Hacker News Reader

Comment by hug | Hacker News Reader

I take a bunch of ubers, by which I mean I take maybe 4 or 5 ubers a week. Before I took ubers, I didn't take cabs, I took the train. I walked five minutes to get on a tram to the train station, I switched to a train, and then I walked ten minutes home.

I never, really, took cabs. I can explain the multitude of reasons: Cab drivers with shitty attitudes, refusing to unlock the doors and just cracking open the window to ask how far it was you were planning to go: Too short? Don't want to take you, fare is too small. Too long? Don't want to take you, won't get a fare back. I mean, y'know, cab drivers are legally obliged to take you on any distance journey but the lack of accountability meant that they wouldn't. Sometimes there were no choices: Cab home or you won't get there. In those cases, I'd take cabs. The cab driver would be rubbing his eyes, swerving all over the road, tired after working a 16 hour shift, while talking on the phone to, I guess, whoever would listen. Doing anything they could not to pay attention to driving, apparently.

And now I take ubers instead. It's not because I like uber. It's not because I think that the laws around the cab drivers should be ignored and uber should be allowed to flaunt that however they like. It's because I think that, at least right now, uber works better than laws. At least right now.

Is the contractor thing a little bit on the suspicious side? Definitely. Should they pay their "driver partners" more? Definitely. Do I think that this problem is uber's fault? Most definitely not.

I don't have lyft available to me. If I did, I'd probably use lyft. I'm happy with being slightly conscientious and paying a bit more, knowing that I'm not ripping off some guy who can't do any better. Anecdotally, most of my friends think the same thing.

But what I won't do is support the existing cab industry.

View on HN

My local (Denmark) taxi company has an app that is pretty much like Uber: I enter start and end address and can prepay. But, they do obey the law unlike Uber.

I suppose Uber's ease of use has inspired other companies, so it's great there was some competition. But now if Uber wants to return to Denmark, they must also obey the law.

I think in Europe we prefer to not have too much "disruption" and "lobbyism".

The big ongoing corruption case in Denmark right now is an IT company that paid for a $50,000 Dubai "research" trip with IT-bosses from the the local government (in hope of making it back for selling too-expensive IT equipment to the state)

There's a lot of people involved -- so far, a government employee has received a 4 month non-suspended prison sentence for receiving about $7,000 worth of iPhones etc.

We had app ride hailing in Nottingham, UK before Uber was even founded. It was an inevitability everywhere.

Rather funnily, we had a Twilio in Nottingham too many years before Twilio was founded.

The difference between EU and American startups is that there are VCs investing huge sums in US companies so they can do mass advertising.

Also becuase of difference between EU VC and US VC: US VCs are happy to invest in something that might not pay off, EU funding are more insistent about ROI.

It's unfortunately not that surprising though. The tech giants have operated in Europe largely without paying taxes. Avoiding corporate income taxes with help of Ireland, The Netherlands and US tax law. As well as avoiding VAT with special deals with Luxembourg. They have essentially operated with a large discount compared to local competitors. It's of course a lot harder to get investments in the shadow of such competition.

I don't think funding as such is the main problem in Europe though. We do have a few really rich tech people, as well as a lot of old wealth. What we don't have is the thousands of semi-rich people in the wake of the tech giants that can "repeat the cycle". Something especially needed since we haven't been spared the increase in housing costs.

Excellent point, especially with the tons of semi rich people. Its often overlooked how young SV really is. The first gold rush was in semiconductors, and the people that made money there invested in software and the cycle continued. What essentially happened is that these "semi-rich" people, as you say, were perfect investors in new startups:

1. They had the money to get the startup going 2. They had the technical expertise to (mostly) select good investments and cut through the bullshit. 3. They had experience with startups themselves; they were excellent mentors and had industry connections besides.

Now the system is in place, it seems rather magical.

What's the name of this app?

I assume he's talking about Moove

Came here to say that, fellow Dane. You don't need to bypass regulations to provide a quality service.

I was going to say "Ironically, Uber has a non-trivial office in Aarhus", which is true, but turns out they have many offices all over the world which is for some reason surprising. Might be one of the larger ones though.

Yours seems like a fairly usual reply when either Airbnb or Uber are discussed - "it works for me". Great that it works for you.

I have never had a problem with the cabs where I live (and Uber is banned)

Anyway to add my anecdote as a counter to yours. I was back home in Scotland at Christmas last year. Private Cabs were all busy, so we tried an Uber wanted to charge nearly three times what the monopolistic black cabs (the ones you hail from the street) charge. My one and only experience with Uber and it didn't seem good.

