Boston taxis drove 1.5 million fewer passengers and took $33 million less in fares in the first half of 2015 compared to the year before, new city data show.
Ridership dropped 22 percent from the January-to-June total last year of 6.8 million to hit 5.3 million, and fare revenue dropped from $133 million to $100 million as drivers grappled with nasty winter weather and escalating competition from ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft. The 22 percent fall in ridership and 25 percent drop-off in fares has increased the sense of urgency felt by many in the industry to strictly regulate ride-hailing companies.
That’s a big drop in ridership, and obviously the taxi industry will collapse if things keep moving in that direction. So, what to do? Here’s Donna Blythe-Shaw, head of a group representing Boston taxi drivers, who is both exactly right and totally wrong:
“The taxi industry isn’t going to survive without any kind of reform or regulations…
Correct.
…on Uber.”
Wrong. Yes, there are regulatory reforms that should be imposed on Uber, Lyft, and similar services. A number of them are already in progress. In particular, background checks and insurance requirements should be uniform across companies that provide rides for hire (and yes, that’s what Uber does, despite its silly insistence that it doesn’t).
But what the taxi industry needs is not for Uber et al. to be regulated out of existence. What the taxi industry needs is to be freed from the yoke of antiquated, oppressive regulation that has failed to keep up with the times (as I’ve been saying for years). Get rid of the medallions. Get rid of town-by-town regulation and the nonsensical rules prohibiting Boston cabs from picking up fares outside city limits. Let taxis compete directly with Uber and Lyft and win back their business, not because the state made life more miserable for everyone, but because they do a better job.
There’s a real role for state regulation in the business of transporting passengers for hire. There are safety and liability issues that need to be taken seriously. But neither the state nor municipalities should be deciding how many cars for hire should be on the road – that is for the market to determine. Nor do I understand the basis for requiring a Boston cab who drops off a fare in, say, Wellesley, to have to drive all the way back to Boston until it can pick up another passenger.
It’s long past time for the state to take over regulation of the taxi industry from cities and towns, to impose uniform rules across the state, and to get rid of measures that no longer work (if they ever did). And it needs to happen soon, before the taxi industry is destroyed.
Wise words, and we have been in agreement on this. We need to balance the rights of drivers and the needs of consumers. Existing taxi companies have benefited from a century old system that their lobbyists wrote that has locked drivers into a form of indentured servitude in an antiquated guild system and subjected consumers to a non-competitive municipal cartel. Uber, while an excellent consumer service in my experience, has locked it’s own drivers into a predatory employment model. Leveling the playing field would force both entities to play by the same set of rules, the same standards for drivers, and offer equal protections to workers and consumers alike. It should be done statewide. The last thing we should do is repeat the same mistake and let the industry write the laws, whether it is the taxis of last century or Uber in this one.
It seems to me that the market is voting, loudly, on what is working and not working. A fundamental purpose of government is to do what people cannot do for themselves. Another is to strive to allow people to do what they want. Protecting an individual industry is NOT an acknowledged purpose of government.
I agree that background checks and insurance requirements should be uniform across all services that carry passengers for hire. I remain unconvinced that the average Uber driver is any more likely to be a threat to passengers than the average taxi driver. I think that insurance fraud by any vehicle owner is likely to be aggressively pursued by the insurance companies themselves — I’m not sure how much additional government intervention is needed.
In typical fashion, the Globe has apparently reported one side of the picture. I’d like to know what happened to OVERALL ridership in the same period. I’d like to have data, rather than guesswork, about ridership of Uber and Lyft, and also for “private limo” services. I’d like to see figures for MBTA ridership for the same period.
I think, therefore, that the first step is for government to encourage Uber and Lift services by addressing in a constructive way the concerns that may restrain the already growing market. I think the next step is to remove the unreasonable restrictions on the taxi industry that prevent it from being responsive to the competitive threat posed by these new ride-for-hire services. I think employees of ALL ride-for-hire services should be protected by a common set of regulations applied across the board. I also think that entrepreneurs who choose to compete by offering rides for hire deserve comparable freedom to entrepreneurs in any other emerging market.
