Montreal cracks down on UberX; seizes 40 cars and fines drivers | Hacker News Reader

Montreal cracks down on UberX; seizes 40 cars and fines drivers

montrealgazette.com

This is sad. I live in Quebec Province, but not in Montreal. Quebec's laws regarding taxis are old and stupid, but they exists. I hope they will change, but in the meantime, sadly, this is their right to execute those laws.

The population (including me) wouldn't be so angry at the taxi industry if they embraced innovation instead of fighting with laws. Please, I want an app to know when my cab will be here, I don't mind that much about saving money, but I do want to pay easily and have a great and easy ride. That's all I want.

FYI, the taxi owners need a licenses, which I think is over $100k, and none were issued in a long time, so price increases. So, if I had one, yes, I would be super angry seeing Uber and stuff like that.

Still makes me very sad that this industry stagnated for so long and is not even trying to adapt now, but getting more laws :(

Edit: fixed typo.

If Montreal is like most other cities, people driving taxis do not own their own permit -- they typically rent them from a small number of people who control a large number of permits.

That's indeed the norm I think in most cities.

Which always make it funny when your Taxi driver gives you his card for Uber service.

Again, in this case its not Uber thats in question but UberX.

It baffles me how very little cabs accept credit cards in the city, and even less with an electronic POS. many of them still use paper based forms (if at all) and they'll almost always be rude about it and demand an extra $2-3 on the fare.

I call Taxi Diamond because they're the only ones whose fleet can handle credit cards. When I phone them, they have already previously recorded my number, so a recording just asks me to press "1" to pick me up at my home.

I hate to sound like a paid shill, but I just don't bother flagging cabs anymore. I just call Taxi Diamond.

Pretty similar to Quebec City. I used to always call and ask for a cab which takes credit card. The vast majority, like 95% of the time, they said the terminal was broken...I was like: "well, it's sad, I don't have cash, can we try?" and it ALWAYS WORKED. This is related though with the crazy fees they need to pay for credit cards, but it's stupid to play the game like that.

Hopefully, they'll be some pressure to change the laws. In the meantime it is to be expected that the law will be applied.

What is surprising however is that it is the Taxi Bureau doing this. The article does mention that they want the power to seize cars so its really unclear how it was done exactly since they need to get the police to seize the cars.

> The population (including me) wouldn't be so angry at the taxi industry if they embraced innovation instead of fighting with laws.

They can't. I don't know the details about Quebec, but I'm willing to bet that an app wouldn't be complaint with taxi meter requirements, surge pricing would be illegal for a taxi company to do, etc.

This app could totally work with the taxi meters, not replacing them and the legal requirements. This is a non-issue to me. By innovation, I didn't think at all about pricing, just quality of service, being able to have service, ETA and easy payment.

Okay, say you're a "good cab company" that wants to compete with Uber. You spend a bunch of money equipping your cabs with GPS and LTE and building an app. But you can't provide easy payment because regulations keep you from tapping into the taxi meter. And Uber can always undercut you on pricing for normal fares, because they don't have to leave money on the table in surge situations.

So what's the point of spending all that money on upgrades, when you'll never be able to compete with Uber on the two fronts that matter the most (price and convenience)?

FWIW flywheel has managed to integrate with cabs in SF. They don't do surge pricing but they do everything else: hail with an app, see the cab coming to pick you up, auto bill a credit card after the trip based on metered fair.

Things will certainly evolve more slowly due to regulation but I expect cab fleets to become more uber-like over time.

And IIRC New York recently updated its regulations to integrate with apps. But the regulations did have to be updated. In the future, I hope cities consider just deregulating the taxi industries. Maybe it'll happen in a southern state.

It's also illegal turn down fares by destination, to "nope" past black people, to play "credit card machine not working", to demand that you pay more than the meter reads ("tip"), etc, but that's never stopped them before.

There's a difference between the out-of-sight activity of individual cab drivers, and what a cab company deploys as company-wide infrastructure.

Right, there is a difference: one is prosecuted, the other isn't. They're equally easy to find and sting-op, but only in one case do the authorities care.

I've lived in Montreal my whole life, left two months ago. The city is pathetic, their old laws are ruining it. There's no progress, it's sad to see.

Most Canadian cities are fighting Uber's refusal to follow city bylaws and insurance requirements, Montreal is only the most recent:

http://globalnews.ca/news/1678342/city-to-announce-developme...