Cabs are shit in most places around the world. What's great with Uber is that you will avoid that while traveling.

I traveled recently in a foreign country where I did not speak the local language. Uber allowed me to enter my destination and location without confusing the driver. I could never have done this with a traditional taxi cab.

You couldn’t show them the address written down?

I've tried that in most countries I've been to. The results have been hit-and-miss.

Japan: Works great Turkey: Nope. Thailand: Nope. France: Works, but not always well

In a lot of countries, cab drivers are illiterate. And I don't mean functionally illiterate. I mean simply CAN NOT read. Not even a map. If you don't speak the language absolutely fluently, you're screwed.

I could, but sometimes addresses are not so clear. In my experience taxi drivers like it when you can explain directions and negotiate price. Without common language for me that is quite difficult.

I have managed to take taxis in plenty of countries where I don't speak the language. Don't pretend that its something difficult.

Sure it's easy to take a cab. What's more tricky, is not getting scammed. E.g. in Vietnam you'll be looking about various internet sources on which taxi companies are probably not gonna scam you. In France, I had some friends getting scammed in a separate ride from mine.

In general, the ability to know beforehand the price, is golden!

Adding to this: in countries payment can also be a problem, trivially solved via Uber. Take e.g. when I first arrived in South Korea and took an cab from the airport (fixed rates and in cabs in Korea are nice, so not a complaint there), the taxi couldn't take my card, and I didn't have 100k won in cash (accidentally took a luxury cab), so we had to drive around to find a bank that luckily took VISA.

Depends on the country. Travel to a difficult country, or a rural area of pretty much any country, and get back to us.

What do you consider a "difficult" country? I used to lug a kayak around South America with me on public transport and taxis or even the back of trucks that were going the right way (while speaking the language very poorly). The biggest problem I had was getting a taxi in Hungary where the letters look the same but the pronunciation is quite different. Even then it was a case of getting a map out and pointing to the street.

I am not sure how you were able to communicate if you could not write or speak directions, but I am impressed! I don't think it wasn't possible to do before Uber in general, just for my case.

Map, and a finger. Or a piece of paper with a hotel name written on it. Are people really becoming so incapable of navigating life without a phone?

So people before Uber have never used taxis in foreign countries?/s In most countries taxis already have apps comparable to Uber available on Google Play. Even before that, I've managed to get a taxi in China without understanding a single word or symbol (could be said the same about driver and English) and successfully reach my hotel -- showing a hotel's reservation did the trick (I bet that pointing a finger on a location on a map would also work).

Did they really have those apps pre-Uber or did they simply adjust to compete by releasing their own app later? Nothing wrong with that, companies adjusting their model to compete, but at least where I live, cabs hadn't changed their model since the 1950s at least. Now, some of them are beginning to release apps, but they wouldn't have bothered without Uber and Lyft taking their business.

Those are interesting techniques. In my case I was in a foreign country and did not have a map or hotel reservation. I also did not know about local taxi companies. My visit was not exactly well-planned.

If you had a phone and Internet to call Uber, you also had a map. Of course, I don't deny that it's much simpler with Uber or a taxi app, but telling that Uber is the only mean to get a taxi in a foreign country is like telling that people couldn't eat before inventing a spoon.

Yeah my intention was just to share that I found it easier. In my case the map wasn’t working. I was on a public WiFi hotspot and I didn’t know where or how to hail a cab. I’m sure it is technically possible to do without the convenience, but doing all the communication over the app in advance saved me from walking four hours in the rain and likely getting lost.

Counter anecdote to your anecdote: I took tons of cabs when I was visiting Colombia and I didn't know a single bit of Spanish. I'd just pull up google maps, click on where I wanted to go, show them the screen. Every single one was perfectly fine.

Not having mobile data in my case meant that I was scrambling from public wifi to the cab. I could not use Google translate or other tools in the car. I also would have no way to negotiate price or insure that I was going the correct place. Not saying that Uber is the only way, but that for me it was helpful.

I didn't realize that Uber worked without mobile data.

Yeah I actually used it from a public WiFi and then ran outside to meet the driver when he got close enough.

This is the primary reason I use Uber when traveling. It makes things so easy.

I don't think thats entirely fair. They vary a lot, some places good some places bad.

Pre-Uber, cabs near me worth horrendous. I'd book a cab to go to the bar on St Patties day a week in advance, and they'd just not show; they found someone else on the way and that maximized their profit so they grabbed that fair. So 30m after I'm supposed to be inebriated; I call company, they say they sent another, and 30m later it also never shows. One of us then bite the bullet and play DD for the night (group of 5 congregated to share the cab and hitchhike back).

