauntlet of adtech and dark patterns, you might have a hard time getting a fair deal. Do people really get fair pricing getting a hotel, a plane ticket, a rental car, a tow truck or an emergency plumber anymore?
When I was in college and didnt have a car, UBER is one of these things that have improved my quality of live like no other thing. If not for UBER, I would have a miserable existence. Long live UBER.
Taxis were as unreliable and untrusworthy and they could be - unpredictable prices, you never know if it will actually come even if company accepted your request, shady city navigation when pay by meter etc.
So I'm all for company like Uber to be able to cut such bad actors very fast to be able to provide good service for customers. But that ability seems like quickly and universally degrades to "we own you and your schedule" attitude by ubers of the world