Parenthetically, I observe that the workers most threatened by Uber and Lyft are not taxi drivers, but are instead taxi dispatchers. That (together with money transfer) is the most important way that Uber disrupts the taxi industry. For better or worse, that job category is dead, and no amount of government intervention will resuscitate it.
My bottom line is that the transformation of the ride-for-hire market, driven by modern information technology, is a marvelous thing that is good for Massachusetts. That transformation should be encouraged by government (by reasonable regulations), not squashed.
except on insurance. The problem isn’t insurance fraud, it’s that Uber’s requirements regarding insurance (and the taxi industry’s, for that matter) may be inadequate to cover injuries when a hired car causes damage or injury, or when a passenger in such a car is hurt. That should be a relatively easy problem to fix via regulation, and it’s exactly the kind of problem that requires government intervention because it’s nearly impossible for consumers to inform themselves adequately about it in advance.
Every driver has to carry statutory minimums already in order to address the concern of damage or injury caused by a vehicle. I’m not sure I see why a hired vehicle will cause any larger damages for a given claim.
What does change is the likelihood of that accident happening. I mention insurance fraud, because pretty much every personal auto policy includes a statement by the insured that the vehicle is not used “for hire” or “commercially”.
If we can stipulate that a hypothetical Uber driver has coverage in excess of the mandatory minimum, and that driver is involved in a personal-injury accident, then it seems to me that the question is then whether or not the insurance company pays the claim. I suspect that the insurance company will assert that the Uber driver defrauded them by claiming that the vehicle was for personal use when in fact it was being used as a vehicle for hire.
That sounds to me as though it falls well within current insurance regulations.
First, on average, I’d imagine that cars for hire spend a lot more time on the road than a typical personal-use car. That would seem to increase the likelihood of incidents causing damage, and perhaps explains why personal insurance policies aren’t supposed to be used on cars for hire. Taxis, Ubers, and other vehicles for hire should (it seems to me) be required to carry insurance well in excess of statutory minimums, which are generally not really adequate even for personal use.
Second, I have heard anecdotes of people involved in accidents with cars for hire having huge problems getting claims paid because of difficulty identifying the true owner, the insurance carrier, etc. That needs to be researched further and rectified. Perhaps cars for hire should have to file their insurance information with the state which will then make the information publicly searchable. Doesn’t seem unreasonable off the top of my head.
I’m not sure we’re actually disagreeing.
Let’s break them up into a few areas:
1. Jurisdiction: let’s go with this idea that taxis should be regulated at the state level. Pick up and drop off across town lines, no medallions, and rules about equipment are uniform, including vans, wheelchair accessible cabs, the works.
2. Rates: Do they have uniform rates across 351 communities? That doesn’t seem to make sense. Is there a set rate assigned for each community, and pickup sets rate? Maybe that’s the way to go, but somebody’s got to assign that rate and update it on the regular. Differences in fuel costs, congestion, cost to store and repair vehicles, living wage, etc.
3. Clumping: Think it’s hard to get a cab in Harlem? How does taxi availability change if taxis can pick up anywhere?
4. Taxi stands: currently (and in general), the same municipal authority that regulates taxis also regulates the streets — namely the taxi stands. What happens now that taxis are a state issue? Where are the cab stands? What “stick” do munipalities have to ensure cabbies or cab companies aren’t behaving antisocially within the community?
I think it’s an interesting exercise to think about the state transitioning in this direction. Maybe have a “supercab” license. No medallion, annual fee, high standards for vehicle (high mpg, really good condition, sufficient percentage handicap, well insured, guaranteed flexible payment options, minimum language skills because it is a customer and public service position, high quality dispatch over the telephone or smartphone app, yadda yadda), pick up and drop off anywhere, regulated rates. Can use taxi stands, the taxi U turn on the Pike, etc. Increase the number of these vehicles every year, and let the “traditional” taxi industry adapt, adopt, or atrophy.
I just worry that we as a group are lazily waving our hand at the very challenging task of actually drafting workable regulations — regs that the state can implement and enforce, that cities and towns can work with, that taxi companies can operate efficiently under, and that work for customers. Maybe that part is, in fact, really challenging. If so, how do we get there?
