
Taxi deregulation coming to Finland - velmu
https://metropolitan.fi/entry/taxi-deregulation-brings-cheap-rides-and-innovation-to-finland-in-2018
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mandelken
Taxi's don't scale in an urban environment. Their use is exactly for night or
irregular use. Go to Mumbai, Jakarta, or any low income country and you'll
find yourself stuck for hours in a cheap taxi. We need regulation because the
market will not build railroads and metro's.

"A developed country is not where the poor drive a car, but where the rich
take public transportation". Visit and compare Switzerland with
Egypt/India/... and you'll see.

~~~
mattmanser
I disagree, from experience. I live in an urban environment in the UK with
extensive public transport and haven't had a car for the last 5 years.

I have friends and family who live in the 'burbs. There are plenty of times I
take a taxi over public transport, including:

    
    
        1. I'm in a rush
        2. I need to transport something not small
        3. I'm feeling lazy
    

Note, that all public transport suffers from some fundamental problems (at the
moment[1]). I live in the south of the city. For anywhere I want to travel to
in the north I have to walk 10 minutes to get to the bus stop. In certain
hours buses get out of sync with their timetables, so you can add another
10/15 minutes of waiting.

Also a lot of public transport has moved to the "hub" model, where you have a
central hub which connects different routes. While perhaps more efficient in
some ways, it's incredibly inefficient for the traveller. It adds a minimum of
20 minutes to any journey where you have to go through a hub. My sister used
to joke it takes an hour and 20 minutes to visit a friend living on a
different tube line in London. My home town is either 3 lines switches away,
adding an hour and a half of waiting to a journey, or I go through the London
Hub, inexplicably having to pay a premium.

So while I like and appreciate our public transport, it can be a huge timesink
and when you don't want to pay the "time tax" of public transport, taxis fill
the role.

[1]I say at the moment as we can imagine a point in the future where you
request public transport with your phone and it can on-the-fly accommodate
you.

~~~
dagw
_So while I like and appreciate our public transport, it can be a huge
timesink and when you don 't want to pay the "time tax" of public transport,
taxis fill the role._

Last time I was in London for work I naively hopped in a Taxi at Paddington
Station because I was late for a meeting and the tube would take 30 minutes.
The taxi took 35 minutes and cost an order of magnitude more.

~~~
mattmanser
Well, yeah, it depends on the town and the time. Here in Notts the buses have
lots of dedicated lanes, so in rush hour it can be better to take a bus than a
taxi.

~~~
gooseserbus
Taxis* can drive in bus lanes

*Not private hire vehicles, which are not legally considered taxis.

------
illuminati1911
Uber left Finland last summer due to the harassment from the government and
police, but it still made huge difference to the Finnish taxi system.

Before the taxi rides were expensive, service was mediocre and there was no
apps nor anything else. After Uber started mixing the market, many new
companies have started operating in the field offering travel packages etc.
and almost all taxis can now be ordered with an app and people can see their
location in real time.

Only thing that hasn't changed is the pricing (taxis are extremely expensive
in Finland) but thankfully that's about to change soon.

~~~
dyyni
Taxis aren’t that expensive in Finland compared to other Nordic countries or
countries with similar living costs as Finland.

Swedish taxis are unregulated and there fares have risen faster than in
Finland.

And Uber as a ride hailing service was perfectly legal in Finland. The issue
was they were hiring drivers that didn’t have taxi permits (and didn’t pay
taxes).

~~~
jpatokal
C'mon. Getting a taxi permit in Finland requires taking a bunch of mandatory
courses on highly Uber-relevant topics like "how to use your taxi meter" (185
EUR) and "local navigation without a GPS" (260 EUR), then passing an exam with
questions like "from memory, name all roads between random location X and
random location Y", meaning you're looking at a bare minimum of 700 EUR and
several weeks of full-time study to get licensed:
[https://taksikoulu.net/kurssit/#hinnasto](https://taksikoulu.net/kurssit/#hinnasto)

And Uber was _way_ (as in, 30-50%) cheaper than taxis while it operated in
Helsinki.

~~~
foepys
Uber is cheaper because Uber's investors subsidize each ride. Don't let this
fool you. Uber will get a lot more expensive when those investors want to see
returns.

