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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.
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.
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.
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.
In chicago and other large cities in the US they do. When I open my uber app, I have the ability to choose from uberx, taxi, black cars and SUVs. I don't understand why they just don't do the same in other places as well.
What makes you think they won't protest over that as well? Anything that hurts their regulatory capture will cause the same reaction.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
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!
So reduce the number of regulations and taxes that taxis are subject to and suddenly they'll be able to deliver the same service as Uber but even more reliable. The taxi drivers seem to be complaining about the unfair advantage that the Uber drivers have, so you either subject the Uber drivers, who certainly fall into the definition of "taxi", to regulation or you deregulate taxis.
I assume there's some good reasons behind most, but probably not all, of the regulations affecting taxis, so why would we want to allow some subset of drivers to bypass those but not others?
I'd personally prefer the route of all of them being subject to the taxi regulations, but those regulations being eased in areas where they might have grown absurd.
That would be different based on the city and state (US)
A friend drove a cab for years and around here that is not how it works. The cab company rents the cabs to the drivers at a set amount per day. The driver can accept jobs that come in across the computer but there will be a small handling charge that is built into the price per mile printed on the side of the cab and used in the meter. If they pick up some one who flags them down or some one who calls their Cell and requests a pickup then there is no handling charge.
The friend of mine that did it treated it like a small business. He had cards made with his cell on them and kept his car immaculately clean. After the first year 90% of his calls were from customers and word of mouth. He would also give discounts to his regulars. Really the discounts were nothing more than him deducting the handling fee from the printed cost.
That shouldn't be hard -- obstructing traffic is against the law. They can just arrest the cabbies after they refuse to move when requested and have their cabs towed.
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.
That would be different based on the city and state (US)
A friend drove a cab for years and around here that is not how it works. The cab company rents the cabs to the drivers at a set amount per day. The driver can accept jobs that come in across the computer but there will be a small handling charge that is built into the price per mile printed on the side of the cab and used in the meter. If they pick up some one who flags them down or some one who calls their Cell and requests a pickup then there is no handling charge.
The friend of mine that did it treated it like a small business. He had cards made with his cell on them and kept his car immaculately clean. After the first year 90% of his calls were from customers and word of mouth. He would also give discounts to his regulars. Really the discounts were nothing more than him deducting the handling fee from the printed cost.
I don't know enough of the facts & details of the particular situation you describe, but just from your description, that's not too bad. Especially if the driver rents the cabs and pays no maintenance, insurance, tags, etc etc.
Sadly though, that's not typical in many urban/suburban areas with denser populations (where taxis are needed most) in the US. Most often, you see some sort of local taxi commission that's usually corrupt "regulating" a small number of taxi operations, sometimes just one.
NY's system is one of the most infamous, with Chicago's corrupt system at their heels with Washington D.C. in there too, vying for "Most Corrupt & Broken US Taxi System". Many others are equally bad, heck, I haven't even mentioned anything west of the Mississippi, and there are no lack of bad & corrupt taxi systems!
What's happening here regarding the new online independent private taxi services is really not much different in principle to what has and is happening to the old business models for media/news/entertainment monetization, sales, and distribution.
This time, there are a lot of locally-powerful corrupt politicians, bureaucrats, and unions in major cities around the world that stand to personally lose out if the old taxi systems go extinct, never mind the corrupt taxi company owners' anger and resistance.
The politicians and bureaucrats, as is typical with government (and the larger it is, the more "inertial resistance" to change there is), will have to be brought kicking & screaming into the modern age. This is particularly true if that change means those in government lose money, power, and/or control.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Even uber can't survive in an unregulated market if other internet taxi companies enter the market flood it with even more taxis.
So you are saying that if anyone can enter a market, the number of vendors will skyrocket until it reaches zero?
That shouldn't be hard -- obstructing traffic is against the law. They can just arrest the cabbies after they refuse to move when requested and have their cabs towed.
It is like you don't even know France..
I suspect you don't. Obstructing traffic is against the law, but also a thing that happens routinely as a part of demonstations. Usually it is farmers though.
