151–160 of 230 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The one thing that cabs do have going for them is no surge pricing. During peak weekend hours where surge pricing is 2x+ on both Uber and Lyft, cab fares stay the same. That's the only time I find myself taking a cab.
In Tokyo, taxis all suddenly become way more expensive after last train.
I'm currently programmer nomad-ing in Uruguay and have been delighted with Easy Taxi. I don't know if all the cabs use it, but tons of them do and it works just as well as Lyft/Uber did for me in Seattle. Real-time updates of location, ratings, instant confirmation of fare acceptance... I say I want a cab and pretty much get one within 5 minutes no matter where or when I am. It's all the same yellow and black taxies…
I don't understand how US taxi companies have been so oblivious to this, given each one in major cities probably has more cabs than the whole country does here :D
Uber finally launched a couple of months ago, but it's more expensive and doesn't have as many cars.
"In reality, we have the best color scheme there is in the world, we’ve got a lot of loyal customers, we still get a high volume of calls to our color scheme on a daily basis" Does "color scheme" have a special meaning in the taxi business, or is this guy actually bragging about how their cars are painted?
So yeah, I'm fairly certain that the guy is bragging about how lucky his company was to be able to have the "traditional" taxi color scheme... it's more or less as silly as it sounds.
Too bad, so sad... If they hadn't allowed their service to get so horrible, with nasty old cars, drivers that don't speak English and drive around in circles to increase fares, drivers claiming their card readers are "broken" so you have to pay cash, taking an hour to show up when called, passing by black people, etc., then this wouldn't be happening. From the article: "Cab drivers, on the other hand, maintain that t…
> Who cares about knowledge of city streets? Haven't they heard of Google Maps and Waze and GPS? If I get into a cab, the driver asks where I am going, and I stump them by naming a major hotel, I personally feel like that was a frustrating failure, as now we are stuck in an intersection while I try to teach them the layout of a city I know less about than they do: the reason I am hiring a cab driver in the first plac…
Curb (app) tried to do this and it looks like cab companies aren't ready to let go of their control yet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you let them tell you they don't take cards? From a quick googling, it seems like taxis in SF must take cards. If they drive me somewhere and the machine's broken, that's not my problem.
It's easier to go with someone who wants my business than to try to force someone who doesn't want it to take me anyway.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The taxis themselves are basically fine. Probably (potentially?) cleaner than uber imo: leather seats are way easier to clean than cloth, and most ubers I've ridden in have cloth seats. Taxis tend to be unhappy if you pay with a card, but telling them they'll accept a card or nothing generally works. The problem is taxis just don't come. There are relatively few areas of sf and times where you can reasonably street h…
I haven't used Uber a lot, but when I have the drivers universally love it. I've had them spend an entire 20 minute trip telling me how much the love Uber and how great it is to work for/with them. Are they really exploitative or is this just perception from outsiders?
Personally, I don't want to be an employee. I already put up with that mess at my day job. I want to click a button on the app when I want to drive, get the person where they're going, sign off, and have no other obligations aside from that.
Simple, fast, and easy. No wonder the government had to intervene.
(Yes, I am slightly bitter.)
Too bad, so sad... If they hadn't allowed their service to get so horrible, with nasty old cars, drivers that don't speak English and drive around in circles to increase fares, drivers claiming their card readers are "broken" so you have to pay cash, taking an hour to show up when called, passing by black people, etc., then this wouldn't be happening. From the article: "Cab drivers, on the other hand, maintain that t…
> Who cares about knowledge of city streets? Funny story: for a while in SF, the taxi union (?) was running ads that were thinly veiled attacks on Uber/Lyft. One of them showed a smiling taxi driver with the caption "would you rather have a driver who knows the city by heart or by GPS?" I found it particularly hilarious because the answer, for me at least, is GPS with live traffic information. Just another example of…
Too bad, so sad... If they hadn't allowed their service to get so horrible, with nasty old cars, drivers that don't speak English and drive around in circles to increase fares, drivers claiming their card readers are "broken" so you have to pay cash, taking an hour to show up when called, passing by black people, etc., then this wouldn't be happening. From the article: "Cab drivers, on the other hand, maintain that t…
> Who cares about knowledge of city streets? Funny story: for a while in SF, the taxi union (?) was running ads that were thinly veiled attacks on Uber/Lyft. One of them showed a smiling taxi driver with the caption "would you rather have a driver who knows the city by heart or by GPS?" I found it particularly hilarious because the answer, for me at least, is GPS with live traffic information. Just another example of…
So after 10 more minutes the driver finally finds me on a street corner and I enter the car - the GPS device (which would have guided him right to my doorstep) is installed but shut down and unused. I ask the driver why he didn't use the GPS, and he manages to tell me with a straight face that he doesn't need it because he knows all the streets in town.
I was literally left speechless for the entire ride.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Background checks are a canard. How do the cab companies check the background of someone from Uzbekistan? They can't, they can only go back as far as that person has been in the country, which isn't very long judging by their mastery of English. U/L do carry insurance for their drivers when they're driving a passenger, and it's probably more than the regular cab companies carry (which is why SF Yellow cab is going ba…
> Background checks are a canard. How do the cab companies check the background of someone from Uzbekistan? In other words, "Hey, Uber hires known felons and its okay because I can think of a scenario where background checks fail." By that logic, stop visiting the doctor, using seat belts, or any safety device known to man because it can fail for some non-0 fraction of the time. > U/L do carry insurance for their dri…
You say this like it's a bad idea to hire people who were convicted of felonies who've served their time and are now out of jail.
> There are some pretty significant gaps in that coverage that shift the burden to drivers, depending on the state.
> In fact there is an entire business built around the fact there are massive holes in that policy:
That "entire business" is "an auto insurance company". Funny that. You see "massive holes". I see "the market at work". Do you wish to force insurers to take on risks that they can't take in a fiscally responsible way?
Anyway. In CA, folks who drive for nontraditional taxi services like Lyft and Uber have access to (and are required to carry) coverage while transporting a fare, coverage between the time they accept that fare and the time that they pick up that fare, and all other times they are operating their vehicle. [0][1][2]
As with all things political, it will take far too long for this to become the policy everywhere, but it's pretty much inevitable.
To analogize: just because many Red States like Alabama refused to accept no-strings-attached Federal subsidization of Obamacare premiums for their poor, and refused to use no-strings-attached Federal money to expand Medicare to cover those who fall into the "Medicare gap" doesn't mean that those programs are bad, or a disaster. It's just a fact of life that many politicians love to play football with other people's livelihoods.
[0] http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/05/29/a-look-at-farmers-new-in...
[1] http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/10/12/lyft-drivers-car...
[2] http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Fatal-accident-tests-...
Too bad, so sad... If they hadn't allowed their service to get so horrible, with nasty old cars, drivers that don't speak English and drive around in circles to increase fares, drivers claiming their card readers are "broken" so you have to pay cash, taking an hour to show up when called, passing by black people, etc., then this wouldn't be happening. From the article: "Cab drivers, on the other hand, maintain that t…
> Who cares about knowledge of city streets? Funny story: for a while in SF, the taxi union (?) was running ads that were thinly veiled attacks on Uber/Lyft. One of them showed a smiling taxi driver with the caption "would you rather have a driver who knows the city by heart or by GPS?" I found it particularly hilarious because the answer, for me at least, is GPS with live traffic information. Just another example of…