Taxis and modern ride sharing services may appear to 'offer the same product,' but they do it in different ways. The accessibility of Uber and Lyft via smart phone apps put them worlds ahead.
Go back ten years. You need a taxi after leaving a social event. Your choice: bar, movie theater, wedding reception, whatever. Go stand outside in the wind/rain/snow/etc. on the corner of the intersection and hope that you aren't racially profiled and ignored by the driver and eventually someone will decide they want to pick you up... but for some strange reason they don't seem to turn on the meter and funny thing, when you arrive, the credit card machine is broken. This is the product that taxis have cultivated over decades of service.
Meanwhile, now, I sit inside protected from the elements, summon an Uber or Lyft on my phone quicker than it takes to call the taxi service (much less flag one down), and pay less than the taxi would have cost me. In my personal experience, I can get picked up by an Uber faster than I can even talk to a human being on the phone at a taxi dispatch.
You think this is the same service? It's not. Taxis are and have been a joke, and the evidence is in the walls they have built around themselves. The medallion system in New York as a prime example. What could be more absurd? What could be the logic, if not to fend off competition? Taxis have not offered the service that Uber and Lyft offer in decades, and even now that they are scrambling to roll out their own apps, they still fail to provide reliability. They have been playing by their own rules for so long, taxis completely lost sight of how to be a service industry.
I just really, really wish that Uber and Lyft could manage to pull off this grand revolution in transportation without dumping their negative externalities all on us.
Up front, I will say that this is just my experience and just what I've witnessed, but, damn, something--in my mind--about the Uber and Lyft driver platforms encourages their drivers to crap all over the public commons just for a fare. Some things I've seen just in the past week here in Seattle:
- Stopping in an active bus lane to pick up a fare.
- Stopping in an active bus stop to pick up a fare, then backing up against traffic when a bus goes around them to make its stop.
- Illegal U-turns, left- or right-turns, and blowing past all manner of other traffic control devices ("no turn on red," "must turn left or right except bicycles," etc).
- "Pressing" (that is, creeping forward into a crosswalk) pedestrians at crosswalks to make a turn.
- Stopping in a lane of traffic and, this is my favorite, turning on hazard lights while waiting for a fare.
- Generally clogging up traffic around major hotspots while waiting for a fare because "surge pricing" or maybe just good business.
In every single case, if a taxi did that then someone could complain to the city and have their taxi license revoked. Meanwhile, it is not readily possible to determine which TNC a driver is driving for or their TNC license number so making a complaint is difficult and there are so many TNC drivers that it's like a moth equipped with a lightning bug trying to burn down a building.
> Illegal U-turns, left- or right-turns, and blowing past all manner of other traffic control devices ("no turn on red," "must turn left or right except bicycles," etc).
I had a Lyft driver who tried to make an illegal U-turn while I was in the car with him.
Google Maps was telling him to go to the next light and make a U-turn. He insisted on making a U-turn at the light before. I saw the no U-turn sign, which explained why Google wanted him to go to the next light.
I repeatedly pointed out the no U-turn sign to him and told him again and again that it was illegal for him to make a U-turn there. I kept telling him over and over to get out of the left turn lane and go straight till the next light. He finally got out of the left turn lane after I raised my voice multiple times. If he hadn't gotten out of the left turn lane right then, my next step would have been to say "if you make an illegal U-turn, I will call the police on you right here".
After he got out of the lane, he was huffing and puffing for the rest of the ride. Fortunately, the ride wasn't much longer, but he was furious. I've never seen someone huff and puff like that outside of a cartoon.
He was also pretty unprofessional throughout the whole ride (example: he had a really tiny car, I'm a very large person, and when he picked me up he tried to make me ride in the backseat that I physically wouldn't be able to fit into... I had to tell him I would cancel the ride unless he unlocked the front door), so I didn't feel guilty whatsoever when I rated him 1 star and flagged him for navigation, friendliness, and safety.
Go back ten years. You need a taxi after leaving a social event. Your choice: bar, movie theater, wedding reception, whatever. Go stand outside in the wind/rain/snow/etc. on the corner of the intersection and hope that you aren't racially profiled and ignored by the driver and eventually someone will decide they want to pick you up... but for some strange reason they don't seem to turn on the meter and funny thing, when you arrive, the credit card machine is broken. This is the product that taxis have cultivated over decades of service.
Meanwhile, now, I sit inside protected from the elements, summon an Uber or Lyft on my phone quicker than it takes to call the taxi service (much less flag one down), and pay less than the taxi would have cost me. In my personal experience, I can get picked up by an Uber faster than I can even talk to a human being on the phone at a taxi dispatch.
You think this is the same service? It's not. Taxis are and have been a joke, and the evidence is in the walls they have built around themselves. The medallion system in New York as a prime example. What could be more absurd? What could be the logic, if not to fend off competition? Taxis have not offered the service that Uber and Lyft offer in decades, and even now that they are scrambling to roll out their own apps, they still fail to provide reliability. They have been playing by their own rules for so long, taxis completely lost sight of how to be a service industry.