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...

"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."

I completely disagree. The uber app shows the route the driver is taking and offers way more transparency than a black cab.

It seems that you rode a black cab very occasionally, if you never experienced a cabbie getting lost. Much has been made of the knowledge, which was dense where the routes being traversed were frequent but it was already deteriorating by the time Uber arrived. I have had the misfortune of having to rely on black cabs, on some of my past gigs, on a daily basis and spent a small fortune/part of my life on these rides, especially when they were the only choice in a rush. I can assure you that the cliché of not going south of the river was 100% true, amongst many others, although it doesn't matter so much anymore. As for romanticising the 'two-way conversation' ─ it was not a dialogue but usually an unsolicited diatribe of regurgitated opinions, gathered from the daily rags and caustic radio chat shows ─ which you were bullied into agreeing with, just to journey in some relative peace and quiet. I will take an Uber et al. every single time, for the very reasons you mentioned.

I've had cabbies get lost twice, that I can remember - once he was claiming to be new, and he was stressing like crazy about it. The other time I went a fair way out of local area. Both times resolved amicably. Sure, I've also had a fair selection of less than perfect routing - but overall, far less than some of the games Uber drivers have tried.

I almost always got conversation or quiet and can't ever remember an unsolicited diatribe. I'd steer conversation away from the political, and if that's what the driver wanted to chat about, I'd ask them to shut up.

I would take the overall service received every time over the comparative service from Uber. Neither was or is perfect. Uber's cheap, and it shows in what and how they deliver, and the complete lack of quality and standards for drivers. It's essentially the only selling point. I'm a long way out of London now, but I've gone back to exclusively using cabs and private hire.

They are not rare in city centres, which is their natural habitat eg. take a trip into Central London/Westend/City of London etc., you will find them everywhere. Unless, you are talking about the suburbs, where they have always been as rare as hens teeth.

https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/taxis-and-private-hire/licensing...

In reality, Uber’s existence, no matter what the company or its supporters might say, is simply a different way of highlighting the very same failure in public policy.

The poor have no bread? Let them eat cake. The citizens need an out of hours ride home from the pub? Page a Prius.

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.

I don't know if private transport is ultimately unsustainable. That's something people much smarter than me will have to figure out how to measure. But I do know rideshare is objectively a better product for consumers across the board than the services it replaced.

Now with Lyft I can get a car in just a few minutes, hop in, get driven to my destination, and get out. No worrying about cash or tipping. Just go. A lot nicer.

Of course you can just have a bunch of black car services in your phonebook that are dispersed around the city but.. at that point why not just use rideshare?

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.

Even when society decides it’s up to the private sector to fulfill its needs there needs to be regulation to avoid the “race to the bottom” from meaning an actual race to rock bottom.

Uber surely provides an amazing service to consumers but at what cost to labor rights, road traffic, and in this case, public safety?

* Deregulate halfway, by promising that things will be better in the free market

* Wait for trust erosion in the public institutions and regulations

* Remove remaining regulations, because obviously, regulation is not working, and the "free" market will take care of things

* Create an effective monopoly because it is not economic to maintain two or more infrastructures in parallel. After that, raise prices.

If only we really had people lobbying for a truly free market. I.e. a market where rules are imposed and maintained. Where umpires make sure everyone is playing fairly. Where businesses can compete and where customers have a choice.

You know if you are a butcher, you should be pretty pleased with a central inspector touring your shop's front and back, making sure that hygiene is well-maintained. What needs to be made sure though is, that EVERY business competing with you is held to the same standards.

So for uber, I'd be super happy if they'd pay their drivers an agreed standard/union wage (or more) and compensated maintenance costs for their private vehicles they are using for the profit of the company accordingly. It's not much to ask really.

Please, take some time to understand why people have different ideas. It is seldom if ever, malice. If you cannot relate, keep your mouth shut, or ask questions.

PS: I'm not pushing for government regulation in any way though. UK have enough of totalitarianism-like regulations already.

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.

