"When TfL decided not to renew Uber's licence in 2017, the company addressed some of the issues raised by TfL back then and then a magistrate later granted Uber a new licence.
On the face of it TfL is standing tough against perceived failings by Uber. But in effect it is letting the courts decide, at a later date, whether Uber should have a licence, or not."
In the centre of town during the day black cabs are often ubiquitous, immediately available, and skilled at getting you the hell out of dodge. Something for which I’m happy to pay a premium.
Anywhere else they can be capricious and scarce. After 11pm this is the case with in fact almost all black cabs anywhere in the city, when a very different type of driver — “borrowing” their license from a friend, card machine with a “sorry not working” post it taped to it, no chat — starts working the night shift. Usually these are more often likely to be rental drivers — during the day it’s owner drivers. The difference between the two classes of driver is, if you will, day and night.
By contrast, the semi robotic Uber will always come, eventually. They’ll drive past you. Go the wrong way to pick you up. Stop on the wrong side of the road and wait for you to cross because they don’t have a tight turning circle. Go the wrong way on your journey. It’s a fact of life that while not all black cab drivers meet the highest professional standards, it’s much rarer to find a good Uber driver.
SF and the Bay Area — I mention them as the root source of Uber’s app and product culture — certainly aren’t a cakewalk to drive around but it’s not a patch on London’s warrens. You can absolutely see that in the navigation skills of those using the big map apps to get around, and those who did The Knowledge. My subjective viewpoint isn’t some romantic notion based on the old ways or traditions either: everyone I know in London has pretty much the same experience.
Same problem has infected everything from rating your apartment maintenance guy to the support person at the call center.
And if they compensate for that by eg. lower price, then how is it different from any other market. You want premium quality, you pay extra - you're fine with compromising on it, you go for the cheaper option.
Also, Uber are paying under the minimum wage in the UK, or at least the regional minimum living wage in London. Uber don't pay taxes in the UK like a London minicab company would, then they underpay their drivers and expect our welfare system to pick up the slack on their crummy wages.
Minimum wages should apply to gig type working like Uber/Deliveroo etc as much as it does to everyone else. This is the market failure.
Without a minimum wage, sick pay, materity/paternity leave pay, of course you can make the ride cheaper.
Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uber-verdic...
Customers will frequently do things that are bad for them and bad for everyone, just because they have received advertising. That's why I think Uber is basically the antivaxx of taxis; they ignore regulations and break laws, putting people at risk and do everything they can in bad faith, but remain incredibly popular in some circles so I expect the law to drive them out, not "customers themselves".
I doubt that there are many Uber drivers that do it long term. Eventually at some point they have to realize that they're making peanuts (if not operating at a loss) after they factor in routine AND long-term maintenance costs of their vehicle. Or they simply get 'real' jobs and were using Uber between jobs or to supplement income temporarily.
The people I know that have personally done driving for these services has done it in addition to full-time work, largely hoping to earn decent extra money from tips.
Cities need to designate pick-up/drop-off spots away from heavily-trafficked streets for these pseudo-taxi services, UX be damned.
Maybe some form of limited-supply, transferrable crypto-token[1][2]... Could be used to prevent these sorts of situations.
[1] I am, of course referring to medallions.
[2] I am, of course, fishing for karma, by introducing a blockchain when one is not necessary.
On what planet are "the poor" commuting back and forth to work via Uber?
Honestly, what's your solution?
Cars are an extremely modern invention for London - the city is almost 2000 years old, and has some really fancy, really old, really precious stuff in the way.
So Uber as a service hasn't been that revolutionary in London, the things they HAVE done is improve the ordering UX and making CC's ubiquitous.
Nobody denies that people like Uber for reasons but what does it even mean for a Taxi system to suck when compared to a super exploitative, unregulated enterprise such as this? As a driver, this is not only about compensation. It's about a critical lack of security in all aspects of your life. And if, as a passenger, you can't really afford decent service and working conditions maybe you are trying to live beyond your means and you should really be boarding a train or bus instead. And if you can't, that, to me, seems like a political problem that shouldn't be solved on the backs of some of the most vulnerable sectors of society.
In London? The suckage level was zero. Black cabs were fine. Reputable minicabs (Addison Lee etc.) were fine. Uber does not provide anything like enough improvement to justify the level of illegality it's riddled with.
