Comment by corin_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by corin_ | Hacker News Reader

In my (only a few days) experience with UberPop in Paris... it was horrible. I've used Uber (various service types) in a few cities, and most of all use them regularly in London. I think I'm close to adding them to my list of companies I just don't want to give business to, but that's a whole other barrel of worms.

I spent a week in Paris last month, and while I'd normally ignore an UberPop level, my hotel was down a straight road to the place I was going every day that week, and with UberPop I exactly hit the minimum (€4), whereas paying more than double that I felt guilty enough to walk the 10-15min..

I don't think I've ever had such consistently bad experiences with any taxi service, be it modern or old, global or local. All the UberPop drivers had no GPS, or GPS that didn't work. All had trouble finding me to collect, despite Uber's seemingly straight-forward system. I had to give directions (not just "my hotel's round the next corner", but directions for full longer journeys), luckily my French is just good enough...

After a few trips I stopped trying to save money and went back to UberX and UberBerline. All sorted after that (a couple of language-caused issues, but that's my fault for being English in Paris and not speaking French as well as I'd like!)

What's the difference between UberPop and UberX?

UberPop drivers are regular people like you and me. UberX drivers are professional "tourist drivers".

Huh. So in San Francisco, UberX are citizen drivers, UberBlack are professional limo drivers, and there is no UberPop.

In Paris (I think, again anecdotal and I only used UberPop on my most recent trip to Paris) UberX are "citizen drivers", but meeting semi-professional standards in both their service and their vehicle. UperPop, at least feels to the consumer, like someone with a small car clicked a button saying "yep I can do this" and voila, off they go.

yeah uberx are still following uber's guidelines and are pretty professional. if they fuck up too much uber terminates their license.

uberpop is basically everyone and their dog, ie this is closer to real ride sharing.

So in the US Uber is what UberX is in France and UberX in the US is what UberPop is in France? Really weird, wonder why they would do that?

It's not really that, it's the car class. UberPOP is anything compact or subcompact, sometimes limiting to 2 passengers. UberX is a 4-door sedan. UberPOP is not launched in the US - you can only start driving for Uber with a 4-door sedan or higher.

UberPop are unlicensed taxis in private cars masquerading as ride-shares. Which they obviously aren't, since the paying client decides the destination.

I would be surprised if UberPop is still in operation anywhere in Europe by the summer of 2015. It's patently illegal on multiple fronts.

Some governments are open to providing a regulatory framework (one that covers safety and consumer protection), especially in places where the taxi market is dysfunctional, but Uber's "fuck your laws, we'll do it anyway" attitude is extremely counterproductive in that respect.

UberX is a professional limousine service, and in most places they operate they abide by the rules. (Which also means they're not particularly cheaper than regular taxis.)

> UberX is a professional limousine service

That sounds like Uber/UberBlack to me. UberX is still citizen drivers in their own cars doing it in their own time. I highly doubt they are professionally licensed.

I'm not the person you're replying to, but from a consumer point of view UberX feels like a limo service (in Paris, London..)

In London for example, if you didn't know anything about the company, you wouldn't know the UberX drivers were any different to more traditionally set-up private firms like Addison Lee. Whereas UberPop in Paris felt like getting a ride from an amateur.

Huh, that's interesting. Over here (Seattle), UberX feels more like Paris' UberPop (citizen drivers, their cars, however still some regulation by Uber) and UberBlack is the full on towncar service that's professionally licensed (and most of them run private car services on the side).

This varies depending on geography. In some cities UberX are regular citizen drivers, but in others UberX are professional drivers.

Here in New York all UberX cars, and their drivers, are licensed in the same category as black cars and limos.

I am a consumer (of UberPop among other transport solutions) and I am (genuinely) not understanding: agreed it's not ride-shares, but why is there laws that make non-ride-shares so complicated? UberPop is simple, for the driver, the consumer and it drives the costs down, this sounds really nice to me.

If it's only about safety and consumer protection, well shouldn't it be a consumer choice anyway? (agreed it's easy for me, a male above 30 to tell this... and despite the bad experiences I also had in Paris with UberPop although my drivers had GPSes - one had 2 of them, was confused as hell and should certainly be looking more at the road) Just like I do when I choose real ride-shares (i.e. not UberPop. We have blablacar in France for example which is hitchhiking through the internet).

