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Uber Gives Up On New York Taxi Service
An anonymous reader writes "Uber, the startup behind a mobile app for connecting transportation services with people who need rides, has halted its efforts to partner with New York cab drivers. They've been fighting an uphill battle against regulators, who have warned drivers that they could face fines or loss of license if they worked with Uber. The company's CEO wrote, 'Demand far out-stripped supply, making you feel pretty lucky when you got a yellow from your iPhone. We did the best we could to get more yellows on the road but New York's TLC (Taxi and Limousine Commission) put up obstacles and roadblocks in order to squash the effort around e-hail, which they privately have said is legal under the rules. We'll bite our tongues and keep our frustration here to ourselves.'"
Update: 10/17 00:48 GMT by S : Here's TLC's perspective, in the words of Commissioner David Yassky: "In recent months, as e-hail apps have emerged, TLC has undertaken serious diligence and is moving toward rule changes that will open the market to app developers and other innovators. Those changes cannot legally take place until our existing exclusive contracts expire in February. We are committed to making it as easy as possible to get a safe, legal ride in a New York City taxi, and are excited to see how emerging technology can improve that process. Our taxis have always been on the cutting edge of technological innovation, from GPS systems to credit card readers."
There's no efficiency improvement or human betterment that can't be completely destroyed by bureaucracy and greed.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
What bullshit. It's two sides of the same coin. It's just a different group of items to ban or a different group to oppress.
Hahahaha. Have you ever visited NYC, let alone lived there? Getting a cab can be a pain in the ass even in mid-town. "Oh, look the 500th fuckin cab that's full or off duty! Might as well stand here with my arm in the air for another twenty minutes like a fucking tourist!"
The MTA may get you where you want to go, but might take two hours to do it. JFK to BX w/out MNR, anyone?
Seriously tell me hailing a cab is easy after you've tried to do it while standing in the snow an hour after bars close and you don't want to take three more God-forsaken hours to get home to an outer borough shithole apartment that costs $waytoofuckinmuch... Not that I'm bitter. :)
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
According to a statement from TLC Commissioner David Yassky, existing "exclusive contracts" are the reason that Uber can’t use cabs in the city. Those contracts are part of the Taxicab Passengers Enhancement Project (TPEP), which provides various hardware including GPS data collection, credit card processing and two-way messaging with drivers. Under the TPEP system, Creative Mobile Technologies and VeriFone have an exclusive contract to provide such infrastructure and services to the TLC.
So, your position is that the free market would support tearing those contracts up now rather than waiting untin Feb. 2013 to negotiate something that would include Uber?
Ever noticed that these "liberal outposts" are where the vast majority of our commerce and business are done?
Thank the government / crony capitalism duo . Taxi medallions are now worth 1 million $ in NYC these days. Slate had a good article on the situation. If taxi prices were set by the market, you would save a bunch, and they would be likely to support Uber as they might see a competitive advantage in doing so.
I saw this on TV a few days ago:
http://tag-taxi.com/
The app seems rather cool. It's the same basic principle of using an app to get a taxi, except you also get integration with the taxi's own GPS so you know precisely where the taxi is while it's on its way. The entire process looks rather streamlined and I'll be curious to see whether this one will work. Response from Taxi Diamond (one of the largest taxi companies in Montreal) certainly sounds a lot more positive than NYC's taxi companies.
"If taxi prices were set by the market"
The entire island of manhattan would be covered in taxi cabs. There would be total gridlock 24 hours a day.
Nope. What we are asking for is to get rid of these stupid medallions (not right now, when the contracts or whatever expire). Create a real free market of taxi companies competing with each other. Atleast of them would ready embrace Uber.
Apply congestion surcharges, the traffic will move better than ever and it is not just the taxis that would be affected.
I wish I had mod points but alas. NYC, especially during rush hour , is almost impossible to get a cab. They apparently change shifts during that time. I feel blessed living in Chicago. Getting a cab at anytime is a breeze.
And then no one would use taxi's because they never move and the taxi drivers would go out of business...and there would be less taxis and things would start moving again. It's called a system with incentives and feedback mechanisms. Taxi drivers don't like sitting in gridlock just for fun just as people don't like sitting in taxi's that don't move and charge the money for the experience.
Bah, you beat me to the bigot bashing. It's really a shame that so many people are too ignorant to realize that it's not "democrat" vs. "republican" and has not been for over thirty years.
The AC OP didn't say "democrat" or "republican". And denigrating a political stance isn't bigotry in any case.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
How adding more vehicles to overcrowded streets is an "efficiency improvement"
Why do you assume there would be significantly more cabs, to the point of becoming a problem, than there are currently?
See, there are these things involved with operating a taxi called costs and expenses. If there are too many taxis competing for riders, some of those taxis won't generate enough income to cover these costs and expenses and will stop operating.
Other large cities that don't restrict taxi licensing like NYC are not flooded with cabs. Service is generally much cheaper and better as well for the passengers compared to NYC taxis.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Taxi Commissions everywhere don't like Uber. In DC recently, Uber has had to defend its practices because the DC Taxi Commission who is out to get rid of them. Why? You have to get a license to operate in DC and that means revenue for them.
