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Comment by wilfra | Hacker News Reader

"The price of taxis is held artificially high and really it is a loss for the consumer."

Absolutely. In Bangkok there are more taxis on the streets than all other cars combined. You can find one anywhere, anytime and a ten minute ride costs about $1. No need to own a car, even if you can afford one.

Our minimum wage wouldn't allow for that but there is no reason it needs to cost $60 to take a 15 minute ride from San Bruno into SF. The gas cost + labor cost of that ride should be 1/10th of that. Double that to account for profit, administration and the car and you have a $10-15 ride.

Price it like that and a lot less people would own cars - and there would be a lot more taxis on the streets to account for the increased demand. And a lot of jobs.

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Bad example. I've never seen a city in more need of stiffer regulation than Bangkok. The single worst part of driving in the city is dealing with agressive or incompetent taxi drivers. They break traffic laws and block lanes looking for fares.

The over-supply of taxis has the opposite effect of a more regulated public transport. It does not reduce the total number of cars on the road. It's useful from a consumer standpoint but the low cost means people are less likely to use the state of the art elevated train and subway, both of which run under capacity.

"Price it like that and a lot less people would own cars." Possibly in other cities -- though I doubt it -- but it certainly didn't help in Bangkok. People don't buy cars because they need them, they buy cars because they want them. The number of news cars sold in the country per day is astounding (though the number escapes me) and that's despite the fact that they cost 50% - 350% more than the same cars in the US.

Bangkok needs to regulate the shit out of the taxi industry and make it more expensive to drive in the city if it wants to sort out its remaining traffic issues.

Uber can probably work in US cities that have the traffic capacity, but it's a horrible idea in congested areas.

"The single worst part of driving in the city is dealing with agressive or incompetent taxi drivers."

That method of driving is not unique to taxi drivers - and those issues exist in several other Asian countries, regardless of the number of taxis on the road. I'll leave it at that.

"people are less likely to use the state of the art elevated train and subway, both of which run under capacity."

That's not accurate. Taking the BTS from Thonglor to MBK is faster than driving or taking a taxi at nearly all times. Thats an extreme example but traffic is so bad that its faster in a lot of cases. That's why both the BTS and MRT are always packed, with people of all classes.

You make some good points otherwise, some I disagree with like whether Bangkok is an example of an unregulated market failing or thriving, but I don't want to get too off into the weeds of a political discussion :)

I'm enjoying seeing all the Bangkok locations mentioned on HN. We should have a Bangkok HN meetup sometime!

I don't understand why you make the claims that you do.

Why is it bad that people are "less likely to use the state of the art elevated train and subway"? Is it because they're "state of the art"? That hardly seems compelling. Is it because the train and subway are faster or cheaper? Sounds like they're not, otherwise more people would take them. Why is train and subway usage important if no one wants to use them?

It sounds like you're advocating forcing people to do something they don't want to do, and I don't understand why you're advocating that.

Because favoring the trains would mean fewer cars on the road, something the city needs.

The trains are faster in many cases (provided you're starting / ending close the line) but they're not cheaper. Making cabs more expensive would change this.

Take a look at what Singapore does http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Road_Pricing to keep cars off the road. It might seem a bit draconian but it's effective.

Why does it "need" fewer cars on the road? It sounds like the city has as many cars on the road as the city wants to have.

If the trains aren't cheaper, why should that be the cars' problem? Why not make the trains a better alternative instead of making cars worse?

Why would you advocate something that "seems draconian" to you?

Pollution? Safety? Things that unregulated free market isn't all that good at handling.

Pretty clear case of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

The shared resource in this case is traffic capacity.

It's proved ineffective to regulate traffic by making cars expensive in this market. That's because cars are not profit centers for people -- they give mostly intangible benefits (increased comfort, status, etc). Taxis on the other hand are cars that are used for profit and therefore will respond efficiently to regulation (if that regulation increases capital or operating costs).

In a classic tragedy of the commons, you might have a common field, on which sheep graze. Everyone takes their sheep there, the sheep deplete the grass, and after this process has been in place for a while, the total capacity of the common field to support sheep is lower than it might be otherwise. That diminished level of sheep capacity is the "tragedy".

