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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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