Our "grand old" taxi company in my town who advertises for being the only reliable option with professional drivers failed on me five times on a row. On successive rides I got a standard neo-nazi lecture about immigrants, my Visa credit card was refused apparently for transaction costs, two of my drivers got lost and one tried to drive to my destination using mostly sidewalks for driving on.

I sent feedback each time to only receive a generic "we are sorry, we have failed our quality controls and this will never happen again" copy-pasted message. Maybe it's more straightforward to advertise than getting rid of drivers who can't behave.

With Uber I know my bad ranking (I have always rated my drivers 5 stars, so far) has at least some effect on the misbehaving driver.

From what I hear.... London !

Here in New York we don't have the same kind of unusual taxicabs, but we do strictly regulate taxi and Uber drivers.

I personally find taxis here insufferable. I live in Queens and regularly had to help them "remember" where Queens is. Or remember the TLC regulations about accepting a credit card.

I've not had the same song and dance with Uber.

If this is the quality that the regulations enforce, count me out.

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/black-cabs-taxis-a...

Yes. I can provide you with multiple examples.

Use a cab in Singapore or anywhere in Japan and be amazed.

The "cabs are terrible" argument seems to me to be a very localized view.

Terrible cabs exist. So does fantastic service via the most efficient route by a driver who actually knows the city.

Uber lost the license because they were 'not fit or proper', nothing to do with vetting, seemingly because of a feature of the website that seemingly allows drivers to upload new photos and get other people to drive for them

> A key issue identified was that a change to Uber's systems allowed unauthorised drivers to upload their photos to other Uber driver accounts.

Other minicab firms of course don't have a photo on an app, and the passenger has to check the photo once they've got in the car (I believe PHV drivers have to show their PHV license from TFL), which puts passengers in a far worse situation when the driver doesn't match. I wonder how many small minicab firms have been determined to be not fit or proper.

What difference in vehicle maintenence?

The vetting process may be flawed, but it's flawed in both hackney carriage and phv licensing. This was acknowleged by say Milton Keynes, which gave a Hackney + PHV license to an applicant with convictions for rape and other serious sexual offences [0]

I have no confidence in London that the vetting process works, and the authorities are far more interested in retaining an obsolete cartel. Rather than fix their vetting procedure (which has always allowed dodgy minicab firms, which were never a threat to the powerful black cab industry), they concentrate on Uber.

[0] https://www.milton-keynes.gov.uk/pressreleases/2014/aug/taxi...

You sure can’t rely on the Uber, Lyft, Juno ratings. It’s 5 stars or bust. The social pressure on 5 stars is enormous.

Netflix moved to thumbs up, thumbs down. YouTube did the same, after showing a graph of the 5s and 1s:

https://techcrunch.com/2009/09/22/youtube-comes-to-a-5-star-...

I relentlessly give an average delivery or ride 3 stars, but feel bad every time. When the ride is quite good, 4 stars, and exceptional, 5 stars. Exceptional is the exception.

Three stars doesn’t make you a bad rider or a bad driver, just average. If it’s not the bulk of the ratings you give, you’re an unreliable rater and not helping the ratings anyway.

Just use the rating system like everyone else and get over it:

If the driver was great it’s 5 stars with all the “what did I do great” options checked and a note for the driver.

If the driver didn’t fuck up it’s five stars.

If you don’t want to be matched with the same driver again but they didn’t do anything egregious it’s three stars.

If you were outright disgusted at your ride it’s 1 Star.

That’s it. It’s simple. Your own personal usage of the ratings system is not helpful.

Actually, for another example of why your ratings method is bad, let’s compare three stars to grades in school. Three out of five stars would be 60%, which is a D- in most schools. That’s not an average grade. Someone who completes all the homework and does an average job would expect a B, which would be 4 stars. Someone who didn’t get any questions wrong would get an A, 5 stars.

If your Uber driver took you to your destination with a reasonably clean car that’s an A. There’s no such thing as exceptional. It’s a car ride not a physics exam, what do you want exactly?

Uber wants a driver to maintain over a 4 rating, something like 4.5 or 4.2. When you give that driver a 3 rating you’re not saying “thanks, you were acceptable and average.” You are saying “you kind of suck” and Uber won’t actually even match the driver with you again. So if you continue to give all your drivers 3 stars just because you wish the rating system worked a different way than it does, you’re even screwing yourself by reducing the number of drivers that can match with you.

