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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

#391

Post by quest88 »

maxehmookau wrote: post #226

I'm always amazed at how fatalist about this sort of thing Londoners are. Like losing Uber will be a massive problem for a huge portion of the population. London has, by FAR, the best, cheapest and most efficient public transport in the entire UK. Uber is, yeah, cheaper than a black cab but also why is it cheaper? Worse working conditions, VC-subsidised, lower standards for vetting (as we've seen here!) It's not sust…

I don't know what I'm missing, but why not let customers decide if they want to use a lower standards for vetting service, and let drivers decide if they want worse working conditions. Note that I don't completely agree with your statements, but assuming they're true, my question still stands.

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

#392

Post by BurningFrog »

72deluxe wrote: post #293
BurningFrog wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Takeaway: Maybe London should spend some effort becoming more naviagatable, instead of demanding professional drivers acquire a PhD level education (the Knowledge) to find their way.

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 don't have a solution. I don't even live in London.

I do think that if the city tried to make navigation more user friendly, a few simple ideas could improve things. I suspect no such effort has ever been made.

I know this is very hard even in companies that live or die by their their products being user friendly, so for a city that don't have those incentives, it probably will never happen.

Not sure how bulldozing would help. It doesn't seem like a charitable interpretation of my post :)

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

#393

Post by gizmo385 »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #382
roflchoppa2 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Or make it so that people can't drive on major city-center/core roads. Make them pedestrian and bus lanes. Encourage people to take public transportation and away from using their own personal vehicles.

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

#394

Post by PaulRobinson »

harel wrote: post #272
Semaphor wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the very least I was hoping Uber would make that industry wake up and join the modern world. Even with Uber never getting a real foothold in Germany, they still did just that. It start with the myTaxi (nor for some inexplicable reason rebranded to FREE NOW) app that allowed you to book a cab, see where it is, get a price estimate and pay with your credit card. It wasn’t as smooth, but still better than before. N…

We're not that lucky in the UK. They came, they might go, and the traditionals will stay the same.

TfL mandated black cabs must - as a condition of license - take card payments, almost certainly in reaction to Uber's claim that they were serving a cashless society that other options weren't.

Black cab drivers also got into Halo and other apps for ride hailing, and there are now a few other third party private hire apps for non-Uber drivers. I also think it made Addison Lee - the largest private hire company in London pre-Uber - shake their game up a little.

A few people will complain, but genuinely, London will be a better place without the fleet of thousands of Toyota Priuses circling all day, every day being driven by people who TfL suspect are not fit to hold a private hire vehicle license.

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

#395

Post by agumonkey »

harel wrote: post #198

I'm not a fan of companies like Uber or AirBnB who attempt a violent takeover of a market. However, as a consumer who needs to get from A to B, or stay at some random city, I find those services invaluable. The black cabs in London are expensive, never around when you need them, and until recently might have refused card payments (now they just seem unhappy about it). At the very least I was hoping Uber would make th…

I agree, some results were great, but the long term philosophy is bad.

I wonder if it will trigger some social structure / device to avoid too much stagnation without requiring a shark-like company to try wiping the traditional market with infinite pockets.

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

#396

Post by wutbrodo »

72deluxe wrote: post #303
maxehmookau wrote: post #226

I'm always amazed at how fatalist about this sort of thing Londoners are. Like losing Uber will be a massive problem for a huge portion of the population. London has, by FAR, the best, cheapest and most efficient public transport in the entire UK. Uber is, yeah, cheaper than a black cab but also why is it cheaper? Worse working conditions, VC-subsidised, lower standards for vetting (as we've seen here!) It's not sust…

My friend who is from Woking said that southerners typically viewed everything as an eternal crisis and were always in a rush. He said it was far different moving to the Midlands, and I think it gets less panicky the further north you go. Perhaps it's a regional condition?