In my view, the sea change driving Uber and Lyft is using the web to connect drivers and riders. This essentially automates the dispatcher.
I suspect that this paradigm shift has a significant effect on pretty much all of your points (except, perhaps your first). With automated dispatching, there is no need for taxi stands. Prospective passengers don’t go to a stand, there’s no concept of a line, and there’s no benefit to cars waiting anywhere. Instead, the current GPS position of each available driver is available to the automated dispatcher, and the nearest car is connected to the prospective passenger.
I’m not sure that government needs to play a role in setting rates with this model. In the Uber model, the cost of the ride is set during initial request, and the driver receives a fixed percentage of the ride. If the proposed rate is too low, no drivers accept it. If the rate is too high, many drivers site idle. This sounds like an issue that a market mechanism solves more efficiently than government standards. I thus think that (2) and (3) may well be mooted by Uber-like technology.
It seems to me that when the dust settles, the disruptive dispatching and rate-setting models act together to make the “taxi service” model irrelevant. Given this technology, there seems to be little advantage to having a corporate entity (other than something like Uber) stand between the passenger and the driver.
I think that today’s taxi companies are already dead or dying. I think today’s taxi drivers will migrate towards Uber-style models (most taxi drivers are already independents who lease their vehicles and mediallions). I think taxi dispatchers (the heart of today’s taxi company) are totally obsolete.
At the end of the day, I suspect that there are no regulations that today’s taxi companies can operate efficiently under — and so they should be allowed die in peace, rather than being kept alive by prolonged government-sponsored intensive care measures.
How does this work for someone without a smart phone who needs a taxi?
It works approximately as well as someone without a job who needs an apartment. So long as there is disparity between the very wealthy and the rest of us, there will be unfortunate people on the bottom who cannot afford the basics of life.
Those who lack a smart phone because they cannot afford one are unlikely to be able to afford any personal transportation service (a taxi is far more expensive) — they probably already use a bus (when and if they run). Those who lack a smart phone because they choose not to buy one may (or may not) revisit their choice.
Although I’m with David that reform is needed, I can’t back anything that has a built in feature that will only widen the gap between the haves and have-nots. Really poor people do need a cab sometimes. People with physical and mental issues who cannot navigate a smart phone need a cab sometimes. Visitors from other countries whose phones don’t work on our networks need a cab sometimes.
The other thing I have a problem with is tying it so closely to a particular technology. That only guarantees that the next game changer will be more chaotic than it needs to be.
Make it work, but make it work for everyone.
I agree that these are issues that need to be resolved.
I don’t think attempting to stop Uber-style approaches to personal transportation is a workable strategy.
I don’t see why both business models shouldn’t be allowed to operate and let users decide which is best for them. Not all taxis get dispatched. As I mention elsewhere my experience just involves flagging them down. I have never called for one. There is a place for everyone it seems.
Some people not only do not have access but may not be able to use it. I know when my grandma had to go back and forth to Mass Eye and Ear when dad was stuck on the day shift in the mid 90s and we were a one car household, we had to cab it to Arlington and then cab it to the Mass Eye and Ear. And they sent a van or station wagon since we were dragging a chair back and forth too. Granted in that same scenario today my brother or I could use a smartphone to call Uber, so could my ma, but my one handed dad cannot. And The Ride takes a long time to set up, over a two month wait for my dad this past year when he was stuck in a chair after an injury.
I think what David proposed at the beginning levels the playing field in a reasonable way. It saves the cab industry and also forces Uber to act as a member of society and not just a Randian force of creative destruction. I am awfully surprised you are taking the Thatcher approach on this issue.
I don’t think we’re that far apart.
I don’t think it’s “Thatcherism” to admit that not having a smartphone in 21st century Boston is not very different from not having electricity a century ago or telephone by about WWII.
I think it makes more sense to find ways to provide smartphones (perhaps temporarily) to those who can’t afford them.
is, IMHO, unrealistic for the foreseeable future. There are lots of older people who simply don’t want to use them. The phones are expensive, and the data plans that you have to buy along with them are expensive too. And the expense and logistical nightmare of a government program to give out some sort of stripped-down smartphone so that people can … what, use Uber? … strike me as almost certainly not worth it. Far better, I think, to ensure that multiple options remain available, than to take a purely Randian approach.
