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Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

bbc.com

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Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#341

Post by smileysteve »

aguyfromnb wrote: post #301
Consultant32452 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like Uber provides valuable service to the poor who are more likely to work night shift and also less likely to be able to afford the premium for the nicer black cab service during the day.

> Sounds like Uber provides valuable service to the poor who are more likely to work night shift On what planet are "the poor" commuting back and forth to work via Uber?

Anecdotally, I've seen this for wait staff;

Most public transit services have reduced service on nights and weekends; so, in a world where you don't have a car; you can take the train/bus to get to a shift in the day, but must take a cab or uber home.

It seems obvious that Ubers or Taxis would serve this purpose wherever vehicle ownership is cost prohibitive and public transit is at all available.

Likely, this isn't "the poor" but inclusive of much of the working class in modern cities.

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#342

Post by 72deluxe »

jotm wrote: post #334
72deluxe wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offence, and I can see that you've been downvoted but how do you actually propose solving this "unnavigable" problem? By bulldozing existing property that is owned by multitudes of private landowners and building new roads or something else?? Honestly, what's your solution?

If this was a real thing, I'd say building bridges/roads above the city would be the only viable (yet extremely difficult) solution. Maybe underground in some places. Would look pretty dystopian probably

Underground is not possible there due to the amount of underground infrastructure dating back hundreds of years. Look at the upheaval at adding a new tube station and the cost and mayhem that caused (can't remember where the last station added was but I seem to recall a new one on the Central Line last time I was in London a long long long time ago).

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#343

Post by reaperducer »

aguyfromnb wrote: post #301
Consultant32452 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like Uber provides valuable service to the poor who are more likely to work night shift and also less likely to be able to afford the premium for the nicer black cab service during the day.

> Sounds like Uber provides valuable service to the poor who are more likely to work night shift On what planet are "the poor" commuting back and forth to work via Uber?

I can't speak for the rest of the planet, but in America it happens quite a lot.

I drove for Uber for almost a year when I was between jobs. The hours I chose were generally 3am-noon (early because I like mornings, but late enough to dodge most of the drunks). The majority of my passengers were people going to and from factory jobs.

A large number of those passengers were people who didn't speak English whose English-speaking children would order the Uber for them. I didn't notice it at first, but after a few pick-up confusions where the passenger handed me a phone to talk to the person who actually ordered the ride, one of them explained it to me.

I live in a transit-sparse city, and a surprising number of poor people use Uber as their main means of getting around. It's simply cheaper than owning a car, especially if you don't have money up front, a steady job, or exceptional credit (Notice how car ads on TV are now disclaiming their advertised interest rates to indicate those rates are only for people with the best credit).

Even for me, now being an office-dwelling developer, if I factor in the cost of just a car payment and fuel, Ubering to work would be cheaper than owning a car. And that's before factoring in insurance, repairs, maintenance, etc... If I didn't enjoy weekend road trips, I'd ditch the car altogether.

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#344

Post by 72deluxe »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #318
72deluxe wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offence, and I can see that you've been downvoted but how do you actually propose solving this "unnavigable" problem? By bulldozing existing property that is owned by multitudes of private landowners and building new roads or something else?? Honestly, what's your solution?

I doubt there is a good solution to the problem in general but having ridden a motorcycle aimlessly around central London on my own little sight-seeing trips I can certainly get on board with the idea that London has been designed to be minimally navigable without knowing exactly where you are going (or having a GPS which does the same). This is at least partially due to one way streets, turning restrictions, traffic…

It's the same for most cities and even towns, I'd imagine, eg. Sheffield (baffling one-way system to visitors), Birmingham (one way streets, central road by New Street actually leads to an underground car park if you're not a bus), Coventry (roads that go nowhere in the city centre, bus lanes that appear and then disappear after only a few hundred metres, cut across roundabouts etc). Try Redditch with its unnavigable ring road system - how do you actually get to the Vue cinema in the central shopping centre, even with a GPS??? Even towns with a grid layout (eg. Leamington) have no right or left turns across the grid so you have to follow a certain route around the town.

I think it's just symptomatic of hundreds of years of town growth.

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#345

Post by zhte415 »

jotm wrote: post #334
72deluxe wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offence, and I can see that you've been downvoted but how do you actually propose solving this "unnavigable" problem? By bulldozing existing property that is owned by multitudes of private landowners and building new roads or something else?? Honestly, what's your solution?

If this was a real thing, I'd say building bridges/roads above the city would be the only viable (yet extremely difficult) solution. Maybe underground in some places. Would look pretty dystopian probably

This was tried with varying levels of success over the past 150 years and is known as the tube.

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#346

Post by fauigerzigerk »

dominotw wrote: post #195
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number comes from Cognizant who were hired to conduct an independent review [1]. They found that 43 drivers out of 45,000 drivers skirted Uber's identity checks committing identity fraud. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/78827b06-0f6a-11ea-a225-db2f231cf...

ok thank you. I don't have FT subscription. But 43 out of 45k drivers seems like a pretty good number, certainly not a ban worthy number.

There are some other accusations as well and it actually says "at least 43" so that could be open ended. I guess they found 43 and weren't sure if there were others they hadn't found. But I'm just speculating.

You can read the article without a subscription if you google the URL and then click on it from the search results.

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#347

Post by Bworkbwork »

alkonaut wrote: post #315

You can't hail a regular taxi in London with your phone still ? Why? How do you get them? Call? Or do you have to wave your arms? It's been 10 years since you could first do it in e.g. Stockholm with normal licensed taxis. Edit what I mean are regular taxis, not "black cabs", "minicabs" etc. I mean the iconic taxis. If you can't hail those, why not?

There's multiple apps that let people hail cabs: Gett, Taxiapp, etc.

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#348

Post by jamiequint »

criddell wrote: post #254
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> underpaid drivers This is and always will be a matter of opinion. Uber is not putting a gun to anyone's head. If it's not profitable for you to drive, you don't have to.

Since drivers can't set their own rates, I've always felt the government should regulate the split. Uber's portion should be capped at something like 5%. The marginal cost for them to connect a driver to a rider is close to 0 so even 5% feels very generous.

Say we implemented this scenario, can we walk though what would happen next:

- What do you expect would happen to Uber prices?

- How do you expect that change would affect overall demand for the service?

- From there, how do you expect this change of demand (if any) would affect the take-home pay of the drivers?

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#349

Post by alkonaut »

Bworkbwork wrote: post #347
alkonaut wrote: post #315

You can't hail a regular taxi in London with your phone still ? Why? How do you get them? Call? Or do you have to wave your arms? It's been 10 years since you could first do it in e.g. Stockholm with normal licensed taxis. Edit what I mean are regular taxis, not "black cabs", "minicabs" etc. I mean the iconic taxis. If you can't hail those, why not?

There's multiple apps that let people hail cabs: Gett, Taxiapp, etc.

Gett looks like it offers its own services though (i.e. its own cars?)

I'm talking about hailing a regular London Taxi, not any car.

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#350

Post by Symbiote »

SilasX wrote: post #332
Symbiote wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In London, for decades there have been competing services to the black cabs: minicabs. They had to be booked in advance (by phone, but that translates easily to booking by app), and the price had to be agreed in advance. From my understanding, this might be called "limousine service" in the USA, although unless you make a special request it will just be a fairly normal car. Mobile phones and then apps made the border…

Stupid question: did they actually translate minicabs to an easy smartphone UX before Uber got involved?

I can't comment on "easy" (I never used it), but the largest company, Addison Lee, had an app in 2010, five years before Uber launched in London.

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240104764/iPhone-app-bo...

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