London black taxis plan congestion chaos to block Uber
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
The other option for people wanting a car journey is the "mini-cab" which can be booked to collect from any specific location but must offer a fare in advance of the journey. In order to transport people for money, mini-cab drivers are licensed and have a background check done.
Uber drivers in London must have the mini-cab license so this is a question around the black cab monopoly. As with any government-provided monopoly, the incumbents are keen to maintain the status quo while the newcomers are fighting for change. Any advances that Uber makes will benefit all mini-cab companies and most importantly, passengers.
Except for all of the disabled ones, the wheelchair users, the ones who only wish to travel a very short distance and are unable to do so alone (the pregnant, mothers with pushchairs, the extremely inebriated, elderly, injured, etc).
The monopoly and some privileges (bus lane access, pick up fares anywhere) is granted in exchange for a lot of obligations including accepting every fare in the centre of London even at a loss (of time spent against the profit of a fare), for fixed prices, and without excluding anyone of any ability.
If Uber wish to gain the advantages that black cabs have, then they are free to accept the responsibilities and obligations that come with it. Which will of course mean changing their whole fleet to fully accessible vehicles and not allowing any driver to refuse a fare.
This is in comparison to the NYC system where once you're in the cab, they're obligated to take you where you want to go.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/16-17/33/section/7
Legislation that obligates the driver to drive up to 6 miles, or for 1 hour, providing the driver has no reasonable excuse.
Later challenged by Hunt v Morgan 1948, in which it was clarified that if the taxi is on a taxi rank they have no right of refusal, and if the taxi is stopped they have little right of refusal. If the taxi is in motion then the driver may not have seen you, it may not be safe to stop, etc and the driver may have a reasonable excuse.
In nearly all cases, if a driver has stopped for you and you are travelling less than 6 miles, the driver has no reasonable excuse and is obligated.
Other parts of the legislation oblige the driver to help those who need such assistance (accessibility stuff).
PS: And English law loves the word "reasonable".
But at least now I know what to quote when I'm complaining about them, ta.
I live in an Eastern-European capital city where cab-fares are more or less completely deregulated. If what you describe were to happen after you'd just ordered a taxi (either from the street, through a phone-call or through a smart-phone app), then all you have to do is for you to call back the taxi-driver's parent company and he will get at least a 2-hour suspension, meaning that he won't be able to pick any phone or tablet orders. If a second, similar complaint arrives about the same driver in a short period of time then his contract is terminated and he's free to go and work for another company.
And yes, it does happen from time to time for me to try a pick a taxi on the street corner and receive an evasive answer, and I'm usually too lazy to call and complain, but the beauty of a free-market is that in all such cases I was able to find a taxi-driver willing to take my money from the same street corner.
It's all well and good that it is written that way on paper but do they actually follow that in practice? Is there any reason to believe an Uber driver wouldn't make every effort to accommodate a passenger needing some extra assistance?
The cars used as minicabs do not have to meet any such standards. Having tried to help a disabled acquaintance get into one, i can testify that it is not easy.
Uber should not have too. Now I can see granting some exceptions to companies that agree to do so, bus lanes and extra time idling.
We can simply come up with more and more burdens until competition is impossible, its not hard. Everyone can come up with a reason for their need. I do not not discount the needs of the handicap but they are used more for preventing business than facilitating new ones and usually not by those who are actually handicapped
It is very rarely I am disgusted by a sentence but you have achieved it.
Replace disabled with Blacks or Hispanics or Females or any group of society you want.
Seriously, take a pause and consider what you just typed.
What's wrong with simply providing a transportation allowance, or means tested reimbursements, to those few who may need it, and set it high enough that it becomes profitable for a reasonable fraction of car for hire drivers to equip their car to deal with them?
What's wrong with simply providing an allowance, or means tested reimbursements, to those few who may need it, and set it high enough that it becomes profitable for a reasonable fraction of supermarkets to equip their building to deal with them?
Fixed that for you.
Damn disabled people and their inconvenient needs. They should just be disabled elsewhere away from the commercial companies you hold dear.
1. Without asking for any clarification
2. Without typing a bunch of stuff into a GPS device
3. And with knowledge of time/space specific optimizations
Yes, black cabs are not cheap. You are getting a very specific service for that money.
