The public transport is much more developed and to me seems like a much better mass transportation alternative. More ecological, cheaper, less cars overall.
This exact sentiment is echoed by many in the US as a reason to not expand public transit. When asked about criminals driving cars to commit crimes, they were not open to bulldozing the roads over. It's gross.
http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Netherlands...
Whether irrational or not, any public transit paradigm has to take the realities of crime and the citizens' perceptions of crime into account if it's going to be successful. And if the crime rate was as low as it is in Europe, it might be easier to get European levels of support for public transit. This implies the need for better policing, earlier social interventions, etc.
If you have strong public spending you have more educated and less desperate people and better public transport.
https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comp...
In the US, public spending is generally a way to funnel money to cronies of the inner party (e.g. transit worker unions, construction unions, politically connected consultants). Various other interest groups - mainly NIMBY homeowners - will also demand their pound of flesh.
We need to fix our social technology ( http://thefutureprimaeval.net/social-technology-and-anarcho-... ) before we can build such things. Luckily we have people like Kalanick taking baby steps in that direction.
I could say, equally (if not more) fairly, that all spending (public and private) is generally a way to funnel money to cronies of the capitalist system (e.g. CEOs, shareholders).
Maybe a more useful thing to discuss is what the money does in the process. Transit workers do provide labor that makes today's transit systems possible, after all.
If you want to claim that the US government spending $2-4B somehow funnels money to the capitalists, it's tangential to my point. Wherever the money gets lost, the point is that the US is simply not capable of building transit the way the rest of the world does.
http://nypost.com/2014/01/05/odds-that-youll-be-killed-by-a-...
...Or are engaged in a criminal enterprise (for murder, not rape).
This is why the (Boston) red line doesn't extend to Arlington.
When I lived in Atlanta a suburban city official explained that "we all know the sort of people who hang around bus stops" while killing plans to expand bus service.
Please don't assume racism where none has been proven to exist.
I absolutely refuse to cease challenging unsubstantiated statements because of this conceptual boogeyman, and so should you.
If this were an attributed quote, you could go look up the source and argue context. It isn't.
http://www.mdjonline.com/news/marta-s-expansion-remains-cont...
If you read up on the history of public transportation in the US, you will be gobsmacked by the racism at play.
To wit: in NYC, the highway to the beach was explicitly designed with overpasses too low to accommodate buses, to keep blacks from the beaches and the white suburbs that surrounded them: http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/now/politics/216905-the-l...
Here's a quote from 1971
Wilson gave to the media at the time, which said, “People fear that rapid transit would give Negroes greater mobility and consider the $0.15 fare as a gift to ‘a certain segment of the population.’”
Arlington is indeed not such a bad area. But folks in Arlington and Lexington (the planned terminus for the red line) were the ones that objected to the expansion. They didn't want increased traffic (all the people trying to park to take the train would make their towns less quaint and all), and they didn't want the urbans/poors/etc to be able to easily visit.
A fathom is the distance between fingertips. "To fathom" in a literal sense is either wrap your arms around an object to measure its size, or to drop a weighted rope to the seafloor, and haul it up, counting one fathom for each double-arm-length of rope hauled in. "To fathom" in a figurative sense is to acquire more than superficial knowledge of a topic--to attain a full depth of understanding. To be unable to fathom something is literally being unable to wrap your arms around it, and figuratively unable to wrap your mind around it.
A phantom is an intangible apparition like a ghost or specter. It is not usually used as a verb, but if it were, the meaning would probably be similar to "to ghost", which is either to work invisibly or to vanish suddenly, without warning or explanation. As an adjective, it means that the modified word does not truly exist.
People in the US are still very class-aware, even if they are not obviously racist. Anecdotally, at a pool party in her suburban McMansion subdivision, I overheard a black grandmother express dismay at the possibility that someone might build a high-density apartment building in the neighboring cattle pasture, because they attract (literal quote) "that kind of people." Nobody wants poor people in their neighborhood, because it is presumed that even if they don't steal anything they can pick up, they will crash all the property values in the surrounding area.
As someone not particularly fond of driving a car, I would love to be able to get around on public transportation, like I did in Chicago. But that requires density to be cost-effective, and for too many people, density equates to too many poor people living near their stuff. So it's more of a two-part process. The mass transit and the housing density go hand in hand, and the NIMBYs are afraid of both.
