Arro Taxi App Arrives In NYC As 'Best Hope' Against Uber 155
An anonymous reader writes with a report at The Stack that "New York City cabs have begun testing a new app-based taxi system in an attempt to win back customers lost to Uber and Lyft." The app is called Arro, and is being trialled in about 7,000 New York cabs. It sticks with metered prices, rather than the demand-based price increases that Uber institutes for times of peak demand. With so many cabs on the road already, the makers boast that Arro will outpace Uber soon. At least based on my limited experience with each, real competition with Uber or Lyft would require some seminars on good customer service.
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Re:Pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
> The whole reason I use Uber is to find a driver with a clean car, clean clothes, good local language, good knowledge of the city, good driving skills, sane metering device, known rates and acceptable behavior.
I've been dealing with those services in an urban are lately. Good luck with "driving skills", "local language", and "knowledge of the city". I've nothing personal against Lyft or Uber's attempts to modernize and improve cab services, but they _are_ cab services. And as their numbers grow, they're running into the same problems with more employees and less skilled drivers that the cab companies do. The "real cab companies" should have been willing to invest in this approach a decade ago when cell phones and geo-locatoin first started becoming useful about 10 years ago.
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There is no small number of traditional cab drivers who are driving for Uber and Lyft.
The driver and car may vary, but it's the app and response time that makes it convenient for the user.
My Lyft ride on Thursday in Santa Clara arrived 20 seconds after tapping the request button.
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With uber or lyft, you can rate your driver, and the driver can rate the customer. I have never had either service with at least 4 stars out of 5 that dont know exactly where they are going, drive safely, and get me to my destination in a reasonably clean and unsmelly car. Lower stars, not as good service. Pretty simple.
You might once in a blue moon find an anomaly to that, but I haven't experienced it and I don't know anyone else who has.
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Poor ratings take time to take effect, and their turnover is _very_ high. That may contribute to the problem where I've used them.
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The only reason they're modernizing their business now is BECAUSE of uber. This is how it always goes with ancient services that expect to be held up regardless of their quality of service.
It always takes these "renegade" new approaches to make things that refuse to keep up with the times to adapt. And it follows the same pattern each time.
1. Original service outdates itself by refusing to make use of new technologies. And more generally with online commerce as a whole.
2. People get pissed off and "take mat
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"Cabs, on the other hand, can be identified by their colour. You can just hail one."
From your spelling, I'm assuming you're not a New Yorker. Yes, the protected medallion cab companies want everyone to stand outside in the rain, vainly screaming "Taxi!" like people in a 1935 George Raft movie.
But now that they are losing the ability to bully customers into using them exclusively, there is the "threat" as they call it, of competition. Instead of being part of that damp crowd you could be reserving a cab with
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Try getting one in the rain sometime.
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Not necessarily. NYC != Manhattan; there's several other boroughs which are not nearly as dense, especially Staten Island, which is positively suburban. You're not going to get a cab there standing on the corner for 30 seconds.
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Not necessarily. NYC != Manhattan; there's several other boroughs which are not nearly as dense, especially Staten Island, which is positively suburban. You're not going to get a cab there standing on the corner for 30 seconds.
You may still get a ride by standing on the corner. You'll not only get to where you're going, but may make a few bucks in the process.
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Given that drivers are rated by Uber and thus have a stronger incentive for service (especially UberX) why can't they maintain higher service?
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There is no good reason to believe that were Uber holding to a static market it would be losing money: that is the Uber is losing money on providing the service. Every indication I've seen is that Uber's losses are growth related. Where would Uber be losing money on a static market?
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Driver churn. Uber is pretty much stuck with always doing heavy recruitment incentives and marketing campaigns Those are both really expensive and will become even more so since they likely have likely already pulled the low-hanging fruit in most markets.
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Why would Uber's driver churn be any worse than other taxi firms? Uber is very attractive in that you don't have a boss telling you what to do or bawling you out, and you can pick your own hours, without even having to choose ahead of time.
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Why would Uber's driver churn be any worse than other taxi firms? Uber is very attractive in that you don't have a boss telling you what to do or bawling you out, and you can pick your own hours, without even having to choose ahead of time.
Or ever having to worry about being made redundant through automation!
Oh, wait [slashdot.org]...
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Oh boo freakin hoo!
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Well that really convinced people.
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Many companies have recruitment costs. /. covers IT. There are plenty of IT companies paying either 20% of a year's salary for IT recruitment or paying something like 40% of the first 6 mo or more to sourcing firms. That's tens of thousands of dollars per candidate and after an expensive search.
