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Comment by RealityNow | Hacker News Reader

I'll attest to the original comment by davidf18. Uber/Lyft have radically changed NYC for the better. Ride sharing services are significantly cheaper on the order of multiples, easier to use (eg. no more hailing, paying), and a hell of a lot more pleasant to ride in than taxis.

Taxis were notoriously bad. They'd intentionally take slower routes to run up the meter, refuse passengers trying to go to locations the drivers don't want to go (despite this being illegal), etc. Not to mention this is all made more attractive due to our failing decrepit subway system.

The smartphone app innovation you speak of was not inevitable. Taxis indeed had a monopoly, and thus had absolutely zero incentive to developing an app. The competition induced by the ride sharing services destroying them is what incentivized them to finally launch an app, but I don't have it on my phone nor do I know anyone who has, and it's probably inferior to that of its competition.

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Counterexample: Taxi companies in Stockholm developed hailing apps before Uber. Most of them already had location services for mobile phones so you could call their voice system, and there was an option to get a cab to your current location if you were calling from mobile. I presume there was a cooperation between the mobile carriers and the taxi systems so they could pull that info.

Their first hailing apps was simply an extension of this, but it used the phone's gps, and you would press a button in the app for "a taxi, now, here", but the underlying systems were at least already there.

After Uber entered the market, they made their apps better, and you can now attach a payment method to pay through the app, and there's gps tracking of the car you're waiting on, same as Uber and similar.

But Stockholm never had a medallion system or other caps, and there's no monopoly, but there is some sort of oligopoly where some companies get better access to major taxi destinations such as airports and train stations. As usual, healthy competition is the key. :)

My point, which both of you appear to have missed, is that we're not actually talking about taxis at all. Taxis are things you hail by flagging them down on the street. They're still there, driving around in circles looking for you, just like before. You're just not using them any more.

We're talking about something called livery cars which have existed forever and were also very widely used before Uber as well. You used to arrange for pickup using your phone. You still arrange for pickup using your phone.

The car, the driver, and the laws surrounding both are essentially the same as they were before. What's actually changed is your phone.

This distinction is quite different in cities that aren't New York, where there were taxis and nothing else, and Uber has in fact created a new category of private car transportation service. But here in NYC the non-taxi car service market segment existed already and was vibrant, the parent comment claiming they broke some kind of monopoly is just incorrect.

> Taxis are things you hail by flagging them down on the street. They're still there, driving around in circles looking for you, just like before. You're just not using them any more.

> the parent comment claiming they broke some kind of monopoly is just incorrect.

Are you saying taxis are not a monopoly? Or are you saying ride sharing apps did not break the taxi monopoly? If taxis were a monopoly, and if we are not using taxis now because of ride sharing apps, then it would seem ride sharing apps broke a monopoly.

carmel didn't quite have the saturation of drivers as uber and so you don't have to "think ahead" to hitch a ride. Certainly the smart phone allowed animated maps to pacify the client but, also, for foreign travelers, didn't really need to speak a different language to convey source and destination (as well as credit card info). Plus all the tracking of the driver for peace of mind from a safety pov.

It's not just that, ride sharing apps allow anyone to turn their own personal vehicle into a taxi, and work their own hours. This massively increased supply, rendering the fixed medallion taxi monopoly irrelevant. Uber Pool and Lyft Line further increased supply and drove down prices.

Add to that the incentives induced by the rating system and fares determined before you hail the ride, and you also get a far superior riding experience.

So no, the innovation here wasn't just that the hailing is done via an app. This alone would not have spurred the dramatic improvements we've seen.

Your reply doesn't address anything CPLX said. There were already non-yellow cab options in NYC for car service, and there still are. That's the point they were making.

> our failing decrepit subway system

Decrepit I'll give you, and even a low grade, but failing?

From Wikipedia:

2016 subway ridership: 1.76 billion = 147 million per month

2016 global Uber ridership in October: 40 million

Not the same league.

The subways could improve, but I prefer them (and walking) by far to taxis and cars. I guess I just don't have experience since I take maybe one or two taxi rides a year and have never used car services. You seem to take them much more.

I've lived here for the past 5 years (including a summer before), and the subway has gotten significantly worse every year. Commuting to/from work in the outer boroughs in particular is a nightmare. The month I lived in Astoria for example, it seemed that on over 50% of my rides, the train would stop at some point for an extended period of time due to signal failures, and I'd often have to wait for numerous packed trains to pass before new ones would arrive.

I actively avoid the subways as much as possible, especially in the summer when the stations are uncomfortably hot/humid. I mostly walk, ride Citibike, or take Uber/Lyft. Luckily I'm able to do this because I live reasonably close to my office in Manhattan.

Uber Pool has been a godsend because it's so cheap. I can often Uber to/from the office for about $.50 more than the price of a subway side. Granted traffic in the city is horrible so it's not all sunshine and rainbows - my Uber Pool today from midtown east to west of Penn Station took absurdly long due to standstill traffic, but at $2.03 I'm not complaining, and I'll take any excuse to avoid the subways.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/12/nyregion/subway-complaint...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/05/nyregion/subway-delays.ht...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/nyregion/why-is-subway-se...

https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-challenges-m...

Your reply is likely attached to the wrong comment, as you did not address the main thrust of what CPLX is saying.

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