However, the think that irks me the most is that rating everyday experiences is just dumb. Most taxi drives will be average and that's it, because we all just want it to be good enough. It's as if my local supermarket made me rate the cashier with 1 to 5 stars. I don't want to do that, because that person just needs to do their job. Anything above "good enough" is unnecessary. Significantly bad experiences should be a "reported to the manager" (or any similar mechanism), filtering out trivial complaints that you'd get in a 5-star scale and getting actual useful information on how to improve the system.

The US restaurant example is funny because the problem is the same. Instead of paying by default fair wages and paying attention to customers that complain about workers, they delegate the 'rating' part to customers, which means that there's no feedback on which they can improve and that their salary is determined by arbitrary people judgements.

That very much depends on which country you're talking about. That's the case in the US, but try telling a teacher in France you deserve 16/20 because you did an average job!

This is actually the sole reason I don't go to restaurants/diners. These rules aren't what I grew up with (yes, in the US, I've never left the country), seem to be different every time I hear them, and usually keep creeping higher. I just never know what to tip, so it's either fast food and no tip, or go a bit hungry until I can get home.

Tipping doesn’t need to be a source of anxiety. If the act of figuring out your tip is the sole reason you don’t go out for a nice meal on a special occasion, I think this is something to talk to a therapist or confidant about.

It's kinda funny how everything is connected: school grades, restaurant tips, taxi ratings.

If enough people make the right choice instead of the herd behavior, the commons will be less tragic.

“If the driver didn’t fuck up it’s five stars” is aggressively harmful to any above average or excellent drivers out there, with no reward for trying to be either.

When you have a 5* scale for rating a restaurant my description would be:

  *      A disaster level lousy place
  **     Sub par. Probably wouldn't visit again
  ***    Quite OK. Probably not my fave anytime soon, but 
         fine
  ****   Above average. Excellent food, service and 
         atmosphere
  *****  An out of this world dining experience. Perfect in 
         every aspect

But it should mean something and when most restaurants have something between 4 and 5 stars (Let alone that the #1 rated restaurant in London was one, which didn't exist[1]) the value of such ratings become very questionable.

You can see the exact same with Airbnb ratings where 4 -, or 5 star does not mean that you will have a great experience.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shed_at_Dulwich

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.

That line sums up this entire site. Talking about workers rights is politics, and we can't talk about that.

Let's just invent things and concentrate on that shall we?

It doesn't matter what effect it has on people or society, that's for other people to think about.

This place is full of politics.

> Let's just invent things and concentrate on that shall we?

I wish! But, for better of for worse, that's not what you'll find here.

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.

Personally, I like and use this "new breed" of app-based taxi services (except Uber). I just want to see Uber finally die. It should have died years ago.

The government granted a cap on drivers to guarantee its buddies got to earn a lot of money off the backs of taxi drivers.

Here in NYC, drivers rent a medallion to be allowed to drive. They start off the day in the hole.

If we're going to judge Uber for breaking this monopoly, let's also turn that same critical eye on the monopoly it broke.

That's quite an accusation (going from "taxi mafia" to taxis connected to actual mafia), though I suppose it's true in some parts of the world.

Either way, sure, plenty of cities had their taxi services thoroughly broken. However, that doesn't justify fighting the bad with the worse. Despite the PR narrative they pushed, Uber wasn't some tiny upstart bravely fighting against the great taxi mafia - it was a VC backed corporation (later on, a multinational) fighting individual taxi networks in a divide-and-conquer fashion. And when I call Uber sociopathic, I don't just mean I don't like them - this particular company has a long documented history of antisocial behavior.

> If we're going to judge Uber for breaking this monopoly, let's also turn that same critical eye on the monopoly it broke.

Again, multinational corporation breaking city after city, in isolation? Also, I'm not judging Uber for being a monopoly. I'm judging them for being a morally bankrupt company that achieved market domination by breaking the law and only got away with it because they moved fast and burned through lots of investor money.

