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London black taxis plan congestion chaos to block Uber

bbc.co.uk

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Re: London black taxis plan congestion chaos to block Uber

#91

Post by gadders »

msy wrote: post #72
buro9 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

The difference I've found is that in NYC, the cabbie will ask you how to get there as well.

Re: London black taxis plan congestion chaos to block Uber

#93

Post by twic »

pmorici wrote: post #76
buro9 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

"without excluding anyone of any ability." 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.

Re: London black taxis plan congestion chaos to block Uber

#94

Post by corin_ »

Symmetry wrote: post #37
kevingadd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: London black taxis plan congestion chaos to block Uber

#95

Post by jcampbell1 »

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.

Re: London black taxis plan congestion chaos to block Uber

#96

Post by Dylan16807 »

aspidistra wrote: post #55
rmc wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Neither the Channel Islands nor the Isle of Man are in the UK.

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.

Re: London black taxis plan congestion chaos to block Uber

#97

Post by cjrp »

viraptor wrote: post #88
cjrp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: London black taxis plan congestion chaos to block Uber

#98

Post by twic »

kevingadd wrote: post #14
brianlweiner wrote: post #3

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…

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.

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.

Re: London black taxis plan congestion chaos to block Uber

#99

Post by corin_ »

nakedrobot2 wrote: post #68
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

[2] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: London black taxis plan congestion chaos to block Uber

#100

Post by iaskwhy »

MRSallee wrote: post #75
JetSpiegel wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to travel a mile, you can just walk.

Rains a lot in London.

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):

Rainy days per year in London: 110.4

Rainy days per year in Lisbon: 117.0

Precipitation (mm) per year in London: 591.8

Precipitation (mm) per year in Lisbon: 774

Sources:

London: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London#Climate

Lisbon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisbon#Climate

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