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UberCab to disrupt the Taxi/Limo business

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Re: UberCab to disrupt the Taxi/Limo business

#91

Post by abalashov »

ajju wrote: post #52
patio11 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do more of my traveling from airport to suburbs than inside the city, so I get to use a car service. It is pretty simple: I call American Taxi (by way of Bangalore), they send me an Eastern European immigrant with a car, and he whisks me home for the published flat fee. Their incentive to not screw me is that they value my continued custom (and chargebacks are a beast). His incentive to not screw me is that he valu…

When you say "by way of Bangalore", do they have their call center in Bangalore? /just curious how many taxi dispatch services do this.

Yes.

Re: UberCab to disrupt the Taxi/Limo business

#92

Post by maukdaddy »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #85
maukdaddy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, sorry, but I want my taxi driving making a living wage. Why? Because [s]he has more to lose by fucking me over. If he is on the edge of poverty, making only 35k/year, he is MUCH more likely to screw me over with shady tactics because he needs to feed his family.

Even after cutting the medallion fee in half, NYC would have $9000/cab to devote to policing taxis. Assuming the 4x yearly safety inspection costs $1000/inspection (at a rate of, say, $333/hour for the mechanic), that leaves $5000/year/taxi for police work. So for every 15 cabs, the city could spend $75,000 on a dedicated undercover taxi inspector. Lets say this undercover inspector works 250 days/year, and rides 3x/…

$35k in Iowa City is equal to $58k in Queens.

So I'm thinking 50k.

http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/savings/moving-cost-of-l...

Re: UberCab to disrupt the Taxi/Limo business

#93

Post by lolhn »

So... how long until somebody who doesn't have insurance to work as a commercial driver gets into an accident while doing this, and loses everything?

How long until somebody is injured by such a driver and there's no insurance to cover their injuries?

Re: UberCab to disrupt the Taxi/Limo business

#94

Post by lolhn »

patio11 wrote: post #13
keltex wrote: post #8

Sound like a nice idea, but unfortunately taxis are a regulated industry in most major cities (e.g. NYC, Boston, Chicago). The difference between a taxi and non-taxi are usually that a taxi license or medallion is required in order to legally stop for somebody hailing down a cab on a street. If this service became at all popular, it is very likely that cities would immediately include "mobile hailing" as also requiri…

Medallions are a conspiracy against the public, especially the poor and minorities, who both are disproportionately refused cab service and prevented from lawfully pursuing a value-creating occupation in their communities which requires only modest capital and no special training. See also hairdressing regulations and a host of others. I could be persuaded there exists an optimum amount of regulation for compensated…

You literally have no idea how much respect I lost for you with this post. It shows a level of ignorant thoughtlessness that is uncharacteristic of your posts.

I guess you've reached a point where you mistake being somewhat competent at one thing for being perfect at all things.

Sad.

Re: UberCab to disrupt the Taxi/Limo business

#95

Post by grandalf »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #34
sprout wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're at all correct that they are less traceable than yellow cab drivers. The government bureaucracy makes it much more difficult to fake credentials and make yourself untraceable. With UberCab, it looks like anyone could steal an iPhone/credit card, download the app, and sign up as a driver all in the space of an hour.

I think you wrote "less" when you mean "more". Assuming that's what you meant, I disagree. From their website, it looks as if UberCab requires drivers to be a livery company, so gov credentials are required either way. The only way I can see the stolen iphone game working is if you steal the iphone from an UberCab driver, or convince UberCab that you are an independent livery and then rape someone before the stolen i…

True. I think it's common for the owner of a medallion to let someone else drive the car illegally.

Re: UberCab to disrupt the Taxi/Limo business

#96

Post by jfager »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #90
jfager wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I specifically said "lower-middle-class jobs", and you're pretending I just said "jobs". Of course I meant that you were replacing fewer higher paying jobs with more lower paying ones. I see nothing in your previous numbers showing how you do or don't keep the benefit to the consumer after throwing in a congestion tax, which is what I said we needed to do the math for. Fun fact: there are about 250 million cars in th…

There are about 13,000 yellow cabs in all of NYC. The GWB and Lincoln tunnels have traffic of 320,000 and 120,000 vehicles (respectively). I'm too lazy to look up the number of people driving from non-NJ locales. Also, I didn't realize that the 37'th percentile of income (36'th percentile in NY [1]) did not count as lower middle class (or just plain middle class). My mistake. If the congestion tax costs less than $24…

There are about 13,000 yellow cabs in all of NYC.

Which is the number set by the medallion system. My original point in this line of argument was that one of the main reasons cabs don't contribute to congestion in the city is because the number of cabs allowed in is capped. You're the one who wants to make that number bigger.

Also, I didn't realize that the 37'th percentile of income (36'th percentile in NY [1]) did not count as lower middle class

The labels are flexible depending on who's drawing the boundaries, I'm sure. The point is that I wasn't contradicting myself when I said your plan would both cut a certain class of jobs and increase traffic, I was simply saying that you're replacing fewer higher-paying jobs with more lower-paying ones. Where we disagree is that I think in this case that's equivalent to giving rich people a break and forcing more of the city's service workers to live further away, and I assume you don't.