That sounds like a pretty typical urban/rural, economically-productive/less-so distinction. In England that happens to line up somewhat along the N/S axis

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

#397

Post by wutbrodo »

kd5bjo wrote: post #214
itamarst wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would think Uber Autonomous Vehicles group would do everything they can not to hit pedestrians. Yet according to the NTSB, previous to killing a pedestrian in Arizona Uber had a weak safety culture ( https://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/Documents/2019-HWY18MH010-B... ). Even worse, "Pedestrian outside crosswalk not assigned goal of crossing street", "Tracking history not considered when classification changes", "Pred…

> "Pedestrian outside crosswalk not assigned goal of crossing street", "Tracking history not considered when classification changes", "Predicted path depended on object’s goal" To be fair, I could see myself implementing these sort of heuristics to get a working prototype. On the other hand, I deliberately avoid working on life-critical software because of how easily it can go wrong.

I work in AV eng/research, and reading the details of the Uber crash was utterly shocking to me in terms of the corners cut. I can get reflexively frustrated at the slowing of progress and pushing changes induced by our safety constraints and testing, but I've always been pretty happy with the choices we've made. Uber made multiple obscenely negligent choices that I don't think are remotely defensible. There are plenty of hacky heuristics in the industry, but it's pretty central to industry practice to avoid hacks that make you _less_ safe.

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

#398

Post by wutbrodo »

omarhaneef wrote: post #313
mkolodny wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One possibility is that, as in the US [0], the London taxi industry has a lot of sway in politics. I'd guess that the taxi lobby had a lot to do with this decision. “Any London politician wants the black cabs on their side. They carry a political and electoral clout that is way beyond their numbers. There is nothing secret about that,” says Daniel Moylan, who was deputy chairman of TfL under Mr Johnson. [1] [0] https…

That is certainly possible -- although I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt. However, if that were the case, why not just say no license? Why give an opportunity to Uber to show an improvement in their numbers? And why do it twice?

It's not all or nothing, and no one is suggesting that the taxi commission is 100% corrupt and in thrall to Big Taxi. The way they're approaching Uber is likely a compromise between kowtowing to business special interests and serving their constituents (as pretty much all policy in every country is).

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

#399

Post by PaulRobinson »

eggy wrote: post #247

If the concern over rider safety was that somebody could pose as an Uber driver and update a photo to make it work, why are black cabs not also deemed unsafe? Couldn't somebody borrow a friend's black cab, slap on a fake photo, and work the city? Maybe a stretch, and more work, but the same concern is there, no? I guess the black cabs have some powerful lobbyists in parliment? Yellow taxis in NYC were a monopoly, and…

> Couldn't somebody borrow a friend's black cab, slap on a fake photo, and work the city?

There is concern that this is happened in the past and penalties are extremely severe: the owner of the original license will lose their badge and may face criminal charges.

It's a bit hard to describe the taxi market in London to anybody who doesn't live here, but it's a closed shop only to the extent that if you're prepared to do the work to get a badge, it won't cost you $1m like New York, but you will have to put some hours in, and you'll get known by many other black cab drivers.

If you show up with "Dave's cab" and you're not Dave, you're going to get asked questions. Do it a couple of times, and they might decide to pull your badge number up.

A few years ago a genuinely licensed black cab driver was convicted of rape and sexual assault, and as a result the community was shaken: it was the first time in over 300 years where a licensed operator had been convicted of such a crime, and they now look on newcomers with even more suspicion.

There are no lobbyists in parliament, and most black cab drivers I know have modest incomes. They declare an average of £38k/year, but as a cash business (until recently), it was assumed they were actually doing about £50k/year. Good money, but not megabucks.

The system is supported because it's worked for hundreds of years. Their chief complaint against Uber is whether their drivers have to undergo the same amount of vetting as they had to (they don't), and whether the fare structure is fair (it isn't, especially as it's VC-subsidised).

Uber is a great solution in many places that have poor transit and poor taxi solutions already. London isn't one of those places, and hasn't been for hundreds of years.

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