So that's just in DC, where most of the "regulated" cabs are broken down piles of crap that usually don't have A/C in the summer and have tons of other issues.
Now, New York? well New York allows a monopoly on hired car services whether it be hired cars (limos) or Taxis. New York says it's to "regulate" theses business so they don't overcharge and so that the streets are not overrun by cabs, of course that would mean competition and drive down prices. What the city really wants to do is keep getting all those fees and regulations to keep coming at you. Let's see you apply, have to take a test then 80 hours of training then a medical test, then pee in a cup. All of that generates jobs and it's considered necessary to be allowed to drive in a New York Taxi with a hack license. Now if you want to own your own cab, that's more fun. If you want a medallion be prepared to pony up big time and all it does is make cab fares higher and squeeze the guy who's trying to make a living. Try a million dollars for a medallion. What that does is create a monopoly on service and New York likes that...
Oh and you have to have a medallion if you want to be able to pick up passengers in response to a street hail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_New_York_City
So, Uber comes along and wants to shake things up and make it easier for suppliers and consumers to link up? Do you think New York is going to allow this when it's so lucrative and bureaucratic all at the same time? Not in this life pal.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Can't you just as easily call a car service? I live in Brooklyn and work in Manhattan. I never take a yellow cab anywhere in Manhattan, I always ride the subway (or drive if I need a car for work.) If I'm in Brooklyn and I'm feeling lazy or just tired I call a car service. The other option would be to allow this app to contact a car service for you. Why does it need to hail a yellow cab?
The entire island of manhattan would be covered in taxi cabs.
Nope. There would be a substantial increase, which would continue until the supply met the demand.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The bigger question is, how the hell did one company get to create a monopoly on taxi service in a major city?
The free market doesn't work that way. What would happen is that some private equity firm would start a deal to sell new taxicabs to any schmuck who thinks he can make a living driving a cab. Once the contract is signed, the new owner/entrepreneur is locked in. If the market shows less demand for cabs, he can't quit. Well actually he can, but the payments continue. Then they foreclose on his cab, drive him nuts for the next few years with a deficiency judgment, and sell the cab to the next schmuck who didn't hear what happened to the first guy.
The free market is a great system as long as you keep your gonads out of the hands of the kleptcrats.
When you are dancing with wolves, never limp
First off, people need to know that being a legit cab in NYC costs a million bucks.
The referenced article argues that "hey it is a decent 5% return on your investment"... sounds like a typical wall street tout pumping a stock. A "5% return" on an investment wouldn't require you to work 8 hours a day to get it.
Based on complaints of availability, the denial to use modern apps, the spike in that graph of medallion licenses... something is going to "pop".
I have no idea what I am talking about. I live in California and get pissed off if the driveways to the acres-large parking lots I use are not conveniently aligned for my use...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
They tried that, but there was too much fraud, various rip-offs, and drivers who had no idea how to get to anywhere in the city. No matter how hard they ignored the problem, the free market just wouldn't seem to step up.
They finally went to a licensing system and things are a lot better, especially now that the fare meter is connected directly to the credit card terminal in the back.
It may not be the best approach, but it is better than the others they trried, including the 'free market'.
tl;dr: it took me over an hour to hail a cab in Brooklyn. Hailing a cab is impossible in the vast majority of NYC.
I was in NYC this past Sunday. I was in Brooklyn, and had an international flight out of LaGuardia two and a half hours later. Naturally, I assumed this was plenty of time, since it was a 20-30 minute cab ride to the airport. I started on a busy street corner (Nostrand and Fulton), and tried to hail a cab. Of all the many cars passing, virtually none were cabs, any cab that did pass was occupied. I tried calling 411 on my cellphone, and asked it for a taxi company, but that didn't give me anything useful. I tried calling the number of a taxi company a friend had given me, only to be told "We don't serve Brooklyn. Sorry, no, I don't know the number of a company who does." I tried walking into a deli and asking the cashier if he could give me the phone number for a cab, only to be told "No, no, just go and hail one, they will come."
I spent over an hour wandering around the area trying to find ANY unoccupied cab to hail, during which time it got dark making it hard to even tell what vehicle was a cab at all. Finally, I managed to snag one a few blocks away, but only because the driver had just dropped somebody off. I was extremely lucky, he told me, because Taxis don't go to Brooklyn to pick people up unless they're called to do so. I was more lucky than that, though, since the guy was sympathetic to my plight, and drove a bit more aggressively than normal, getting me there two minutes before my flight's cutoff. I gave him a hefty tip, and learned my lesson: don't think you can hail a cab in NYC if you're under time pressure.
PS: I was taking a cab rather than public transit because getting to LaGuardia from where I was would have taken an hour and a half on four separate vehicles including a bus, which is not something I was keen on doing in a foreign country where I had no data plan to help me figure out what to do if I missed a stop.