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French Cabbies Say They'll Block Paris Roads On Monday Over Uber
mrspoonsi writes Parisian taxi drivers have vowed to block roads leading into the French capital on Monday to protest a court's refusal to ban urban ridesharing service UberPOP. Like their counterparts in large cities across the globe, Parisian taxi drivers are fed up with what they see as unfair competition from Uber's popular smartphone taxi service. UberPOP, which uses non-professional drivers using their own cars to take on passengers at budget rates, has 160,000 users in France, according to the company. A commercial court in Paris ruled on Friday that a new law making it harder for Uber drivers to solicit business could not be enforced until the government had published full details of the restrictions. "It's the straw that breaks the camel's back," said Ibrahima Sylla, president of France Taxis, whose organisation has joined several others in calling for the early morning protest on Monday. They have urged taxi drivers to gather at the northern Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport and the southern Orly airport at 05:00 am before slowly converging on the city in a bid to block arterial highways. "This is a fight against Uber. We're fed up. Allowing UberPOP means leaving 57,000 French taxis high and dry, and thus 57,000 families. And that is out of the question," said Sylla.
Thats whos causing the problem.
The taxi drivers are arguing that if they can't be the ONLY ones to drive people to their destination, then NOBODY can. And then they wonder why fewer people want to patronize them.
How will we know the difference between their protest and normal traffic?
Have gnu, will travel.
I believe a blockade of Euro Disney is the standard French response to any turmoil in the country.
-- Posted from my parent's basement
My industry is threatened. Quick! Do the only thing that doesn't make your industry any money on a given day. NOT WORK!
Annoy everybody, including the people who would be using your services, in "protest". What a GREAT idea!
I travel all over the world for business. As such, I take a lot of taxi rides each year. But it doesn't matter if I'm in NYC, London, Paris, Berlin, Toronto, LA, Sydney, Rome, Vancouver, Chicago, or even my home base of San Francisco. Regardless of where I am, taxis are an awful experience.
Why is it that, in any major Western city, all of the taxi drivers are from the Middle East, India, or Pakistan? Why is it that they can't keep their vehicles clean? Why is it that they can't speak a fucking word of English? Why is it that they're always chattering on in Arabic, Hindi or Urdu through their mobile phone's earphones/mic, while driving? Why is it that they often don't have any frigging clue where they're going? Why is it that it always costs so goddamn much for such shitty service, especially when this industry is allegedly "regulated" in most areas?
I don't like the idea of Uber, or Lyft, or any of those services. I don't want some untrained, possibly-uninsured hipster driving me around. But then I look at the alternatives, and these amateurs actually look pretty damn good compared to the so-called third-world "professional" taxi drivers!
As a customer, I'm fucked either way. I'm guaranteed either shitty service when I go with a taxi, or I'm guaranteed a higher degree of risk when I go with some online service. I just can't win!
Oh, yes, causing massive traffic snarls is a sure way to with the hearts and minds of the public. Reminds me of the German train drivers who keep striking, not for more money or better working conditions, but because their union bosses are at risk of losing their negotiating power to a larger union. Makes everybody in German just love the train drivers.
Paris taxis charge to just come and pick you up. Get in the car, and find that the meter has already been running from wherever the driver let off his last fare. Given a new competitor, the taxi drivers could always compete by offering better service, or lower rates, or more reliability, or... Nah.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
what would happen if the cab drivers would also act as Uber drivers?
If you can't fight them, embrace them.
Haven't seen this anywhere yet.
Allowing UberPOP means leaving 57,000 French taxis high and dry, and thus 57,000 families.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I've never driven a cab for a living but I've spoken w/ cabbies about it, and it's not an easy job. A good cab driver knows the turf. S/he gets you to your destination safely and efficiently... and doesn't rip you off or make you feel creeped out. Over time, failure to meet these criteria has resulted in licensing and regulation. The licensing requirements also provide a barrier to entry. So "official" cab services have evolved an ecosystem of sorts. And a skilled, hard-working driver can make decent, but not great, money. Here's a Huffington Post article that asserts some numbers for both Uber and traditional cabbies:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Now along comes Uber. Cool business model. Flexible price structure. Apps that get a ride to where you are when you need it. Disruptive to the old order. If you know what you're doing, you can use Uber to get around conveniently. If I understand it right, the Uber system addresses, using the clout of the company, some of the good cab requirements (e.g. they'll monitor their drivers).