What's your model here? That if there were fewer cars on the roads of Bangkok, it would be able to support more cars? What would there be more of, in total, if you confiscated a bunch of people's cars?

Would you advocate banning most people from a popular public beach on the grounds of overcrowding? Would you justify that as preventing a "tragedy of the commons"?

More fresh air. Less dust. Less noise. Shorter transport times for everyone.

Congested traffic makes everyone's trip longer and less convenient. Any individual gains from using a car as opposed to not using a car as long as the traffic is not congested. Too many individuals doing what personally benefits them make it worse for everyone. This is the definition of tragedy of the commons. In the sheep example, every shepherd benefits from using the field, but if too many sheep use the field, it's ruined and noone can use it. Same with congested traffic.

I couldn't say for sure since I haven't studied it properly, but I think due to traffic, at some point we have a lower capacity to move people in a timely fashion. So perhaps the thing that there could be more of, in total, is "amount of people moved per unit time".

Again, I just hopped into here, and haven't much evidence to back that up, but it's the sort of thing that seems likely.

Yeah it's called a traffic jam. As the total number of cars on the road per unit of distance increases, the speed at which those cars can travel decreases. It's not linear of course but, well, I think you get the picture.

As you add cars to a road, the throughput in terms of the number of people or cars per minute first increases. This should be pretty obvious: as you add cars to a nearly empty road, more people use it, but they all go just as fast as before.

As you continue to add cars, you reach a point where cars start to slow down, but throughput continues to go up. Once you reach a certain point, people begin to drive slower due to congestion. But at low levels, this is offset by the additional number of people using the road, resulting in greater total throughput.

Past that point, you reach another point where adding more cars does not increase throughput, as the added cars are balanced by the slowing of traffic as a whole. Beyond this point, adding more cars reduces the throughput of the road. Take this to the extreme, and you have a giant parking lot with people gradually inching forward, and people/cars per minute excruciatingly low.

No sources, but I'd think this is all fairly obvious.

This is fair. I would submit that there's a strong argument that, when the total supply of sheep goes up, everyone benefits. I don't think that's true of road throughput; that just benefits the people who are still on the road after you've put up the barrier to entry. I don't see that there's any sort of failure involved in the phenomenon of traffic jams -- I've "happily" sat in stop-and-stop traffic because it's still better than my alternatives. Participate and pay the cost of annoyance due to congestion, or don't and don't. You're on thin ground saying "you need to get off the road, so that it will function better for me".

When everybody tries to crowd onto the highway, everybody slows down. Beyond a certain point, throttling usage actually makes everybody get to their destination faster. Imagine a roadway with some kind of nasty merge which gets severely jammed up if there are too many cars. If ten cars all try to go through at once, everybody could be stuck for quite a while. If you throttle them so they go through one by one, everyone gets to their destination faster. The same thing can apply to real roads on a larger scale.

"What would there be more of, in total, if you confiscated a bunch of people's cars?"

Road. Fewer cars on the road would mean a more constant speed for the cars on the road.

"Would you advocate banning most people from a popular public beach on the grounds of overcrowding?"

You generally don't have to. Since the benefits of going to the beach are relatively low, people more efficiently self-regulate their usage. That is, if a beach is too crowded to put down a towel, you'll probably leave.

That's not the case with taxis. As long as buying taxies and renting them out is profitable, taxi operators will continue to do so. To make things worse, the profitability of driving a taxi is only indirectly related to the profitability of renting that taxi out. The cost of rental is relatively stable while the money made by the driver varies considerably. The drivers absorb short-term (even medium-term) fluctuations in the market.

More people moving.

Car is not the goal. There are other means to move people way more efficient.

Be careful. It's very, very hard to demonstrate that other methods of transportation are "more efficient" than cars, even in heavy traffic.

Why does it "need" fewer cars on the road?

If you'd ever been to Bangkok you'd know why it needs fewer cars. Pollution is terrible, and traffic is appalling - often a journey which should take 20 minutes takes hours, and safety standards are very low - the most popular form of taxi is a pick-up truck with bench seats in the back which is really unsafe in the event of an accident. They desperately need to encourage more public transport and get rid of some of the cars/trucks on the road to prevent rush-hour gridlock and massive pollution.