Just recently I took a bus at LGA that takes you from the tetminal to the taxi stand due to construction. Even this was easier than getting a Lyft or Uber. I was in the cab way faster (including bus ride) much faster than if I trek to the designated ride hailing pickup areas and negotiate the sea of traffic to find my driver (even in less busy hours).
To boot, the cab trip started further from the airport due to the bus ride, so we were out of airport’s immediate dropoff traffic right away.
Ride was ~$10 cheaper than Lyft as well. The only downside was the annoying TV embedded in the cab. I muted it but could not power off the display.
And this seems to just be the commonly accepted narrative among upper middle class progressives, so much so that nobody even bats an eye at the extraordinary contradiction.
I feel like I'm living in an alternate reality lately. All tech is evil, that's just a fact, but it has improved our lives so much that we all continue to use it all day every day.
And yes, I think Uber's attempt to squash all competition is bad. But because they are managing to do it, the smaller firms lack driver mass and when i need to get from A to B, I'm stuck with Uber. Tomorrow I will try Kapten, and if that works fine, I'll just use it. If it doesn't deliver, I'll stick with uber while it's around. Between standing in the rain and using Uber - my choice is already made up. Still doesn't mean i need to like them.
Even with Uber never getting a real foothold in Germany, they still did just that. It start with the myTaxi (nor for some inexplicable reason rebranded to FREE NOW) app that allowed you to book a cab, see where it is, get a price estimate and pay with your credit card. It wasn’t as smooth, but still better than before.
Now last weekend when I came back from a party at night, I called out "Anyone taking card payments?" and two drivers out of 10 raised their hands, they used SumUp [0] which is also what my favorite cocktail bar uses :)
[0]: https://sumup.com/
This tunnel vision of only seeing one provider of a new but fundamentally commodity service is interesting. It reminds me a lot of how Git and MySQL took off - people encountered them, thought, "oh, that's great, i'll use that", and never stopped to think if there might be better alternatives.
I imagine Uber is incredibly badly managed.
What is a "violent" takeover? What would a nonviolent takeover be?
I'm all for new companies providing better services to consumers. If they take over a market, isn't that because the existing market wasn't meeting consumer needs? A new company taking over a market is generally a good thing, the creative force of capitalism itself.
(Provided it's not done by ignoring legitimate standards for safety, environment, externalities, etc.)
I wonder if it will trigger some social structure / device to avoid too much stagnation without requiring a shark-like company to try wiping the traditional market with infinite pockets.
I'm not a fan of them and I've never paid them any money, neither one. They are scum bags.
How will the world improve if you reward what you don't like?
Sure "The Knowledge" is an impressive feat of learning, but more often than not the drivers don't make use of it because the best route is not the most profitable one for the driver.
I have lost count of the number of times I have been subjected to the "tourist tax" where the driver heads straight for the major artery roads with their traffic jams (e.g. Kings Road, Strand, Embankment etc.) so you get to sit there watching the meter clock up whilst you move nowhere. Or the number of times the quickest and least-traffic route is South of the river but the driver sticks religiously to the Northen route.
Or the number of times the driver fumbles slowly getting the change, in the expectation that you say "oh forget it, keep the change" ... even if that change is £4 or more !
Or when I've been driving around London only for the Black Cab in front of me to stop on a double-red line to drop off a passenger. Or make a U-Turn in the middle of a busy street.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not fond of Uber either. Their standard of driving is pretty poor, and I hate the way they sit at the Heathrow DROP-OFF area waiting for their next job.
What I am saying is that the London cabbies are in dire need of some stiff competition. Yes I would rather that competition come from someone of better quality than Uber.
Black Cab drivers seem to think it is somehow their birth right to have a job that charges outrageous amounts, like they are some sort of vital service like the police or ambulance service that needs to be protected no matter what. Bullshit - I bet if they all disappeared tomorrow most non-tourists wouldn't even notice apart from the lack of traffic and diesel pollution near stations.
And "The Knowledge"? yeah yeah yeah...whatever. Most of us had to study full-time and/or in evenings & weekends in order to pass exams to get our jobs too, but that doesn't mean our out-dated and largely obsolete knowledge should be put on a pedestal and protected against more efficient modern tech (1).