But Uber disrupts an existing ecosystem... a system that lots of licensed, chartered drivers depend on for their livelihoods. While tech types typically revel in so-called "disruptive technologies," I worry that Uber spells the demise of yet another low tech job. I mean, shouldn't there be something between fast food workers and cube dwellers? So I can see both sides of this. There's not a simple answer to the problem.
Finally a representative of cabbies is honest about the real reason for the resistance to Uber and Lyft:
"Allowing UberPOP means leaving 57,000 French taxis high and dry, and thus 57,000 families"
Not regulations... not customer safety... PROTECTIONISM - pure and simple.
... a prison sentence. It is one thing to express your opinion. It another to attack other people and physically restrain them from doing what they have every right to do.
What is more, these cabbies should have their licenses threatened. A cab license is not a right.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I had to pay $60 for an eight mile (12 km) taxi ride from the Portland Oregon airport to downtown because the idiot public transit system there stopped running from the airport at 11:25pm. All the flights from the East coast and Midwest USA leave in the late early evening and arrive between 11:30pm and 1:00am. The local public transport system (TriMet) spends millions of dollars each year telling people how wonderful they are, but they can't even get one single bus an hour on this most important route of the city: the airport to the downtown.
To hell with taxis, and especially to hell with Tri-Met!
Anything that improves the basic transport needs of any 21st-century city is welcome!
Yeah right. They will just keep things as shitty as before except charge even higher prices once they get Uber and Lyft banned.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Unless Paris is very different from elsewhere, the people that drive taxis do not own the licenses. The drivers derive no benefit from the license, the drivers get paid below minimum wage rates on contracts.
But most Taxi drivers seem to believe that they benefit from the licensing, from paying maybe 55% of their income to the license owner. Whereas many of them would be better off just driving for Uber. Or at least no worse off.
What the page you cite doesn't tell is that the number of licences is limited, like taxi medallions in some US cities; you can get one free after a couple of decades on the waiting list, or you can buy one from another taxi driver who retires. In Paris, the market value of such a license is over 200,000 euros; in some other cities, it's even higher. However, the arrival of Uber and similar services are making these values drop.
So, when they speak of "families" left out to dry, they actually mean that they won't be able to sell the license they invested in, as they expected to. A bit like a housing price crash, except that license prices used to be kept high by a state-mandated scarcity. I guess taxi drivers are lashing at the government for not enforcing this scarcity anymore.
I don't really have an opinion on this subject. I think the government is at fault for letting people depend on a business model and then not being consistent. On the other hand, it happens all the time with any change in subsidies and policies. And blocking roads is definitely a step too far, but it's not the first time: the French administration has never been a good negotiator in that kind of situations; violent strikes have kind of become the default solution...
Uber drivers must pay for their own vehicles/insurance/maintenance, Uber gets their percentage before drivers are paid.
N.Y.C. medallion cabs are usually rented from the medallion owners. Drivers typically will pay $150 for the cab before starting their day, and need to continuously hustle their ass for the next 12 hours in order to make as much as possible, take home is $100 to $200 per shift.
No cab company is run like another. Some drivers truly care about their customers 'experience'. When you had a good cab driver tip accordingly, tips can make or break their profit. Some cabdrivers are sociopaths, a good cab company will try to weed them out when made aware of unacceptable/unsafe drivers.
When Google provides self driving taxis for free, but with a big screen showing commercials in the passenger compartment.
Driving jobs will mostly disappear before you know it.
57,000 taxi drivers unable to make ends meet because of Uber? How many people were having trouble finding affordable transportation before Uber? After getting a good taste of what it's like to scrape by, maybe they should ditch their taxis and register with Uber instead of trying to force real inequity on the masses.