Uber's current tactic is to assert that their drivers are insured in Canada, but refuse to provide proof of that to anyone, including drivers themselves and city regulators. This sort of "Russell's teapot" insurance claim is, unsurprisingly, looked upon dimly by the regulators. The laws are quite clear in Canada that personal insurance will not cover Uber drivers.

I'm not sure exactly what this says about the culture and business norms of Montreal, but while there for PyCon, I noticed that the number of police seemed to have increased at least 10x from last year at the same time.

There is a great deal of political upheaval centered at UQAM, apparently mostly related to issues of pension promises broken for public workers. This is the ostensible reason to have so many more police and police substations, but I have to believe that it has other cultural effects as well.

There was a very iconic image recently making the rounds:

http://i.imgur.com/IHIOxLK.jpg

What's particularly striking about this picture, if you'll pardon the pun, is that the cop is wearing stickers that are protesting the same austerity that the students are protesting with their red velvet squares. Cops are not allowed to strike (i.e. not work), so they wear stickers instead.

Howard Zinn's final chapter of his famous book comes to mind: "The Coming Revolt of the Guards". A system that separates people into prisoners and guards and pits them against each other, despite their common cause:

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html

As to what this all says about police in Montréal, I don't know either. I've lived here for nearly eight years and have never had any unpleasant interaction with the police. The students are very leftist, though, and with such a large student population (four major universities, two Francophone, two Anglophone, plus several other research and education centres), the students' attitudes just amplify themselves.

"I've lived here for nearly eight years and have never had any unpleasant interaction with the police. "

This is a tangent from your original post but I've noticed that Montreal cops seem much more relax than the ones I've dealt with in the US.

This is completely anecdotal but I feel like cops in the US are somewhat more prone to talk and act aggressively when they start interaction with people. I'm wondering if that's a side effect of their training. In general I've had the opposite impression from the Montreal and Canadian cops in general. (Also border patrol in both country are night and day in how they interact with you).

It could just be risk? I don't have numbers on the comparative risk between Canadian cops vs. American cops, but I know that America isn't the safest place to be a cop, and it's well-understood that a cop who does not feel at risk is a friendlier cop.

it's worth pointing out that Quebec has no trouble at all living life as an "outsider" with respect to Canadian and north american "norms" ... i.e. no matter how "standard" uber becomes (or not) this will not be an argument in favour of adopting it.

there are a metric ton of examples of how life in quebec is bizarre compared to neighbouring provinces in Canada (and compared to the US)

this may be just another one

Well, FWIW Vancouver is just as backwards as Montreal in this regard, we don't even have Uber.

It's also one of the most corrupted with government officials.

Yes, corruption directly correlates to Uber presence (or lack thereof).

What are the arguments for a city to adopt Uber? Presumably there were reasons to implement taxi regulations and medallion caps and whatever those reasons were, if they made sense to the city 5 years ago, they probably still make sense today.

5 years? More like 40-80. In Vancouver for example the 4 taxi companies comprising the taxi industry basically regulate themselves. Of course they will never approve another entrant. I wouldn't be surprised if Montreal is about the same.

I didn't say the reasons were created 5 years ago.

In most modern legal systems, the question is not what the law should allow but what the law should prohibit. So the question should really be, what are the arguments for a city to prohibit Uber?

That's irrelevant to the point, which is that whatever prohibits Uber today also prohibited Uber in the recent past before Uber existed. Did unregulated taxi service make sense to a city 5 years ago?

Just because a law has been on the books doesn't mean the law continues to be in the public interest, especially when it was enacted before the technology to enable Uber was widespread enough to make Uber possible.

The reasons tend to be closer to a century old than 5 years, and similarly tend to have been the result of preferential regulation in favor of the taxi companies.

A good history of the jitney transport industry[0]. I'll note that the statistics reported regarding length of service and demographics of jitney drivers indicate that UberX is a much more apt solution to the problem of matching riders with drivers than a "traditional" taxi service with full-time employees.

[0]http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/724795?uid=3739976&uid... - note article is available with a free registration.

I didn't say the reasons were created 5 years ago, only that if there were reasons 5 years ago they probably haven't changed. Of course you could make the argument that there weren't valid reasons 5 years ago but that doesn't seem compelling, I don't think a city would have de-regulated the taxi industry and let anyone pick people up for money 5 years ago.