I agree that buses are more ecological, but doesn't this just mean that we should combine Uber and public transport? In the future I see a fleet of larger vehicles combined with a Uber Pool type app working really well. And even further in the future these vehicles would be self driving.
Certainly in London, unless you're taking a route that cuts across the city in one of the outer districts, during quiet times of day, these services are rarely materially faster than public transport. If the traffic info is inaccurate you can end up in a journey that's many times slower, without expecting it.
It's still great as an option; it expands the utility of taxis tremendously, since previously the arrival latency was unknown and potentially quite high. With a mature marketplace, the QoS for taxis as a whole goes up tremendously.
But really it's a simple competition with the QoS of the local public transport, and in my experience (in the UK) the Uber QoS is somewhat correlated with the QoS of the local public transport, so it is rarely (if ever) objectively better. It just offers different characteristics that are sometimes worth the cost.
This already exists. Or it existed anyway. NYC used to have "Chinatown buses" that ran underserved routes for a fraction of the price. NYC and the MTA prosecuted them and got rid of them. Furthermore, innovation and competition in busing is great in Latin America.
But we're waiting on regulations to change, not for innovation to happen.
I agree that a fleet of self driving mini buses sounds great for efficiency and even housing prices (the pool of commutable properties goes up and the price of rent goes down). Even a fleet of buses with drivers that are allowed to innovate on the business model (monthly subscriptions? scheduled pickup windows? flex pricing?) would be better than what the U.S. has now.
The implication in your comment seems to be that the MTA went after the Chinatown buses because they were anti innovation and competition.
I'm not sure if you ever took the Fung Wah bus from Boston to NYC, but one reason the DoT and MTA worked so hard to get rid of them was they had a tendency to burst into flames by the side of the road.
In my experience Uber is vastly superior than all other available transportation options.
Taking the bus from my home to work, I get to skip the bridge toll plaza, I get a nicer view (being up higher than an individual car), and I can get a seat with space enough to comfortably get work done.
Taking BART home is substantially faster than waiting in traffic out of the city, whoever is driving.
Uber, Lyft, et al are often a better user experience on balance than public transit. Calling them "strictly better" is an exaggeration.
A bus can transport about 60 people in footprint of 2-3 cars (which would transport about 15). There is no way a transportation system that revolves around everyone getting into cabs is going to match that sort of efficiency. The "user experience' of such a service that ignores externalities like forcing people to sit in traffic (raising travel times and prices) is not a good analysis.
Also, many people don't think that having to walk a few blocks as part of a journey is some kind of crazy physical burden.
If _everyone_ used lyft line/uber pool, the vehicles could be larger and more efficient. Uber/Lyft know where people are going; at scale ("everyone") they can aggregate rides more extensively.
That's called a bus. If I have to ride in an efficiently routed, high capacity vehicle I'm essentially just riding a bus service with an app that tells me when the next bus is coming. What you're describing is just an upgrade to a public transportation system. There is no reason a well administered city government couldn't do all of this.
Hell, a city could develop an app for getting around in it that serves multi-modal transit. You could have an app or a card that works as a single interface for riding buses and trains, renting out a car-share or bike-share, and hailing cabs. There is no concrete benefit to tying their city transit to the whims of a private corporation when they don’t have to.
>Uber/Lyft know where people are going; at scale ("everyone") they can aggregate rides more extensively.
Not "everyone." Just people with smartphones at the moments when they happen to have smartphones with them. It’s also dubious to claim we would realize that many benefits from eking out microefficiencies in aggregating rides. What's the real upside there? Well maintained bus lines in walkable city plans do just fine enough on their own.
> There is no reason a well administered city government couldn't do all of this.
It would be great if they did, but I'm surely not holding my breath for everyone to get a well administered city government. In the hypothetical that we're discussing (uber/lyft usage that's high enough for most rides to be aggregated) the cost of using uber/lyft would be much lower per-rider. In that world, cities would be better off giving residents subsidies for private ride-hailing use.
As long as there's a competitive market with multiple entrants, the cities wouldn't be at the mercy of the private corps. The concrete benefit of the private companies is much more competent technology development, and the option to switch if they're not giving you what you want.
> Not "everyone." Just people with smartphones at the moments when they happen to have smartphones with them.