If the congestion tax costs less than $24,000/year/cab, consumers still pay less for a taxi.

You're taking the savings from the medallion and labor costs that you posited above and assuming they'd be passed directly to the consumer, but that's overly simplistic. More competition means marketing costs go up, which drives the fares back up a bit. The congestion tax is presumably convincing fewer people to drive to work, which increases the demand for cabs, which drives the fares back up a bit more.

The point was not "you are wrong about consumer prices going down", it was "you have to start modeling the problem more carefully to have a meaningful conversation about it". You're probably right, consumers would save money, but again, given who the consumers are (oversimplifying: rich people), I don't necessarily see that as a good thing when it comes at the cost of cabbie pay.

Re: UberCab to disrupt the Taxi/Limo business

#97

Post by three14 »

tptacek wrote: post #44
patio11 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American Taxi dispatches forty thousand fares a week. They're a wee bit bigger than me.

Come on, Patrick. American Taxi is pretty much the cab company for all of the Chicago suburbs. You think they do 40k fares to/from ORD? That's 500 fares an hour. There's a difference between airport taxi service by chauffeur-licensed drivers dispatched by a branded cab company (with something to lose if drivers misbehave) and "I signed up with 1 of 5 different companies that dispatch cabs with iPhones". I don't have…

In NYC, my experience with unlicensed cabs at airports is limited, but every time they did try to take advantage.

However, I had much more experience with unlicensed cabs in Washington Heights (north end of Manhattan, where licensed cabs refuse to cruise around to get business) and I never remember anyone trying to rip me off. Much of the time this wasn't with calling any specific company, just flagging down (illegally) whichever car was passing.

I think there's just too much money to be made from unsuspecting tourists at NYC airports.

Re: UberCab to disrupt the Taxi/Limo business

#98

Post by jfager »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #86
jfager wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to solve a problem in one fell swoop with one technique. Medallions aren't the only way to reduce congestion, and they aren't a complete solution, but they certainly do at least partly address the issue as an explicit goal, not a side-effect. I would welcome a separate congestion tax levied on certain other kinds of traffic to complete the solution. You want cabs in the city, and you want them running…

You're a cab driver with rent and your kid's tuition to pay, are you the one staying home today? If congestion charge + other expenses > expected revenues, yes. Actually, things should equilibrate roughly at expected revenues - congestion charge - other expenses = average low skill wage. The real trick is to set the congestion charge somewhat higher for taxis than for regular vehicles, since taxis spend more time on…

People don't always make optimal, rational economic decisions. If driving a cab is what you've always done and is all you know, it's not as simple as plugging the numbers into the equation each morning before deciding to go to work. You know there are fares out there, and that if you don't take them, someone else will. What motivates any individual cabbie to acknowledge that they should be the one to give that fare up rather than someone else? And what job do they take in its place? You're certainly correct that the decision would get made one way or the other, but there's a human cost that cold, superficial economic reasoning has a hard time accounting for.

The real trick is to set the congestion charge somewhat higher for taxis than for regular vehicles, since taxis spend more time on the road.

Commuter vehicles deliver less value to the city, though. They spike congestion in the morning and the evening, waste time looking for parking, and take up valuable real estate just sitting around during the day. That's the traffic you want to discourage, not cabs, delivery trucks, and other actual economic contributors.

Re: UberCab to disrupt the Taxi/Limo business

#99

Post by mechanical_fish »

smoody wrote: post #6

a friend of a good friend of mine was brutally raped by an independent Lincoln Town Car licensed driver (in NYC). I would advise (my personal opinion) women to avoid such services and deal with the hassle of getting a cab. Getting into a stranger's car and closing the door behind you is an action that should not be taken lightly. That is why I always take a taxi or use a well-established car service (as in substantia…

This article has to be read very carefully. Near the beginning it says:

UberCab contracts with black car services – mostly Towncars and Escalades

That suggests that they are probably doing some due diligence.

My friends the management consultants report that they use these black-car services all the time. You think a business traveler with a big expense account hails one of those yellow cabs, like me and the rest of the plebes? ;)

The follow-up idea of dispatching cab traffic to any random idiot with a Lincoln Town Car, an iPhone, and a possible drug problem seems to be Arrington's idea. It is, as you point out, a pretty lousy idea. [1] But don't blame UberCab.

---

[1] I should know. I had this idea five years ago. Then I conducted a thirty-minute thought experiment and decided that the due diligence would be annoying and not my cup of tea.

Re: UberCab to disrupt the Taxi/Limo business

#100

Post by mturmon »

smoody wrote: post #6

a friend of a good friend of mine was brutally raped by an independent Lincoln Town Car licensed driver (in NYC). I would advise (my personal opinion) women to avoid such services and deal with the hassle of getting a cab. Getting into a stranger's car and closing the door behind you is an action that should not be taken lightly. That is why I always take a taxi or use a well-established car service (as in substantia…

It used to be standard advice in women's self-defense classes (e.g., http://modelmugging.org/) to avoid at all costs being coerced into a vehicle. Being in a vehicle with an assailant was said to lower your odds of escaping considerably.
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