i dont know that its such a great thing in the end. Uber/Lyft is 50-100% more expensive now than taxis were before. Theyre entrenched in different ways.
But I know what I'm going to pay up-front, can always pay with a credit card (which happens automatically without annoying post-trip payment), the ride is fully tracked, and I can report issues with the driver that I have an expectation will actually be acted upon. And when I'm in another country where there are known to be taxis that scam foreigners, Uber is a godsend.
Yes, pre-Uber taxis were expensive and crappy, and even if Uber is expensive now, it's not crappy; it's actually worth the price. And I'm not convinced Uber is even that expensive. We always forget to account for inflation... sure, we might today say, "that ride in a taxi used to cost $14, but in an Uber it costs $18". But that ride in a taxi was 15 years ago.
Now, I see people at the airport walk over to the pickup lot, joining a crowd of others furiously messing with their phones while scanning the area for presumably their driver.
All the while the taxis waiting immediately outside the exit door were $2 more expensive, last time I checked.
I have no idea what I'm going to get with those taxis waiting immediately outside the exit door. Even in my home country, at the airport next to my city, I have no idea. I know exactly what I'm getting with an Uber/Lyft, every time. That's valuable to me.
I was just in another country a couple months ago, and when trying to leave the airport, I was confused where I'd need to go in order to get an Uber. I foolishly gave up and went for one of those "conveniently-waiting" taxis, where I was quoted a price up-front, in my home currency, that I later (after doing the currency conversion on the Uber price) realized was a ripoff. The driver also aggressively tried to get me to instead rent his "friend's car" rather than take me to the rental car place like I asked. And honestly I consider that lucky: he didn't try to kidnap me or threaten me in any way, but I was tense during the whole ride, wondering if something bad was going to happen.
That sort of thing isn't an anomaly; it happens all the time to tourists in many countries.
I won't recount what recently happened to a friend in Milwaukee. It was an unpopular story (because the ripoff was Uber-based, and not the traditional taxi).
There's bad actors in every industry. I have found that industries that get "entrenched," tend to breed the most bad actors.
If anything turns into a "pseudo-monopoly," expect the grifters to start popping up. They'll figure out how to game the system.
Is that true?
Uber was a godsend for everyone living outside of like 4 metro areas in the US.
I lived in SF when Uber started. We used to call Veteran's Cab because they were the only company that wouldn't ditch on the way to pick you up, but it was completely normal to wait more than an hour for a cab in the dark hinterlands of 24th and Dolores or the industrial wasteland of 2nd and Folsom. An hour during which you had to be ready to jump as soon as the car arrived. Everybody had at least one black-car driver's cell number for downtown use because if they happened to be free, you could at least get picked up.
Uber would have had a religious following of fanpersons even if all they'd done was an estimated pickup time that was accurate to within 20 minutes.
I happily pay a premium for none of these things again.
The Taxi mafia had to go but Uber and co. are still questionable benefactors.
The taxi industry sealed it's own death warrant a long time ago. Ride sharing services solved a real problem at the right time. If that cost a bit more, it was well worth it. I won't take a taxi now unless I am forced to.
That's typically considered to be somewhere between assholish and straight up illegal in most civilized economies.
Sure now that it costs them money, they're reacting, making things worse for literally everyone: the taxi drivers, who've been victimized by the governments not reacting when they should. The customers, who are now paying more. The Uber drivers, who are certainly not the ones getting the money.
A great lawyer will tell you laws don't matter if they're not applied, and then tell you how laws are applied and what you can and can't get away with (this is a necessity since most laws aren't very clear at all, especially where it comes to actual real-world cases or penalties). The EU are absolute masters of that. The famous GPDR, for example, isn't protecting anyone's data in any way it matters since governments have the power to grant themselves exceptions to them. Which lead to all the things the GPDR tried to avoid: insurance getting private medical data (who are mostly part of governments in the EU), private medical data being used by the police or in court, just to give some examples.