There's a whole gamut of options between current regulations and no regulations. But the corrupt regulators don't want to change anything because they like how the current regulations bring in $800K per year per medallion to license holders who are also their friends, partners and/or campaign donors (actual Vancouver numbers).

What kind of safety or convenience or other concerns require profits in excess of $800K per taxi cab per year? What's wrong with market pricing? Why should short rides subsidize long rides? Why can't one company offer no-frills service (at no-frills prices), and the other one premium service? Why can't taxis have optional ride pooling?

Uber, Lyft & co have already proved that they can work great alongside existing cabs. There is no reason why they wouldn't work if the regulations are updated from 1930 to 2015 and from protecting incumbents' profits to protecting users' interests. But the cities are unwilling to do that because they like their profitable taxi cartels.

There is only one reason and it is very simple: taxi owners use their political influence to extract rents. It's a scheme to legally steal from people who use taxis.

> there are a metric ton of examples of how life in quebec is bizarre compared to neighbouring provinces in Canada (and compared to the US)

Quite the prejudicial statement. While some things are different, living in Quebec is pretty similar to any other place except for the fact that we speak french.

When LA or New York banned Uber, did you say how californian and New Yorkers were 'bizarre' and 'outsider'?

My understanding is that they also legally require French to be used in a variety of contexts (with "language police"). If so, that is significantly different than most other places - and may feel "bizarre".

For example, you are free to run a restaurant with employees that do not speak English in the US, but you are not allowed to run a restaurant with only English speakers in Quebec.

Let me just say this: Nothing you wrote is remotely true.

Not. A. Single. Thing.

I didn't mean to offend. This is merely how it was described to me. I have read a little, but I could be off. I have seen things like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Language_Act_%28Quebec...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_qu%C3%A9b%C3%A9cois_de_l...

Really?

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/quebec-language-pol...

In Quebec, the law is that the public has an affirmative right to be served in French:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_the_French_Language

and fines are issued for violators:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/french-still-under-th...

I don't know if this counts as "bizarre" or not, but it's certainly unusual, since other provinces do not do this.

Ironically, NYC and California are often seen by other regions as outsiders. 'specially Californians, which feature regularly as the butt of rural dislike and jokes. :-)

The example that really rubs me the wrong way (currently) is if I lived in Quebec, I would have to send my children to school in French, even though they have never spoken a word of French before --- that is, unless I send them to private school. It is a law that if you are an immigrant, your children, if they go to public school, are only permitted to go to French public school. I find that bizarre. My tax dollars are neither French nor English tax dollars. They are just Canadian dollars. If that is prejudice, so be it.

Are you sure about this? I don't think it's true. I think actually only kids from English speaking parents can attend public English school. Not 100% sure though TBH.

Even worse

You are failing to grasp a few basic understanding of how laws and culture works. Since education is of provincial jurisdiction, that means that your federal taxes have nothing to do with what's happening in Quebec.

We have french public schools for the same reason you have english public schools in english speaking provinces. It's not rocket science, just common sense.

If you want your kid to go to an english speaking school and deny them from the french culture, no one is stopping you from putting your money where your mouth is.

You do seem to dislike quebec so may I suggest you just move out? It may be better suited for you to live elsewhere.

not the first time someone told me if I didn't like something about the way my government operates, I should just leave

Making this a Quebec VS Canada issue is ridiculous. There are similar fines given across the country.

If something does not conform to your "standards" and "norms", that does not make it automatically "bizarre" (whatever you mean by that). And as many pointed out already, uber is banned in many cities across Canada and US, which is maybe proof that those "norms" and "standars" you talk about do not actually exist. This is probably an example of your own prejudice actually.

Not very surprising given that Quebec has the highest unionisation rate (~40%) among all Canadian provinces and U.S. states.

How is that related again? :)

yes, olalonde, enlighten us? Most taxi drivers are non-unionized people 'renting' a taxi permit/car from a permit holder

A quick Google search shows up this union: "Regroupement professionnel des chauffeurs de taxi métallos (FTQ)".

Regardless, my point was that Quebec is very pro-union and the public opinion generally tends to side with workers (taxi drivers in this case) as opposed to consumers.

In fact, multiple large unions in Quebec have shown their support for taxi drivers in their fight against Uber (http://www.usw.ca/districts-fr/5/nouvelles?id=0158 sorry, French).

Montreal has a taxi driver union? That would be unusual if true...

Taxi drivers are somewhat exploited under the present system. Someone else usually owns the medallion and puts the boots to the driver. It's the sort of thing that causes a union in the first place and there have been some efforts in Canada to create a taxi driver union.

