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Comment by pfarnsworth | Hacker News Reader

I wonder where all of a sudden all this mass sympathy for taxi drivers come from. I guess no one remembers how shitty and expensive trying to get a cab was in SF not even 10 years ago. I for one will be celebrating when the entire medallion system is completely dismantled and all the monopolists who exploited that system are bankrupt.

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Londoner here. From my perspective the medallion system always seemed crazy. Contrast with London, in which becoming a licensed cab driver requires you to pass examinations, health and character checks, but the actual ticket price is pretty cheap in comparison. https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/taxis-and-private-hire/licensing...

The difference being: London saw a need for cab drivers and introduced licensing to ensure quality, New York (and other cities) saw a need for cab drivers and saw a revenue stream.

Then again, the Knowledge is also pretty worthless in a world where GPS receivers are cheap.

They'll argue that the Knowledge allows them to route around bad traffic, rather than just following what SatNav or app says to do. Many cabbies have SatNavs that show live traffic conditions so they can do this, but they don't use them for navigation directly. Cabbies tend to know a lot more of the time saving shortcuts than the private hire drivers.

It's also very nice to be able to get in a black cab and say something like "The Civil Service Club please" and they'll know exactly where to go, no prodding at a phone/SatNav for a minute or asking for a postcode.

The downside is that some cabbies use that same knowledge to their benefit. I've been in several cabs where the driver has purposely used a route that's bad for traffic (rather than the obvious alternatives) so they can earn more money for a journey. (This is more common at times when fares are sparse.)

I live in a city where all the taxi drivers know where they're going, and regularly have to travel to somewhere that the taxi drivers rely on GPS. On more than once occasion with the GPS-enabled drivers I've had to stop them and give them directions; something I've never had to do when my drivers have local knowledge.

Give them a low review after the ride and help the problem sort itself out.

Or when you have apps like Waze for real time traffic updates. I have yet to find a built-in car satnav that wasn't horrible and hella expensive but Waze is free and crazy accurate.

Maybe that will be true one day, but I still keep struggling with minicab drivers who we have to guide street by street because their GPS keeps sending them outright idiotic routes that any driver who knows the area will know is going to be heavily congested.

It still is. A few months ago I had to go to the airport and there were some problems with the Uber app. I hailed a taxi but it intentionally took a longer route. I was furious that I might be late for my flight. The driver apologized and said he wouldn't have done that if he knew that my flight would be leaving soon. He graciously capped the fair at 'only' $60.

Reminds me of my first few years in NYC (late 90s, early 00s). It was nearly impossible to get a yellow cab to take me to Brooklyn. There were plenty of nights where I would get into the cab, tell him my intersection and he'd sit there exclaiming "No Brooklyn! Get Out! No! No Brooklyn!". My place was literally a mile and a half away. Happened more times than I can count. And if you told them where you were going before you got into the cab - forget about it; your success rate dropped from around 50% to about 10%.

And then there was one time when I dozed off as we were crossing the Williamsburg Bridge. I woke up about 20 minutes later and we were somewhere near Coney Island (I lived in Bushwick, exactly a mile from the bridge. Coney Island is the other side of Brooklyn). I told him he could take me where I originally said for half the price on the meter, which was still more than the usual fare, or let me out without incident. That was a painful subway ride home that morning.

Wasn't the system that you seem to be condemning at least in part exploiting taxi drivers? Why wouldn't that earn them your sympathy?

You mean the taxi drivers that would pass me by on 3rd and Howard for 2 hrs because there was a conference and they could make more money servicing conference people? Or the taxi drivers that said they would be at my house at a certain time and then never show up, forcing me to wait another 45-60 mins for the next promised car, and then give up and drive myself and pay for parking? No, I don't have any sympathy.

Plus, they can always become Uber drivers, and have better earnings and make their own hours. 90% of all drivers I've had are happy to be driving for Uber.

Same. I once got thrown out of a taxi in the middle of a busy street, halfway to my destination because I accidentally admitted that I didn't have any cash and he would have to run my credit card. (This was just a year before all the drivers spontaneously realized that card users tip better and the practice changed overnight. But it would still be years later before rides could be reliably found in the outer boroughs…)

The taxi system is — or was — indicative of all these weird east coast attitudes that I, as a westerner, find completely insane. All these awful inefficiencies and shitty attitudes baked that everyone accepts as normal because that's just how things are done. (Basic traffic enforcement is another biggie… the "Masshole maneuver," and New Yorkers blocking intersections or parking on sidewalks, landlords who would rather risk lawsuits than do inexpensive repairs…)

Although I have moved on from Uber for various reasons, I will be forever grateful to them for tearing down this horrible system. It sucks that some independent medallion owners are going to take a bath on their loans, but it was a terrible investment in the first place.

Not to mention the racism.

He probably means the taxi drivers that would pass by my minority friends to pick me up. The look of horror in their faces as I waved my friends to come get in the cab was always some slight consolation. If it hadn't happened so regularly, it might have been funny. We now take Uber and it's never a problem.

I feel for any of the honest cab drivers that didn't pull this kinda crap, but my experience tells me that there weren't many of them.

I appears one of the main advantages of Uber is you don't get to see the guys who didn't want to pick you up. For one, it's less obvious an uber cab has driven past you than an official cab (NYC/London), and also only guys who want you will accept you as a ride. So you don't have that awkward 2am "it's not on my way home" conversation.

Was it exploiting them more than fast food and other industries?

We seem to be simply replacing the old monopolists with new ones. What makes you think the end game will be any less shitty than the old days?

Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, Flywheel, etc...

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