"Everyone" was the premise of the comment I was replying to. But seriously, smartphone penetration is quite high. And how many smartphone users don't carry their phone with them when they go out?
Buses aren't a good choice for "everyone" either--they only help people whose trips align with bus lines and schedules.
Hail a cab? You can even use a cab-hailing app? There is nothing magic about Uber/Lyft's service that a municipal taxi service couldn't use.
And an aggregated bus service through Uber isn't going to be any better. Once the VC funding subsidy runs dry and the dream of cheap, point-to-point ride hailing is going to die. You're going to have to learn to walk a few blocks every now and then.
>As long as there's a competitive market with multiple entrants, the cities wouldn't be at the mercy of the private corps.
If you're talking subsidization then it will have to be. Administering tax subsidies or credits for using ride-hailing in lieu of actual public transit would be a nightmare to implement if the market is truly open to any entrant to the market. And there is no reason a city government should want to allow a private corp to skim off the top either.
>But seriously, smartphone penetration is quite high. And how many smartphone users don't carry their phone with them when they go out?
More than you would think. Young people, old people, poor people, mentally handicapped people, people who have been away from power outlets for a while. Foreigners who don't have domestic SIM cards yet.
>Buses aren't a good choice for "everyone" either--they only help people whose trips align with bus lines and schedules.
Bus lines and schedules aren't exogenous. They're put together based on estimations of where the demand for the bus line is. You think people aren't at the mercy of Uber and Lyft's schedules? You call a car and it says you're waiting 15 minutes for the next ride, that's no different than going to the bus stop and seeing that you'll be waiting 15 minutes for the next bus.
Are you arguing for or against ride-hailing apps, here? The original comment you replied to was that ride-hailing (as exemplified by uber/lyft) is a much better experience than existing public transit.
> And an aggregated bus service through Uber isn't going to be any better.
Compared to existing public transit (on a set schedule/route), uber/lyft are better because they're demand-dispatched based on where people want to go and when.
> Young people, old people, poor people, mentally handicapped people, people who have been away from power outlets for a while. Foreigners who don't have domestic SIM cards yet.
Many of those people will also have a hard time figuring out which buses (with which combination of transfers) will get them where they want to go. Assuming that public transit even goes where they want to go in the first place.
You're concerned about excluding people, but you're ignoring all the people who are excluded by transit routes/schedules.
> Bus lines and schedules aren't exogenous. They're put together based on estimations of where the demand for the bus line is.
Those estimates are exactly that, estimates, and the resulting routes are subject to lobbying. Plus, the bus lines don't change very often--if they did, it would be very confusing.
But demand-dispatched transportation like uber/lyft know exactly where people are starting from, exactly where they're going, and exactly when. If there's a popular show at a music club, the bus lines aren't going to adapt to that in real time.
> You call a car and it says you're waiting 15 minutes for the next ride, that's no different than going to the bus stop and seeing that you'll be waiting 15 minutes for the next bus.
The difference is that I'm waiting at home rather than waiting at the bus stop. And that the car is going where I want to go, without transfers.
I never said to ban hailing apps. I said they’re not useful as cornerstones of a transit system. You’re bringing up edge cases to argue against transit when, in fact, the edge cases are where the alternative options make sense. But they’re edge cases. You don’t build general infrastructure around edge cases.
And once the subsidization schemes end, those services will wind up being prince according to the real cost, illustrating just how much of an edge it is.
>Compared to existing public transit (on a set schedule/route), uber/lyft are better because they're demand-dispatched based on where people want to go and when.
You’re comparing existing public transit to a hypothetical future ridehailing service. Of course it doesn’t have problems, not existing has that advantage. If you wanted apples to apples, you should compare it to an idealized future public transit system, which winds up looking very similar, except without some Silicon Valley VCs skimming significant amounts of money off the top.
>Many of those people will also have a hard time figuring out which buses (with which combination of transfers) will get them where they want to go. Assuming that public transit even goes where they want to go in the first place.
And yet they do. Have you ever lived in or near a transit-oriented city before? It sounds like you haven’t.
>You're concerned about excluding people, but you're ignoring all the people who are excluded by transit routes/schedules.
This is some weird pretzel logic here. I'm talking about building out transit to include more people.
>Those estimates are exactly that, estimates, and the resulting routes are subject to lobbying. Plus, the bus lines don't change very often--if they did, it would be very confusing.