It seems that, in France, politics made a huge mistake coming up with horrendously expensive (apparently 200k to 300k EUR) taxi licenses and now some people are at risk to pay for those mistakes, namely people who have recently invested in one of this license. Cause even if UberPop is banned, VTC (Vehicule de Tourisme avec Chauffeur) are now legal and make those licenses quite useless (or at least the investment isn't nearly as justified as before).

It's obvious to me that the law have to go in the direction of new technology or the consequences will be quite disastrous. I agree that Uber's attitude seems a bit harsh but I would thanks them for any induced (political) changes in the direction of technology.

EDIT: didn't know the adverb "patently" was not referring to patents, thanks dminor for teaching me english :) (I'm french obviously :/)

>> "If it's only about safety and consumer protection, well shouldn't it be a consumer choice anyway?"

Ideally BUT it's unlikely the consumer will have the full information to make that choice. Is the taxi going to provide it and wait until they've read it and made an informed decision?

> The word "patent" sounds especially weird to me in that context. Are they seriously "patents" for taxiing people?

"Patently" is a synonym for "obviously" - nothing to do with patents.

This is one of those funny cases where the etymological connection has been a bit obscured by time. Patents are called such because they are "open letters" disclosing the invention. Patent : Open :: Latent : Hidden.

Of course in this case it's patent that patent disclosures are not what is being referred to. :-)

Just saw your comment: Thanks for the insight! Now that I understood the root causes and laughed at the related word play, I won't forget anymore :)

Politics didn't make taxi medallion expensive, they gave it free, it's supply and demand that made them expensive[1]. Taxi are not useless, not everyone is able to use and app on his smartphone and some people want the simplicity to hail a cab. But the taxi license starts to decrease. Banning UberPOP is about consumer protection because VTC or taxis are professional that had an exam, special insurance, they pay there taxes, unlike UberPOP which is about transferring the costs on insecure workers and unsustainable jobs that don't take in account of all the costs of doing this job.

[1] : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxis_parisiens#Le_prix_de_la_l...

Thanks, so apparently they limit the number of licenses causing those horrendous prices? In that case it seems to me they are still at the root of the problem and should fix it now that it has surfaced (paying back licenses that where purchased shortly before the VTC law for example).

If you ask me, we are way to focus on sustainable job in France. Unemployed people need to start somewhere. Which is far more easy if you are from the UK or the USA.

I think that paying back would a way to go out of this system. But the loser will be the tax payer. When the state/politics decided to give licences for free (a long time ago) and then let the offer and the demand decide the price, they created a speculative bubble: every buyer expected to resell it for at least the same price or make a profit (often a big one). Now, if this market is opened to more actors, the lasts to buy will get a big debt out of their deal and may be in a bad position for the rest of their life.

For me the ones to blame are those politics who created this situation. Concerning the taxi drivers who made a big profit, why should they be blamed for a system the state has put in place? (well, I do for being so greedy and making the taxi a transportation for affluent people)

Note also that taxi drivers are well known for hidding parts of their revenues (proof or source: none). Because of that, taking the taxi is really the last resort for me.

The idea behind regulating personal transportation, aka taxis is because of the big external effects. If there was a free, unregulated market for taxis, obviously fares would be much lower and there would be much more taxis on the streets. However this in turn decreases the experience for the individual passenger (more traffic leads to longer rides) and much more importantly causes traffic lags for all other users of the road - most notably for the transportation of goods. So while a completely liberated taxi market might work out for the passengers (especially outside of rush hours) it most likely won't work out for the economy at large. This is an inherent problem when you have a liberal market (transportation) which uses a publicly owned good (the streets) which can't be priced appropriately (or only in a limited way - see London).

But doesn't fewer taxis also mean longer waiting times to get a taxi, and encourage an increase in private car ownership, replacing taxis on the road with private drivers driving themselves?

Won't one Uber driver replace many cars on the road, especially as the price is driven down, the cost of using Uber makes owning a car less appealing in many locales?

Rather than ban Uber, they could just implement taxes, just like Uber implements real time surge pricing. The tax could be tied to congestion. Uber would pass these onto consumers, prices would rise, and presumably demand for drivers would equalize with how much time and money people collectively would be willing to pay.