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.

Is it "stupid" to want jobs that arguably require "less-skill" to not pay out a decent wage? Are we going to try to force more and more into university and leave those that don't fit in that box to work towards minimum wage? Taxi driving in London has long been a way of making a working class individual's life much better in exchange for the investment of the cost of the cab and licence.

First your argument is does one have a right to make money doing something the same way it was done yesterday? Or 10 or 20 years ago?

At one time you could make good money operating an elevator. Do we ban buttons in elevators to protect these jobs?

So no. No I don't think it's on societies best interest to outlaw buttons in elevators. New technology is happening that fundamentally de-values what a driver now does. It's unfair but it's maybe time for new jobs. That's simply best for society as a whole. The amount we all collectively save will vastly dwarf anything these few get by holding back the tide.

Two - the old system sucked. It was terrible. It still is. Taxis in NYC were already a cesspool of con-men and corruption. Lives were ruined in the buying and selling of medallions. The cars sucked, the drivers refused to go places, the ONLY reason it survived at all was the government forced it down our throats.

Uber won because people like it better. No matter what you say about any of it - people decided they VASTLY prefer pressing their own button in the elevator. It's sad but it's life.

So yes, it is "stupid" to fight this when everyone using these services has so clearly said the new way is better.

The EU's CAP is huge protection and in the US I'm sure there are all sorts of subsidises industries that "don't deserve it".

From the perspective of the working man this argument just seems to push down their wages but not allow other industries to pop.

No. Regulated taxis used to be a racket; of course they provided (somewhat) decent living for those who participated, although most money went to the medallion ownert.

I don't see why the needs of a few thousand cabbies (per city) should trump the needs of the millions who clearly prefer Uber.

also, don't call me 'intelligetsia', it is insulting

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?

Also you have to remember that people work for best option they have right now. If uber wasn't their best option they simply move to a better job.

If you ban uber you simply remove the current best option for most people working for uber.

> If uber wasn't their best option they simply move to a better job.

Simply? You know there are costs and risks associated with changing jobs, right?

> If you ban uber you simply remove the current best option for most people working for uber

This is blackmail and using workers as hostages. If Uber were a decent company, it would have hired the workers they need instead of the fraud that is the partner scheme. In this situation of Uber losing license to operate, the drivers would either be still employed or be fired and get severance packages and unemployment benefits.

This is why a lot of people dislike and want the "gig economy startups" gone: they ignore the rules in the name of "user experience", exploit their workers to keep prices down and eat up the market, and then use the position they have to force their views on public policy. Governments must stop them and make them pay what they should have paid if they were operating correctly.

If you actually listen to vast majority workers working Uber they're ok with it. They enjoy the flexibility and the lack of obligations. If people want more fixed work they can get it at the moment.

Essentially you are taking the choice away from these people to work for uber, based on your own version of your morals and not theirs.

Your imposing your own morals on people who don't want your morals. That can be dangerous.

>Your imposing your own morals on people who don't want your morals.

You are wrong. It is not morals. It is the law. Uber is bypassing laws, full stop.

1: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/08/uber-driv... 2: https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/02/mit-study-shows-how-much-d...

1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

The laws are created by a minority of people who don't always vote in favour of the public.

You regulate it like a normal job, and the thing they like about it most will be removed.

By the way, the report shows in appendix table 7 that only 23% of the sample reported more than 50% income from the gig economy. Don't you find it weird?

> The laws are created by a minority of people who don't always vote in favour of the public.

And Uber has the interest of the public in mind, right?

> You regulate it like a normal job, and the thing they like about it most will be removed.

Hiring someone as a freelancer to do a regular job (that is, a job where Uber decides fares, conditions and tools for the job and the worker mainly does what it's told) is fraud. And I'm not the one saying this, the courts are saying it in the UK [1] and other countries are following suit.

1: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/19/uber-lose...

You could pay the whole country a penny a day if all you cared about was boosting a number metric. It wouldn't somehow translate to worker satisfaction.

If you ban uber you simply remove the current best option for most people working for uber. You would worsen the conditions for them.