The sad reality is that they have TfL by the balls, and that is why this action against Uber is happening. Just as a reminder, the UK's most prolific rapist was a black cab driver who picked people up in his cab then drugged and raped them - they think he raped up to 100 people (2) so it is clear that the vetting for black cab drivers does not actually work (3). Yet despite this, and the obvious parallels of anyone being able to borrow their mates black cab just the same as anyone can borrow their mate's uber login & car - TfL do nothing about Black Cabs.
1 - "the knowledge" only memorises fixed routes. It does not provide information about traffic, road works, accidents etc, but google maps API as used by Uber et al does, so the knowledge is obsolete there.
2 - "The Blackcab Rapist" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Worboys
3 - this guy was not just a "one off" that slipped through the vetting process through a moment of madness or a "who could tell that one day this man would rape someone?" He was a maniac who raped up to ONE HUNDRED people - the UK's most prolific serial rapist in fact - yet the vetting process failed to detect the worst rapist the UK has ever seen and approved him to be a black cab driver. You have to wonder how many small-time rapists also got through the vetting...
Minicabs are.
There is stiff competition, if uber is banned from london permanently, the drivers will be going to one of the three+ alternatives.
Uber's idea isn't new in london, Addison Lee had a "app based booking" since at least 2013. The _only_ thing going for it is that its ubiquitous. Its not even the cheapest.
I rarely get taxis anymore, because frankly its pointless unless you're drunk. However when I have been forced to (wife in hospital, post tube closing time) The fastest, cheapest and most comfortable was the black cab.
Failing that there was a really good minicab firm round the corner from my old house.
The black cabs have different rules and regulations.
Uber has its advantages, but as I've moaned about here on HN in the past, its drivers tend to slavishly follow whatever automatatically-derived route it is that Uber spoon feeds them, often meaning they set off in the wrong direction (based upon which side of the road they pick up from) or use routes that anyone who knows the local area (or has The Knowledge) would do their utmost to avoid.
Uber took off here easily because existing minicabs were all really really crap. Not just expensive but often rude or incompetent drivers. I would guess a lot of them were unregistered and uninsured and their cars barely road legal.
Black cabs are Better but very expensive and still rip off tourists all the tine by charging without the meter. Even with the meter it was impossible to get any idea how much a trip would cost before you took it. And you needed cash.
Example: One time I got a minicab, it took the guy over half an hour to arrive, then he had to actually find me which took even longer. Then I realised the back seats of the car were full of vomit and he made me ride up front with the windows wide open - it was winter and cold. Then he didn’t know where he was going and got lost and then he charged me £30 for what would have cost £10 on Uber.
Uber, by comparison is great.
At the very least, if the only penalty is getting booted off the 'platform', getting added to Uber's platform is relatively cheap. Getting added to the black cab 'platform' requires getting licensed, which takes years and costs a lot of money.
I'd imagine that fraudulently impersonating a black cabbie comes with significantly more penalty than getting 'booted off the platform' (license revocation).
There is concern that this is happened in the past and penalties are extremely severe: the owner of the original license will lose their badge and may face criminal charges.
It's a bit hard to describe the taxi market in London to anybody who doesn't live here, but it's a closed shop only to the extent that if you're prepared to do the work to get a badge, it won't cost you $1m like New York, but you will have to put some hours in, and you'll get known by many other black cab drivers.
If you show up with "Dave's cab" and you're not Dave, you're going to get asked questions. Do it a couple of times, and they might decide to pull your badge number up.
A few years ago a genuinely licensed black cab driver was convicted of rape and sexual assault, and as a result the community was shaken: it was the first time in over 300 years where a licensed operator had been convicted of such a crime, and they now look on newcomers with even more suspicion.
There are no lobbyists in parliament, and most black cab drivers I know have modest incomes. They declare an average of £38k/year, but as a cash business (until recently), it was assumed they were actually doing about £50k/year. Good money, but not megabucks.
The system is supported because it's worked for hundreds of years. Their chief complaint against Uber is whether their drivers have to undergo the same amount of vetting as they had to (they don't), and whether the fare structure is fair (it isn't, especially as it's VC-subsidised).
Uber is a great solution in many places that have poor transit and poor taxi solutions already. London isn't one of those places, and hasn't been for hundreds of years.
I guess demeanor, dress, etiquette, and a bunch of other pleasantries are still a commodity, but then again the stereotypical NY cabbie gets their fair share of likes and dislikes from the movies and tourists too. To me, Uber and Lyft are indispensable for doing business across teh US now. I can go away with car rentals where I only need to make a few hops during a day, and I can stay somewhere without worrying about parking or hailing down a cab.