So long as “not purely Randian” isn’t a euphemism for “suppressing new technology to keep a dinosaur alive”, I’m fine with that.
I’m really not attempting to argue with anybody here. I’m instead saying that it seems glaringly obvious to me that the taxi industry, as we know it, is dead. DEAD. That’s what the statistics in the thread-starter mean to me.
Background checks for drivers, tighter insurance regulations, and so on aren’t going to keep the conventional taxi industry afloat. While I’m sympathetic to the plight created for those who don’t have smart phones, it seems to me that the reality is that there aren’t enough of those people to sustain a taxi industry — no matter how loosely or tightly it is regulated. “Yellow cab” is dead.
I suggest, therefore, that after much hoo-ing and hah-ing about regulations and “impact” studies and all that, when the dust settles there won’t be a taxi industry because:
– No drivers will want to work for it,
– Not enough riders will want to use it to keep it afloat,
– No investors will want to fund it
I’m sorry if that sounds “Randian”, in my view it’s just the inconvenient truth.
Let me offer a parallel. The availability of video imaging DESTROYED Polaroid and wiped out nearly the entire film processing industry. Polaroid was a large and well-loved area employer.
The demise of today’s taxi industry is, in my view, just as certain as the end of Polaroid. However we deal with the results of that certainty, I think we misuse whatever government energy remains in attempting to change that reality.
Instead, I suggest we find ways to adapt to it.
either with human or computer dispatchers. You would probably be a little more limited in your selection of rides, but I don’t see why it couldn’t work.
And could work a lot like the Uber model, with “dispatchers” on-call with calls routed to their phones. Home for a few hours? Make a buck or two by answering a few calls and directing a few cars.
Needs honing, and there probably isn’t a lot of money involved, but it could solve the problem.
Stands are needed for two distinct reasons (at least!).
1. Stations. Airports, train stations, downtown nightclub areas, or anywhere else where lots of people are loading and unloading in the same place. A taxi stand creates order; the lack of one, chaos.
If you’re coming out of South Station along with 100 other people looking for livery, it doesn’t make sense to pre-match riders to taxis and have 100 pairings looking for their partner. A taxi queue is a much more efficient loading algorithm, especially important with luggage or in a rush.
2. Where do the vehicles go when not with fare? I’ll tell you where taxis go — they go to cab stands. It’s a place to be. Taxis don’t do a great job of parking in legal places now — imagine how bad it would be if there weren’t taxi stands for the bulk of idle cabs to wait.
I hear you about places like train stations and airports.
I’m not sure that rides-for-hire, especially using the Uber model, are very different from friends and family awaiting a cellphone call from an arriving passenger. It seems like a cellphone lot may suffice, and those already exist at Logan.
I’m not sure that lining up waiting vehicles nose-to-tail in a physical queue is most efficient when a virtual queue is already present and each driver knows their place in it. In fact, I suspect that a largish parking lot where only a few vehicles need to move for each passenger may be more efficient (at least in carbon footprint) than a long snaking line where each car has to traverse the length of the line for each pickup. Parallel versus serial processing and all that.
Similarly, I agree that rides-for-hire need a place to wait. It seems to me that, as in the airport cellphone lot above, other models may use space and fuel more efficiently than today’s taxi stands. When each driver already knows his or her passenger, there is no benefit to the line of taxis waiting on Harvard Ave in Coolidge Corner. In fact, if most of their passengers are going to be picked up in the neighborhoods, then Coolidge Corner strikes me as a very bad place to have idle vehicles wait — it’s already clogged with traffic, street parking is already a scarce resource, and in the Uber model each “taxi” will arrive and leave empty.
When Zipcar needed to find Brookline homes for its vehicles, it was able to do so despite initial concerns about where the cars would land. I suspect that similar arrangements could be accomplished with Uber — the same dispatching system that directs a driver to a waiting passenger can also direct a just-emptied vehicle to a suitable waiting area.
I don’t see how that would work at an airport or train station where you have a lot of people simultaneously seeking a ride and they don’t particularly care who their driver is. How do I discern my driver’s car from the dozens of others there when each is looking for a particular passenger? How do the drivers find their individual passengers?