I think 'Cabs Suck' was pretty ubiquitous comment in many many areas of the country pre uber/lyft; it's an industry that needed to be disrupted badly.

Surge pricing is actually a great feature. It’s the low base bay, lack of benefits, and screwing with liability that are loathsome.

You had a choice of NO CAB or an Uber at triple rate. Didn’t want to pay? Clearly someone else did. Economics at work.

One of my early experiences with Uber was much the same, trying to get my family home from the national zoo in Washington DC in a sudden rain storm. Cabs — not available. Uber — surge pricing. Totally worth it.

That said I use Lyft exclusively now because of Uber’s moral vacuum.

We hailed a black cab there and then, so it was quicker than Uber and a fraction of the price. (Just to clarify, the cheaper private hire cabs where you book in advance were all busy. Usually I avoid black cabs - the ones you hail on the street, as they cost way more. These expensive back cabs were still less than half of the price of Uber).

If TNCs didn't exist, then almost all the black cabs would have been in use and you would have been back with "no black cab" as an option. The only reason it's now easy to hail a vehicle on the street is increased competition from TNCs.

It was never difficult to hail a black cab, its just the costs were high.

I prefer waiting longer for a cab to be available, than only rich people taking cabs. With uber at a triple rate, I have to wait longer on average for the fare to go down, than to catch a free cab by chance when the fare stays flat.

a choice of NO CAB or an Uber

That's not what he said. Private-hire taxis are not the same as "black cabs". The first is more like what we'd call a car service in the US (call and schedule in advance). The second is what we know as a yellow cab (hail on the street).

It doesn't matter. Uber doesn't hide the fact that they charge more during demand surges, and the fact that there is a demand surge is more info than cab companies usually provide; typically they'll take your booking and lie about how close the driver is.

> Cab drivers with shitty attitudes, refusing to unlock the doors and just cracking open the window to ask how far it was you were planning to go: Too short? Don't want to take you, fare is too small. Too long? Don't want to take you, won't get a fare back. I

You are citing some problems that aren't "uber vs taxi" but seem to be due to a lack of competition among taxis.

- Taxis shouldn't be allowed to reject you

- Taxis should all take cards, and preferably pre-payment

- Taxis should be bookable with apps

- Taxis should compete for service meaning a nice attitude and a nice car will be common.

So this isn't about "uber vs taxi" this is about monopoly taxi vs. non-monopoly taxi. Once the monopoly is out, Uber will just be like every other taxi company. And better still, all the taxi companies will be like Uber.

It might be that "taxi" in a lot of cities, especially US cities, are monopolies, have shitty cars, no apps, rude drivers etc. But that isn't because they are taxis, it's because they are a monopoly. Uber should be considered a taxi company, because they are taxi. But they should of course be allowed also to operate as a taxi, everywhere they want.

> So this isn't about "uber vs taxi" this is about monopoly taxi vs. non-monopoly taxi.

But that's not true. Uber doesn't fix these issues by being an "alternative", it fixes them by switching the incentives around. What this is about is "order a cab" vs. "hail a cab". By letting drivers opt into a ride, all of GP's issues disappear.

Of course you still do need competition once you're past that layer, yeah; taxi monopolies do sometimes offer cab-ordering services but those services still suck (Only available by phonecall with waiting time, no notifications, no prepayment etc). Simply removing the monopoly would not fix the issue entirely.

I'm speaking from the perspective of an unregulated market.

I can order a regular taxi via an app that is as good as Ubers, or hail one in the street, or go to a taxi stand (I doubt there will be an Uber at the stand, but there is nothing stopping them I suppose). Or I can order an Uber-. I'm not sure if I could actually hail an Uber on the street, but hypothetically if an uber driver was idling and saw I needed a taxi, I'm sure I could just take a seat and order the ride using the app from the passenger seat before we drive off.

Regardless of whether I order a regular taxi or an Uber, I can prepay, track it in the app etc. And regardless of whether I order an Uber or a regular car, I expect a nice driver and a reasonably new car (Not rarely a Tesla).

My point is: when there is no monopoly, the others can't afford to have an app, cars, or services that are worse than Ubers. Also, when there is no taxi monopoly, it's pretty natural that Uber is "taxi" like all the other taxi companies. They provide nothing that the others don't!