Fwiw, congestion tax is already a thing: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing

I agree; real time surge pricing for congested roads would be the optimal solution. But just imagine the outcry in the population when you try to implement road charges for all inner city roads. This is another example of an economically perfectly sound concept which is in many parts of the world politically completely unfeasible (at least for the moment). On top of that, couldn't you argue that transportation is a basic human right? If so, you would have to either discriminate against the poor or adjust the rates based on income, which again makes this a politically very hot and difficult topic.

> real time surge pricing for congested roads would be the optimal solution.

Except where people are too poor to afford surge pricing, even though they may need to travel just as much as anyone else.

Libertarianism is great right up to the point where you actually need something you can't afford, like medical care or travel to a job. Then it's pretty much a big FU because you're not profitable.

The problem is that mainstream economic theory assumes your utility to society is equal to your income and therefore discriminating based on income is an optimal strategy for society.

Of course, wages are about negotiation power, not utility. It's so misguided it's bizarre.

This comes up every time someone suggests pricing a scarce good (either with Pigovian taxes or privatizing a scarce resource), but it has an easy solution: [p]rebate everyone the amount of tax they would pay for poverty level consumption of the resource. That preserves all of the incentives to cut back on a marginal unit, without penalizing someone for being poor.

Facing economic realities doesn't mean keeping staying with systems that rewards the wrong thing.

Idea: In the same way that the Alaska Permanent Fund has created a vocal pro-industry constituency out of nothing (aka the residents of Alaska, who are paid from extractive revenues), maybe we could drum up political support by distributing the revenues directly to the people. As in, "Dear Mr. Smith, you live here, therefore here is your monthly check for your share of the dynamically-priced congestion tax revenues that we collected on your behalf. Have a nice day."

That might be more palatable than "We invisibly 'lowered' your tax bill elsewhere, Mr. Smith."

Interesting how you ended up reaching the libertarian conclusion. If roads were private (and in places where they are we do see this) you can change the charging fee based on time of day, congestion, etc, and optimize it in such a way as to keep the traffic flowing.

No way to do that when things are public.

Thanks for the insight. Seems fair to regulate publicly owned goods. Maybe the problem is that the regulation is too dumb? For example it could encourage taxis at night (like many have said Paris at night is terrible and taxis are way too expensive), or be based on congestion like cromwellian suggested?

I find it extremely hard to believe that an artificial shortage reduces externalities.

> If there was a free, unregulated market for taxis, obviously fares would be much lower and there would be much more taxis on the streets.

Why are you guessing? There is real data on this.mThere used to be regulated pricing for taxis in Stockholm, Sweden. Now it is an unregulated market ("free" as they like to call it).

The result is well documented. Prices remain the same, availability is up, but overall it's been an unpopular change. Any of the independent riders will rip off tourists at the first chance they get, scamming them for as many thousand dollars they can get away with, by inventing complicated fee structures. Police will do nothing as it is (currently) legal.

If your workplace was just 10-15 minutes away, straight down the road I just don't understand why you didn't took the countless public transport opportunities.

Paris has IMHO one of the most affordable and pleasant metros I've ever used in Europe. I'd almost like to guarantee you that you would have reached your goal faster, cheaper and more relaxed if you'd taken the metro!

Not cheaper or more relaxed! Between my hotel and Porte de Versailles (the convention center) was literally one straight road, with a one-way system.

Was 15-20 minutes to walk it (Google Maps says 18min), under 5 minutes to drive in one direction, 5-10min the other (due to one-way road).

Metro was easy sure, 300m to nearest station, then 2 stops on one line to Porte de Versailles - but that takes fractionally more time than a taxi, and is less pleasant than either a taxi or walking. I think 5 nights in that hotel and I probably walked it 60% taxi'd 40% - don't think I used the metro once.

Overall however I agree with your praise of the Paris metro. That said, I've been to Paris probably every other month for the past couple of years, and 50+ times in my life, and use 90% taxis... because they're easier, because the cost difference to me is non-existent (company credit card) and because most of my trips to Paris are cramming in meetings and therefore time between them relaxed in the back of a car with my laptop out catching up on emails is much needed.

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