This boogeyman trope needs to die. Uber is not funded by VCs anymore.
Black Cab drivers have the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association lobbying for them politically https://twitter.com/TheLTDA
A black cab driver has made a more significant investment in that license and will be much less likely to jeopardise it than some shmuck loaning out his uberx login -- especially when Uber not only doesn't do anything to stop it, but encourages it with more dark patterns.
Literally what? Who does this? The app is a source of income, why would anyone share it?
If anything, this ban makes me feel like London is run by a bunch of protectionist luddites.
Not that America is any better these days, NJ recently decided to get into the game and started to go after Uber.
I wouldn't be surprised to see Uber riders blocking taxi ranks if Uber actually stopped operating, Black Cabs serve very few Londoners.
Edit: Not "literally couldn't get home", I would just have to spend over an hour on a night bus.
Don't be ridiculous. Private hire minicabs have existed since the 1960s.
I'm not being flippant here: customers have routinely shown that for lower prices they'll suffer almost anything, to the point that safer alternatives become uncompetitive.
TfL isn't asking for much here: just that drivers are vetted properly and consistently. Every other firm in London is asked to do it, and complies. If Uber can put them all out of business by saving money on not doing that, the market will make the industry less safe for passengers.
We have voted in people to ensure that doesn't happen, because we want protection from the free market, simple as.
Another huge reason is that black cab drivers need to pass The Knowledge, a test of London streets, that often takes 3-4 years of study to pass, and AFAIK the requirements for this test haven't changed in the age of smartphones. This is utterly absurd with modern GPS, and just serves as protectionism and a false barrier to entry for new drivers.
Perhaps it's a regional condition?
I take it for granted that the staff at Uber would do anything not to lose the license. I am sure that, for 17 months, they've been investing heavily in security systems, ID verification etc. They must have followed up on every complaint. If I were them, I would have just manually followed everything that the Cabs do till I had a technology in place.
It also seems that the city is making some effort to give them space to improve: 15 months, then 2 months.
So then why didn't the gap close in time? Is this because the technology platform was so massive that turning it just took more time? Or is there something about the details that I can't see?
Edit: I start with the assumption that both Uber and the City are trying to do their best, and don't ascribe nefarious intent to anyone.
Even worse, "Pedestrian outside crosswalk not assigned goal of crossing street", "Tracking history not considered when classification changes", "Predicted path depended on object’s goal".
Basically they configured it to run over people who crossed outside a sidewalk.
I would not assume Uber are doing their best. Or, insofar as they define "best", it's "what can we do as quickly as possible with no consideration to what is legal".
To be fair, I could see myself implementing these sort of heuristics to get a working prototype. On the other hand, I deliberately avoid working on life-critical software because of how easily it can go wrong.
But, for the sake of argument, let me grant you that some large subset of the decision makers were callous about these safety concerns.
I don't know how they would still not be sensitive to the need to respond to the authority that has only conditionally let it have its license back. I mean, that sort of threat has a tendency to focus one, even if one is cynical about their motives.
“Any London politician wants the black cabs on their side. They carry a political and electoral clout that is way beyond their numbers. There is nothing secret about that,” says Daniel Moylan, who was deputy chairman of TfL under Mr Johnson. [1]
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/07/31/the-t... [1] https://www.ft.com/content/41a0ff40-a383-11e7-9e4f-7f5e6a7c9...
Multiple mayors - including the current PM who was once Mayor of London - have explained that there needs to be an open culture.
There are other private hire vehicle operator firms in London. Addison Lee is huge, and there are many, many "minicab" firms. They all comply with TfL's licensing and vetting procedures. Uber does not.
This isn't "black cabs vs Uber", this is "black cabs, Addison Lee, all the minicab firms, TfL and the Mayor of London demanding basic vetting procedures that everybody else does without question or issue".
However, if that were the case, why not just say no license? Why give an opportunity to Uber to show an improvement in their numbers? And why do it twice?
Plus, there are two taxi systems, the Black cab, and the minicab. There are way more minicabs than black cabs, and they are a much bigger competitor to uber than black cabs.
I would not be surprised one bit to learn that they did very little or even nothing at all to address the concerns.
This seems, from a technical perspective, an easy problem to solve with the resources of a public company.