> But that's not true. Uber doesn't fix these issues by being an "alternative", it fixes them by switching the incentives around

Depends on the market. In Las Vegas, for example, there is plenty of taxi competition, but the taxis only work the tourist zones. The reason the people of LV forced their local politicians to welcome Uber, above the objections of the taxi cartel, is because the taxis refuse to pick up the locals in the neighborhoods. There's no need to when they can make the same money, or better, being lazy working the tourists.

Uber and Lyft have been a godsend for people with limited mobility, the elderly, those who can't afford or choose not to have a car, and those who would like to have a nice night out without worrying about a DUI. Taxis are despised in Las Vegas. Their lobbying power is the reason the monorail system stops just short of the airport.

> Once the monopoly is out, Uber will just be like every other taxi company. And better still, all the taxi companies will be like Uber.

That is pretty much how things are here in Lithuania. The system works well, you don't really come across drivers or cars with issues, and there isn't really any kind of monopoly. There aren't many true taxis, because being a 'taxi' vs a 'private driver' means you pay more effectively just to be able to drive in bus lanes.

Historically people would phone up to book (and a car would turn up in under 10 minutes), but now you can use a single app to book and pay by card with all the different taxi companies (and get whatever car is quickest or cheapest). Uber were late to the game when they entered the market in 2015, and their launch has gone pretty much unnoticed.

What monopoly? There is no taxi monopoly that I'm aware of. If anything much of the problem with Taxis is because of the heavy competition racing to the bottom.

Depends on where you live. In some large cities there is a maximum number of taxis allowed. They have get permits/medallions to operate. In these cities where Uber is not considered a "taxi" they can operate as many cars as they want.

I don't think that means it is a monopoly.

It may be more accurate to call it an oligopoly, but the distortion of the market from limited supply and competition remain the same.

I’d compare it to how ISPs are in the US. Most people believe ISPs have local monopolies which is why Comcast sucks. But we can’t simply change services because laws restrict ability for new ISPs to be started. Same issue with taxis. There are limited options and the medallion model limits the competition and new options from being created to compete.

Same for me. I absolutely understand the criticism of Uber but saying that they are just a taxi app doesn't cut it.

To add more advantages to the list: Full price transparency, pre-agreed price so you don't need to worry that you drive in circles, no driver searching for change for several minutes until you let him keep it.

And, like McDonald's did for fastfood, it creates a world wide standard for taxi services. I had a driver in India that took me to tourist stores instead of my destination and in Mexico City they warn you about taxi drivers robbing you - all not happening in an Uber.

The local cab firm that exists only in my small home town has all these "innovations" too.

Yep, as do cab firms all around the globe, including apps that offer the same experience with regular registered cab drivers.

Not sure if you're being sarcastic but that's a big overstatement. There are a lot of big cities (capitals) around the globe where the cab industry is a pure scam. There's no such thing as GPS tracking, price transparency, apps and whatsoever. No wonder Uber took over.

That's true too.

Maybe, in a way, Uber was a necessary evil. From following the discussions about it here for years now, I realize there are many places around the world where taxi situation is absolutely horrible. All of that created an opportunity for a bunch of evil assholes (and I'm not using these words lightly) with VC money to take over and earn money breaking laws, knowing in full that the locals will appreciate the increase in quality and decrease in price to the point of actually defending them from regulators.

Exactly. I, by no means, agree to a foreign company stepping over local taxi companies which spent huge amounts of money on licensing and operating rights. But the service plainly sucks for end-users.

On top of that, there are also numerous locations where taxis simply didn't exist.

> all not happening in an Uber

I'm pretty sure similar [0], and worse [1], is also happening on Uber/Lyft, just not to the same scale yet because of taxis services being far more established around the world.

But I don't see any reason why cab drivers would be any more criminal than ridesharing drivers. Unless ridesharing services do some extra deep background checking on their drivers, which I doubt is actually happening.

[0] http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/h...

[1] http://www.whosdrivingyou.org/rideshare-incidents

To take [0] as an example, the driver was easily arrested. If she had been travelling in a taxi, is it likely she would have memorised the plates?

The use of apps to book rides makes it very easy to trace drivers if anything untoward happens.

Route tracking also makes it easy to reclaim if an indirect route is taken (I have successfully done this with Uber).

Route tracking could of course be implemented with traditional taxis, but at the moment is a reason why ride sharing is considered safer.

> To take [0] as an example, the driver was easily arrested. If she had been travelling in a taxi, is it likely she would have memorised the plates?

It was a he who got robbed by a she and it could only happen because he got drugged by the water she offered and then abused his trust-advance, towards ridesharing drivers, by asking to use his toilet.