People make their decisions about where to live based on transit access. This is why people like fixed-rail streetcars over buses where routes can be changed. The permanence is a feature, not a bug. It raises housing values for the people near it since they can plan their lives around it being available to them.
>But demand-dispatched transportation like uber/lyft know exactly where people are starting from, exactly where they're going, and exactly when. If there's a popular show at a music club, the bus lines aren't going to adapt to that in real time.
It’s becoming extremely clear that you have no experience of a transit oriented city. In most cities, the baseline capacity is generally enough outside of rush-hour to accommodate moderate increases in traffic from local events. For larger ones that fill up a part or stadium the transit systems generally know when large events are happening and increase capacity accordingly. They can do this because those things require organizers to book reservations and file for permits weeks or months in advance to alert them.
I don’t know why you think having 2 minutes of warning when people start booking rides are going to enable ride hailing apps to be more dynamic than the actual municipal government’s permitting data. No system is dynamic enough to respond that quickly except with hand-fisted nonsense like surge pricing.
>The difference is that I'm waiting at home rather than waiting at the bus stop. And that the car is going where I want to go, without transfers.
As long as you’re okay with spending $11 instead of $4 there is no reason both options can’t exist. But for most people’s everyday travel, they’ll settle for the $4 instead of expecting technology to solve all the issues by magic.
Ride-sharing apps are much simpler and standardized compared to the incredibly complexity of public transit options and schedules when traveling. I've seen first-hand all those people (except those without working phones) have an easier time with uber/lyft.
Poor/affordability is a different issue.
And that's not getting into how the drivers might tank their ratings over time for inconveniencing them by being disabled.
(compared to SF, compared to rest of EU not so much)
Still, you get in places where waiting for a bus to come is longer than just walking to the U/S-bahn station.
(I lived in Cambridge, MA for many years and this wasn't rare with the #1 bus)
The NY metro area is much more populous than London, and the LA metro area is very slightly less populous.
Well, 14 million vs 20 million is not such a big difference. And the definition of metropolitan areas is somewhat arbitrary in any case.
San Francisco's Bart is hated by almost everyone but it is much faster[1]. In fact, I have never taken a slower subway than NYC subway.
That's a bizarre example. Of course it takes a long time to go from one corner of the city to the other. No reasonable person would be making that commute regularly.
Lots of people work in Manhattan and commute from Brooklyn. It's a 1.5 hr train ride to Columbus Circle + 0-60 minute random slowdown where you may have to take the train in the opposite direction for a bunch of stops.
Sometimes they actually tell you to get off the train, take a shuttle bus and get back on the train. Other times the train stops 8 subway stops from where you have to be with an inaudible message from the conductor. As a result, you are stuck the middle of nowhere at 8 PM on a Saturday. Only option is to take a local bus (that tends to be much more reliable) or Uber. This kind of treatment is unheard of in any European country including Russia.
It could have been a 45 + 0-5 variation minute ride if trains ran as fast and reliably as they do in almost every other city.
This can be solved on a small scale (build "pockets" of livability), but mass transit will have a harder time surviving without other urbanization changes
That was a very loaded word to use. The problem is many people consider dense urban neighborhoods to be unlivable..
That's not even NEAR true.
Los Angeles metro is 12,562 sq km, whilst "Greater London" is 1,569 sq km.
The LA Metro has 12.8m residents, while GL has 8.6m.
So, by either metric, they're much smaller.
It'd be slower and more expensive in some parts of the UK, easier in others and in some countries I assume you'd be expected to just cycle the 6 miles.
6 miles is 10 km, that's a nice ride but I've never heard of traffic planners that expect 10km rides.
For another unrepresentative sample, cycling commuters on strava average a bit over 10 miles: http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/10-stats-pai...
I can't find the stat I want for Copenhagen, they have 1/3rd to 1/2 of people commuting by bike but I can't find out how many journeys of ~10km are completed by bike. I know it's a small number of cycle journeys, as many are shorter, but that's not quite what I'm after.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/nov/30/cycling-revol...
I can't seem to find mode share as a function of commute distance.
Pure anecdata, but when I worked in El Segundo and lived in Santa Monica, I usually cycled the 12 miles to work. It took about 5 minutes longer than the drive.