~~~
Reason077
Uber's prices will remain competitive so long as there is healthy competition.
If Uber is able to establish a quasi-monopoly in a particular market, then
prices will rise.

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davnn
I thought Finland was one of the few places where taxi prices were high enough
that taxi drivers could make a fair living off it. Those days are probably
gone.. I don't see the great innovations that ride hailing services bring to
the table at this point.

Having another person drive you around should expensive in my opinion.

~~~
indubitable
You have to keep in mind that prices are, generally, not magical. The price is
a balance between what people are willing to sell something for and what
people are willing to buy it for. Of course that's elementary, but thinking
about this will explain why drivers, in general, will not be well paid.

Driving is a low value skill that the vast majority of people have, and if
they don't have - they can learn it rapidly. Let's imagine now being a driver
was lucrative. Well you'd have a ton of people racing to become drivers, no
pun intended. But with so many people willing to drive people around, it'd
mean a shortage of work for all the drivers. And so somebody would offer to
drive people for a little bit less. And that'd repeat on downward until we
reached the equilibrium point at which not enough drivers were willing to go
below.

There are some exceptions like truck driving where people spend hours and
hours on the road driving vehicles that do require some degree of skill to
manage. And so the wages there are still pretty decent. It's not just driving
per se, but unpleasant work that requires some degree of skill.

Ride sharing apps bring market efficiency. If you're willing to drive for $x
and people are willing to pay $x, well - why shouldn't you be able to? They're
still centralized of course, but I think it takes us one step closer to
decentralizing the entire industry which would be amazing, as it entirely
removes the middle man and let's people simply directly offer and purchase
each others' labor. Of course this ideal is pointless in this particular case
as automation is imminent and will super-centralize the industry. Although
there prices will likely be lower than even a decentralized market could
offer.

------
kisstheblade
Taxi service has been great in finland. Competent drivers (they know their way
around the city) and clean cars. Pretty good availability, except for the one
hour when the bars close when you have to fight for your life at the taxi stop
:)

And you could actually make a decent living driving cabs.

This will probably change and the foreigners who now deliver our food (Foodora
et.al.) will start driving taxis.

So drivers getting lost and crashing in the winter months because of lacking
skills in snow driving. And of course not speaking finnish so handling the
eldery and school transports which are a big service taxis provide here might
get more difficult. We'll see... But in my opinnion it is not possible to
operate taxis much more cheaply (and with the same quality) as we have now.

------
joncrane
I wonder where Finland draws the line between "taxi" and "ride sharing" (stuff
like the Waze commute thing).

~~~
alkonaut
If they deregulate it’s not unthinkable that they are looking across the water
to Sweden. In Sweden there is no difference between different operators, Uber
is a Taxi company. You can’t drive anyone for money without being a taxi
company.

 _Actual_ ride sharing where no one makes money is obviously not taxi. What
Waze commute will count as I suspect is still up in the air so long as neither
of the people in the car makes any money.

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AnsemWise
Finland doesn't exists.

~~~
AnsemWise
Exist _

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deanclatworthy
This reads more like a promotional piece for Whim - rather than a neutral
article - as well as no reference for the regulation change (although it is
happening).

~~~
Mad_Mac
They mention Whim twice + a pic of the app. I don't really see how that's too
promotional. Even Fixutaxi is mentioned more.

------
staticelf
Finland is just killing it lately, I wish Sweden could be more like Finland.

~~~
deanclatworthy
It’s funny the outsiders perspective of Finland. I can assure you there are
plenty of problems here. The government being broke for one and making obscene
cuts across the board.

~~~
fulafel
By the numbers Finland looks like one of the not-so-broke governments in EU:
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/269684/national-debt-
in-...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/269684/national-debt-in-eu-
countries-in-relation-to-gross-domestic-product-gdp/)

A common neoliberal political strategy is to kick up drama about state
finances to justify tax cuts and reductions in public services in spite of
popular support for welfare, maybe the same here?

