The Black Cabs in London have a long-standing monopoly on picking people up on the street and providing a metered journey. This is mandated by law. To become a black cab (not always black in colour) driver, it is necessary to take an advanced test called The Knowledge where you are expected to know every London street and landmark along with best routes based on random street closures. It takes about 3 years to study for The Knowledge and there is evidence[1] that they have increased brain size as a result of memorizing all that information.
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.
> 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.
Black cabs have no obligation to pick up fares and will regularly refuse to take trips that they feel are inconvenient or they think will likely result in a return journey without a fare, even after you're in the cab. Want to go south and it's near the end of the driver's shift and he lives north? Back to waiting for you.
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.
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).
The law stipulates a Hackney Carriage, once hailed, must accept any fare within the Metropolitan Police Area. If refused one should report it to the Public Carriage Office. It might not sound like it is worth it, but the PCO takes trade regulation very seriously and it will have implications for the driver, especially after repeat complaints.
> 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).
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 black cabs have to meet accessibility standards. They have low floors and plenty of space internally, so it's easy for a person in a wheelchair, or a standing person of limited mobility, to get into one.
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.
There is no reason why someone cannot come up with a service to cater to the needs of the disabled. Hence, there is no reason to grant monopoly status just because you agree too.
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
Why would the 99% of people who are able to exit and enter a regular car, benefit from being carted around in a "fully accessible vehicle?"
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?
>> Why would the 99% of people who are able to exit and enter a regular building with stairs, benefit from ramps around a "fully accessible building?"
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.
One of the key benefits of The Knowledge is that I can jump in a black cab in London and say "Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons" and have a driver who can instantly decide which way to go...
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.
What if you don't want to pay for that specific service? I got a taxi home (not in London) last week and the taxi driver used his sat nav to route me home. It didn't bother me in the slightest.
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.
London doesn't have a grid structure. When there's a closure or delay on one route, it's not as simple as choosing the next road over. GPSes vary in their quality for routing diversions, but in a maze of one-way streets, turning restrictions and temporary / permanent rerouting in effect, a human is always going to be better. GPS maps are often out of date as London is constantly changing with rat-runs being closed down and new railway lines being built.
And "The Knowledge" doesn't provide the ability for taxi drivers to psychopathically become aware of delays in traffic on a given road. I've never noticed any particular difference in the amount of time I've been stuck in traffic when travelling in black cabs or in taxis with drivers using a GPS.
Which usually involves several minutes of waiting, as opposed to simply flagging one down as it's passing, which you're allowed to do with a black cab.
As a singular anecdotal counterpoint, I've yet to get in a cab and say e.g. "Greenwich" or "Blackheath" and have those three points happen. I've had worse though - I've got a cab from Lewisham Station to Maze Hill and had to direct them most of the way ("left, right up the hill, turn right, turn left, stop").
Meh. My last black cab experience was supposed to take me from Paddington Station to the Marriott Marble Arch. The cab dropped me at Marriott Park Lane and sped off before I realized he had left me at the wrong hotel.
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.
There's no monopoly, there's merely a minimum standard defined by law. You're free to complete The Knowledge to become a cabbie, or a medical degree to become a doctor.
And that is great, but some price-conscious customers might be ok with driver entering location into gps and spending extra 15 minutes in traffic in exchange for lower price. Just give a chose to customers, not outright ban uber.
I had a neighbour that was doing the knowledge. We used to hear him practise in the back garden with his wife. Hearing her shout random routes at him like "Buckingham Palace to Bank Tube" and him spouting one road name after another was pretty amazing.
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.
Google isn't (yet) quite as good at predicting traffic though. For example, a cabby would know that if a Chelsea game's finishing at 5pm, he should avoid Stamford Bridge.
Thanks, that's a great example of where the real-time data collection is not as good as the local knowledge! Unfortunately that depends on whether the driver cares about football (or similar events in the city). I hope that waze/google/other services will start including information like that in the future.
Absolutely, and I honestly don't think we're far away from Google or someone (...but probably Google) integrating all of this data. Times for football fixtures, events at the O2 and planned demonstrations are all accessible online, it's just a case of an automated system parsing them and deciding the impact.
TFL and AA road watch know that so there is no reason Google couldn't. It's all data - after all the cabby most likely got it from the same data through a different aggregation medium (radio/paper).
But in 2014, there should be no need to make people memorize those thing to the risk of their heads exploding. Maybe if the Black Cabs had used their network to create an AI-powered optimal route-finding system, they wouldn't be afraid of competition.