I'd be very interested in hearing about any place that uses a value as high as 10km, and the rationale.
The minority cycles. Crowded cyclists are hardly better than crowded cars.
https://bicycledutch.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/amsterdam.j...
But the pragmatic reality is that in much of the world that has had such a bike culture, you will eventually end up with this:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/QSXDqDni9VE/maxresdefault.jpg
Cars, although far less dense, are objectively better than the latter case. Safer, quieter, less polluting.
Citation desperately needed. Also, keep in mind there are different ways of defining "safe". Cars are only "safe" inasmuch as they are safer for the occupants and incredibly dangerous for everyone else around. If we considered harm to people _outside_ the car we would view them as much more dangerous (and walking, motorcycling, cycling, etc as being much safer)
You'd also need a road 10x wider for the same volume of traffic.
(They certainly have advantages like exercise, noise, and storage space.)
Bicycles are physically smaller, but they still need a substantial safety zone, just like cars. It's easier and faster to stop a 25mph car than a 25mph bike.
> It's easier and faster to stop a 25mph car than a 25mph bike
Really? Is it that much different? Nothing I found was particularly conclusive but didn't suggest much of a difference.
Perhaps you can enlighten us as to how getting hit by a bicycle is comparable to getting hit by a Land Rover?
Please elaborate; I don't really understand what you mean.
http://www.bikehub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Munster1...
But that doesn't make the comparison "shitty", it just means you need to do more than convincing people to cycle to get the advantages.
> In reality, the effective space taken by cyclist on genera purpose road is bigger than a car — you need a huge safety margin to overtake a cyclis
More than a car? I've certainly not been given more space when people overtake me. Remember a car is 6 feet wide, that's quite a bit of space already that's taken up by a car.
Also, when you have a decent number of cyclists and congested roads they often do travel in packs. See here for an example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-4ynw8672A
or here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhuxmiNsHmA
The city in these videos has many cyclists (and one of the most successful bike-share schemes in the world), but rather scandalously provides very little bike infrastructure and even less enforcement (bike lanes are generally used for parking).
Finally, you might wish to note that one generally refers to "riding" a bike in English, rather than "driving". The same goes for motorcycles in most contexts. This is different from some other languages, such as German, where the same word is used for operating all of those conveyances.
http://keyassets.timeincuk.net/inspirewp/live/wp-content/upl...
But you are right that the cities are more dense.
That's a problem you created yourself, though. You can't say "this would never work here, because we'd never try".
If you change your cities, it would definitely work.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_con...
When I started in uni in Sweden, before I found a local apartment I had to commute from my parent's place. The commute basically crossed a county with a population density of 120 ppl/km2. They lived in a village of 4000 ppl, and I commuted through farmlands, connecting in a city of 100,000 ppl to the student town of 90,000 ppl. It was about 70 km (43 mi) and 50 minutes each way (1 regional bus, 1 train, 1 city bus). Despite this, there were interlocking combinations of these trains+buses about every 20 minutes.
Which Europe? ~$100 pr month seems about par for the course for most major cities I've looked at, and some cities, like London, charge quite a bit more.
http://www.navigo.fr/titres/le-forfait-navigo-annuel-tarifs-...
Plus the train has tables, 240V sockets, wifi (which selects the best from several different providers, so better coverage than my phone), all of that. There are seats available from our station on pretty much every train, and the journey time is more reliable than the car.
The vast majority of people who experience motion sickness in cars will also experience motion sickness in trains.
It took years for me to really understand why so many people don't love trains like I do: motion sickness makes the freedom, relaxation, and ability to focus on work I experience not universally shared.
I'd be genuinely interested to know stats for car and train motion sickness, though: I haven't found any on a quick Google. Motion sickness in general appears to be ~30% of the population. Obviously it's not a simple scale: my wife, for example, will get car-sick (without reading) on a fast, bendy journey more easily than I will; neither of us get train-sick; I get sea-sick much worse than she does.
(Let me just pre-empt someone's example of some billionaire somewhere who loves catching buses, I'm sure there's one out there somewhere.)
For what it's worth, the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte cycles to work just like most everyone else in the Netherlands.
Netherlands, of course, being an example of a place having public transport which is exceptionally good and quite often more convenient and more practical than having a private chauffer.