Is it the desperation of people who need the money so badly they will constantly cheat the system? Can you design for that?
Is it the desperation of people who need the money so badly they will constantly cheat the system? Can you design for that?
I don't think the motivation on the part of the drivers who do this is very important. They're intentionally deceiving Uber customers, and in some cases endangering them. That just has to stop, even if the driver is desperate. The point here is that it's Uber's responsibility to stop it happening, and Uber has apparently chosen not to (like you, it's not that hard). That will be very hard to justify, especially as Uber were running TV ads about how they do background checks on all their drivers here in the UK recently.
It's a pain in the ass to have to pull over and do this sometimes, but it does seem like they're trying to do the right thing with it. I will say that at first it made me pretty angry, but when I realized the implication - that someone has probably already tried to fraudulently hand control to a different driver - it gave me chills and I realized they may not have many other options.
Perhaps a selfie with the driver taken by the passengers during the drive would also suffice.
In my opinion, Uber has done enough. They provide the passenger with the drivers name and photo. It’s up to the passenger to verify, but Uber should make violations easy to report.
This is the Internet. If you don't design for people cheating you, they will wreck your system as soon as it becomes popular enough to be visible.
You could also do spot checks (no idea if they do or not), but that's not going to eliminate the problem just reduce it.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2...
Unauthorised drivers who don't match their picture ID driving.
They tried to solve the problem from the wrong angle, and it turns out that the high cost of taxis, while suboptimal for sure, might not be entirely for no reason.
Well get this, I live in London and I love Uber and I would definitely miss Uber if they stopped operating here. So your statement is wrong. In fact, our general slack channel at work had a ton of people posting sad faces about this news. But yeah sure I guess you know what every Londoner thinks...
Their race to the bottom was absolutely beneficial to consumers while it was going on. Smaller rivals have nowhere near the resources of Uber when competing with Grab.
We surely missed Uber when it left.
I'm pretty sure Uber will raise prices the moment it kills the competition
From my understanding, this might be called "limousine service" in the USA, although unless you make a special request it will just be a fairly normal car.
Mobile phones and then apps made the border between the two services fuzzier, but they are still separate things.
This is and always will be a matter of opinion.
Uber is not putting a gun to anyone's head. If it's not profitable for you to drive, you don't have to.
Uber outsources all the risk and fees that taxi companies would have to cover.
I wonder if we would all feel the same about some other ponzi scheme.
But their platform has a near-monopoly in many markets, which they use to set prices while simultaneously classifying drivers as independent contractors.
> Legislation means that Uber now has 21 days to appeal, during which it can continue to operate pending any appeal and throughout any potential appeals process. Uber may seek to implement changes to demonstrate to a magistrate that it is fit and proper by the time of the appeal.
I bet they could go on like this forever.
A family member booked. A driver committed. The wait got shorter. Then it got longer. And longer. And then our trip was cancelled without reason. Another was booked. Same gig. We had no opportunity to 1-star those drivers for being dicks. The third arrived but we didn't get the fabled offer of foot massages, nor were we plied with snacks or drinks. It was just a cab ride with the awkward "You've been great passengers, I'll rate you five stars!" exchange at the end. "Err, thanks mate?"
The return trip was pretty similar. It's 1am. Want to go home. One dropped. It's getting really cold now. Second arrives. Again, an entirely standard private hire experience with the added convenience of being asked to rate at the other end.
But this lack of recompense for crappy initial service isn't good. If a real private hire did that, you'd use another company and would never use that one again. You'd tell friends and family not to use it. You'd be able to complain to the council about the company. With Uber, you just huddle up and hope the next is better.
This is by far one of the more benign complaints you hear about (versus deliberately slow routes to push the top end of the range, or surge pricing) but it absolutely undermines the purported convenience factor. Being able to talk to a manned rank in actual contact with their drivers is so much better in practice.
It's a hugely better process than the old phone-a-number and hope minicabs and taxi services. That would take 15 minutes minimum, often much longer, and you had no idea when it would arrive.
I think it's partly because of the ease of use - usability, partly because of brand investment and loyaly, but with Uber and Airbnb, there are no direct competitors that have the same user experience. That people are willing to put up with hosts cancelling their uber stays or swapping them for something dodgy and that people are willing to put up with bad Uber experiences speaks volumes. I also think it might be because when things go wrong, we users will blame the driver not the company, we will blame the airbnb host, not the company.