Having taken a non black cab yesterday which involved the driver reprogramming the sat-nav, whilst talking on his Bluetooth and handing my friend a business card, I'm OK with relying on human knowledge once in a while.
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.
I don't know - some modern satnav systems are able to get hold of live traffic info and suchlike. That was always the point of The Knowledge - to know (for example) which major thoroughfares to avoid so you aren't going to be sitting in gridlock for an hour, however counterintuitive such evasive manoeuvres might be to an automated route finder.
The better informed the satnav, the less valuable that is.
I don't want to say "that should be easy to do," but I'd be shell-shocked if any company with experience doing navigation systems couldn't figure this out without too much trouble.
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.
Google maps already integrates with Uber. If they managed to get such connection, I'm not sure why a bigger black cab company operating in large cities couldn't get an agreement to include taxi/bus lanes on a separate app. Can't imagine Uber forced Google to cooperate with them...
Google Ventures are an Uber investor, I'm not sure if that's what sparked the integration but it probably didn't hurt!
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).
Isn't Google -- through Google Ventures -- a significant investor in Uber? That kind of may give them a different set of considerations than "a bigger black cab company" would have.
Sure and I think we're in agreement - Google proved it will do something nice for a taxi company if they profit from it. It's just a very specific kind of profit in this case.
Well, that's a simple software problem with street definitions. Much simpler to fix than what amounts to implementing a GPS/pathfinding system inside someone's head for even one driver.
For the purpose of my and other people's safety, I don't want my taxi driver to be constantly looking at the phone at the busiest junctions, neither do I want to explain to them how to spell a given street name so that they can type it in their phone in the middle of a busy street during the rush hour.
It's not "constantly looking at the phone", it's the plain old "using navigation in your car" that many people already do. AFAIK, safe driving with navigation is a long-solved problem.
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?
They also brought Southwark (near London Bridge, London) to a complete standstill on Tuesday because TfL (Transport for London) is not ensuring enough well placed taxi ranks. The Shard for instance has a space for a single taxi.
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.
Ridiculous behavior. I'm glad the black taxis seem to have their customer's well-being at heart.
"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?
> 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.
>> "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.
Umm, citation needed. Salaries are usually at least 50% of a company's expenses, and UK tax on salaries will be 30-40% of that, so that's at least 15-20%, likely more.
Citation needed for sure, but being a big % of expenses doesn't mean anything either way - salaries could be 100% of your expenses, and tax rates could be 90%, but if the company has revenue of 100x and expenditure of 10x then 90% of that 100% is still only 9x, which is the equivilent to a 10% tax on their 90x company profits. (Equally, salaries could be a small percentage of expenditure, but if the company makes only a small amount of net profit then tax on salaries could easily dwarf tax on the company's profits.)
Ignore my numbers, my point was just that without knowing total amount spent on salaries, total net profit, and the tax rates on both, there's no way to state which is going to provide more taxes, and that therefore there's no point talking numbers on one side without the other side to match. (But yes, your point is accurate.)
The company's profits are far in excess of the employee salaries that are taxed in most cases anyway. That's the goal. If the goal was to retain exactly $0 in profit by paying your employees generously, then yes, the taxes your employees paid would be enough.
Uber gives 80% of the fair to the divers. I'm struggling to see how it could earn profits "far in excess" of of that 80% unless it invests whatever is left of the 20% after overhead in some really lucrative City investments.
Presumably a chunk of that 80% gets written off by the drivers in expenses, so not all of it will be taxable. Whether it's 10% or 90% that's nontaxable I've no idea.
The company's profits are far in excess of the employee salaries
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.
They're probably talking about the Google not having it's corporate offices in the UK. The UK is a massive tax haven anyway, with weird little sub-national groups like the Channel Islands and Isle of Mann.
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.
The Channel Islands and the Isle of Mann are Crown Dependencies[0] and aren't part of the United Kingdom, nor are they part of the European Union (although their citizens are also British citizens and they are part of the EU customs area)
Sure, they are 'crown dependencies'. What's the appropriate term to use instead of 'UK' to include all such fiddly bits? rmc's logic is sound, they just made a mistake of terminology.
It's a moot point. For all practical purposes, and with some exceptions, tax havens around the world are run out of London, by our substantial and much-admired financial services sector.
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].'
There are ways to hold a protest/demonstration/march legally [1], though I've no idea a.) whether what they plan would fit what's allowed on that front b.) whether they have informed police etc.