Her getting caught on his surveillance cam, leaving the house only two hours later, probably did more leading to her arrest than her being an Uber driver instead of a Cab driver because the victim didn't remember a whole lot of anything after having been drugged.

> The use of apps to book rides makes it very easy to trace drivers if anything untoward happens.

Afaik taxis also keep logs about where they go, tho that might depend on the country we are talking about, just like the background check practices of any given ridesharing service.

But I don't see why regular taxi services couldn't do the background check that Uber supposedly does.

Tho I agree with your last two points, I still think the only real difference here is that criminals and scammers haven't fully adapted to these ridesharing services yet, but the potential is there none the less.

>Same for me. I absolutely understand the criticism of Uber but saying that they are just a taxi app doesn't cut it. To add more advantages to the list: Full price transparency, pre-agreed price so you don't need to worry that you drive in circles, no driver searching for change for several minutes until you let him keep it.

None of the above are impossible to have in regular cabs + app.

In fact tons of countries already have just that.

Sure, but what Uber offers is to make this ubiquitous and save me from having to learn the subtle variations of the local taxi markets in each place I visit.

If there are differences it'd be (partly) b/c of regulation which the topic is all about. By all means if Uber feel like using licensed drivers, cars etc. as they apply to a specific country, they can keep their ubiquitous app.

For instance: enough cities may not have preferred/dedicated public transport lane which makes significant costs based on waiting times, rather than distance: hence pre-agreed price is an estimate at best.

To me: Uber is a taxi company through and through and if there are local regulation Uber should not be able to circumvent them.

Your argument boils down to: they are not taxi service, because they are ubiquitous.

There is nothing about taxi definition that would exclude ubiquitous from it. There is nothing about taxi definition that would exclude companies with easy to use apps from it etc.

I'm not arguing that they're not a taxi service. Colloquially they definitely are, and I don't know enough about the legal definitions to have an option on that aspect. I was just pointing out their competitive advantage over local taxi companies with local apps.

> pre-agreed price so you don't need to worry that you drive in circles

This isn't the case in the UK, it's always an estimate and I've had plenty of shitty drivers who don't know how to drive in London which have added 10 mins to a surge price journey because they've missed turnings, driven round in circles or taken the wrong bridge.

But with Uber, you can message customer service who have a full gps trace of your trip. This actually works, I’ve done it. They refunded my entire trip, and I bet the driver has a mark on their record somewhere.

pre-agreed prices are pretty recent in the US too, I am confident they will implement it in the UK at some point. It just makes more sense.

> Full price transparency, pre-agreed price so you don't need to worry that you drive in circles,

In UK you either get a taxi which uses a calibrated tamper-proof taximeter and published rates per mile, or you use a cab which must offer the option of pre-agreed fee.

This dual system existed decades before Uber.

Great for you, but until Uber I never experienced those things. Because of Uber, I experience them everywhere. I use Lyft exclusively when given the option, and cabs here and there as I travel. No matter what, I'm grateful to Uber for creating pressure across global markets to make the "typical experience" much closer to the "good experience" that you've been privileged to already have.

A tamper proof taximeter is useless when the driver can just drive in circles to make some extra money.

“Is this contractor thing a little bit on the suspicious side? Definitely. Should They pay their “driver partners” more? Definitely. Do I think that this problem is Uber’s fault? Most definitely not.”

What?

Uber is the sole party that structures the relationship with its drivers and determines the rate it would pay them. Why is it not their problem or fault? And, if it’s not their problem, whose is it?

If you had the option to hire one of two people that will do the same job at the same performance level and one costs you $10 an hour and the other $20 an hour, which one do you choose? Is it the company to blame for picking the $10 an hour person?

The company is definitely at fault if it achieved that $10 rate by misclassifying the individual as a contractor.

Then the government that made the contractor vs employee laws needs to apply it. If a law is not enforced then it is not really a law. Companies are not obligated to do better than enforced laws, they are not charities or social organizations here to make the world a better place, they are here to make money for their shareholders.

I think the EU is doing the right thing. It sometimes takes a while for government laws or competition to catch up and balance out issues, but I don't for a second think that any company is going to play nice if it does not have to.

>> Companies are not obligated to do better than enforced laws

They really are.

You seem to be effectively saying "well, if they can get away with it there's nothing wrong with that"

>> they are not charities or social organizations here to make the world a better place, they are here to make money for their shareholders.

There's a lot more to it than that, we are not a pure, unfettered capitalistic society in Europe.