Pretty much all I ask for in a taxi is get me from where I am to where I want to go, as quickly, cheaply and safely as possible. I'm not against people being licenced (that comes into the "safely" bit of my requirements), but if they can achieve the "quickly" bit just as easily with a free app on their smartphone as they could with 3 years worth of studying, allowing them to provide the service more cheaply, then I'm all for it.
Don't use it. Call a minicab instead.
I'm convinced he did this on purpose. It was rush hour, there was a bomb scare nearby, and I assume he didn't want to sit in traffic. Of course, if he had just explained that to me, I would have been happy to walk the remaining few blocks. Instead, I was just left at the wrong location and a bit confused.
So much for "The Knowledge".
So are you in favor of that very specific service being a monopoly or not?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_Kingdom#...
If you're ever in London and you see a guy (or girl) on a bashed up moped with a clipboard strapped to the handlebars, they are learning their routes for The Knowledge.
It's impressive but no more impressive than navigating a 4 million line software product intuitively...
I may not have all the facts, but I think it's fine for the black cabs to offer a luxury service that you need to pass a hard test to join. This is distinct from making it illegal for someone else to offer an inferior service at a discounted price.
On top of this, in central London it's pretty built up so SatNav doesn't always work in the canyons between buildings.
The better informed the satnav, the less valuable that is.
Also, even if GPS signals are hard to get in London, navigation in a fixed city can be calculated in lots of different ways. Allowing for some regulatory limits, a company (or an experienced third-party) could scatter their own transmitters around the city as needed, figuring out which frequencies give the best accuracy.
I'm not sure if there's actually a comprehensive source for bus lane data - if there is, it would be really useful for motorbike users too (who can generally use bus lanes).
Maybe in 2024.
Simpy by sheer logic the very act of using a navigation aid (phone, Sat Nav, map) must result in decreased attention to the mechanical process of driving.
I would challenge that safe navigation is a long solved problem.
Who solved it? How? How was it measured? When was it solved - 2013? 2004?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvFKh_3evC8
The documentary paints an interesting picture
Cabbie: me mates are making a point about Uber
Punter: Uber? What's that? <tap-tap-tap> Cool! Let me out here.
Cabbie: tom tit! :-(
Frankly this new protest and the former reek of an unwillingness to change. Given the monopoly black cabs generally possess, it's not they're ever going to be short of customers.
"Uber, funded by Google, Goldman Sachs and others, has a stated aim of challenging legislation that is not compatible with its business model," said Mr McNamara.
"This is not some philanthropic friendly society, it's an American monster that has no qualms about breaching any and all laws in the pursuit of profit, most of which will never see a penny of tax paid in the UK."
Besides the ridiculous attempt to conflate Uber with evil bankers, it seems strange to suggest "most" of the profit will never be taxed in UK. Aren't all the UK drivers paying taxes?
They would, yes - but when any big company gets bad press for not paying taxes in the UK (for example Google), nobody uses the excuse "but their staff in the UK still pay UK tax", the focus is on whether the company's profits are being taxed.
Because the tax paid by employees is insignificant compared to the tax the company should be paying.
No. For a startup, the company's profits are zero or negative. They might have significant revenues, but they will be ploughing all their free cash flow back into growth.
edit: Yes I'm aware the Channel Islands & Isle of Mann aren't part of the UK, but they are 'British' and massive tax havens, sometimes with one company director per inhabitant.
So, as far as I'm concerned, the correct term for all those fiddly bits - constitutional niceties be damned - is 'the City'.
'If a person, without lawful authority or excuse, in any way wilfully obstructs the free passage along a highway he is guilty of an offence and liable to a fine not exceeding [F1 level 3 on the standard scale].'
- Highways Act 1980 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1980/66/part/IX/crosshea...
Other (one-off or infrequent) protests such as Critical Mass certainly obstruct free passage along the highway, but they are tolerated.
Could well be they're going down the "prove we're not just normal congestion" road.
Edit: forgot the link. [1] https://www.gov.uk/protests-and-marches-letting-the-police-k...
Instead there is a device used for calculating how far it has gone, e.g. "metering"... this is a bollocks distinction.
(Hmm, I wonder how Uber's metering copes with the Blackwall tunnel and the Woolwich ferry. My GPS directed me over the ferry once, resulting in a huge delay. Note that on the ferry a GPS would count as "moving" but a taximeter "stationary".)