The queue provides an orderly way for everyone to get a ride in this situation with minimal confusion.
is filled with Ubers waiting for someone to call them, there won’t be room for actual people waiting to pick up friends and family. The lot at Logan is already close to full at peak landing times.
There is an enormous amount of space occupied at Logan by personal automobiles parked for days at a time.
Surely it makes more sense to make it easier (and perhaps even encourage) the use of alternatives that do not require parking a half-ton of metal for extended periods.
I’ve never hailed a cab in Boston, but the handful of times I have in DC I didn’t go to a designated stand. I just walked a block or two to a main street, say Pennsylvania Avenue, and flagged down whomever passed by.
In many cities, taxis line up in queues at hotels. I’ve always found the nearest hotel more quickly than the nearest cab stand, especially in an unfamiliar city. A tip to the bell-hop who hails taxis for hotel guests is generally well-received and eases any concern about whether or not I’m a hotel guest.
My impression is that in cities like DC and NYC, the taxis who you can hail from the sidewalk are generally on their way to somewhere else rather than intentionally cruising the streets looking for a fare. I could be mistaken about that, though.
Somehow I’m reminded of fishing from a boat. Generally (at least for the freshwater bass I’m accustomed to seeking), the paradigm is to sit in a likely spot until I decide to move on (usually because there’s no action there). Then I move to the next likely spot. When I’m moving from spot to spot, I often trail a lure in the water behind the boat “just in case”. I’ve always thought the cabbie driving Pennsylvania Avenue with the illuminated “In Service” light is doing the same.
cabs indeed cruise the streets. There are a lot of them, which is why it’s possible in some parts of Manhattan to reliably flag down a cab when you need one. But it doesn’t work everywhere even in Manhattan, to say nothing of the other boroughs. In Boston, in contrast, there aren’t enough cabs, so the likelihood of finding a cab on the streets is low.
the combination of rush hour and rain means it’s nearly impossible to flag down a cab anywhere.
Totally agreed about this. Getting a cab to stop on the street at rush-hour is difficult even in Manhattan. It was during my extended stays in Manhattan, while doing contracting in the financial district, that I learned the trick of walking to the nearest hotel.
1. —-
2. Rates. Why, exactly, does someone have to set rates? No one sets rates for the price of a large extra cheese pizza, why is this different?
3. Clumping. This seems to me to be a problem solved by technology: vehciles already have a GPS log, and so you can see where they go. That is, you can actually see the cars that are willing to go to “certain areas” and those that are not.
4. Taxi stands. This seems a bit like asking where to store the buggy whip. What anti-social behavior needs to be prevented with a stick anyway? If you really need a no-call pick up area, then have an area, but let all drivers have access to it. There is no reason to have the foolish “local” exclusions in place. Indeed, since all of the vehicles are equipped with techology, you need not even have an actual queue to have a queue.
The issue with taxi stands is less about technology and more about physical logistics.
I’ve been places like (name any) airport, Penn Station in NYC, or Union Station in DC where there have been more than a hundred people all waiting for a taxi at the same time. Having a first-come, first-served method for both the passengers and drivers (whether taxi, Uber, or whatever) is the only thing that makes sense to me in this situation. I can’t imagine having 100 cars out there and everyone trying to match up – especially when the matching up isn’t necessary to meet the goals (i.e., for each person to get a ride to wherever they want to go).
It reminds me of the drop-off / pick-up situation at the elementary school my kids went to. Drop-off goes pretty smoothly because each car stops, drops off, and then leaves. Pick-up… not so much. Of course, a parent isn’t just going to take the first kid they see. It takes a lot more time to clear out the traffic in the afternoon than in the morning.
But doesn’t seem like the sort of things that requires govt regulation. Set a spot at the airport, or wherever, and then leave it be. If too many cars show up for too few riders, the situation will rapidly self-correct.
What we can and cannot imagine is quite different from what even today’s automated dispatching for Uber does easily. I can’t imagine maintaining running row and column totals for even a modest sized spreadsheet, and the first generation of spreadsheets did that quite handily more than three decades ago.