>A driver committed. The wait got shorter. Then it got longer. And longer. And then our trip was cancelled without reason
has happened to me a lot too. I wish they would fix that some how. I'm not sure what it's about. You'd think the drivers would either come get you or not rather than say they are coming and then flake.
What year was this? Where was this? This comment is worth absolutely nothing without specifics, and even then its a tiny data point which cannot offer any real perspective on the current news about Uber in London.
Those issues are all systemic. They apply to Uber everywhere today just as much as they did six days ago when this happened.
"I rode a black cab once before Uber and it was awful."
I'll trust the research from TFL rather than random anecdotes from either side, thanks.
The counterpoint seems obvious here. That’s more expensive. Even more than hypothetical unsubsidized Uber. There’s lots of valid complaints against Uber. These feel like the lowest priority ones available. Uber is about cheap prices and secondly low interaction costs.
Have you ever seen a bunch of Deliveroo riders clogging up the public space outside a restaurant or other public space? Why should one business get to exploit pavements for profit, without regulation. Private companies shouldn’t be able to co-opt public space without scrutiny or permission.
Or maybe I’m too ethical and not being enough of a hustler, and I should move my team into the desk space at the local library?
Maybe the restaurant should pay for the use of that public space of they want to offer delivery?
It feels though like the delivery driver loitering problem is a red flag for a much larger problem of corporate appropriation being acceptable, without being challenged by those we entrust to look after our public spaces and roads.
It’s why a solution like “delivery drivers shouldn’t loiter in public spaces” is a poor solution, and why “private business should not be conducted in public without a license” might be a better and more general message.
Did they go beyond simple parking into more egregious use of public space, like parking on the sidewalk or blocking traffic?
Or is it about public parking? Would it be okay if they were customers instead of delivery workers? How much of a difference does it make that a corporation is involved?
Unlike the others, it's operated and owned by the workers - so you know that everyone is getting a fair deal.
Well, one year on and Uber has not been able to get its house in order. This move will doubtless be extremely unpopular with Londoners, many of whom will suspect that the black cab unions are behind it. Uber called Tfl's bluff last year knowing there would be a public backlash if their services were withdrawn. It will be interesting to see how it plays out this time.
Regardless of your opinion of Uber and their labour practices, they offer an incredibly valuable service to millions of people. They have massively increased the availability of minicabs, made booking them incredibly easy and safe (not to mentioned with far better coverage than was previously possible) and affordable to more people. Not only that, thousands of people now make a living driving Ubers whom before wouldn't have been able to get a job as a minicab driver at all, as the firms would artificially limit numbers to keep fares high.
Uber and Tfl are both playing a risky game here.
any idea what the source of this info is?
And not sure what the timeframe here is. Is it 14000 since Uber started operating in london?
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/78827b06-0f6a-11ea-a225-db2f231cf...
This is politics plain and simple. And not the first time Uber has had to play the game. This same thing played out in 2017. The courts will side with Uber.
I don't have FT subscription. But 43 out of 45k drivers seems like a pretty good number, certainly not a ban worthy number.
[edit] open access version of article: http://archive.is/mNxBo
I would guess that if this is a widespread practice it is only a secret to the outsiders. Probably an investigation can find a way to frame this known secret in a way that is legally accepted in the court of law.
The legit driver almost always gets a cut for this, free money on your vacation days or while you're working other, better jobs.
* https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2019/novemb...
What a time to be alive. Don't have and don't need a license.
> Tons of breaches documented here [1], at least 14 000 trips with unlicensed (uninsured) drivers. Drivers with suspended licences were allowed to re-register with Uber, drivers were allowed to drive without insurance on their vehicle.
I genuinely wonder if Uber could keep enough drivers if they stopped allowing uninsured or suspended drivers.
[1]: https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2019/novemb...
London is not an easy place to drive, and many of those passengers would have been vulnerable: lone females, people who had too much to drink, etc.
You might not consider it horrific, but by London standards it is completely unacceptable.
I'd assume, this will be resolved like the last time, just a minor hitch.
At worst (for Uber) it's just some free organic traffic for their competitors.
I am curious how you get to decide on what should be affordable? And what if somebody disagrees?
Do not know about London. In my location all the money go to paying license fees and to the actual owners of Cabs (any entity with the money but the taxi driver). And how exactly exploiting taxi drivers makes us safer I have no idea.