You are confusing legality with ethics. Ethically, Uber has a lot to be desired.

Uber is a US based company and will try to follow the capitalistic model as much as possible unless restricted by local laws. I would never make an assumption that a US based company's goal is to do good. Assume they are out to maximize profit no matter where they operate. If they seem to do good then there is a driver in their business model where this leads to more profits than doing bad.

>> You are confusing legality with ethics.

In this case I'm not sure I am - if there are laws that companies need to follow, even if they are not always strictly or consistently enforced, I would consider it the legal obligation of a company to follow them.

The thing is, under a lot of systems of law, you don't have that opportunity because you have to pay employees at least a minimum. Using "independent contractor" status to work around that is scummy, and may yet prove illegal.

I have employees and contractors working for me and we have very strict rules on what contractors can do, how you interact with them and when they might be considered employees. The company I work for wants to stay clearly on the legal side of contractor law.

If it is proved illegal then Uber will owe these people back pay and possibly back benefits which might collapse Uber and that is fine. If you want to run that close to the edge of the law then you have to accept the risk. But let these laws and judgments catch up with the new economy/technology.

Well, they are, albeit slowly.

I am a contractor myself, and the law in this area is murky. But in the case of the gig economy it is being used as a tax and rights avoidance strategy, not honestly.

Uber have already lost at least one case in the UK in which drivers sought to be classified as employed.

"Uber is the sole party that structures the relationship with its drivers and determines the rate it would pay them. Why is it not their problem or fault? And, if it’s not their problem, whose is it?"

The driver is the sole party who decides each day whether or not the offer from Uber is worth it.

If drivers don't think it is worth it, they won't do it. If they do think it is worth it, why should I get in the way of their choice?

If Uber raises the rates they pay drivers, rates to customers will also rise. Economics suggests more people will be drivers at the higher rate, but fewer people will buy rides.

More supply and less demand probably won't make drivers happy, either.

And competitors can come in and undercut, as long as drivers are willing to accept the pay provided.

Economics also suggests that worker rights are crucial to a functioning economy.

There was actually an interesting paper written about this recently: http://john-joseph-horton.com/papers/uber_price.pdf

Essentially, when Uber raises fares it increases earnings in the short term, but not long term, because more drivers enter the system and push their earnings back down as each driver gets fewer rides.

Uber could solve this problem by limiting the number of drivers. But that of course turns some underpaid Uber drivers into unemployed ex-Uber drivers. Which doesn't sound like a desirable outcome either.

Which is another reason why the EU would want to class uber as transport. In switching from PT to Uber you create congestion, which cities will want to regulate.

I hope that what I said didn't come across as supporting a lack of regulation. I'm pro-regulation. I'm anti-luddism, though, and sometimes it's hard to figure out where on the line I should stand.

The point is not that uber is good for ignoring regulation, the point is that the current regulations, borne from an age where things such as uber could not have existed, don't quite hold up in the age where things such as uber do exist.

If the choice for me is "behave according to inane regulation", or "break the regulations", or "update the regulations to reflect the reality of the situation" I will, in every case, like to see what's behind door number three.

Phrasing the uber-versus-taxis debate without the third option is just suffering under the yoke of bureaucracy. We can do better.

Nope, think we agree with each other :) Just pointing out why the EU would want to be able to deal with Uber as Transport.

The sane way to handle congestion would be to have a congestion fee (as London does) for driving in the urban core. Make it apply to taxis as well as private cars, and the created incentives will balance uses well.

So, Uber is giving you the taxi cab service you always wanted? That's great, and that's why they should be regulated as such.

One could make the argument that regulation got regular cabs to the position they're in today, and applying that to Uber would ruin the service. A functioning system would have been more resistant to disruption. Perhaps the regulations cabs already have aren't enforceable?

Do you have specific area in mind within the EU where the statement "regulation got regular cabs to the position" is based on?

You take cabs.

You take cabs with a company who have a history of all sorts of shady dealings, a history of evading laws, evading employment rights, evading inspections, avoiding taxes, duping inspectors, not cooperating with police and a ton of other stuff.

But it's OK because you don't like the way other firms operate a service you think is a bit shabby.

You might want to take more of a look around at what you're supporting. Lots of stuff can work better without the laws, until it doesn't and you realise the laws were there for a reason.

I agree, but this experience can be delivered without the dodgy business model.

Hailo did this, all within the bounds of the standard regulatory framework by joining independent drivers to customers with all of the advantages that you provide.

They never annoyed anybody.