I didn't realise what a rip off they are until I started driving around the city myself regularly with Google Maps which to be honest with traffic aware routing destroys "the knowledge" instantly. Black cab drivers know how to make cash, not the most efficient journeys in time and money. That meter hurts you badly.
So they'll cause some chaos; good for them but it'll raise more awareness on the issue and hang them faster.
More competition is required in this sector for the passengers.
I make a point to use minicab firms if I'm not using a black cab, having spoken to a couple of drivers about the working conditions under Addilee.
Also, I only ever get taxis when I'm in a state of refreshment sufficiently advanced that walking becomes unwise.
Here's an example with data comparing London and Lisbon (which people usually believe is always sunny):
Rainy days per year in London: 110.4
Rainy days per year in Lisbon: 117.0
Precipitation (mm) per year in London: 591.8
Precipitation (mm) per year in Lisbon: 774
Sources:
There is a pretty big difference between 12 hours of cloud and drizzle and 2 hours of steady rain followed by 10 of sunshine in terms of the human misery factor.
I usually say my Portuguese friends about London: "It doesn't rain a lot but it rains every day. Thing is, by Lisbon standards we would never call this rain." :)
Another curiosity is how tough the winter is in both cities. In London it's the greyness and lack of sunlight for months and months. In Lisbon it's the heavy rains. I spent this last winter in Lisbon and it was most probably one of the winters with more precipitation. Humans exagerate, I know that, but it really felt like it (heavy) rained for almost six months. It stopped a few weeks ago, sunny Lisbon is back again at full throttle!
Usually enough that I'd still rather cab a mile than walk it. (I couldn't afford cabs then.)
Unless you have a superpower that makes you impervious to drowning.
Edit: well according to http://www.bbc.co.uk/climate/impact/gulf_stream.shtml "This slowing will have a cooling effect but the temperature will still increase in the region overall" due to the global warming effect.
Get Taxi http://gettaxi.co.uk/
Hailo https://www.hailocab.com/london
I believe these have faced some resistance in some cities even with a strategy of working with licensed taxi operators.
Every time I get in a black cab, I wish I had booked with them. Most mini-cab firms are atrocious - staff are rude and they have no idea where they're going.
There's already good competition, but if there's more coming then I'm all for it. Black cabs have a bad reputation.
(Edit: no, I don't work for them or have any affiliation.)
The black taxis should be banned for some period of time for this behavior.
"The Licensed Taxi Drivers Association complains that Uber's drivers are using a smartphone app to calculate fares despite it being illegal for private vehicles to be fitted with taximeters." So using this website in your car is illegal?! http://www.worldtaximeter.com/
Whether the law should still exist, and whether this method of protest is appropriate, are other questions of course.
So they're complaining that they'd like the law to be different so that Uber could be temporarily banned until they code a workaround. Pointless.
You can measure the distance on a paper map as well. The smartphone app is only slightly more convenient. I do not think they are breaking the spirit of the law.
This attitude puzzles me greatly. Rule of law is a principle, not a dogmatic application of The Rules Über Alles. Crap laws should be ignored.
So who gets to decide which laws are “crap laws” and which laws are proper laws that should be obeyed? Last time I checked, this was usually not the job of some random startup firm but rather the responsibility of parliament. You can argue that sometimes it is appropriate to fight against specific laws by ignoring them if the cost of not doing so vastly outweights the cost of lowering the authority of the law. I don’t think taxi laws fall into that category – if the current laws required all drivers to be white, I could maybe understand fighting that law by disobedience, but otherwise?
Reasonable human beings. You act as if this doesn't happen on a daily basis. Do you always drive the exact speed limit? Ever violated a copyright for personal use?
Slavish devotion to the law does not make you noble or somehow better than everyone else. It merely makes you obedient.
I could maybe understand fighting that law by disobedience, but otherwise?
Crap does not necessarily mean discriminatory.
Well presumably you know their side of the story too?
Presumably (hopefully someone who actually knows can fill us in) the taxi drivers have spent huge amounts of time learning The Knowledge and buying their cars and keeping to the fairly strict regulations that exist, and don't find it fair that another company can offer a service without a level playing field. Presumably.