Could well be they're going down the "prove we're not just normal congestion" road.
This was my thought. Purposely blocking traffic is illegal and I hope everyone of these taxi drivers get fines. This is like a child throwing a fit when they don't get their way...
How easy would that be to prove? At what point does a group of vehicles that happen to be driving down the same piece of road turn into a 'wilful obstruction'?
I can't imagine a scenario where this doesn't backfire. This is going to put Uber on the front page of every local London newspaper for a week. At most the black cabs will force uber to make a minor programming change to the app, and the most likely outcome is a massive expansion of Uber in London. I imagine the folks at Uber HQ are giddy right now.
The impression is that Uber are somehow freeing customers from unscrupulous and gouging taxi drivers. Taxi customers aren't being freed, they're simply under new management.
Just because they're getting something out of it doesn't mean it's a better deal all round. Amazon saves individuals money but that doesn't ameliorate the externalities that Amazon's business model create.
So -
>> TfL told the association last month that it believed Uber's vehicles were not strictly "equipped" with taximeters since there was not "some sort of connection between the device and the vehicle".
Instead there is a device used for calculating how far it has gone, e.g. "metering"... this is a bollocks distinction.
It's correct, though; it's not attached to the drivetrain of the vehicle. Ruling that any GPS device capable of tracking distance constituted a "taximeter" and was therefore banned from private cars would be an unworkable disaster.
(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.
Fair competition is great.
It isn't a level playing field though if Uber can do everything a Taxi can without the extra obligations that add to overheads.
It's one of my missions to correct this falacy. The number of days with rain in London is just around average and the overall precipitation is quite low.
Here's an example with data comparing London and Lisbon (which people usually believe is always sunny):
Check out the mean sunshine hours in those tables to figure out why Lisbon is perceived to always be sunny, it is because it is. Literally twice the sunny hours a year.
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.
While I understand your point, my experience doesn't really follow that logic (I have lived in Lisbon for 25 years and I'm on my third year in London). In my experience, while it's usually sunshine, when it rains in Lisbon it does rain most of the day and it's usually not drizzle but heavy rain (which I believe is the reason why precipitation is so high in volume in Lisbon; Oporto is even worse) while in London it can drizzle every day for a couple of minutes and then stop and "clear" (clear London style, meaning less clouds) and then drizzle again hours later. I assume London's sky is more chaotic because we're in an island in the middle of the sea but I'm no expert on the matter.
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!
I used to live on the other side of the lake from Seattle, and there too the winters were worse for the "greyness and lack of sunlight for months and months" than for the rain.
Usually enough that I'd still rather cab a mile than walk it. (I couldn't afford cabs then.)
It rains less now that the gulf stream is shifting. It's going to get a lot colder, though.
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.
I've used Climate Cars a few times and they're great. Mostly on time, their drivers are courteous and well-dressed, and they have a fleet of nice cars (I've mainly been in Prius and hybrid E-class cars).
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/
If that law is correct then it seems they have a perfectly valid complaint, using an app on your phone instead of a dedicated device is just circumventing the spirit of the law.
Whether the law should still exist, and whether this method of protest is appropriate, are other questions of course.
Transport For London (the governing body) have set it is not illegal as the law only covers meters that are mechanically attached to the car not an app that uses information about location/time/distance.
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.
Well, if you do so with the intent of charging a passenger for distance traveled, yeah. The taxi industry is heavily regulated, and circumventing those regulations is extremely questionable. Certainly it does not seem to be a fair market.
You're either a minicab offering pre-booked journeys or you're a taxi with a meter. If Uber is claiming they're a pre-booked journey service rather than a taxi then yes, they shouldn't be using meters and that would be illegal. If you want to change the law then by all means write to your MP or whatever, but in the meantime the law as it is should be enforced, even against fashionable companies.
In the absence of a pre-agreed/fixed price most minicab drivers will charge based on a combination of distance/time measured using the vehicles trip-meter/odometer and a clock. That's not much different to what the Uber app is doing in (surge multiplier excepted).
Minicabs in London are required to be pre-booked, otherwise they're breaking the law. I can't say I've used them a lot but when I have I've always been quoted a price when booking.
I rarely ever agree a price when booking a minicab in advance, but I use the same minicab firms I've used for a long time so I know they're unlikely to rip me off.
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?
So who gets to decide which laws are “crap laws” and which laws are proper laws that should be obeyed
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?
