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Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

metropolitan.fi

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Re: Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

#11

Post by oblio »

TomMarius wrote: post #10
mandelken wrote: post #7

Taxi's don't scale in an urban environment. Their use is exactly for night or irregular use. Go to Mumbai, Jakarta, or any low income country and you'll find yourself stuck for hours in a cheap taxi. We need regulation because the market will not build railroads and metro's. "A developed country is not where the poor drive a car, but where the rich take public transportation". Visit and compare Switzerland with Egypt…

The market would build railroads and metros given the chance.

The market did build those. Look up robber barons.

Re: Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

#12

Post by davnn »

I thought Finland was one of the few places where taxi prices were high enough that taxi drivers could make a fair living off it. Those days are probably gone.. I don't see the great innovations that ride hailing services bring to the table at this point.

Having another person drive you around should expensive in my opinion.

Re: Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

#13

Post by foepys »

jpatokal wrote: post #8
dyyni wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxis aren’t that expensive in Finland compared to other Nordic countries or countries with similar living costs as Finland. Swedish taxis are unregulated and there fares have risen faster than in Finland. And Uber as a ride hailing service was perfectly legal in Finland. The issue was they were hiring drivers that didn’t have taxi permits (and didn’t pay taxes).

C'mon. Getting a taxi permit in Finland requires taking a bunch of mandatory courses on highly Uber-relevant topics like "how to use your taxi meter" (185 EUR) and "local navigation without a GPS" (260 EUR), then passing an exam with questions like "from memory, name all roads between random location X and random location Y", meaning you're looking at a bare minimum of 700 EUR and several weeks of full-time study to…

Uber is cheaper because Uber's investors subsidize each ride. Don't let this fool you. Uber will get a lot more expensive when those investors want to see returns.

Re: Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

#15

Post by illuminati1911 »

dyyni wrote: post #6
illuminati1911 wrote: post #3

Uber left Finland last summer due to the harassment from the government and police, but it still made huge difference to the Finnish taxi system. Before the taxi rides were expensive, service was mediocre and there was no apps nor anything else. After Uber started mixing the market, many new companies have started operating in the field offering travel packages etc. and almost all taxis can now be ordered with an app…

Taxis aren’t that expensive in Finland compared to other Nordic countries or countries with similar living costs as Finland. Swedish taxis are unregulated and there fares have risen faster than in Finland. And Uber as a ride hailing service was perfectly legal in Finland. The issue was they were hiring drivers that didn’t have taxi permits (and didn’t pay taxes).

If the pricing of taxis is correlated with local purchasing power, taxis are almost (#2 or #3) most expensive in the world in Finland.

It doesn't matter if the prices increase or decrease. The price will get adjusted according to the market needs IF there are no other regulations or interferences. If the prices increase, it means that there are other regulations or restrictions in place which are not publicly known or people don't have a need for taxis in Sweden. The former assumption is probably correct one in this case.

Outside of North Europe in countries with similar living costs as Finland taxis are still much cheaper like Israel or Japan even though their taxi markets are also regulated.

Also in Finland car purchases for taxi drivers used to be subsidised with tax money resulting in most of the taxi cars being expensive luxury cars like Mercedes', Teslas etc. Nothing wrong with luxury cars, but most people just wanna get from A to B and not pay fortune for it.

Re: Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

#16

Post by Reason077 »

foepys wrote: post #13
jpatokal wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C'mon. Getting a taxi permit in Finland requires taking a bunch of mandatory courses on highly Uber-relevant topics like "how to use your taxi meter" (185 EUR) and "local navigation without a GPS" (260 EUR), then passing an exam with questions like "from memory, name all roads between random location X and random location Y", meaning you're looking at a bare minimum of 700 EUR and several weeks of full-time study to…

Uber is cheaper because Uber's investors subsidize each ride. Don't let this fool you. Uber will get a lot more expensive when those investors want to see returns.

Uber's prices will remain competitive so long as there is healthy competition. If Uber is able to establish a quasi-monopoly in a particular market, then prices will rise.

Re: Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

#17

Post by Reason077 »

TomMarius wrote: post #10
mandelken wrote: post #7

Taxi's don't scale in an urban environment. Their use is exactly for night or irregular use. Go to Mumbai, Jakarta, or any low income country and you'll find yourself stuck for hours in a cheap taxi. We need regulation because the market will not build railroads and metro's. "A developed country is not where the poor drive a car, but where the rich take public transportation". Visit and compare Switzerland with Egypt…

The market would build railroads and metros given the chance.

Building a metro requires enormous investment, with a huge but very long-term payback. Most of that return is not direct in the form of ticket revenues, but externalised in the form of economic growth along the metro routes, as well as environmental and social benefits.

Even where you have private companies building and operating metros, it's usually with the direction and financial support (such as land grants and loan guarantees) from governments.

Re: Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

#19

Post by goty2 »

illuminati1911 wrote: post #15
dyyni wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxis aren’t that expensive in Finland compared to other Nordic countries or countries with similar living costs as Finland. Swedish taxis are unregulated and there fares have risen faster than in Finland. And Uber as a ride hailing service was perfectly legal in Finland. The issue was they were hiring drivers that didn’t have taxi permits (and didn’t pay taxes).

If the pricing of taxis is correlated with local purchasing power, taxis are almost (#2 or #3) most expensive in the world in Finland. It doesn't matter if the prices increase or decrease. The price will get adjusted according to the market needs IF there are no other regulations or interferences. If the prices increase, it means that there are other regulations or restrictions in place which are not publicly known o…

There is no mystery why taxis are expensive in Sweden. Deregulation legalizes price gouging, meaning few people will ride independent taxis or look a new companies. That doesn't just limit competition, but also puts more taxis on the road in relation to riders. Meaning higher costs.

Re: Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

#20

Post by mattmanser »

mandelken wrote: post #7

Taxi's don't scale in an urban environment. Their use is exactly for night or irregular use. Go to Mumbai, Jakarta, or any low income country and you'll find yourself stuck for hours in a cheap taxi. We need regulation because the market will not build railroads and metro's. "A developed country is not where the poor drive a car, but where the rich take public transportation". Visit and compare Switzerland with Egypt…

I disagree, from experience. I live in an urban environment in the UK with extensive public transport and haven't had a car for the last 5 years.

I have friends and family who live in the 'burbs. There are plenty of times I take a taxi over public transport, including:

    1. I'm in a rush
    2. I need to transport something not small
    3. I'm feeling lazy
Note, that all public transport suffers from some fundamental problems (at the moment[1]). I live in the south of the city. For anywhere I want to travel to in the north I have to walk 10 minutes to get to the bus stop. In certain hours buses get out of sync with their timetables, so you can add another 10/15 minutes of waiting.

Also a lot of public transport has moved to the "hub" model, where you have a central hub which connects different routes. While perhaps more efficient in some ways, it's incredibly inefficient for the traveller. It adds a minimum of 20 minutes to any journey where you have to go through a hub. My sister used to joke it takes an hour and 20 minutes to visit a friend living on a different tube line in London. My home town is either 3 lines switches away, adding an hour and a half of waiting to a journey, or I go through the London Hub, inexplicably having to pay a premium.

So while I like and appreciate our public transport, it can be a huge timesink and when you don't want to pay the "time tax" of public transport, taxis fill the role.

[1]I say at the moment as we can imagine a point in the future where you request public transport with your phone and it can on-the-fly accommodate you.

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