I’ve never had any issues with taxis. Have not used Uber and likely never will. The recent reports about the number of sexual assault arrests of Uber drivers doesn’t speak well of their screening techniques, or lack thereof.
When the number of medallions is limited, the secondary market would be where someone has to go to buy one.
Had the cities used the medallions only for requiring minimum standards for taxi drivers (by not limiting the number issued), rather than a way to protect incumbent medallion owners from new competition (presumably due to political lobbying by incumbents), there would not be as big an opening for phone-app rideshare companies to enter.
My BIL is a great guy, but he has learning disabilities that have always made it hard for him to hold down a regular job. He drives for Uber in Austin and does OK. He’s an early bird, so he is in demand before sunrise.
I prefer taxis. Have only caught Uber once, when BIL had his car towed and we needed to go reclaim it. Haven’t yet caught Lyft. When there are 2 of us, taxis are often cheaper than vans from
airport to the hotel and back. The taxis vary in cleanliness. We prefer to get rides with friends and family whenever possible.
On the Uber ride, the driver was giving us a sob story about how little he earns driving and all the debt he owes. It was pretty awful.
Philosophically, prefer Lyft over Uber as haven’t heard they cheat their drivers. Both our kids have both apps and use whichever is cheaper and faster for any given ride.
That’s what you get when protected by the government. Why change if they can force uber/lyft out with rules and regulations.
@greenwitch, going across the river is a bit of a problem. I hope they were at least starting from near the river because City Park isn’t even close
I drove a cab in Ann Arbor for a while back in my long-ago college days (summers and weekends), so I have some sympathy for taxi drivers, though I certainly understand the complaints. I’ll still take a taxi now and then, with mixed levels of satisfaction… My daughters take Uber and Lyft quite often and much prefer it. There are some problems with those services, though. As others have noted, their screening of drivers is uneven at best, and there are some real unsavory characters out there driving. And in many markets the drivers make very little money. The Washington Post calculated that Uber drivers in Detroit average $6.33/hour after expenses, and the new Uber/Lyft drivers’ union in New York City says many of its members need to work 12- to 14-hour days just to make the minimum wage after expenses. Those aren’t living wages. It may be fine for someone driving in their spare time just to pick up a little extra spending money—though it’s likely many part-time drivers aren’t realistically considering their expenses, especially depreciation on their vehicles. But it’s not a sustainable means of earning a living, and it’s undercutting taxi drivers who never made a lot of money but at least made a living wage. But because they’re treated as independent contractors on a take-it-or-leave-it basis and there’s essentially no entry barrier, the drivers are in an untenable bargaining position to demand better compensation, much less benefits.
New York, Chicago, DC and some other cities also say their central business districts are now flooded with Uber/Lyft vehicles, materially worsening congestion which was already bad before the unregulated onslaught of cars for hire. So those cities are now considering slapping a congestion surcharge on ride-sharing fares, which of course will ultimately put another squeeze on the drivers.
Do you think it’s the same comparison to how airbnb is affecting the hotel industry?
I live a bit out there, no cab company services this area, but a few locals started doing uber and now we use it around town and to the airport.
Lots of complaints about airbnb, even more I’d say, and a lot of them aren’t directed at hurting the hotel industry. They affect neighborhoods, they affect tourist towns where it can become hard for the workforce to find rentals now as lots of inventory has been turned into airbnb rentals (ski towns in Colorado as an example), there has been much talk about discrimination against POC, renters not paying taxes at least in the past, to name a few issues off the top of my head.
I feel like Lyft will become more like taxi in the long run in at least one respect. I’d guess that ultimately background checks are going to be required by many states or cities. I hope Uber just goes out of business.
I don’t think taxis can compete on the location factor — Lyft has so many drivers that one is never more than 10 minutes or less away. And obviously the app/user interface is an area where Lyft has a big leg up on taxis.
I don’t think Airbnb is at all comparable in its impact—at least not yet. A paper by researchers at Harvard Business School and MIT found that in the 10 markets where Airbnb has the largest market share, the entry of Airbnb resulted in 1.3% fewer hotel nights booked and a 1.5% loss in hotel revenue. So there’s some impact, but not much. What really rankles the hotel operators is that Airbnb limits their ability to gouge customers during periods of peak demand, but that’s a good thing, IMO. Taxi operators are generally prohibited from engaging in that sort of pricing practice—their rates are generally fixed by local regulations, and while some municipalities will allow for moderate increases during certain times of the day, it’s nothing like the hotel industry where operators are free to charge whatever the market will bear. (Ironically, it’s Uber and Lyft that are allowed to use what they call “surge pricing,” and I’ve heard of people paying some truly outrageous fares during “surges,” e.g., when there’s a sudden downpour just as a big sporting event is letting out).
Count me among the people who believe that a government supported taxi monopoly is bad and therefore hurts consumers. Competition in New York from the ride hail services is welcome, as far as I am concerned.
I don’t understand how a city can charge a cab for a medallion and an uber car can avoid it? Seems like unfair competition; level the playing field and get rid of the medallion fees for everyone, and instead charge a small licensing fee for everyone that would pay the cost of a background check.
Real taxis are the only ones that can pick up customers hailing from from the street. Other for-hire vehicles can only pick up with pre-arrangement which hailing by phone app does (other forms of pre-arrangement include airport shuttles and “black car” services).
Of course, some people find hailing by phone app more convenient, particularly if their origination is not in a taxi-dense area, or if their hails on the street tend to be ignored by passing taxis (i.e. black men).
If medallions were only used for background/quality checks, rather than as an artificial restriction on competition to protect incumbent taxi companies, there would not have been the kind of opening that non-taxi ride share companies could move into, since new entrants could just become real taxis. Hailing by phone app would still be an innovation, but would probably have been done first by a company running real taxis.
It seems like a distinction without a distinction to me. They are both providing the same service - a hired car ride. The same rules should apply to both.
When the distinction was first made, there was a much bigger difference between hailing a taxi on the street on the spur of the moment versus pre-arranging a ride from an airport shuttle or “black car”. It is only recently that phone app hailing made the difference less significant.
It makes sense now to unify the rules for all such services, but also remove the limitation on the number of licenses/medallions that served only to protect incumbent taxi companies.
- Uber and Lyft driver apps both support outside navigation apps, at least on Android (Google and Waze, maybe more now). So whoever has a sob story about the app's navigation just needs to set that up. Or maybe ditch the iphone, if they don't.
- Both Uber and Lyft have car lease options in most markets so the entry barrier is pretty low, actually. They aren't necessarily a good deal, but can be for full time drivers as they often come with unlimited mileage and thus no wear and tear issues.
I use both services often as my town doesn’t have taxi service of any reliable kind. I think the review system works well as far as filtering out bad drivers (depends on the market but drivers below 4 are usually deactivated).
http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/27/technology/business/uber-leasing-layoffs/index.html
Uber got rid of car leasing according to reports.
In LA Uber/Lyft >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Taxi. Taxis here are ridiculously expensive, take at least 30 minutes to arrive when you call and sometimes will then refuse to take you where you want to go. Uber/Lyft have been a godsend here.
@doschicos my Lyft driver last week leased her car. And Uber is still offering various lease/rent things - https://www.uber.com/drive/vehicle-solutions/
In NYC I sometimes take cabs - never Uber. Prefer to walk/subway.
Growing up I had to take gypsy (illegal) cabs because yellow cabs didn’t cruise my neighborhood (and occasionally refused to take me home as well). If I still lived where I grew up I suppose I’d use rideshare now.