Sadly it seems they tried and failed to take on the less regulated markets and this was their undoing.

I miss Hailo and I hope somebody comes along with a credible replacement soon. MyTaxi is just plain awful and is probably the best marketing for Uber round these parts there has ever been!

There really isn't any critical intellectual property or secret sauce that should stand in the way ... just pure graft required.

Hopefully this will do the trick http://www.whistletaxiapp.com/

>Is the contractor thing a little bit on the suspicious side? Definitely. Should they pay their "driver partners" more? Definitely. Do I think that this problem is uber's fault? Most definitely not.

The contractors thing is a tax avoidance scheme at the sole advantage, and responsibility, of Uber.

> I didn't take cabs, I took the train.

And then a new cab company came to town, and were sufficiently innovative in the market to convince you to stop taking the train, and take their cabs.

But compared to tram and train, Uber is much more expensive, is it not?

Maybe it depends on the country you are from.

Sure. I pay twice as much, on average, to get home in a lot less than half the time.

I also support public transport. I pay for a monthly pass, every month. Do I want that to be my only option? No.

> I pay for a monthly pass, every month.

So in practise you pay more than double, as the additional public transportation you take is 'free'? Just being curious.

I'm kinda the same as GP. I used to get train then tube, not I get train then Uber. For me it's about 2x as expensive but 5 minutes shorter journey without having to deal with this[1] on 4 tubes a day. This also means I avoid this[2] at least twice a month when the tube inevitably breaks down.

It doesn't avoid the misery of the train which suffers from overcrowding every day and frequent cataclysmic failures adding anything from 30 mins to hours to your commute.

If only more companies would get on board with remote working. There is literally no need for 90% of people to be in the office 5 days a week.

1. https://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/1/590x/tube-596...

2. http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/08/05/17/2B201BF40000057...

You could try working somewhere other than London. You'd likely take a paycut, but you'd also probably have cheaper living.

Edinburgh and Newcastle both have thriving tech scenes with plenty of startups needing problems solved badly.

No, my day rate is 2x it'd be anywhere else in the country and the savings wouldn't come close to making up for that. I also like where I live but that doesn't mean I don't get to bitch about the state of the city I work in.

> If only more companies would get on board with remote working. There is literally no need for 90% of people to be in the office 5 days a week.

This. Worse case scenario in a city with a diverse economy is 50%, that is half of the people don't really need to be there in the first place.

I work remotely for a company who's headquarters are in a district which is a textbook example of bad urban planning.

Each time I have to be there for some reason I witness a sea of people in cars and public transport taking literally minutes to cross one intersection and I wonder - how and why do they put up with this?

Uberpool was usually equivalent to Chicago public transportation personally. Some days it was roughly 20% more, but if my gf rode with me it was actually cheaper and was generally faster or aleast equivalent.

+1 on that. Uber is great for a couple or a pair of friends.

>I never, really, took cabs. I can explain the multitude of reasons: Cab drivers with shitty attitudes, refusing to unlock the doors and just cracking open the window to ask how far it was you were planning to go: Too short? Don't want to take you, fare is too small. Too long? Don't want to take you, won't get a fare back.

None of the above is a problem when ordering cabs from a cab company's app. You don't need Uber to get accountable cabs, or to not have to haul them on the street.

You don't, but I do. All of the above continue to be a problem on the incumbent taxi provider apps.

(For reference, I'm in Australia.)

Good for you. This ruling is re the EU.

It works better than law mostly because of the amount of privacy both employees and customer have to sacrifice. Most things would "work better" with that trade-off.

Edit: Does this mean people can now hail an Uber without needing an account or the app?

And the tax evasion (executed by the driver, on behalf of Uber). Without that, would there even be uber ?

According to this ruling, you support the taxi industry by using Uber in EU. Probably the Uber drivers will also start acting like you have described. After all, they are ordinary taxi driver now.

So I guess: Back to trams and walking?

You know what used to happen if I got upset about a taxi driver driving irresponsibly?

I'd call up. I'd complain. They told me they'd take the feedback onboard, and they'd definitely do something.

And then, of course, they hung up and went back to doing whatever it is they did rather than providing customer service.

I can only assume this is because it wasn't worth it to them to bother, but I also know it's why there's a value proposition that supports uber, at least for my use case.

I don't know if uber drivers earn less than cab drivers, but I do know that uber drivers they tell me they earn more that their former cab jobs. I don't know if uber is a horrible company or not, but I do know that when I complain, they promise I'll never see that driver again.

I know that uber will actually show up to pick me up.

