The Taxi Industry Is in Total Collapse

[Recursion]

http://observer.com/2015/05/the-taxi-industry-is-in-total-collapse/

Late last month, the Observer ran three stories chronicling the shocking and rapid decline of the traditional taxi model. That’s where owners buy the right to pick up street hails anywhere (including the airports) without a prior reservation and charge a metered rate to get from Point A to Point B. The number of vehicles allowed to do so is limited by the city, which issues medallions or “tins,” with the idea being that if there are too few, no one can find a ride and if there are too many, drivers can’t make a living because they’re aren’t enough fares.

Until very recently, the value of these medallions went in only one direction—up. Cities used occasional auction sales as a rainy-day fund. New York City, for example, auctioned 368 medallions between November 2013 and February 2014. Trading for around $1.2 million each, that injected almost half a billion dollars into the city’s coffers. And the owners were happy to pay because the medallions themselves were financial assets. Not only could they be counted on to increase in value, but unlike stocks or art, one could use them to make money WHILE they were increasing in value (and paying even more to the city in the form of taxes). And they could be used as collateral as well; owners of many medallions could borrow against their value to get the funds to secure even more medallions.

That entire premise is coming under fire. And lawmakers don’t seem to have any clue what to do.

Last Fall in Philadelphia, a city that badly needs more cabs on the street, the Philadelphia Parking Authority has authorized the sale of 45 additional medallions, earmarked for handicap-accessible cabs. With no new medallions having hit the market for 15 years, the Authority expected $475,000 for each of them. There were no takers.

The taxi medallion regime is a corrupt cartel system and needs to be purged with fire.

You want to regulate taxis and liveries? Great. I'm a liberal; I'm with you. Regulate the fuck out of them. Place sky-high safety, environmental, and labor protections. Hell, it's just about the only service that can't be offshored, so go ahead and do that.

But. Then. Let the fucking market decide how many providers there should be. Stop protecting legacy medallion holders from the 1930's. Same problem with food trucks:

Regulate standards, but then let anyone who meets those standards participate. Otherwise you're just another cartel.

[Jesus Malverde]

1. Not dying in Japan.

Uber ran for a couple of weeks in Japan before being stopped. Japanese taxis are immaculate and the drivers service impeccable.

In SF taxi "service" sucks, the cars are nasty. The drivers crank crappy music while your bombarded in the back seat with a screen showing ads. They probably crank the music to drown out the ads. SF Uber cars are clean, the drivers polite (since they get rated) and the service reliably tells you when your going to get picked up. You can also choose between a variety from limos, SUV's or sedans.

[Dwayne Hicks]

2. Fuck Uber

They skirt the laws and think they are not taxi's which they are. Get Uber out of this country.

[Jesus Malverde]

4. Given a choice I would choose UBER over the shitty cabs of SF any day.

Maybe the taxi industry needs to step up it's own game.

[FLPanhandle]

27. Fuck that

Uber is great. I prefer to use them over taxis.

[Demeter]

3. Elon Musk and his self-driving car will take care of the lack of off-shoring

[Jesus Malverde]

5. indeed!

[Recursion]

6. We do have to acknowledge the coming time when the robots can do all of our jobs....

I'm open for ideas.

[Humanist_Activist]

9. Right now, probably the most practical would be a basic minimum income...

a livable wage for every adult, adjusted by inflation and family size.

This is still far off, but seems to be the only equitable way to deal with wholesale labor replacement by machines.

[Recursion]

10. I've advocated for that several times (nt)

[Humanist_Activist]

13. I think what people don't realize is that this will be pervasive, ubiquitous and...

unavoidable.

Self-driving vehicles only need to NOT kill as many as 30 plus thousand people on the road to be what insurance companies will demand, first for commercial vehicles, then for personal transportation. General purpose robots, computer programs, etc. will follow, taking such jobs as filing clerks, cashiers, baristas, etc.

Large sections of not just this country's, but the world's economy will have their labor forces be made completely unemployable. Unless you want violent revolutions, I think a universal wage will have to be put forward.

ON EDIT: In addition, I think we will have to modify our culture to redefine what it means to work in the first place, probably integrating the idea with hobbies and/or recreation.

[Recursion]

14. Bingo

I think we will have to modify our culture to redefine what it means to work in the first place

That's the one, yes.