I believe a blockade of Euro Disney is the standard French response to any turmoil in the country.
You could remove 'Euro Disney' (in general or from your sentence) and it would still be true. The blocades are part of the French charm, possibly the part that makes you not want to live there.
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?
It is like you don't even know France... Obstructing traffic is against the law, but also a thing that happens routinely as a part of demonstations. Usually it is farmers though.
The reason it is common, is that the French government routinely caves in to the demands of whomever throws the biggest tantrum, and the French voters routinely support the appeasement. In America, causing disruption and chaos is the best way to lose public sympathy for your cause. In France it is the best way to get it.
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."
That's what they would do if they had a functioning police department or legal system in France, but they haven't had that for many years. You might remember that they had a plague of thugs setting cars on fire a year or so ago, and the cops didn't even try to arrest any of them.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
See, this the the weird thing. As someone in Auckland, NZ, this simply makes no sense to me. The local taxi company already *has* computer-assisted hailing (complete with updates on current cab location as it approaches -- on iOS and Android) and, of course, can take payment via credit card. (Real chip-based credit card readers with PIN, so it's more secure than any website or app).
There's no limit to the number of cabs any particular company could run, nor any limit to the number of taxi companies (just certain registration, a level of knowledge requirement and certified taxi fare meters and cameras etc.) Because of our already deregulated nature, people simply are not permitted drive a car for hire-or-reward without the right type of driver's license ("P" endorsement).
Thus, all uber, thus, gives me is a snazzier app. That's it.
Even uber can't survive in an unregulated market if other internet taxi companies enter the market flood it with even more taxis.
So you are saying that if anyone can enter a market, the number of vendors will skyrocket until it reaches zero?
Actually that's what often happens. Someone's making money, many others flock to the market, nobody ends up profitable, market retrenchment. Remember all the x86-compatible cpu manufacturers ... most bit the dust. Or the mom-and-pop computer stores? Or all the different donut franchises? Or now, all the new mobile developers who aren't even breaking even and are running on a wing and a prayer?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Most businesses fail in general, so claiming that most businesses fail due to too much competition is sort of a moot point.
Regarding your examples:
x86: I'm pretty sure that Intel had a great deal of legal control of that market, and they've certainly not been shy of anti-competitive techniques.
mom-and-pop computer stores: I believe they were displaced largely by websites like NewEgg and TigerDirect, as the model they have allows them to undercut them and in many ways be more convenient.
donut franchises: There's not a shortage of donut shops, and I've seen a decent number of indie donut shops
mobile devs: that was basically the same niche as websites and flash games, neither of which has ever been a particularly reliable method of making a living.
That the diversity of a market doesn't always increase doesn't mean that there is an inevitable and irreversible race to the bottom. A market only has a limited carrying capacity, and when it exceeds that, there will be some degree of pruning. That doesn't mean that the population is doomed, though.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Why couldn't he have saved $5-6000 working other jobs to buy a used car to use as a cab instead of this renting his cab from a company? Then he could've kept 100% of his earnings, and the fares would also be a lot lower for the consumers.
It's quite possible that even barring any laws or regulations restricting/forbidding such a move, the cost of renting a taxi might well be a net savings over footing all the costs of ownership & operation as an individual due to things like group rates for liability insurance and fleet maintenance contract cost savings over costs for individual trips to the local auto mechanic's garage, etc.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
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.
That's what they would do if they had a functioning police department or legal system in France, but they haven't had that for many years. You might remember that they had a plague of thugs setting cars on fire a year or so ago, and the cops didn't even try to arrest any of them.
-jcr
2888 people arrested over the 20 nights:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2...
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
That sounds a lot like a command economy to me.
What I hear is 57,000 cabbies want to take money out of the mouths of families to feed their families, claiming their families are more important than other families. When you supply a service for $500, and the next guy supplies it for $250, the next guy can eat, and the people you were fleecing have $250 and can also eat. If they could eat already, they spend that $250 at the cobbler for shoes, and the cobbler can eat.
The cabbies should get a new job. Their business model is old and outdated. The CDAA needs to stop trying to prop up an obsolete business model that the consumer has already abandoned.
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