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Comment by jipiboily | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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