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Arro Taxi App Arrives In NYC As 'Best Hope' Against Uber
An anonymous reader writes with a report at The Stack that "New York City cabs have begun testing a new app-based taxi system in an attempt to win back customers lost to Uber and Lyft." The app is called Arro, and is being trialled in about 7,000 New York cabs. It sticks with metered prices, rather than the demand-based price increases that Uber institutes for times of peak demand. With so many cabs on the road already, the makers boast that Arro will outpace Uber soon. At least based on my limited experience with each, real competition with Uber or Lyft would require some seminars on good customer service.
I suggest we confuse the primary Uber benefits with the electronic dispatch system, rather than showing up when you've made a commitment to show up, the lower prices Uber charges on average, the cleaner, newer vehicles, ad the pleasant drivers who have to be pleasant because there's a feedback system which loses them referrals, whereas a taxi driver with a medallion can't really be fired without losing the medallion.
It must be the app, right folks? Not all the other things?
" real competition with Uber or Lyft would require some seminars on good customer service."
And a user driven feedback and rating system. It kills rude and poor performance by design.
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"real competition with Uber or Lyft would require some seminars on good customer service. " And basic hygiene.
Because ten years down the road after Uber puts taxis out of business, there is no longer any incentive to remain clean or maintained. Now everyone is stuck with a crappy service more reminiscent of why regulations were put in place in the beginning.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
You are very confused about how competition works in the real world. No company ever comes in spending more, whether it be on cleanliness or safety. Regulation is the only way to prevent a race to the bottom.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Of course it can be gamed. Uber is the gamification of taxi services. Everything is intended to be gamed. And the easiest way of gaming the driver ratings? By actually giving a good service and being polite. It costs nothing.
Of course be an asshole to real customers and pay accomplices to rate you. But that would cost you money. Poor gaming strategy.
Great theory. But in practice what parent said is correct: uber drivers have about 100x better service than taxi drivers. By the way, many taxi drivers are independent contractors and pay the taxi company for use of the car and medallion. The difference is decades of monopoly has slowly turned normal human behavior where the customer might actually matter into a game of purely maxing profit per mile, considering the chance of picking up a fare for the taxi's return trip, as if they are uship drivers moving cargo.
There was already an app called "Hailo" that tried using regular taxis, but summoned with an app like Uber/Lyft. It sucked. I tried it several times here in Atlanta and all it did was confirm how totally abysmal is taxi service here. Three times I tried using a typical ride that I make with Uber. All three times were a lesson in futility. Average Uber response time is 4 minutes. Shortest Hailo time to get a taxi was 12 minutes, with the other two approaching 20 minutes. Cost of Uber rides was always about $6.50. Lowest Hailo cost was $11, and the driver was pissed that I didn't tip him. Sorry, you deliver inferior service, you lose.
> The whole reason I use Uber is to find a driver with a clean car, clean clothes, good local language, good knowledge of the city, good driving skills, sane metering device, known rates and acceptable behavior.
I've been dealing with those services in an urban are lately. Good luck with "driving skills", "local language", and "knowledge of the city". I've nothing personal against Lyft or Uber's attempts to modernize and improve cab services, but they _are_ cab services. And as their numbers grow, they're running into the same problems with more employees and less skilled drivers that the cab companies do. The "real cab companies" should have been willing to invest in this approach a decade ago when cell phones and geo-locatoin first started becoming useful about 10 years ago.
Or you could only pay for cosmetic improvement to your vehicle but never any safety improvement.
This sounds clever at first but is incredibly stupid once you mull over what you are saying.
What "safety improvements" would you pay for? Roll bars? Four point harnesses? Fir extinguishers in the main cabin? Come on.
Uber inspects the car to be used to see if it passes muster - any car made in the last ten years will already be really safe, with no improvements to be made that could improve safety.
The things that degrade on cars over time are mostly cosmetic - body wear, interior cleanliness. They are what are ESPECIALLY degraded in "real" cabs.
The few aspects of cars that do degrade over time (tires, brakes) are checked by the state in yearly safety inspections anyway so it's not like letting them go is an option - but you've forgotten the driver has a powerful motivator to keep the car safe, because they are the ones who are going to spend far more time in it than any one passenger.... why would a driver want to risk his own life to save a few $?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
After the app is released, people will flock to the cab app during peak hours because of the cheaper pricing.
That also means there will be few cabs to be found... the cabs they do find will still be the same old foul NYC cabs we all know and .
So the end user experience for most people will be cheaper cabs they can't have, vs. Uber cars they can - with the unreliable access to cabs demonstrated, people will just go back to uber and ignore the cab app exists.
People forget that surge pricing exists not just for drivers, but also passengers. You may not like the pricing but you do like having a ride available on demand...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Have you considered that maybe technology has outpaced the regulations in a taxi industry that has become terminally moribund? This is quite clearly what has happened, and everything could be easily addressed simply by updating the pertinent regulations that govern the industry, but that will NEVER happen, at least not in time to accomplish anything meaningful. Somehow, through some mutant form of regulatory capture, the taxicab business in most urban areas has become a dysfunctional chimeric melding of regulator and regulated, a single conjoined entity that is completely incapable of forward movement, forward thought, or in fact significant change of any kind. The sad fact is that Uber and its ilk will very likely destroy the current system entirely before any meaningful change in regulation occurs, which perhaps is a blessing because that will make it much easier to start over from scratch when the inevitable complete regulatory rewrite finally occurs. The cab companies and their regulatory pets/masters have proven incapable of providing the kind of service Uber does, and they will pay the price for their inability to adjust to the new reality. Forced rapid change in a well-established market is seldom pretty, but if you sit back and let it all play out, in a few years you'll see new cab companies working under new regulations providing new and improved services that will probably look a lot more like Uber than the old medallion taxi fleets. It's inevitable.
In other words, it's just progress, folks, nothing to see here, move along...