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Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

Maybe at the expense of consumers, but not necessarily to the detriment of citizens.

Anecdote, not data, but my experiences using Uber have been universally better than using taxis and the same is true for everyone I know who has moderate recent experience with both in the US.

There may still be arguments to make that it's detrimental, or at least not beneficial for other reasons, or there may be data that contradicts my anecdote (if so, please link it), but I'm glad Uber exists and probably opposed to any regulation that makes it difficult or impossible for it to operate in a given place.

I know of no one in any of the dozen or so cities I've lived who doesn't prefer a typical uber driver to a typical cab driver.

A lot of people say the same thing you do -- their diverse anecdotes agree that regular cabs are obviously (better, worse) than uber/lyft/etc.

The trouble is, they don't agree which way it goes.

I think the resolution to this conondrum is, it varies based on city/region. Some areas had traditional taxis that are worse than ridesharing, and some better.

Name a region where taxis provide better service than "rideshare".

It might be hard to believe, but there are urban places, outside the US, where public transportation works (so Uber and taxis are still luxury items, so taxis themselves are nice and clean), where taxis are plentiful (so no problems finding one, even at 3am) and either electronic cash works (ie; not credit cards that drivers accept), or credit card readers are required (and effectively enforced so there are no problem paying with credit card), or cash is still king (if your job is paying you in cash, paying cabs with cash is not a burden). On top of that, Google maps/GPS/whatever is unfortunately terrible in many places, so an Uber driver being directed by an app may never get you where you're going, greatly hurting adoption.

Makes sense. However, I travel frequently, but have yet to encounter this situation. In the US the taxi monopoly results in poor customer service and/or difficulty getting a ride. In the various countries I've visited outside, the wealthy countries have had slightly better Ubers than taxis. In the poor countries, I'm incredibly happy to find Uber has arrived as I no longer fear for my life or worry that I'm being cheated. And no, I'm not exaggerating. These are places where the tourism office says to avoid taking public transport for fear of robbery/murder. Thus my belief that Uber is wonderful.

Come to Stockholm, the situation is 90% close what your parent comment said.

And taxis are allowed to be Ubers too, we have Teslas S, Mercedes-Benz E and S classes and normal VW Passat taxis, all of them probably working also for Uber.

Taiwan. I'd definitely take standard taxis in Taiwan over Ubers. In fact, I've made that choice at least a hundred times.

Especially in Taipei, they hit a price and convenience point where taking an Uber is essentially doing a task on my phone in exchange for having to wait longer to get a ride. To be clear, it usually takes about 15 to 90 seconds of waiting to get a cab.

Outside of Taipei, any convenience store (which are basically all over the place) will call a cab for you and again, it's still a pretty short wait unless you're in a remote area in the mountains or something.

NYC. Ask anyone who's recently tried both yellow cabs and uber a bunch of times. Yellow cabbies tend to be more experienced, and it shows in their driving.

Xapata, you must really be a heck of a globetrotter to be able to so confidently ask a question like that!

Enough of one I suppose. Obviously there's some areas I haven't made it out to in a while. And it's not like I systematically study drivers.

Confidently? More curious than confident. It's best not to assume tone in text.

I can't agree more strongly about the trouble assuming tone in text. I apologize for assuming

How about Singapore?

Clean, cheap usually friendly drivers with lots of local insight and you're guaranteed not to be cheated.

What's the difference? Please elaborate. As I see it, there are only a few citizens who benefitted-- those involved in the ownership of taxi companies & medallions.

Untrained Uber and Lyft drivers are all but required to violate the law and endanger others, in pursuit of "customer service." Pull over RIGHT HERE. Flip a U-turn RIGHT HERE. Customer must not walk FIVE FEET. Customer can open door RIGHT HERE. Ad nausuem.

I bike commute in San Francisco and on a typical day I dodge literally dozens of illegally double-parked ride share cars occupying marked bike lanes. I have been nearly doored multiple times, nearly run into parked cars multiple times, been forced into traffic innumerable times, etc.

This is not the 'fault' (sic) of individual drivers. It's the business model, and I hold Uber and Lyft accountable.

EDIT: taxi drivers do this 2% as often; I've bike commuted in the city 20 years and it is apples and oranges

Agree 100% that the experience is similar in NYC. Non-yellow cabbies in NYC seem much less experienced (I mean on average, of course) with urban traffic -- when I'm cycling, I am much warier of the black uber cars than of the yellow cabs -- the yellow cabs are aggressive too, but are very experienced and their aggressiveness is thus very practiced and predictable, easy to deal with and not really usually a danger as long as you know the drill

And when I'm on the other side and need to take a cab, I much prefer to take a yellow cab, because they get there faster. Even with GPS, a dense urban environment is filled with little foibles and tricks that only experience can handle

My experience in NYC was that the medallion taxi drivers were much more willing to violate traffic laws. I've been hit by a taxi, never by an Uber.

Other people on the road benefitted, at least in some places. A major reason for taxi regulation in NYC was to reduce road congestion - they calculated that adding more taxis would increase the average travel time. Now Uber has upended this.

I think that pricing congestion directly would be better, but in the absence of that, this is an example of Uber hurting some citizens who are not taxi companies.

The road congestion theory is a backwards rational -- someone was trying to come with reason for why medallions should still exist and came up with it. There's no way that anyone in 1937 had congestion in mind when they were creating the taxi medallions; to call it a "major" reason for why tax medallions were created is completely absurd.

To cite road congestion as being part of the "spirit" of why taxi medallions were created leaves me with the impression of someone being disingenuous.

> There's no way that anyone in 1937 had congestion in mind when they were creating the taxi medallions

What on earth makes you assert this? The intense and (to modern eyes) borderline insane levels of traffic congestion in NYC at the dawn of the automobile age are very well documented. There are pictures and videos you can easily find, that make today's horrible congestion look bearable and civilized. A lot of traffic rules and devices have their dawn in the same era.

A taxi monopoly can help citizens at the expense of consumers only to the extent that citizens are not consumers. If few citizens are consumers, it seems the taxi monopoly is not serving most citizens well. Isn't that a contradiction?

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