The easiest way to clear up the roads for public transport is to make driving more expensive and use some of that money for improvements in the public infrastructure. I doubt they'll ever do it, but they could do worse than follow the example of London with a congestion charge for central areas, and use the money to subsidise public transport, which is underused at present (because the train is so expensive, and the buses are so slow due to all the other traffic).

Huh? The most popular form of taxi in Bangkok is a typical sedan. The Songthaews are more like mini-busses and actually are a pretty affordable form of private small-scale mass transit. They definitely aren't safe, but without them most of the poorer folks in Thailand would be screwed.

Driving is already fairly expensive in Thailand: cars and gas are both pretty expensive. Taxis in Bangkok are much more expensive than they are where I live (tourist areas are even worse with their taxi mafias). Bangkok already has a public transportation system that is much better than other cities in the area (barring Singapore), they aren't doing that poorly.

Yes, there is a mix of taxis and probably the cars outnumber trucks (depends what you're doing, if it's long distance you wouldn't want to take a taxi because of cost, and I guess they have tuk tuks too). Neither are great because of the traffic and pollution caused by all the other road users. So Bangkok is a terrible example of a place which needs more taxis, as if you want to go any distance at rush hour they are terrible, and they cause all sorts of problems (pollution, noise, traffic) - it's one of the worst cities I've been to for traffic.

The public transport there is good (what there is of it), but the BTS and MRT are both expensive and therefore underused by anyone other than tourists and business people - most people don't use it and it's not as extensive as other cities. At least when I've been there the skytrain is remarkably quiet compared to the streets given how quick and easy it is. It's a shame they won't tax the cars more in town and use the money for improving public transport instead IMHO, and Bangkok is a terrible example of a place which needs less regulation - they need far more regulation on their taxis and traffic in general in order to manage it as at the moment it is bedlam at rush hour, partly because of all the taxis, motorbike taxis and trucks. It is a great example of the free-for-all which results from unregulated capitalism though.

Skytrain is packed during rush hour, but it's not as packed otherwise. It seems to go everywhere I need it to when I visit Bangkok, though.

Beijing cut the subway to 2 yuan during/after the olympics (it was 4 yuan before and even in 1999 it was 3 yuan). The result is that the subway is very elgalatarian and very packed; I avoid it for the taxi accordingly (spend about 80 yuan a day on taxis). But Beijing traffic is also worse than Bangkok's, and there is more regulation (no private minibuses, not many tuktuk that are useful). Whatever they do, the answer to our problems probably isn't more taxis but public transit is also a problem (for the middle class).

I like Japan the best, where the transit is affordable, convenient, and mostly comfortable (when not rush hour).

Where China is harmed by their overregulation they are helped by their practice of creating laws and then selectively enforcing them.

In Zhuhai (near Guangzhou) there are far less taxis on the street than demand would dictate, however plenty of citizens drive around offering people rides at similar rates and everybody uses them, locals and foreigners alike. It is obviously illegal but it is so widespread and common (happens right in front of you and the police on every major street all day) that it is clear the police aren't doing anything about it.

That system is very Chinese. They make laws that would seem to restrict business and then local officials tell the police to ignore them when they deem their area is better off without them. Unfortunately this also extends to things like drugs and even kidnapping in some areas. No system is ever perfect.

If traffic is so bad as you make it out to be, why do people still choose the taxi over other methods of transportation?

The pollution argument is valid and is a case of "tragedy of the commons", but the traffic argument isn't.

Because there are no other good cheap options - both issues are examples of the tragedy of the commons and without regulation/restrictions neither will go away. The trains are fast/expensive, and the buses/taxis are cheap/slow because of all the traffic.

> Because favoring the trains would mean fewer cars on the road, something the city needs.

Yes, so that I can drive faster.

People don't buy cars because they need them, they buy cars because they want them

Or to show that they can afford them. "Oh you take the taxis? Poor you. I actually own my own vehicle, I don't have to share"

Same situation in Beijing (and most of China actually). But then I rely on taxis heavily and avoid the over-capacity subway (different from Bangkok) unless I'm despearate, so I'm kind of a hypocrite. Taxis do not really improve traffic, and only help preserving parking spaces (which we have precious little of).