Failure to do criminal background check is also pathetic lame excuse. I really doubt that said former criminal got into taxi driving job and paid all those fees in order to rob/assault passengers.
Private transporting is not sustainable and it is not something that has to be affordable for everyone, even less by lowering workers wages or playing with the tariffs by demand. Taxi regulations gives us passengers safety and fair prices. There are taxi apps that work exactly like Uber's like 'Free-now' where you can see your trip, its aproximate cost, the driver's rating...
We have to promote governments that support affordable and good quality public transport, even though I love driving alone in my car.
I hope Deliveroo, Glovo and other companies are also punished for their labour rights abuses. Make sure your delivery guy is payed fairly or either go to the restaurant yourself.
So many years of labour rights fights being attacked by these startups that do not invent anything but base their business model on lower wages.
Not that it was completely without problems, but compared to say NYC cabs they were worlds apart. Sure, there was a problem for a while with rogue unregistered cabs, though IIRC that was mainly minicabs and relied on intercepting despatch radio messages, but there were some black cabs. The cliche of not going south of the river held up to some scrutiny too. Uber of course go with phone you then just don't show if they don't like the route and waste half and hour of yours. At least it was a two way conversation with a cabbie.
That London hasn't put a blanket ban on diesel cabs in the low emission zone isn't really the cab's fault - that's firmly on the authorities...
Moreover, the cabs were filthy, they often refused passengers due to race, disability or other illegal prejudice, refused certain destinations, spoke little English, didn't know the city, would drive inefficiently to drive up costs and on and on.
Oh, and cellphones arrived and they did NOTHING until Uber pushed them to accept mobile payments. You STILL can't see your ETA or share the ride, and there's no ratings/reputation system.
So between the demons, I'll take the ride-sharing companies.
Uber has pushed up quality in general. Market pressure is often a better way of doing these things rather trying to have a central inspector who can't see everything all of the time.
Here's the thing: I don't want to rate my driver. I want to be able to rely on a third party that all available drivers are punctual and competent. It is not a choice I want to make.
Too much responsibility is already dumped on consumers under the guise of choice. Quality control of services I utilize is something I expect to pay for.
1. Remember to get the cab medallion number during your ride.
2. Go online to submit a fairly lengthy report to TLC, alongside your contact info.
3. Nothing for 2 months
4. Someone calls you asking you for details. You may even have to show up to a hearing. By this point you forget almost the entire issue.
5. The cabbie who ignored you, drove dangerously, scammed you has been driving for months without a registered complaint and nothing will happen.
New York Yellow Cab is the best too—cabs in the Bay Area, for instance, were absolutely awful before Uber. I also cannot imagine Taxi companies were stewards of fair labor practices before Uber either.
What I heard from drivers is Uber has by far the best tech for predicting/connecting routes. And I am really tired of of screaming "workers rights" all the time.
The only reason ANY of the taxi companies have improved service with new apps and lower prices is because of the competition introduced by ride sharing companies.
Pre uber hailing a cab from a location other than the airport in Atlanta where I live was impossible. You'd have to call their 1-800 number hours in advance with no guarantee of it being serviced. Even if such apps exist now it might be due to uber pushing the envelope. Uber and other ride sharing service might not be relevant in the NYCs, Chicagos and Londons of the world but for cities like ours they were a godsend.
Uber isn't exploiting anyone: it is extremely simple to register with them, you can work whenever you please, and you can stop at any point; they pay on time and give you transparent access to their managerial infrastructure to see how you can align yourself with their business, or that you're unwilling to do that. Just because your system isn't set up to particularly support independent contractors doesn't mean that Uber's drivers fall outside that category.
In Toronto, when the cabbies were fed up with being out-competed by Uber contractors (and Uber's subsidies at the time), they decided to block all the roads surrounding a major hospital, including the emergency vehicle routes. To my mind, all of them should have lost not only their taxi licenses, but their driver's licenses as well.
The authorities promised to professionalize cabs, but in reality they did the exact opposite, and the same story has repeated itself across North America.
Unfortunately people are morons that don't know how to make the "right" choice. We will be conveniently layering bureaucracy and laws on top of all of this to make sure the clearly inferior product wins by fiat of the government.
You would all thank us but you're obviously too stupid to know what's best for you.