Re: Eh? (Score:3)
Great theory. But in practice what parent said is correct: uber drivers have about 100x better service than taxi drivers. By the way, many taxi drivers are independent contractors and pay the taxi company for use of the car and medallion. The difference is decades of monopoly has slowly turned normal human behavior where the customer might actually matter into a game of purely maxing profit per mile, considering the chance of picking up a fare for the taxi's return trip, as if they are uship drivers moving
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What customer service do Uber/Lyft provide?
Providing transport in something that does not smell like a taxi is a good start...
So this Japanese guy (Score:2)
So this Japanese guy arrives at the airport, jumps in a taxi, smiles at the driver and says ...
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So this Japanese guy arrives at the airport, jumps in a taxi, smiles at the driver and says ...
Ou, haai.
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So this Japanese guy arrives at the airport, jumps in a taxi, smiles at the driver and says ...
Goldberg? Iceberg? All same to me!
Re: Hope for whom... the customer? (Score:5, Interesting)
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And another startup can then step in and drive Uber out. Or maybe Uber understands this and maintains its standards. This is basic free market.
Re: Hope for whom... the customer? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes. I too am confident that without regulation we'd all be stuck driving Yugos to work, living in slumlord-owned apartment blocks which leak when it rains and catch fire nightly, and subsisting on flavorless gruel. Competition could never bring us safe cars, pleasant housing, organic food, or usable taxi services, and people running away from the disaster scene that we
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Uber is making its money from not paying what any legitimate taxi driver must pay or any taxi corporation must pay to meet the regulations and obligations. In short, Uber is making its money by cheating on the free market. Should they have to incure the same costs as the regular taxi industry as a whole you would be legitimated to talk about free market. But they just don't. Making money by cheating is easy until you get caught. Now, they are lobbying to evade the rules and regulations.
The regulations exist
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Uber is making its money from not paying what any legitimate taxi driver must pay or any taxi corporation must pay to meet the regulations and obligations. In short, Uber is making its money by cheating on the free market. Should they have to incure the same costs as the regular taxi industry as a whole you would be legitimated to talk about free market. But they just don't. Making money by cheating is easy until you get caught. Now, they are lobbying to evade the rules and regulations.
Are they cheating or are they choosing to not participate in an artificially restricted market by creating an alternative?
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a moribund industry that must change (Score:3)
Have you considered that maybe technology has outpaced the regulations in a taxi industry that has become terminally moribund? This is quite clearly what has happened, and everything could be easily addressed simply by updating the pertinent regulations that govern the industry, but that will NEVER happen, at least not in time to accomplish anything meaningful. Somehow, through some mutant form of regulatory capture, the taxicab business in most urban areas has become a dysfunctional chimeric melding of reg
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Well then you have lost faith in the government and that is another issue altogether. It doesn't mean companies should get a pass on breaking laws.
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The incentive is continuous (Score:2)
Because ten years down the road after Uber puts taxis out of business, there is no longer any incentive to remain clean or maintained.
Even a moment of thought would reveal how untrue that statement is, because cars with poor drivers or unsafe or unclean, would not get riders - who can see the cars rating quite plainly
Look over Fluffenmutter's history, a more obvious shill for the taxi industry I've never seen. Not once will admit a single flaw with taxis, while claiming that every flaw taxis suffer from U
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yah im leaving this discussion because i can't stand the 5 replies to every post by *nutters
i'll just uber instead of taxis from now on because fluffer* says they suck.
I suggest we confuse the primary Uber benefits... (Score:5, Insightful)
I suggest we confuse the primary Uber benefits with the electronic dispatch system, rather than showing up when you've made a commitment to show up, the lower prices Uber charges on average, the cleaner, newer vehicles, ad the pleasant drivers who have to be pleasant because there's a feedback system which loses them referrals, whereas a taxi driver with a medallion can't really be fired without losing the medallion.
It must be the app, right folks? Not all the other things?
Re: I suggest we confuse the primary Uber benefits (Score:2)
Re: I suggest we confuse the primary Uber benefits (Score:4, Informative)
Of course it can be gamed. Uber is the gamification of taxi services. Everything is intended to be gamed. And the easiest way of gaming the driver ratings? By actually giving a good service and being polite. It costs nothing.
Of course be an asshole to real customers and pay accomplices to rate you. But that would cost you money. Poor gaming strategy.
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Or you could only pay for cosmetic improvement to your vehicle but never any safety improvement.
This sounds clever at first but is incredibly stupid once you mull over what you are saying.
What "safety improvements" would you pay for? Roll bars? Four point harnesses? Fir extinguishers in the main cabin? Come on.
Uber inspects the car to be used to see if it passes muster - any car made in the last ten years will already be really safe, with no improvements to be made that could improve safety.
The things t
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You think brakes on a vehicle that is driven 24/7 are going to be good checked once a year? lol. Does uber even control the time the car spends on the road and how often it is inspected? For a
Your ignorance is without bounds or reason (Score:1)
Commercial insurance, commercial licenses,
How does that improve SAFTEY you blithering moron? Rather than just helping pay medical bills after the fact?