Lines of physical vehicles “managed” by men or women in fluorescent vests is MUCH worse than the various alternatives we’ve discussed here. I can tell you from first-hand experience at Logan that one major advantage of Uber is that I don’t have to go near the first-come first-served taxi chaos.
The school pickup situation is even less comparable. My practice with my children (when they were old enough to carry phones) was to stop somewhere convenient and tell them, by phone, where we were. I never came near the traffic jams surrounding the school bus pickup areas.
Getting picked up by Uber really is much more similar to calling a spouse or friend on a cellphone (only easier still). If a particular location is crowded, the passenger simply walks somewhere less crowded. It really doesn’t sound as though you’ve tried it.
That easy pick up for you is ONLY BECAUSE the masses are still in the taxi line (just as the pick up for the kids works OK because you are away from the congestion zone). Tell me how it works when those hundred or so people at the airport terminal all use a Uber-like service. Where are these convenient places that all will go (especially those who don’t know the airport or area) to get their rides?
I’m not saying it can’t work. I’m not saying it needs a lot of regulation. I’m not defending the taxi industry. I’m just looking for practical outcomes, and I don’t see one yet.
I’m sure it would work fine for me. I’ve done car services before. But, again, that works because of the limited number of customers using it. You are advocating doing away with the taxi industry. OK. Just show me how it works in the new world in the situation I’ve described.
Let’s use terminal B as an example (the same holds true for the others).
A given passenger first walks out to the sidewalk in front of the terminal (away from the taxi stand) and looks for a thin spot. If one is found, and the traffic passing is not too thick, then stand there and request the vehicle.
If the sidewalk is crowded or the traffic is too dense, walk up the stairs or take the elevator to the rooftop deck of the parking lot (for decent GPS reception). Do the same there. There is an enormous amount of space there, more than enough for dozens of passengers.
If some sort of sequential assignment is needed, it can be accomplished by having each driver, as the driver leaves a holding area (like a cell-phone lot) notify it’s single passenger (or group of passengers, now available from Uber) that that passenger is next. So a few (at most one or two at a time) passengers step out of the waiting group to meet their car. It’s not very different from how restaurant reservation buzzers work. Again, it’s just not hard to solve.
Our difference seems to be in your last two paragraphs. First, I see zero evidence that it needs regulation, and great deal of evidence that current regulations have made the problem worse rather than better.
Next, while you suggest that the Uber model doesn’t scale, I simply disagree with you. I think Logan airport at a busy time is prima facie evidence that the current approach doesn’t scale. Several thousand square feet of parking deck absorbs a group of several dozen passengers much more effectively than a taxi stand carved out of a sidewalk in a two- or three-lane roadway already dense with traffic.
Finally, I am not “advocating” doing away with the taxi industry, just as I never advocated doing away with Polaroid. I’m saying that technology progress has already killed the taxi industry, just as it killed Polaroid.
The plain truth is that this horse has already left the barn. This train has already left the station. The taxi industry is already dead.
Oh, OK. I thought the opposite. It is a queue, and nothing more than a queue.
There is no need to line up 1/2 ton hunks of metal bumper-to-bumper to have a queue.
In a system where each driver is already linked to each passenger or group of passengers, it is enough for each driver to know their sequence in a virtual queue. An electronic system does that.
Order a meal at a busy time in a typical Panerra Bread outlet, and you’ll see the same mechanism in action with their buzzers. Customers are handled in first-come first-served order, and no lines are required at the pickup desk.
Pizza isn’t a commodity. It’s a differentiated product. You call a specific pizza parlor, not a pizza dispatcher. You order a specific pizza, with specific toppings, from that specific vendor. If a pizza with different toppings showed up, from a different vendor, you would likely be unhappy.
Taxis are different. They’re common carriers, using the public way. Roads, taxi stands, etc. Furthermore, from the perspective of a customer, it’s a commodity good. One taxi is as good as another. The same is not so for pizza, where every parlor has a differentiated product.
I don’t know of a single taxi jurisdiction in America that doesn’t set rates. Given that districts do set rates, and given that the cost of businesses vary across regions, allowing 351 city and town pickup presents this problem where costs vary. Should revenue vary accordingly?