Uber at the end of a day is just a private enterprise operating (mostly) consistent with the law and with it's function as a private enterprise which is to make money for its shareholders. Blaming them for this is akin to blaming the puppy eating monster for eating the puppies we give them. Who the f- thought that would be a good idea to begin with?
Says who? Just because you say it, doesn't make it true. Private transporting has been with humanity since ancient times. It's not going away and it's sustainable.
> and it is not something that has to be affordable for everyone, even less by lowering workers wages or playing with the tariffs by demand.
It's nice that you aren't price conscious when taking 'private transport'. And you're right, uber opened up the market to people that could not afford (or could not justify) taking a taxi before. You see that as a detriment, because you have money but others may disagree. That was certainly me in Uni when I walked home in the middle of night, through sketchy neighbourhoods, because my city's public transport ended at 2am, and I wasn't about to pay $40-$60 for a cab ride (assuming it showed up at all).
I actually started using Uber when during a trip to Chicago I got shafted by several taxi companies who simply wouldn't pick me up from (I guess) the neighbourhood I was in .. in the middle of November. That was the reality of taxis pre-uber. Everybody hated them. They were openly discriminating by geogrpahy and ethnicity. They were expensive. They were also unreliable. And you had no options.
>Taxi regulations gives us passengers safety and fair prices.
Tax regulations, especially in cities like New York, protected taxi cab companies (and the private equity firms that owned the medallions) and created a medalion bubble which made running an independent taxi almost impossible and benefited only the medallion owners.
It's also a false choice. Muncipalities can (and do) certainly set safety standards on Uber and Lyft.
And by the way, many of the regulations that Taxis operate under came as a result of taxis scamming and cheating people (especially tourists and forgeiners) out of money. And it still happens if you travel abroad ... speaking of which, when I'm abroad and Uber is available, it really does remove the language barrier and is immensely helpful in navigating a non-english speaking city.
>We have to promote governments that support affordable and good quality public transport,
'Private transport' is public transport. It is part of the mix of public transportation. Every option you provide that disincentives car ownership is a benefit.
In most cases, the person laying flat on the pavement was a delivery driver (with an "L" printed on the bike).
Amazon's subcontracting model is not much different in that regard, imo.
You're conflating how Uber works in certain countries to how it works in London. The relationship between Uber and the driver can vary so much depending on what market you are talking about.
Wait, what?
It's been 10 years since you could first do it in e.g. Stockholm with normal licensed taxis.
Edit what I mean are regular taxis, not "black cabs", "minicabs" etc. I mean the iconic taxis. If you can't hail those, why not?
https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/taxis-and-minicabs/book-a-taxi?intc...
There isn't a central service that gives you access to all cabs, though.
TfL used to have a service where you could text them, and they would text back two phone numbers for local minicab firms near you. That was really useful for getting home when you were in an unfamiliar part of town.
You hail them with your arm, yes. This is quite fine and normal because there are millions of them.
Just like how you might signal for a bus.
I simply do not trust the company.
I accept that the market pressure uber has brought has improved transportation. I do not accept that uber and its repeated atrocious behaviors required for this.
Its a shame that uber can so easily bypass tfl with appeals and minor changes.
90% of the time, uber is being kicked not because of any concern for safety, but because of traditional taxi company lobbying.
Source: personal experience in 2 cities.
I don't know why on earth that even technical people praise them so much.
The technical innovations to delivering this cheap labour are just an afterthought.
No one is forcing people to drive for uber and no one is forcing the rider to use uber. In my city, Accra, Taxis were so expensive until uber came to the market and forced down the price.
The only system that puts the consumer (read: common man) first is the free market (if and only if politicians would allow it to work).
on the other hand, often it often takes an outsider to disrupt a well established and corrupt market in order to move it forward.
When I was in London, the ease of ordering a ride with your smartphone was a reliable comfort in a foreign land.
Maybe if I hadn't undergone shitty experiences in Paris et al. being swindled by the train operations, I wouldn't be taking Uber's side, but it just is that Uber has just worked for me so many times when other options failed.
What it sounds like is that people were able to buy/use/borrow “verified” Uber Driver accounts, and upload their own photo into the app to allow them to drive for Uber without the correct background and license checks. I think it’s fair for a regular to give Uber a slap on the wrist for allowing this to happen, whether in purpose or not.
It looks like their offices are still there but when you go in there is an empty room with a phone.