Also, misses the point: the argument that infrastructure in europe is so much better that there is not a demand or a need for services like uber and lyft contradict the necessity of several cities to ban it. Otherwise they wouldnt have had to do anything and they would have failed.
Uber has not been banned in Germany. They provided an illegal service and have never applied for a permit. They have never been legal. They also had drivers operate without the required health certificates and without the required insurance. (The usual "independent contractor and we're just an intermediary" dance didn't fly either - if you're soliciting an illegal service you're not protected by law just be because you're not directly providing the service.)
Please also note that not all of Ubers services in Germany have been illegal and some still operate. Notably, the classic car-for-hire service is legal, but seems to be making losses, so yes, they failed.
> As a taxi your only (and important benefit) is the monopolization of your business by the local government.
The following describes the situation in Berlin. Since Taxi regulation is partly local, things will differ slightly elsewhere, but the gist applies. Data is from 2012, so somewhat outdated but nothing major changed.
Monopoly is not an important benefit for the local taxi industry. There are about 3000 Taxi companies in Berlin, of which the large majority owns 1 car and only about 10% own three or more cars (about 7000 cars, one per 500 inhabitants). Taxi licenses in Berlin are effectively unrestricted. If you want one, prove that you're not convicted of a crime that makes you ineligible, fill in a 6 page form and hand proof of insurance and some papers, pay a fee, wait. Drivers need to pass a health check every few years (vision test etc) and a one-time knowledge test. All in all, a few hundred to a low thousand EUR and you're in business.
However, Uber didn't even consider applying for a local license here, well, "because". They consciously chose to run an unlicensed Taxi service and spin it as if they'd be unfairly treated by authorities. (Eine Runde Mitleid)
Licenses may be restricted in other jurisdictions or even - since it's a part of the public transport network, Taxis may even be subsidized (Ruftaxi for example)
Benefits that Taxis enjoy is that they're allowed to use lanes restricted for public transport (they are public transport) and may stop on any road at any time to pick up passengers. There are restricted parking spaces at airports, train stations and in central locations that are reserved for taxis.
My experience in berlin was that all uber drivers were taxis and as such the rates they had were comparable if not the same to taxi rates. There could be conditions that I did not see as a tourist, but if Uber could freely move its prices it would have been substantially cheaper that regular taxis. It is so even in argentina, where the service is outright declared illegal.
> The following describes the situation in Berlin. Since Taxi regulation is partly local, things will differ slightly elsewhere, but the gist applies. Data is from 2012, so somewhat outdated but nothing major changed.
Monopoly is not an important benefit for the local taxi industry. There are about 3000 Taxi companies in Berlin, of which the large majority owns 1 car and only about 10% own three or more cars (about 7000 cars, one per 500 inhabitants). Taxi licenses in Berlin are effectively unrestricted. If you want one, prove that you're not convicted of a crime that makes you ineligible, fill in a 6 page form and hand proof of insurance and some papers, pay a fee, wait. Drivers need to pass a health check every few years (vision test etc) and a one-time knowledge test. All in all, a few hundred to a low thousand EUR and you're in business.
However, Uber didn't even consider applying for a local license here, well, "because". They consciously chose to run an unlicensed Taxi service and spin it as if they'd be unfairly treated by authorities. (Eine Runde Mitleid) Licenses may be restricted in other jurisdictions or even - since it's a part of the public transport network, Taxis may even be subsidized (Ruftaxi for example) Benefits that Taxis enjoy is that they're allowed to use lanes restricted for public transport (they are public transport) and may stop on any road at any time to pick up passengers. There are restricted parking spaces at airports, train stations and in central locations that are reserved for taxis.
Thanks for the specific Berlin regulations!
I only saw what I saw, didnt look much into it. If the licenses are relatively unrestricted (cheap, easy to obtain and unlimited) then there is very little stopping a regular person from going through that process and joining Uber. Uber could assist in abiding a very easy regulation and i attest that they tend to not even follow the easy ones (In argentina, they didnt even get a tax id). They deserve and it is just that the law applies to them.
Still, prices are still regulated in berlin, meaning that you cant have the business model of uber work the way it usually does, by combining low-earning drivers with consumers. Also, do taxis require to have car identification? That is another way to restrict low-earning drivers into the market. Etc etc.
If it only were doing basic, cheap and unrestricted access to taxi licenses, then anyone would do it and join uber, without uber needing to do much.