That’s the question I pose. Your response is to not have uniform rates. The problem is that customers aren’t equipped to price shop a taxi, and doing so is remarkably inefficient.
I like your analysis.
I wonder if perhaps you’ve nailed one of the disruptive elements of the Uber model — it does, in fact, provide customers with the ability to price-shop an Uber-style ride.
If I’ve installed the apps for both Uber and Lyft, then I can see an expected price from each for the same trip. That ability, when expanded to a “taxi”, is why the need to regulate uniform rates is less necessary.
I also think it bears mentioning that, to the extent that I am representative of taxi consumers, I care less about the meter rate (which is what is currently regulated) than about the price of the overall trip. This matters because the bottom line remains that Uber and Lyft result in significantly less expensive trips than their conventional counterpart — in my experience, often by more than a factor of 2.
Since it is standardized across the state, the only ‘ask’ of Uber is that it recognizes it’s employees are it’s employees and that it is a transit company, so it has legal and social responsibilities that a transit company would have (vis a vis insurance and the like). It’s basically deregulating the cab industry along the airline model, while forcing Uber to adhere to some pretty basic regulations it’s absurdly refusing to do at present. The mistake of 70 plus years ago was letting the cabs organize as a cartel and blessing that cartel with state protection, the mistake of the present would be allowing Uber to write the laws for the next phase of this industry. I’d rather the Commonwealth actually do it’s job and look out for the public first, the workers second, and the companies bottom line last.
Most taxi drivers are independent contractors who lease the taxi (primarily because of the medallion) from the taxi company. Uber drivers are independent contractors who use their own vehicle. Neither is an employee.
We mostly agree on the regulations needed for “personal transportation for hire”.
Whomever writes the laws for the next phase of this industry, technology itself has made the basis of the current laws obsolete (never mind the abuses by the taxi cartel).
The taxi industry, as we know it today, is already dead because the world has left it behind. People once had jobs operating elevators. A great many people had jobs as telephone operators before technology made self-dialing possible. The once ubiquitous coin-operated pay phone is now virtually absent from most of our major cities.
Even if other companies provide the apps, and new regulations govern ALL drivers, I suggest that when the dust settles, the “personal rides for hire” industry will look a lot more like Uber and Lyft than the current taxi business.
Oh, and for what it’s worth, it won’t be THAT much longer before the “personal ride for hire” will not have a driver at all. If those self-driven vehicles are safe, shall we attempt to prohibit them because of the drivers (even Uber and Lyft) they displace? I hope not.
Uber offers two price services that taxis don’t, if I understand correctly.
1. They offer a differentiated price, based on demand (e.g. surge pricing). To the extent that varying price is used to discourage demand and encourage supply during times of too-few-rides (and vice versa), that price responsiveness is a service.
2. They offer a price a priori. When I get in a taxi, I have a reasonable idea of the price most of the time when going to or from the airport to my house. When I’m in a different city or traveling to/from a destination in Boston that I don’t typically travel to/from, the cost of the ride is an after-you-buy surprise. My understanding is that the Uber price is a fixed price, presented just before you choose to book. Different days/times may be different prices for the same source-destination pair, but you always know the price before you accept service.
Both of those pricing items are fundamentally different than taxis (although taxis in some areas do have time-differentiated pricing). I don’t know how much users value either one of those two things explicitly, but I do wonder: could taxis evolve to either of them? Frankly, I’m not sure.
When I’ve hailed a taxi, I’ve asked BEFORE I get in, “How much will it cost for you to take me to…” Somewhere along the line I read this was good consumer practice and it certainly makes sense. As I’ve mentioned I’ve only used them in DC so it may be a different system regarding how many zones you cross or something else that holds prices constant.
With zones, you know the price.
Few cities use zones. For most taxi rates, it’s something like the sum of:
1. Fixed cost for pickup (sometimes more at night)
2. Passenger cost x num passengers
3. Luggage cost x num bags
4. Mileage cost x num miles
5. Idle cost x num minutes not moving
all of which means that once you’re already hailed a cab, you could ask and maybe or maybe not get an accurate estimate. That’s a long way from knowing the price of the trip before you actually hail the ride.