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Uber London loses licence to operate

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Uber London loses licence to operate

#531

Post by fortythirteen »

conanbatt wrote: post #460
fortythirteen wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that those companies haven't built software with the express purpose to operate extrajudicially. Being "innovative" doesn't mean that you have full reign to operate unethically.

> Being "innovative" doesn't mean that you have full reign to operate unethically. You are right. Being "Government" means you have full reign to operate unethically. Do you believe that if a government comission said that Uber cabs are safer than taxi cabs, that they would ban taxis?

They would a taxi company if they built software to allow their drivers to break the law.

Re: Uber London loses licence to operate

#532

Post by KaiserPro »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #474
confounded wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Almost all Uber drivers in London used to be minicab drivers (or work for e.g. Addison Lee), and the pay, rates, customer-base etc. are similar.

> Almost all Uber drivers in London used to be minicab drivers Source?

All Uber drivers in london must be licensed by TFL to operate. That license is the valuable bit, and is entirely seperate to uber.

Why is the license a good idea? because it stops rapists posing as taxi drivers (which alas is still a problem even with prominant signage.)

Uber only provides a customer gateway, there are may other out there.

For those of you in the US, the important thing to note is that the market is much freer than say new york, there are only two requirements:

1) a safe car

2) a minicab license (https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/taxis-and-private-hire/licensing...) which is reasonably cheap.

As a customer, I'm happy with that level of regulation.

Re: Uber London loses licence to operate

#533

Post by KaiserPro »

dalbasal wrote: post #419

Uber is such a contentious topic that a decision like this is ipso facto political. There are [1] competitors (especially black cabs)that have a very strong interest to lobby against uber. [2] There are pro labour politicans that see Uber as workaround for labour laws, and the vanguard of a wider threat to labour norms. [3] Now, there are feminists and work culture interested people reacting to all the accusations ab…

> There's no good reason for Uber to lose a big market over that. Complying would not have disrupted their operations one bit.

This is the thing, Uber assumes that london is just like NYC, where its a highly regulated market with a massive barrier to entry. Its simply not the case.

A minicam license to operate costs ~£500 (https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/taxis-and-private-hire/licensing...) There is a rich and thriving minicab market. Uber are really quite late to the party, Addison Lee having an internet based hailing serivce in 2007, and an app since at least 2010. The only thing new they bring is "cachet"

Re: Uber London loses licence to operate

#534

Post by twic »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #515
vertex-four wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading Taxify's side of the story alone reveals significant bias, and even that seems to suggest that what happened is that Taxify bought an existing company for its minicab license - which is practically bound to be a problem. Why couldn't they find a customer to sell their product to without acquiring that customer? The problem wasn't the app - it was the company bypassing the licensing process. Interestingly, the…

Buying a company that owns an asset or holds a license is a reasonable way to obtain said asset or license. Nothing wrong with that.

If you're talking about a license in the sense of a right, like a copyright or patent license, or a license to drill for oil somewhere, then yes. But this is a license in the sense of regulatory approval of a specific organisation, which is not something it's proper to buy and sell. You can't buy someone's driving license, gun license, medical license, license, etc.

Re: Uber London loses licence to operate

#535

Post by unityByFreedom »

taysic wrote: post #524
taormina wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, it happened in Austin. Lyft and Uber threw a hissy fit and the market was happy to fill in the gaps.

Did it happen in Austin? According to this article, they were allowed back in a year later and no longer were asked to perform fingerprint based background checks.

> Did it happen in Austin?

NYC still requires fingerprint checks.

In Austin, the mayor and people voted in favor of the checks, but the state legislature killed the city's fingerprinting rule. Some argue this diminished the city's ability to self-govern. That part of the history, despite being quite short, is left out of this article.

Re: Uber London loses licence to operate

#536

Post by foldr »

sol_remmy wrote: post #510
vertex-four wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Perhaps it would be difficult to replicate what Uber did in SF and other US cities without breaking regulations - but in London, their model is perfectly replicable, as evidenced by the fact that they were originally given a license by TfL.

But here's an even better model: 1. Do a good job 2. Consumers use your service & rely on you 3. Wait for the government to try to shut you down 4. Consumers will back you 5. Government backs down & lets you do what you want

There's not going to be much public pressure on TfL to reverse this decision. Most Londoners don't use Uber, and there are plenty of alternatives.

Re: Uber London loses licence to operate

#537

Post by unityByFreedom »

dalbasal wrote: post #419

Uber is such a contentious topic that a decision like this is ipso facto political. There are [1] competitors (especially black cabs)that have a very strong interest to lobby against uber. [2] There are pro labour politicans that see Uber as workaround for labour laws, and the vanguard of a wider threat to labour norms. [3] Now, there are feminists and work culture interested people reacting to all the accusations ab…

> Complying would not have disrupted their operations one bit

They're required to do fingerprint checks in NYC and seem to do alright there.

Uber drivers are taxi drivers and should follow the same rules. It's very straightforward.

Re: Uber London loses licence to operate

#538

Post by retube »

There are loads of alternative private minicab firms in London. Addison Lee has excellent mobile site. No need to sign up or install an app. And in my experience has always been excellent service and keenly priced.

Re: Uber London loses licence to operate

#539

Post by conanbatt »

fortythirteen wrote: post #531
conanbatt wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being "innovative" doesn't mean that you have full reign to operate unethically. You are right. Being "Government" means you have full reign to operate unethically. Do you believe that if a government comission said that Uber cabs are safer than taxi cabs, that they would ban taxis?

They would a taxi company if they built software to allow their drivers to break the law.

If you truly believe that, you are naive. There is no reasonable situation that would make any government turn on its own cabs.

Re: Uber London loses licence to operate

#540

Post by dalore »

twic wrote: post #520
SilasX wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You could easily build a company that does what Uber does in London without the hate for local Government that is ingrained into Uber's culture - and there already are a number of minicab companies that do what Uber does, just minus quite as fancy an app. But that just begs, er, fully reduces to the question of ... why haven't they? Is a slick, user-friendly app really that much of a barrier? The article has tweets…

They have: https://www.addisonlee.com/apps/

They are more hated then Uber. Their CEO is just as infamous.
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