I know that the drivers are held accountable.

That's worth a lot. Worth enough to you? I don't know. Worth enough to me that I'd pay more than the going taxi rate, though.

> That's worth a lot. Worth enough to you? I don't know. Worth enough to me that I'd pay more than the going taxi rate, though.

Uber has "invested" billions of dollars (double digits) in making itself cheap. That tells me that if they were even just comparable in price to taxis, they would never be able to survive.

> if they were even just comparable in price to taxis, they would never be able to survive

In the quiet words of the Virgin Mary, [citation needed].

Uber has invested millions of dollars into something. One of those things is, undoubtedly, expanding. One of the facets of expanding is, undoubtedly, lowering fares.

Does this mean that an uber-like service must run at a net loss in order to provide their service? Of course not.

The drivers own the cars and pay for the maintenance costs. Neither Uber, nor the drivers pay for taxi licenses, so they pocket that as well.

Uber does more than make their drivers accountable. Just a few under-5-star ratings can really hurt their career. It's heavily weighted in favor of the passenger, which you might like, but is unfair to the drivers.

>I don't know if uber is a horrible company or not

Really?

According to this ruling, you support the taxi industry by using Uber in EU

Transportation service, not taxi.

I never had such huge problems with taxi. Just about the only one I can relate to is them taking only cash.

When I call for taxi, they ask where I want to go, so the whole window situation never happen.

> Cab drivers with shitty attitudes

Not always rosey with Uber drivers. My first was in San Diego a few years ago: driver had been in town 2 days, asked us for directions, and spent the entire drive asking me about sexual activities he could find on Craigslist that was illegal in his country. Presumably it could have been a fraudulent situation and he was driving for someone else, which would likely get that person removed from Uber, but still, not a great intro to the service.

You could have phoned a private hire firm? They're the same taxi drivers you're paying, they're just using an app now.

Bit of a silly stance and rant in my opinion.

Find me a private hire firm, operating across the entirety of metropolitan Melbourne (Australia), with a pickup time of under 30 minutes, with a rate that is available to someone you wouldn't describe as "independently wealthy".

I'll wait.

Of course, I've tasked you with an impossibility. You're saying I should use a service that doesn't exist. The only way that services like the one we're talking about work is by having a surfeit of vehicles available, and the only service that has that in Melbourne is uber.

You can call what I was saying a "silly stance", but you're saying that from a position of ignorance.

Perhaps, for a moment, you should consider the outside perspective.

On the other hand, if you do find the service I described, please let me know. I'd like to use it.

It's not ignorance, if there were such a massive opportunity for a taxi firm in Melbourne, without rides being subsidised by Uber's deep coffers, why didn't one spring up?

It's the same taxi drivers driving you today as would be driving you 4 years ago.

There’s a threshold where the service fundamentally changes.

Phoning a cab here is looking for the local cab company number, getting shitty call quality, argue with an operator where you are, wait who knows how long for a cab you don’t how it looks like, explain the driver where you’re supposed to go, do the “fucking let me pay by card” dance.

Even trying one of the national cab company’s app only reduced that shittiness by half. It can be the same drivers at the wheel, the delivered service difference is still night and day.

Same. If Uber were to stop operating in London I would just take the Night Tube home or not go out (weekdays).

Win-win. Less pollution and you spend less.

Also less quality of life.

That depends. If your quality if life is measured by nights out, it's true. However if I look back at my life my most satisfying and memorable happenings were either the ones I has to wait and long for, and the ones happened completely randomly - both completely irrelevant to going out or not on weekdays. Your life will not be less if you go out less - go out when you have a reason, a concert, a band playing, a movie you actually want to see, and not for the sake of going out.

BTW, I lived in London, public transport is not at all that bad; it's acceptable in Budapest, where I also used it quite a few times. If you can and are willing to afford a taxi, get a taxi, otherwise public transport is fine. (Not in Cambridge, though, there is no public transport in the night.)

My understanding is that Uber and Lyft drivers earn about the same. Lyft pays more per trip, but Uber is more efficient at getting drivers a greater number of trips per hour. The end result is that they both pay about the same on a per/hour basis.

So Uber is a better cab service, than the original one. Hopefully the upcoming regulations will result in only slightly increased pricing and a more sustainable system (keeping the drivers in mind).

all the superficial issues you've described simply reinforces how similar new car hailing service are to legacy cabs.

Your argument is akin to arguing juciero is not a juice machine. it's a connected juice delivery experience that is uniquely distinguishable from the act of making juice from solids.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com