And people joke when startups are considered "disruptive." This is disruption in action. Uber is changing the face of society. (When it comes to cabs.)

And society is resisting. Any other company, in any other market, would just give up. But a San Francisco tech company is different: it can KNOW that progress is right, and push, push, push it through throughout society.

This is a story that repeats again and again. Idealistic disruptive startups actually change the face of society, while everyone else poo-poos and wrings their hands, until they don't.

And disrupting moral standards in business, according to some. (I'm not judging Uber or those who say that, including one of their investors)

(Actually that is a separate matter and I agree with you completely. They need to return to their roots and not do any of that spoiled only-child stuff (no offense to people who are an only child, I just can't think of a better example, and of course if someone is an only child they can still learn to cooperate-etc.)
If you want, Uber, you can be a child who doesn't share their toys: just create something new again! You can't retain a monopoly otherwise. Wouldn't you rather keep growing, like Google after search, than retain a hundred percent of some single tiny specific market, like Windows as a monopoly? Just take a look at the two respective stock charts (goog and msft, max timeframe).

I actually take this subject totally seriously. However it's orthogonal to what we were discussing. For anyone who doesn't know what we're talking about, it doesn't matter here.)

This is NOT a Montreal-only phenomenon: UberX cars have also been sized in Toronto and Vancouver. Edmonton is calling to ban UberX and the service has been shuttered in Calgary...

Toronto: http://globalnews.ca/news/1914064/11-toronto-uberx-drivers-f...

Ontario: http://metronews.ca/voices/your-ride-toronto/1345960/queens-...

BC: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/taxi-co...

Edmonton: http://metronews.ca/news/edmonton/1331675/edmonton-taxi-asso...

Has any taxi service, in any city, rolled out a self-dispatching app for end-users?

Yes there are apps that work with existing taxi services.

https://www.hailoapp.com/

Hailo was quite popular in Montreal for a while until Uber launched and drove them out of business. As far as i recall they shut down all of their North American operations to focus on EU. Wonder how that's going. I quite liked them, but I prefer UberX any day

Though Hailo is notable for recently having withdrawn from the North American market. Mytaxi.com is still around though.

Flywheel in SF is in use by all the cab companies I think. Same features as uber (hail from the app, pay with your phone, etc) but only for the taxis. One cool feature is that if you get in a cab off the street without the app you can pull up the app while riding and they figure out which taxi you're in and you can pay via the app automatically.

We have a few of these here in Brazil (i.e. http://www.99taxis.com/). The apps work just fine, it's the taxis that lack quality in their service. Cars are usually beaten down, dirty. Drivers are impolite, almost never use Waze or some other GPS app and the fare at night rivals Uber's.

There has been some drama regarding Uber v. Taxi around here as well (São Paulo, Brazil). One thing I know for sure is that as long as Uber's around I'll never call a taxi again.

http://www.seattleyellowcab.com/ appears to have. I've not used it (or Yellow Cab), so I can't give more information.

>> Has any taxi service, in any city, rolled out a self-dispatching app for end-users?

Do you mean an app where an end-user can request a cab, or do you mean an app allowing you to become a cab?

If the former then there are at least two I know of in my small-ish south-coast city in the UK. And one in Perth, Australia.

If the latter, no idea.

For the record that's West Quay Cars and Radio Taxis in Southampton, UK and Swan Taxis in Perth.

I'm pretty sure there are now companies selling OEM taxi apps to taxi firms, ready for deployment after some integration and rebranding.

In Manchester, UK (I don't know if it's like this in the rest of the country), uber is a normal registered taxi service, it's not normal people using the app to give people rides. It works really well

UberX is different, with UberX "anyone" can be a taxi driver.

Who cares if Uber is illegal.

The unions, the politicians, the construction companies. These groups steal from the population for decades (Charbinneau commission).

Who cares what the govt thinks in Quebec. The Quebec govt is out to steal and cheat for their own benefit, not the benefit of the population of Quebec.

Speaking English in Quebec is illegal in certain situation.

Ignore laws in Quebec. Choose what laws you follow, just like the unions, politicians etc.

If you get caught just say sorry. Quebec society loves apologies and forgives immediately so you can get back to stealing and scamming people.

Not a single person from 40 years of corruption we say at Charbonneu will even get a fine.

Uber, keep going! Fuck Quebec laws. It doesn;t matter.

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