[Humanist_Activist]

15. The only jobs I can think of that have true job security are those whose...

tasks are too complicated for bots to do, or rely too much on human-machine interfaces, which suck ass. Of course, I must emphasize, this is only at the present, 10-20 years down the line, they may improve.

We have had plenty of automated phone systems over the years, from simple recordings that shuffle you between different "menus" of selections. Nowadays, they try to be "smart" and make you say the selection, I've found that to be fucking annoying, because it fucking doesn't work. They even take out the ability to dial the number for what you are trying to do, or at least don't mention it anymore, so you have to guess. Happened to me recently with, I think, Verizon.

Unless I'm calling to pay my bill, or ask for the account balance, I dial "0" or yell operator at the damn machine, because its useless for pretty much anything else.

There are still limits, and we still have time to adjust things, but I would say the last jobs that will be replaced by computers are support positions that require human interaction of some sort. Until computers can master human communication pretty much flawlessly, there will be a need for humans on the other end of the line. Once they do master it though, then we most likely have a true Machine Intelligence that matches our own, and hence is now our replacements in everything.

[Fumesucker]

24. Humans have yet to master human communications "flawlessly"....

[eShirl]

11. JohnnyCab!

[Sparhawk60]

20. Yup

Robot taxis are a question of when, not if. Same goes for long haul trucking. Sooner or later, robots will take those jobs as well. How we adjust as a society will be interesting (and painful) to see.

[leftofcool]

26. Would this be the ones having all the accidents?

[Demeter]

34. You've been reading my posts!

I believe Google is the one reporting the accidents, although apparently, it's voluntary...

[DanTex]

7. Hold on a sec. I live in NYC, and the taxi system works out pretty well here.

And there are pretty good reasons why the total number of taxis should be controlled, as opposed to letting the market decide. For example, traffic congestion. At least here, taxis are part of the public transportation system and the entire urban planning system.

From the point of view of a frequent consumer of NYC cabs, I'm not looking forward to the day where I need to use a smartphone app that tracks my location 24-7 (by default, unless I go take extra precautions to shut it on and off) as opposed to being able to walk out an hail a cab whenever I need one.

[Skittles]

12. it's amazing the amount of privacy people willingly give up

sickening, really

[joshcryer]

8. Wait for electric self-driving cars.

Shit is going to get real. The next President needs to address this. Immediately. Immedit-fucking-ly. To not do so will be a dereliction of duty.

[Recursion]

19. Yep

This shit is coming to an occupational field near you real soon now.

[joshcryer]

22. I just hope our leaders adapt.

It's happening, now. Apple just shifted to automated cars. The tech is not yesterday, it's today. 5-10 years, it's everywhere. :O

[Nuclear Unicorn]

21. Yes, but then you won't need a cab because a robot will have taken your job as well.

[joshcryer]

23. And the taxi drivers job?

There is going to be a huge labor vacuum soon. We gotta adapt quick. We're talking some million employees. Even "worst case" we're talking about losing 50k jobs a year as self-driving cars take over.

[underahedgerow]

16. I hate taxis and I love them. I've lived in many major cities around the world and the only time

I needed my own car was when living in Los Angeles and in the South of France. Everywhere else, Chicago, NY, SF, London, Brussels, Paris, etc I've availed myself to public transport. Even in the South of France I frequently use the trains to get up to Italy, points south along the coast, Grasse, etc. It's just easier of course.

I like Paris the most because I have so many options for transport. If I need a big vehicle I rent one for 25 euros a day or have large items delivered. The local grocery store chains offer free delivery of your groceries usually over 60 euros and within a couple hours. Sensible!!!!!

If I'm running errands that require me to carry stuff I use the Auto-Lib, which is like their Velo-Lib, bicycle rental by the hour after you sign up. It's a huge fleet of rather decently maintained electric cars that are perfect for city driving and they have GPS built in, perfect for city streets. I LOVE the Auto-lib and it costs about 8 euros an hour. There are hundreds of convenient stations close to my regular locations and around the city, it's a really well thought out and evolving system; sometimes I'll take a bus to one point and use the Auto-lib on the return. The monthly fee is just 80 euros per year.

I have Uber if I really need it, taxis on my smartphone to book ahead or get priority and mostly there is the Metro and hundreds of buses; it costs 60 euros per month. Taxis are the most expensive option, so unless I'm billing a client, I use other means; one regular client pays for my Auto-Lib since most of my work there is for her.