Examples are: not having the right to refuse a fare within 6 miles of the centre of London (usually taken as Charing Cross). Being obliged to have vehicles that are accessible to wheelchair and disabled users. Being obliged to take a vehicle out of service if it is damaged in any way (i.e. another vehicle clips your wing mirror or dents your door, and you must take the vehicle off the road immediately and not put it back into service until fully repaired). The full background and criminal record check (one of the few exemptions from Rehabilitation of Offenders Act allowing people to hide their history). And every black cab is tracked 24/7 (revealed in a court case of alleged rape where the victim had claimed an unnamed taxi driver had done it - when locality was narrowed down and the list of taxi drivers in that area revealed they all had fares or did not meet the description the case collapsed). Then there's also the type of licence of a driver has, granting access to inner London taxi ranks vs outer London with various restrictions on both. Black cabs must take the shortest possible route (defined as time I believe), or a route you instruct. Prices are regulated and cannot be surged, etc.
Simply... the black cab taxi is not comparable to the private hire vehicle (minicab or executive car). The set of costs you are exposed to is significant, as is the set of intrusions and obligations.
I only know most of the above due to another company, Addison Lee, illegally using bus lanes and jeopardising cyclists. Only then did I learn that the bus lane privilege is part of the obligation about accessibility and shortest route.
In this specific instance I find myself thinking the LTDA are acting from a purely preservationist perspective as I think TFL are right that mere facts are a different thing from a taximeter. And if LTDA want to win this, they need to extend the narrow definition of a taximeter to any device that allows metering of a vehicle based on factors including distance travelled, location, speed, etc. As the legislation currently wouldn't treat this https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/mytaxicontrol-leading-taxime... as a taximeter.
But usually, my response is that London is better with a fully accessible and regulated taxi service requiring all fares to be accepted than without, and that there's nothing stopping Uber or anyone else accepting all of the obligations that black cabs have in return for operating on the same terms.
That said, if you're within 6 miles of Charing Cross they have no right to refuse... beyond that they are permitted to.
Even nowadays the requirement that London taxi drivers know how to get around London seems popular with the public; British tourists regularly complain about how drivers elsewhere can't even find major landmarks without a map, in a "glad it's not like that back home" sort of way. My guess is that the requirement would be confirmed if put to a referendum. Other requirements, such as the "cannot refuse a fare in central London" requirement, are also pretty popular.
See also the Coin wallet, various payment services, etc, which were conceived to address inefficiencies that are unique parts of the US financial service industry.
As for regulations and licensing, it shouldn't exist in the first place as it only raises prices and prevents legitimate competition.
Try safety of the passenger, upkeep of the vehicle, all the other reasons mentioned elsewhere on this page...
Or maybe, just maybe, the people should decide instead of random companies who don’t pay taxes. And ‘the people’ usually decide by voting for their favourite MP who can then implement their wishes. Laws regarding regulation of taxis did not fall down one day and then were accepted as the god-given rights of taxi drivers but were implemented because the general population thought them to be a good thing™.
It’s not up to Uber to decide otherwise.
Oh wait, you needed the State then. Now it just seems inconvenient to you.
But even if you were right and indeed it is me who is supposed to be paying taxes now for my education in the past, then this sounds a lot like this:
- Here, have a free sandwich - Ok, thanks - You ate it? Now give me $10.
in other words, a scam.
I wish we had more scams like that.
Your naivete is breathtaking.
Someone else is not keeping their service in line with the regulations and it costs them business? Sue them. Doesn't work? Well, the same rules don't apply to you apparently, so your life just got a bit easier.
I'm in favour of some regulation of the transport services. But as soon as companies try to backstab each other at the cost of people in the city - charge them for it, I'm sure there are other companies that will be happy to take over.
It's not mentioned in HN's FAQ or Guidelines that downvotes are for that purpose, and in fact there's an old comment from pg stating the exact opposite: "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness." [1] (It's 6 years old so he may disagree now, but I think I remember him saying similar within the last year.)
On the other hand, it does specifically say in the guidelines "Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." [2]
"illegal to install taximeters" isn't going to resonate with the public, I think. It's hardly the abuse and exploitation by an monstrous and inhuman Management that kick-started unionization in the first place, anyway.
Yes, definitely, the Tax card is enormously effective in UK.
I wish the legacy businesses would rather change themselves, seeing how ineffective they are, instead of spending resources on fighting innovation.
It might also tap into latent racism about immigrants driving around with the same level of licencing.
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2014/01/15/with-ubers-comes-stru...
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/01/16/san-francisco-ca...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/12/12/how-lyft-...
In fact, for all the articles about taxi companies protesting before Uber comes to town, have you ever seen one about drivers complaining after?