Juno to soft-launch this month as the anti-Uber service
washingtonpost.com
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For me it does not.
I use Uber here in Austin because it is significantly cheaper that Lyft. I hear people say that their drivers tell them that Lyft treats them better. Apparently that's not so much better that they stop driving for Uber. I've actually never had a driver make a comment to me in either direction about Uber. And I've had many drivers who drive for both companies. They have told me, on the few times that I've asked, that the reason they do it is to increase their likelihood of getting a fare.
When I think about it more it really seems like drivers for these services are all getting a raw deal just based on the wear and tear on their vehicles and so small differences in business practices don't really count for much to me.
Edit: And the exploitation I was referring to was of the taxi drivers under the current system, not myself.
Government regulation exists to protect people. Whether that's labor regulations, fire code, zoning ordinances, etc, its to ensure the health and well being of citizens.
Now, you'll argue that always isn't the case, and I'll agree with you. Incentives with taxi regulation went sideways, hence the medallion system. But that doesn't mean regulation is wrong, that means that apathetic, disinterested stakeholders are the problem. Just as we've made the problem by not caring enough to fix it, we can care enough to work towards fixing it. The number of vehicles for transport in a metro can be regulated using an unbiased algorithm. The wages of drivers can be determined by labor regulations. These are not hard technical problems to solve. They're political problems to be solved.
Should we throw out the medallion system? Yes. Should Uber get to stampede all over transport regulations? No. There should be a middle ground.
People say someone should be able to accept a job no matter what the pay is, as long as they're willing. No one is willing when they're an economic captive. It costs a minimum amount of money (dependent on locale) to have shelter, food, and clothing. This is what government regulation is for (see: minimum wage, employee/contractor classification, etc), to ensure that people can support themselves on the work they can obtain. If they can't support themselves on what a job pays, the job pays too little and the business relying on that undermarket labor rate is unsustainable (see: Walmart educating its workers on relying on social benefits, thereby using the government as a subsidy).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
This is going to negatively impact driver supply (making wait times higher, especially in the outer boroughs) and increase the cost of the service vs Uber.
> Juno’s drivers will provide better service because they’re happier, Marco said.
The only 'service' I want from a taxi driver is to show up, follow the GPS, and not double-swipe my credit card or claim the machine isn't working. Uber already has basically perfect service.
Unless they have some secret innovation I'm not seeing this is going to be a massive failure.
I don't shop at Walmart though, because of their poor track record treating their employees well.
Seems like a number pulled from nowhere.
All professional drivers, including Uber drivers, already need TLC licensing, as do their vehicles.
Maybe NYC specifically is different, I don't know.
I'm probably just weird. At least the general population probably has no such associations with primitive email services.
At the time, we didn't have local dial-up numbers so I used it very extensively. Standard Internet access was very expensive (and I was a young teenager so my parents were paying for it) so I subscribed to dozens of mailing lists and read them all off-line, dialing up to Juno just to send and receive. Most of my "downloading" in those days was facilitated by Juno and "ftp by e-mail".
Trademarks exist to prevent confusion between similar products. Juno, the free dial-up and e-mail provider and Juno the taxi/transportation(?) company are very different.
Juno brings back lots of memories for me as well. I remember having a very hard time convincing everyone it was 'free'.
They've recruited a lot of the NYC Uber drivers. They've been paying them $25/week to keep the Juno app open while they're on duty, collecting information about driving habits, routes, etc. The drivers' relationships with Juno won't be as contractors, so Juno will have much more control over the drivers - such as having exclusivity agreements.
The idea seemed to be to bring on all the drivers as employees, destroy the population of (good) Uber drivers, and advertise the app. The plan is that everyone in NYC switches to Juno, since you won't be able to get an Uber in a timely way, and Uber's quality will be bad because it'll just be the "leftovers" of the driver talent pool.
That's what I remember getting out of the conversation, anyway.
Did you try targeted or scoped Google searches? (EDIT: disregard second paragraph, thats A-level googling)
I already pick Lyft whenever I can just because I noticed in the past drivers with Lyft were happier and some mentioned they were treated better by Lyft than when they were with Uber.