The Great Taxi Upheaval 218
An anonymous reader writes: Uber, Lyft, and a variety of competitors are becoming ubiquitous. Their presence is jarring not because of how different they are from conventional taxis, but simply because they're different at all. Taxis really haven't changed much over the years. Watch a movie from the '90s and you can't help but chuckle at the giant, clunky mobile phones they use. But you can go all the way back to movies from '30s and scenes with taxis won't be unfamiliar. New York Magazine has a series of articles about the taxi revolution currently underway. "So far, Uber appears to be pinching traditional car services—Carmel, Dial 7, and the like—hardest. (They have apps, too, but Uber's is the one you've heard of.) The big question is about the prices for medallions, because so much of the yellow-cab business depends on their future value. ... [I]t's hard to see how those prices won't slip. Medallions, after all, are part of a top-down system formed to fight the abuses and dangers of the old crooked New York: rattletrap cars, overclocked meters, bribed inspectors. Its heavy regulation in turn empowered the taxi lobby and (somewhat) the drivers union. That system may be a pain to deal with, but in its defense, it provided predictability and security. The loosey-goosey libertarian alternative, conceived in the clean Northern California air, calls upon the market to provide checks and balances. A poorly served passenger can, instead of turning to a city agency for recourse, switch allegiances or sue."
Re:The Free Market has the Technology Now (Score:2, Interesting)
Really? Perfect information? You trust an app from one vendor to give you a fair pricing vs. another vendor?
Re:Predictability?...Well... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's definitely not true. It's more likely black patrons will not be able to hail a cab in any rush hour period. E.g. 5pm, 2am ( many clubs and bars close ). It's not that the drivers are afraid, it's greed more than anything else.
The cab drivers know that statistically black patrons are more likely to take them to the outer reaches of the boroughs. The fair to these areas is ok, but coming back there is no fair. So it's worse than someone who stays in Manhattan and then the cab driver gets fairs every direction every time.
But it has nothing to do with the time of day, it's really about how busy they would be. At 4AM in the morning, when everything is quiet cab drivers will tell you they are happy to pick up anybody.