Here in Oslo, I really looked forward to Uber. Now that it is here, it costs a minimum of $20 more than any taxi company I compare it to.
Is it different elsewhere?
Do you know that the number of cab drivers in Paris hasn't changed since WWII? It's always been around 57000. So it's very hard to get a taxi in certain regions and at certain times. So the fucking cubbies should shut up.
Uber exists because cabs suck.
Customers aren't property. If cabbies want fares, they should start behaving like it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Wait, so you'd trust your daughter in a taxi, but not an uber? Tell me how a taxi medallion makes a taxi driver a better driver than someone with a regular license? Uber and Lyft drivers are background checked, so no worries about getting a felon. Also, if your daughter was an hour late getting home, do you think you could call up yellow cab and they'd be able to tell you where she is? Uber tracks both the driver's phone GPS, and the passenger's phone GPS. There'd be little trouble in finding out where they are.
And for your idea about hailing a cab already in route to a similar destination, Lyft already has that https://www.lyft.com/line
Its pretty obvious you've never tried these services
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
As such, I take a lot of taxi rides each year. But it doesn't matter if I'm in NYC, London, Paris, Berlin, Toronto, LA....
Have you actually ever taken a cab in London? The problem is the exact opposite of what you describe with only ~5% from minorities to the extent that they are trying to recruit more. As for "untrained hipster" they are required to pass The Knowledge before they get a license. They may have somewhat colourful characters but I've never had one who is not extremely competent, knowledgeable and driving a clear, well repaired cab.
The Uber paying service will be banned starting from January the 1st, according to the French governement.
Uber has a good idea and it is of use to the public. Many other trades have fallen to progress. Can taxi cabs be any different? And we have seen nothing yet. Just wait until the housing industry is smacked down by 3D printing of dwellings. Matter of fact how much is there in a Tesla type car that can not be made by 3D printing? The frame and body and interior should be a cinch for 3D printing. I suspect that small boat building will fall to 3d printing as well. There has already been a canoe made by 3D printing. How long before a rugged 3D printed bass boat is available?
Drove from the suburbs down south, not far from Orly, to work this morning, right downtown.
Guess what? Traffic was awful today. But it was also awful yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. If it's not summer vacation, traffic in Paris is terrible. Every day.
Worst protest concept ever.
If there was a app that encouraged people to buy drugs and deliver them to customers we wouldn't allow it no matter how "disruptive" it was.
No, but I suspect the majority on slashdot would be all in favour.
It's all to do with evil governments interfering in the right of geeks to become billionaires by doing something slightly differently on the internet.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Yup, being a dick to public transportation users, cyclists, delivery drivers and everyone else because your price fixing racket's getting some competition is totally the way to handle the situation.
Furries make the internet go.
instead listens to ordinary people who exercise their democratic voice.
Well, not exactly.
"Exercising a democratic yell on a megaphone" would be the appropriate way to describe the French way.
The small group which manage to piss off the most people is the one to obtain the attention.
Instead of having the most rich bully being at the top, you have the most annoying one.
Meanwhile, just on the other side of a border, you have countries like switzerland with a real direct democracy.
As in "it's the people who actually decide and have a final word on everything".
Want to change something ? Instead of pouring money or pissing of people, you just gather the necessary amount of signatures, and then you can submit your law propostion for voting. If it passes voting you law is passed and is enforced.
ANYONE can do it, just gather the necessary amount of signatures to be able to submit for vote.
That's what I call "Exercising the democratic voice".
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Prostitutes:coeds as taxis:uber brbr One tries to be sustainable, the other lives outside the economically sustainable boundary by not keeping itself fully accountable for the total cost of operations. The establishment lament is "how can we make a living when the tyros are giving it away below cost"? The tyros retort? Your place or mine?
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
Build a better Krispy Kreme and you will own the world and everything in it.....
That won't accept the umpire (court's) decision.
The government gave the monopolies to help the citizens because when taxis first came around they crowded the streets. Now the government can remove the monopoly because the taxi companies been abusing it. Again, to help the citizens. There is no duplicity here. They don't owe anything to the taxis that bought into their protected industry