Hell, it's now been confirmed every 2 years or so since 2015 that essentially all European countries think all of the FANGs are abusing their market position. Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, ... they've given them billions of dollars in fines. Tell me, what has been fixed? US advertising companies are deeper entrenched than ever before (even outside of the internet, ie. ClearChannel). Law is supposed to fix the problems. Well, obviously the problem of US companies' dominance is not solved, in fact it's gotten a lot worse.
And this is nothing new. Take what EU countries signed in the Budapest memorandum. You will find that it states that if Russia ("any of the ... blabla", which includes Russia) takes Crimea a bunch of EU countries (France, UK) would, first, declare war on the country that did it (Russia) and initiate actual hostile action against that country (ie. not just support to Ukraine). That meant they agreed to have UK and French (and ...) soldiers attack Russia. That was the security guarantee Ukraine had, and that was an international treaty, which in the EU (look it up) has the power of law.
As everyone and their grandmother's cat knows, they didn't actually follow through. They "gave support". That's just one, at the moment important, example.
And of course, the effect is the same: it became worse and worse. Russia's actions became worse and worse and worse. Now the EU countries have given the same guarantees for countries like Poland, Latvia and even Estonia, either directly or through NATO. Will Russia attack? Why not? It's not like these countries will (or let's be real: can) actually fight under any circumstance.
No country gave guarantees only assurances and it is even highlighted that the US senate would have never voted for it favourably, and thus it never was a treaty.
On the other hand breaking this assurances will guarantee no other country will ever give up their nuclear arsenal, of course a non consolation price for Ukraine. Guarantees in nato which is indeed a treaty and ratified, covering Poland and Latvia and Estonia would be stronger but of course, I would not put all my eggs on it.
After few years of operation, government realised it was serious and pressured Uber to stop taxi operations « Uber pop », until disruption in legislation got through.
I used Uber from first year it was here. As the service got popular with young adults and the people took notice and public debate began, the police was instructed to fine Ubers. Then the drivers asked us passengers to sit up front and pretend we were friends. (Not sure if the app had instructions related to this or not.) Once the legislation change was clear, they closed operation officially for the brief period, as stated in the article.
I just thought it was exciting at the time..
And Uber is available in Finland: https://www.uber.com/global/en/r/finland/cities/
Bulgaria kicked out Uber for not obeying taxi regulations.
Sounds unrelated? Well it used to be a socialist dictatorship and laws are still written in a ham-fisted-yet-vague* way so that (1) you can't realistically obey them and (2) they can be used against anyone state authorities (or their friends) don't like.
So what's the actual reason? Uber was on its way to price taxi companies out of the market by offering better service at a price of €0.25/km.
* If you're from a developed country and this sounds like what your government is currently doing, you should start panicking.
They acquired market power by killing them through predatory pricing, leaving incumbents unprofitable and forcing them to exit - while creating a steep barrier to entry for any new comers and strategically manipulating existing riders by offering high take rates initially and subsidising rides to create artificial demand and inflate market share - then once they kicked out the incumbents, they exercised their market power to raise prices and their % of the take rate of each transaction; leaving consumers and riders worse off.
We can talk all day about the nice UX blah blah. But the reality is, financially, they could not have succeeded without a very dubious and unethical approach.
But I remember when I started using Uber back in 2012. It was amazing compared to every single other option out there. Yes, they entered the market in questionably-legal or often probably outright illegal ways. But illegal is not the same thing as immoral. And I don't think it's unethical to force out competition when that competition is a lazy, shitty, legally-enforced monopoly that treats its customers poorly.
As pointed out here, many governments have laws stating that they will step in ... and they didn't.
Creating the gig economy doesn't get any moral points from me.
That said, uh, the use of getting a taxi to drive you to or from the airport was just not having to park at the airport which generally costs a lot of money, and in certain areas is a little sketchy on whether or not your car will get cracked open while you're away.
The US has tons of cities like this that I imagine would have issues with taxis - all parts of the bay area peninsula / east bay, cities in Texas, Denver, etc. Most cities are not like the NYC/Boston and even in places in Chicago, unless you lived downtown likely didn't see taxis driving around.
Uber at least has fixed rates from what was displayed and there are logs of which driver was doing dodgy stuff.