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.
Not just that, but black taxis have to operate under certain constraints and obligations.
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.
Yes, but I think the taxi associations only have themselves to blame for all the ceremony required to become a taxi driver. I think a lot of these regulations were created by existing taxi companies to present barriers of entry to people wanting to form new taxi companies.
Although I'm not an expert in the history of UK taxis, my impression is that a good number of the regulations were imposed by the government, due to complaints from the public about quality/maintenance/knowledgeability/numbers. That seems to have been the impetus for the original 1662 Act imposing a mandatory licensing requirement, at least: Londoners thought there were too many taxis clogging up the roads, and further were worried about reckless and otherwise un-vetted drivers.
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.
Sorry, I guess I should say I wasn't speaking with any experience of taxis in London. My statement mostly applies to things I've read/heard about taxis in the US and Canada.
The perverse way that taxis are regulated in the US (medallions and so on) seems to be completely unique to the US, or perhaps North America. It's not how things work in Europe. Uber and friends were started in the US as a sensible reaction against that perversity. They make a lot less sense in Europe.
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.
If their knowledge is of any value to consumers, consumers are going to choose them over Uber. If not, then nobody should care. I can learn how to program stuff for MSDOS, doesn't mean it'd be worth anything these days.
As for regulations and licensing, it shouldn't exist in the first place as it only raises prices and prevents legitimate competition.
Their knowledge is quite valuable in London (mini-cabs blindly follow the sat-nav and so will sit in traffic for longer, in my experience). Also, black cabs can often make use of bus lanes (of which there are many in London) which can actually result in a quicker, cheaper journey. Perhaps the LTDA should be promoting the benefits of black cabs rather than causing a traffic jam.
To what end? Anyone with a car can start their own taxi service?
I don't think it is in the public's interest to make taxi driving unprofitable which is what would likely happen without regulation and licensing.
Where I live anyone can be a cab. You raise your hand on any street any time of day and some car will stop. As a result, prices are normally 3 times lower compared to the US. You negotiate the price with drivers beforehand and you don't have to tip them because all of the money go directly into the driver's pocket. I've never heard anyone complain about this system. Now tell me how is this a bad idea?
Licensing is good for safety. Upkeep as part of safety is important, otherwise not. If they neglect to keep the car working they'll drop out of the market, no harm done. If they neglect to keep it pretty no harm is done.
My argument is that market should decide. If some people want cheap and unsafe, let them have it. If some people want expensive and licenced - let them have it too. In Europe and the US you currently have a situation where those who want a cheaper ride essentially subsidize those who value safety more. That is in no way fair.
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™.
I just don't understand, how is it that in your mind voting is a better way to let consumers decide than actually giving them choice? Alright, let me stop right here. I know where this is going. You like state and regulations. I don't. I think each individual should decide on his own with his own money he spends or doesn't spend.
For those things you're talking about my parents paid their fair share of taxes, not me. You have to realize, it's parents who pay for their children's education and healthcare, not children themselves: this is true whether we're talking about public or private.
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.
Does their story matter if they purposefully block the city traffic? Sure, it may matter on its own, but if they break the law and make life harder for others, that behaviour cannot be excused. They may have learned for the test, but in the time of satnavs that already have all the streets, digital broadcasts of current roadworks / street closures / accidents, and waze/google like collection of real-time data about traffic, that knowledge is simply not required.
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.
Yes, I do know their side of the story, and I'm sorry to say that I still have the opinion written above. The Black Taxis are rather obsolete. As a consumer I don't really care that they learned The Knowledge since it won't help routing me around a traffic jam that just started a few minutes ago, to give one example!
Hi, To the person who is downvoting every one of my comments - if you disagree with me, please write a reply to me. Downvoting here on HN is meant only for people who are significantly detracting from the discussion. Thanks.
I'm not one of the downvoters in this instance, but actually I disagree with you.
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]
Also, causing gridlock and disrupting the commute is not the best way to make friends and influence people. Unless you have a really clear moral outrage, people will get pretty upset at you as well as those you have a problem with. (If it were otherwise the transit unions would have a much easier time of things.)
"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.
Note that the rank-and-file taxi drivers aren't complaining; they'll all get a chance to become Uber drivers. It's the incumbent taxi organization that's upset, because it's about to become a lot less powerful.
Taxi drivers' pre-Uber work arrangements are even worse; by and large they seem to love switching from working for a taxi company to working as an Uber driver. For example:
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.
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/677048.stm