BTW Uber provides that ANYWAY.
safety shields
You do realize what those do to passengers in a crash ? No ? Idiot.
fresh brakes,
Fresh brakes are worse than brakes that have been worn in, retard.
steering controls, suspension, and control arms
The 70's called and said under no circumstances are we to return you even though you plainly belong there....
You aren't
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People who support the creative use of technology, and gamification of work shouldn't exactly be a surprise on a technology site such as Slashdot.
Just because someone has a different view to you doesn't make them a shill.
Re: Your ignorance is without bounds or reason (Score:2)
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I don't think you have the IQ to be posting here.
My post was in response to you calling someone a shill. Not any of those things you mention.
they simply don't care about the millions of people they are hurting?
You really are quite the hysteric.
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Uneducated people are bound to repeat the mistakes of history I guess.
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"Stuffed with grease"? Do you know anything about modern cars at all? You can't add grease to steering or suspension components; zerks disappeared decades ago.
You act like cabs are specially-built vehicles. They're not (the old Checker cabs have all been removed from service); they're just regular cars painted yellow (and only in some locales) with a taximeter slapped in.
If a vehicle is falling apart, you can tell pretty quickly. Most cabs I've ridden in are like this: brakes squeal, inside is dirty, et
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Hey, if you like sitting in a nasty, smelly old Crown Vic cab which likely had hundreds of arrestees bleeding and barfing in the back seat before its new life as a cab, go right ahead and knock yourself out. I'll be riding with Uber in a nice, newer Mercedes.
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That Mercedes won't be so clean 10 years from now.
So what? Uber won't let them drive a car that old.
It's not like they'll be able to sell a car, unless they lie about the fact that it was a Uber car.
First, it's their choice. I guess you're one of those people who hates it when people have freedom of choice, and wants local governments to tell them what they can and can't do.
Second, it's still a Mercedes. They have much higher resale values (even with lots of miles) than the POSes that taxi companies usu
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Yeah, these Uber-haters are making me want to vote Republican.
Except that the Republicans are the ones pushing and defending laws to ban automakers from selling direct to customers, because they hate Tesla and love the stealerships.
It's weird how the Democrats are the statists when it comes to taxis, yet are all for the free market when it comes to electric car sales, and vice-versa for the Republicans.
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How do you know the politics of people discussing Uber/Taxis?
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Well the pro-Uber people usually call the anti-Uber people "statists". There's only one group of people who use that word, and they're not on the left. The anti-Uber people usually whine about worker protections (as if taxi riders actually have any), and people concerned about those aren't on the right.
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Well the pro-Uber people usually call the anti-Uber people "statists".
No they don't.
The anti-Uber people usually whine about worker protections
Again, no, they usually go on about vehicle safety and insurance.
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>No they don't.
Yes, they do. I see it here all the fucking time.
>Again, no, they usually go on about vehicle safety and insurance.
Then they're morons. There's no way in hell a nearly new Mercedes is less safe than some 30-year-old piece-of-shit Crown Victoria. Crown Vics are notorious for being dangerous cars when rear-ended; a lot of cops died because of that. Why do you want to ride in shitty old unsafe cars instead of riding in new, well-engineered cars which top safety rankings?
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Or you could only pay for cosmetic improvement to your vehicle but never any safety improvement. That would be the best game of all because people would rate you highly and it would save you money.
Not sure how much repair work you've had to do on your own vehicles, but "cosmetic" (body) work is a hell of a lot more expensive than mechanical work.
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I give his mom short rides over and over, and I've got a great rating!
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No, by giving tourists too-long rides over and over, but being very polite about it :D.
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the lower prices Uber charges on average
This may be a fair point. People will forgo a lot if stuff is cheaper. I'm not sure whether it is cheaper in all places where it is popular though, so I dare not conclude anything here.
because there's a feedback system
This may also be it. Taxi's in my country are generally very clean, very recent Mercedes Benzes, but when you take/order one, you don't have the faintest clue whether the driver drives like a moron (actually, you sort of do, because many of them do so). Even entire taxi companies aren't commonly or easily compared in quality
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A lot of the strong feelings, on both sides, here seems to be from Americans. I'm an American and have used both; the problem here is that there is not a single taxi in this country of 310M people which is a "generally very clean, very recent Mercedes Benz", or anything
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So what's the problem with that? It's allowing them to make ends meet; is that a bad thing?
When (if?) the economy improves, and the supply of drivers for Uber dries up, prices will rise so they can get more drivers. This is normal for many things when the economy improves.
What's the problem?