Bangkok has many problems with taxis. Part of it is that the fares are set unreasonably low, so drivers try to drive >100h/wk and are very poorly trained. Market pricing would probably be higher for at least some taxis. (it was bad enough that whenever I didn't want to be seriously hassled, I'd use a hotel car, at a negotiated rate. I'm fine with spending $20/hr for an S320 with driver and then tipping him 100%.)

The big problem with regulation in general is that it sets a single value, static in time and across preferences, as both floor and ceiling. For some things, that might make sense ("levels of acceptable poison in baby formula"), but for other things it doesn't make sense ("housing").

For Bangkok, I think the right thing would be to encourage public transit over taxis, but to encourage taxis over private cars. Charging a per-day fee to have a vehicle inside the city (similar to London), combined with actual traffic law enforcement, open access to getting a taxi medallion once you pass minimum qualifications, and either market rates or at least fair rates for taxi rides, would probably go a long way.

If taxis substitute for several cars, increasing taxis should decrease congestion. That is the London model, but London taxi drivers are kind of the polar opposite of Bangkok taxi drivers. Other SE Asian taxi drivers are fine, though -- Hong Kong and Singapore -- and it's easy to convert taxi fleets to NGV or Electric compared to private vehicles.

While I'm pro drug legalization, testing for meth in drivers would probably be worthwhile too. I always checked the eyes of any driver I used, since so many of them were tweaked out of their minds and thus even more unsafe than usual. (I actually had one driver assault me, too, which was kind of funny afterward).

The over-supply of taxis has the opposite effect of a more regulated public transport.

Public transport suffers because of prioritising cars in general.

It doesn't particularly matter if cars are privately owned or taxis but as long as the city infrastructure has been designed more for automobile traffic than pedestrians, cyclists, and public transit, then these other forms of transport suffer.

To make public transit relatively more efficient, the streets must be put on a diet and narrowed down. This frees more space for pedestrians and while car travel is still possible it's more cumbersome so it effectively taxes out all but truly necessary car traffic. Try driving through Central London versus taking the tube: you can do that but you don't want to.

Surely usefulness from a consumer standpoint is a GOOD thing?! Just what else is the economy there for?

Fuel cost is generally about 1/3 the price of operating a passenger car, so your math is pretty off. But the point still stands, prices are artificially high and enrich a ton of the wrong people.

It's 13 miles according to Google Maps. At $3.80/gallon and 25 mpg (both should be realistic), that's 15.2cent/mile or just under $2 for the gas. At the 1/3 you state (does that include insurance?), that makes the ride a total of $6 in costs. At SF minimum wage ($10.25) and assuming 50% occupancy (probably a bit on the low end), add $5.13 for a total of $11.13 for the floor price for the journey.

The 2012 mileage reimbursement rate set by the IRS is 55.5c/mile, and is supposed to take fuel, maintenance, insurance, depreciation, etc costs into account.

http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=250882,00.html

So they are saying its $6 + labor + profit = $60 for a 15 minute ride.

The system is broken.

You also have to account for any costs incurred between fares. Labor costs during down time, mileage accumulated between dropping off one fare and finding the next one, etc.

Not saying there aren't any inefficiencies or that there isn't established-player protectionism at work, just pointing out that a lot of the cost estimates floating around in this thread are clearly hugely inaccurate.

It's an order of magnitude estimation aka back of the envelope. Any discussion of numbers without access to internals is going to be estimate, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to let these inform the discussion.

I don't know the area that well but it appears to be ~11 miles from SF to San Bruno. Lets call it 11 miles, or maybe 1/2 a gallon of gas. That's <$2.

In Quito, you can go just about anywhere for not too much. USD is local currency, and it's a few dollars to go anywhere except to/from the airport.

And the city doesn't have a shortage of cabs.

And talking with drivers in my uneasy Spanish, I have found many are former doctors and lawyers who turned to taking cabs because it was more lucrative.

Fares are artificially high there but nobody is under any illusions who is in control. The city and the cab companies had an argument about pricing some time back and it lead to a taxi cab strike.... which meant cabs blocking traffic and the city was shut down (streets impassible) until the city backed down....

I was in Quito during a bus driver strike and everyone was talking about it. They even called in the army to tow busses.... It was amusing to see uniformed soldiers pushing busses around.... But there were fewer busses than cabs and so the streets were still passable.

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