The USA desperately needs to EVOLVE in terms of its mass transit and transport needs, both in urban centers and suburban commutes. The American notion of car ownership is just archaic and ridiculously expensive. I'm always shaking my head at how much value Americans put on their vehicles by their social status, size, color, model; it still disgusts me that most suburban homes put the garage in front of the house, like the cars are trophies instead of simple tools. The house is supposed to be a home representing family, not cars. Cars should be garaged and stored out of sight, like the lawnmower. The front of your house should greet people, not cars. (Home design in the US is another rant all together!)

I've only ever bought one car new, and it was very cool little Toyota Scion, and I got it at a discount as it was the showroom model. I had it for a year and sold it for exactly what I paid for it. I would NEVER buy a new car, ever, since they lose half their value once they leave the lot. Worse, to pay for a car in massive payments over many years is nuts. For example if a new car is 20K and you have payments for 5 years, by the time you're done paying nearly 27K for the car with finance charges, the damn thing is worth about 10K. Where is the sense in this? Cars are objectified in the USA nearly as much as women are. 'If you buy THIS car, you WILL HAVE SEX" is the main message that car dealers sell, and it's all just a bunch of hooey.

Last but not least, how about that car insurance? Frankly I love having my car stolen! It means I get a new car and the old one paid off! They are CARS people, not your identity.

Comfort & reliability are the main factors in transport. The USA needs to evolve. The taxi medallion thing is a total effing racket that needs to be abolished; new modern modes of transport need to evolve, that's for sure!

[whatthehey]

25. and in the half dozen or so US cities with similar density, there are similar options

That just leaves the other 280 million or so of us who will lack them because building a metro system to go from, say, Edmond to Norman OK would either cost a few hundred dollars a ticket or billions in taxes to make it feasible.

Evolving would require a US population well north of a billion to match France's. In transportation, this is kind of important.

[951-Riverside]

17. The days of the greasy smelly hairy taxi-driver from Raciststan are over

Self driving cars won't refuse to pick up black customers and that's a good thing.

[Codeine]

29. Strange that a post condemning racism

is one of the most racist things I've seen on DU lately.

[MineralMan]

30. The irony in your post is stunning!

Uff da!

[Comrade Grumpy]

31. You are indeed a Minnesotan.

[Lyric]

18. I despise the taxi cartel in my city.

They are mechanically unreliable because they are too cheap to keep the cabs properly maintained, the dispatchers are rude and insulting, the cabs are disgusting inside, they show up three hours late but get bitchy if you're not waiting outside for them the second they get there, and half the drivers are criminals, racists, homophobes, druggies, and sex offenders. The city council won't authorize any other taxi company, so Yellow Cab has a monopoly in our town--therefore they provide the shittiest service imaginable because (until recently) there was no alternative.

Thank god for Uber and Craigslist ride-sharing. Let the taxi company die, for all I care. The decent drivers can transition to Uber, and the rest can go back to whatever reeking, filthy, diseased crevice they crawled out of.

[Chathamization]

28. Agree completely. N/T

[DemocraticWing]

32. Uber is neoliberal union busting at its finest.

"Not a taxi service" they cry...BS of course. They just want to get out of regulations so they can undercut the organized labor of Taxi drivers.

We can improve Taxi services, but letting libertarians skirt regulations and bust unions is not the Left way to do it.

[Nye Bevan]

33. How many years have the taxi companies had to try to get it right?

Why haven't they figured it out yet? How many more years do they need?

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

35. I hate the taxi industry

Often when I try to get a taxi at SNA the douchebag tells me I'm not going far enough and to fuck off, the next guy is probably going to Disneyland. Others will take a long scenic route and get on the 405. I have had a few taxi drivers get difficult about my mother's wheelchair or have so much of their own shit in the car their is no room for mine. I have only had an Uber driver get rude about her wheelchair once and he too had a trunk full of shit.

But Calgary is unfuckingbelievable. The last time I tried to call a taxi in Calgary the wait time was 3-5 hours. I probably could have walked in less than two. But the city will neither deregulate black cars, issue more taxi licenses or allow things like Uber. This is the only place I have ever worked where company chauffeured cars was still a thing.