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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

#381

Post by vertex-four »

omarhaneef wrote: post #191

Something about this doesn't make sense to me. I take it for granted that the staff at Uber would do anything not to lose the license. I am sure that, for 17 months, they've been investing heavily in security systems, ID verification etc. They must have followed up on every complaint. If I were them, I would have just manually followed everything that the Cabs do till I had a technology in place. It also seems that t…

It's possible that the team dedicated to ensuring that Uber met the requirements in London was doing their best, but were hampered by a lack of resources and a higher policy of "regulation is negotiable" which has worked for them in the US - i.e. a feeling of "if we can't meet the requirements, we're hardly going to get kicked out of the city".

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

#382

Post by ilikehurdles »

roflchoppa2 wrote: post #295
gorgoiler wrote: post #240

After living for years in London, it’s hard to compare Ubers with black cabs. In the centre of town during the day black cabs are often ubiquitous, immediately available, and skilled at getting you the hell out of dodge. Something for which I’m happy to pay a premium. Anywhere else they can be capricious and scarce. After 11pm this is the case with in fact almost all black cabs anywhere in the city, when a very diffe…

of all the jerks i see causing traffic delays, 90% of them are lyft/uber drivers. next time your in SF and you see someone blocking the bus-lane with their hazards on as if its some excuse, you'll see the uber/lyft tag.

They're a blight on the already tight, difficult, and crowded streets of Boston. If you're traveling down Tremont St in the South End, for example, just give up on trying to use the right lane for travel. There'll be multiple ubers/lyfts suddenly stopping for long periods of time on every block.

Cities need to designate pick-up/drop-off spots away from heavily-trafficked streets for these pseudo-taxi services, UX be damned.

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

#383

Post by VBprogrammer »

UncleEntity wrote: post #360
VBprogrammer wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Probably because its been "designed" over a couple thousand years and they don't have cars for the majority of that.

I doubt many donkey and cart owners encountered the no right turn onto Piccadilly! All of the things I mentioned are very much 20th century additions.

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

#384

Post by vertex-four »

alkonaut wrote: post #349
Bworkbwork wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gett gets you an actual taxi (regulated fare and all) in most of the UK, not certain about London.

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

#385

Post by phreack »

Uber was a good service for me until for some reason it appeared to have flagged me internally as a sort of driver beta tester, and from then on would only give me drivers with less than 2 weeks on the app. The experience was awful and dangerous so I abandoned it for good, but the good thing out of it all is that it sprung up competition and it was easy for me to jump to another app with better drivers (for me).

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

#386

Post by dominotw »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #380
dominotw wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The number comes from Cognizant I don't see that here http://archive.is/mNxBo was it edited out after u read it?

I can't open your link for some reason. But it's all still there in the original FT article. It is a bit unclear though which numbers and findings come from Cognizant and which are from the TfL investigation.

hah yea crazy that article seems to be the only source linking cognizant to those numbers.

Those numbers are repeated everywhere without any context or sourcing. Totally sounds like a smear job to me.

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

#387

Post by vkou »

roflchoppa2 wrote: post #295
gorgoiler wrote: post #240

After living for years in London, it’s hard to compare Ubers with black cabs. In the centre of town during the day black cabs are often ubiquitous, immediately available, and skilled at getting you the hell out of dodge. Something for which I’m happy to pay a premium. Anywhere else they can be capricious and scarce. After 11pm this is the case with in fact almost all black cabs anywhere in the city, when a very diffe…

of all the jerks i see causing traffic delays, 90% of them are lyft/uber drivers. next time your in SF and you see someone blocking the bus-lane with their hazards on as if its some excuse, you'll see the uber/lyft tag.

It's almost as if there is some sense in limiting the number of taxis that can be on the road at one time.

Maybe some form of limited-supply, transferrable crypto-token[1][2]... Could be used to prevent these sorts of situations.

[1] I am, of course referring to medallions.

[2] I am, of course, fishing for karma, by introducing a blockchain when one is not necessary.

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

#388

Post by fauigerzigerk »

dominotw wrote: post #386
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't open your link for some reason. But it's all still there in the original FT article. It is a bit unclear though which numbers and findings come from Cognizant and which are from the TfL investigation.

hah yea crazy that article seems to be the only source linking cognizant to those numbers. Those numbers are repeated everywhere without any context or sourcing. Totally sounds like a smear job to me.

Having read it again, I now think the numbers are indeed from TfL and not from the more recent Cognizant review.

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

#389

Post by criddell »

jamiequint wrote: post #348
criddell wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> What do you expect would happen to Uber prices?

That would depend on how much money Softbank has left to invest. Prices might go up.

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

Uber's great advantage is that the quality of service is better than the alternatives. If drivers can make more money, more drivers might sign up and wait times would drop. A better experience means the service will be used even more.

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

There are two parts to this. First Uber should have to make sure no driver ever makes less than minimum wage. If a driver starts the app to announce their availability and has the app running for four hours, they are entitled to a minimum of four hours of pay.

The second part is that I think getting 95% of the fare would mean drivers take-home pay is generally higher than it is today. If Uber wants to make more money by raising the rate, then drivers automatically get a pay increase as well and that seems fair.

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

#390

Post by PaulRobinson »

reaperducer wrote: post #343
aguyfromnb wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

So the big difference between your example and London which is how this thread started, is that London (where I live), is a place I can assure you is not transit-sparse. There are many, many public transit options.

For example this map is the night bus map just for the area around the Bank of England, and most of those will run at 15 minute intervals: http://content.tfl.gov.uk/bus-route-maps/city-of-london-nigh...

This is not unusual - other maps exist for other parts of London, and even when I lived in W6 (Zone 2), I could get a bus at all hours of the night from Piccadilly Circus to my home or vice versa. Even now living out in TW1 which is some 11 miles out from central London, I can get a night bus all night, every night to and from Oxford Circus.

Costs are also low: £1.50 a ride, with a second ride taken within 60 minutes of your first ride being free/included.

Realisitically that means you can easily get from one side of London to the other in the middle of the night for £1.50 - £3.00. It might not be the most direct or fastest route, but it's popular, and with good and obvious reason.

Tubes also run all night on some routes a few nights a week, and even when they don't 5am is a typical start time.

Poor people don't tend to use Uber in London as a utility that it sounds like happened in your city - it's a luxury product with luxury prices. Their target market here are those who are drinking and meeting friends off the beaten path from home or work on the tube network.

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