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Just like the movie industry it hasn't occurred to taxi companies to build their own app to make it easy for people to get a ride through their service. With a little forethought the taxi companies could have snuffed out Uber before they picked up steam, but they ran to their paid for government officials and lawyers instead.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
TFA addresses that: "The average number of Uber cars in Manhattan’s central business district between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on weekdays is 2,000, Mohrer said in a telephone interview."
But that doesn't address whether those 2000 cars displace 2000 personal cars that would be on the road, or whether they just add 2000 extra cars, or whether it's somewhere in between.
How likely is it that Uber cars have actually replaced taxi cars on New York streets? In the minds of many consumers, this replacement has already happened.
The author takes pickups as a measure of congestion, but as they (sort of) admit much later on in the article, this is a bad measure. The argument of regulators is that, in the absence of proper congestion pricing for cars on the road, the market equilibrium for number of taxis per inhabitant will be higher than is efficient. That's how they justify a cap on the number of cabs. (It increases wait times but, they argu…
It's more than that. There's a finite number of people seeking a ride, it's a zero sum market where the supply of rides will crash, and Uber will jack up the rates. Uber ultimately will have enormous leverage to submarine any meaningful competition and even to displace public transit. Their national scope will make them a force to be reckoned with.
Just like the movie industry it hasn't occurred to taxi companies to build their own app to make it easy for people to get a ride through their service. With a little forethought the taxi companies could have snuffed out Uber before they picked up steam, but they ran to their paid for government officials and lawyers instead.
It wasn't actually built internally to the industry, but the taxi industry does have its own ride-ordering, etc., app: Flywheel.
So, there might be some narrow sense in which what you say is true, but in the sense that actually matters, its false.
I would take Uber over rude Manhattan cabbies any day. My personal experience with Manhattan taxi drivers after living in NYC for last two years. 1) They drive as if they are on a rally track. I have had never experienced motion sickness before until I moved to Manhattan. 2) If you ignore the tip or tip them in the range of $1-3 you get snarky remarks from them. 3) If you try to hail a cab and (regrettably) ask the t…
The author takes pickups as a measure of congestion, but as they (sort of) admit much later on in the article, this is a bad measure. The argument of regulators is that, in the absence of proper congestion pricing for cars on the road, the market equilibrium for number of taxis per inhabitant will be higher than is efficient. That's how they justify a cap on the number of cabs. (It increases wait times but, they argu…
It's more than that. There's a finite number of people seeking a ride, it's a zero sum market where the supply of rides will crash, and Uber will jack up the rates. Uber ultimately will have enormous leverage to submarine any meaningful competition and even to displace public transit. Their national scope will make them a force to be reckoned with.
What I find interesting is that Uber doesn't seem to be having an effect on private car use. From the article, in the busiest part of New York, "Uber gained 3.10 million pickups, while taxis lost 3.09 million." I read this to say that almost every Uber ride would have been a taxi ride if Uber did not exist. It doesn't seem to be replacing private car use at all. If it were, we'd see Uber rides increasing faster than…
I don't really find that especially surprising but I wouldn't necessarily generalize it beyond Manhattan. Manhattan had an imperfect but certainly widely used taxi system--culture even--before Uber came along. The Uber experience may well be preferable to the taxi experience but the difference is probably not such that a lot of people who were driving private cars to avoid cabs now suddenly stop driving. And a lot of…
The author takes pickups as a measure of congestion, but as they (sort of) admit much later on in the article, this is a bad measure. The argument of regulators is that, in the absence of proper congestion pricing for cars on the road, the market equilibrium for number of taxis per inhabitant will be higher than is efficient. That's how they justify a cap on the number of cabs. (It increases wait times but, they argu…
It's more than that. There's a finite number of people seeking a ride, it's a zero sum market where the supply of rides will crash, and Uber will jack up the rates. Uber ultimately will have enormous leverage to submarine any meaningful competition and even to displace public transit. Their national scope will make them a force to be reckoned with.
Why do I need to trust Uber for reputation management? Is there really any other piece of Uber that couldn't be replicated overnight by a knowledgeable enough team?
I would take Uber over rude Manhattan cabbies any day. My personal experience with Manhattan taxi drivers after living in NYC for last two years. 1) They drive as if they are on a rally track. I have had never experienced motion sickness before until I moved to Manhattan. 2) If you ignore the tip or tip them in the range of $1-3 you get snarky remarks from them. 3) If you try to hail a cab and (regrettably) ask the t…
Also, some percentage of taxi drivers are racist. I've had tremendous difficulties hailing a cab, Uber removes this (and having to think about it).
Just like the movie industry it hasn't occurred to taxi companies to build their own app to make it easy for people to get a ride through their service. With a little forethought the taxi companies could have snuffed out Uber before they picked up steam, but they ran to their paid for government officials and lawyers instead.
Eh, in NYC, yellow cabs were prohibited from picking up fares that way.