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How is anyone being forced into a McDonald's job? They're taking the job willingly. And what are you going to do when all the taxi drivers are put out of work by driverless cars anyway? Are you going to ban those because we need to preserve all those crappy jobs? What about when McDonald's figures out how to automate cooking? Are you going to ban that too, so those people don't lose their jobs? Where does it end? Are you going to ban all automation because it makes jobs obsolete? Why not ban cars, s
Re: I suggest we confuse the primary Uber benefits (Score:2)
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No, my position is that we should look at better ways of managing an economy than creating make-work jobs and forcing people to use far less efficient and convenient services just to keep some people employed.
Answer me: Do you really think the government should force people to eat at restaurants, instead of making their own food? Do you think people should be forced to hire maids instead of cleaning their own homes? Because if you support keeping taxi drivers employed and banning automated cars from being
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So you want to stick with the shitshow that is the modern taxi industry, just because "stability is good"? WTF?
And how is there a "need" to protect taxi jobs anyway?
Feedback? (Score:3)
" real competition with Uber or Lyft would require some seminars on good customer service."
And a user driven feedback and rating system. It kills rude and poor performance by design.
And basic hygiene (Score:5, Funny)
Hilary Clinton's Natural Constituency (Score:1)
NYC cab drivers.
I know Krugman (whose name may not be mentioned without the word "Nobel") has been whining about the sharing economy and whispering in her ear. The very definition of conservative., resistant to change.
So another "Hailo"? (Score:2)
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A friend accidentally left her purse in a Lyft car. Clicked one link in the confirmation email, which started a text conversation with the driver, who promptly brought it back to her apartment. Try that with any taxi service.
I can tell you how the story ends (Score:3)
After the app is released, people will flock to the cab app during peak hours because of the cheaper pricing.
That also means there will be few cabs to be found... the cabs they do find will still be the same old foul NYC cabs we all know and .
So the end user experience for most people will be cheaper cabs they can't have, vs. Uber cars they can - with the unreliable access to cabs demonstrated, people will just go back to uber and ignore the cab app exists.
People forget that surge pricing exists not just for drivers, but also passengers. You may not like the pricing but you do like having a ride available on demand...
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After the app is released, people will flock to the cab app during peak hours because of the cheaper pricing.
That is already happening in cities like San Francisco and New York (without the app).
Taxi cabs simply do not have the extra capacity during peak hours. In New York, a famous black neurosurgeon can't seem to catch a cab, but as a white person in SF, I can't even seem to catch a cab either when I really need one (and as it turns out, I tend to need one during peak hours when everyone else wants one).
The Medaillon system assumes the demand is constant 24 hours a day 7 days a week. It does not increase the num
Honest question.. (Score:2)
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Because some drivers prefer to drive around where the live, and also some drivers prefer to drive where there is less competition more occasional fares, but for longer distances.
The practical reality is that uber HAS gotten a car to me quickly in outlying areas of a city where a cab would have been 20-30 minutes away - if they every even came, which anyone who has ever really used cab services knows is questionable.
Again you refuse to acknowledge that whatever sins you paint Uber with, Taxis have far greate
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People complain about taxi's denying riders because they are only taking short trips that aren't worth it..
Who complains about that? Shorter trips are more profitable for cabs because of the "flag drop" fee.
Red herring.
How does Uber encourage drivers to take less profitable fares? What keeps Uber drivers from flocking to an area where they make more fare and totally ignoring areas where the fare is lower?
Nothing prevents this. It's free association and supply and demand. Have you seen anyone actually com
Uber Air (Score:2)
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Like many socialist idiots, you conflate control with regulation. US airlines were decontrolled in 1978 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_Deregulation_Act).
The result was that airfares plummeted, many more people (read: lower-income) could afford to fly, the industry and employment grew dramatically. Meanwhile, flying in the US has never been safer (notwithstanding the TSA), and the FAA still regulates safety.
Re: Uber Air (Score:2)
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So your argument is that it is good to have a market of several decentralized companies playing by a set of common rules.
Yes
.... like the current taxi industry?
There is no market, only central planning and rationing.
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So the same business model as for Wall Street fat cats who have to send their poor children to Harvard? Is that the kind of "market" you mean? The average joe just has to spend more of his hard-earned money for a simple service that costs more because of a trust-like cartel that only the rich can afford to enter? And too bad for a poor student who needs some pocket cash to pay for the ever-increasing cost of a college education - your job is reserved for others.
This correspondence is ended.
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Cab and Uber service feel completely different (Score:1)
We used it in San Francisco this year for the first time. It was a very nice experience. No meter antics. No complaining that the credit card machine was out of order. (I'm looking at you NYC cabs).
I have a better hope (Score:2)
Then cabs will be competitive and uber will just be one of the many excellent options.
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Man, why do you think regulations are put into place in the first place?
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