
Ride services decimate S.F. taxi industry's business - papa
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Taxi-use-plummets-in-San-Francisco-65-percent-in-5760251.php
======
jliptzin
Usually I feel bad for traditional businesses quickly displaced by emerging
startups. However, I've been in too many cabs where the driver is constantly
on the phone while driving, abusing the speed limit, slamming on the breaks
every 8 seconds, foul odors, dirty vehicles, roundabout routes, the list goes
on. Good riddance.

~~~
eldavido
Amen to that. Living here in SF, the customer service aspect of cabs is
appalling. I'm tired of getting dirty looks for paying with a credit card,
having cabs with their light on and nobody in them drive right by me, playing
the "where are you going" game, drivers talking on phones, and general
surliness.

The day the industry unionized, that pushed me over the edge. I'm now 100%
using Uber to get around and my only regret is that I didn't try it sooner -
it's awesome.

~~~
lolwutf
Don't forget: Uber and Uber's drivers have been responsible for children's
deaths, interfering with the normal course of competitor's business, stuffing
blind persons' service dogs in the trunk, price gouging during states of
emergencies. All on top of a proprietary, unpublished 'surge pricing'
algorithm.

I know you think taxis are the devil, but Uber's behavior as a parent company
has been downright heinous.

Personally, I avoid supporting them, whenever possible, and go with better-
acting players in the market like Lyft and Sidecar.

~~~
hkmurakami
Not sure why you're being downvoted a bunch for this post (seems like you're
just stating facts that have happened, as well as your opinions, albeit in a
somewhat negatively biased tone, but nothing out of reason).

So here's an upvote. I'd forgotten and/or downplayed these issues and your
post made me reconsider and start using Lyft for the first time (been lazy
thus far), so thanks for your post. :)

~~~
lolwutf
Thank you! I've been watching the downvotes, too, and wondering the same
thing! Cynical lolwutf wants to think it's tied to yet-another-overly-
aggressive Uber suborg, but who knows.

Glad to provide the perspective! Thanks for the upvote.

------
mdesq
> The new companies, unlike taxi operators, have lesser insurance
> requirements, no restrictions on the number of vehicles they put on the
> streets, no clean-air standards and less-stringent background checks.

There are clean air standards for taxis? I'm not sure how well they work,
since about half of the taxis I have taken recently (worldwide) have had the
engine light on, indicating a likely emissions problem. Since taxis drive so
much, an emissions issue on a taxi for a month is probably equivalent to a
year on many private vehicles.

That said, even private vehicles have clean-air standards in any state (like
mine) with emissions inspection requirements.

~~~
rgbrenner
[https://energycenter.org/programs/clean-cab-
partnership](https://energycenter.org/programs/clean-cab-partnership)

[http://www.sfenvironment.org/news/press-release/san-
francisc...](http://www.sfenvironment.org/news/press-release/san-francisco-to-
add-clean-air-vehicles-to-citys-taxi-fleet)

[http://www.sfmayor.org/?page=684](http://www.sfmayor.org/?page=684)

~~~
carl8
Was just going to site that last one:

2/8/12

"Today 92 percent of the taxi fleet is comprised of hybrid or CNG vehicles.
There are 1,318 alternative fuel vehicles out of a total of 1,432 eligible
vehicles. CNG vehicles account for 89 of those and the hybrids account for
1,229."

------
byoung2
_The agency...required electronic information systems in all cabs and
encouraged the use of dispatching apps. Most cabs now use electronic hailing
apps similar to what the ride services offer._

So it took some healthy competition from startups to get the Taxi industry to
actually improve their product? Next, I'd like startups to tackle banks,
insurance, hospitals, airlines, and nearly every other established industry.

~~~
henrikschroder
Meanwhile, outside the Valley, across the ocean, five years ago, some regular
taxi companies where I lived launched hailing apps, all on their own. No
startups required. Maybe the competition was stronger?

~~~
jfoster
Where is that? Would be interesting to know how Uber is doing in that market.

~~~
henrikschroder
Stockholm, Uber just entered it, so that's going to be interesting to follow.

To be fair though, Uber's app is (now) better than the existing taxi company
apps, with its integrated payments and map where you can see how far away your
car is, so there's some value there.

------
raldi
I'm going to call this submarine marketing (well, really submarine _lobbying_
) on the part of taxi companies.

If they were truly in dire straits, they'd be turning in their medallions and
the city would be struggling to find new buyers.

------
ericfrenkiel
Never has creative destruction ever been so enjoyable to observe and partake.
For all the waiting in the cold, rude cabbies, cash only bullshit, and lack of
availability, to the taxi industry of SF, I say to you: you have only
yourselves and SF City Council to blame.

------
miah_
Yellow Taxi, Green Cab decimated themselves. Living in SF there was one thing
you learned quickly: calling the taxi was a complete waste of time. The reason
Uber, Lyft, etc won was because they could actually perform a job the taxi's
had been failing at for years.

------
baddox
> Among biggest impacts of the ride services has been the drop in taxi rides
> taken by people in ramp taxis, which carry people in wheelchairs. As the
> ride services have grown and the number of cabs has diminished, so has the
> availability of wheelchair-accessible taxis, which are costlier to operate.

That's certainly a negative effect, but why would it result from the rise of
ridesharing services? If taxi companies need to scale back the number of cars
in their fleet, shouldn't they only take from the cars that _aren 't_
accessible?

~~~
philip1209
It's worth pointing out that they seem to have a monopoly in handicapped
transport too. Not saying this is a major plus and not saying it's a
profitable market, but they can at least use it to their advantage in
marketing and courts.

~~~
cmsmith
It's not only not a major plus, it's a minus.

Traditional taxi companies are forced by regulators to provide less profitable
accessible transport in exchange for being given a monopoly on taxi services.
Part of the way that Uber is undercutting the taxi companies is by not
providing services to the disabled (or at least not without added cost).

------
sixQuarks
I have no sympathy for the SF taxi industry. I can't count the number of times
I was left stranded at 2 AM on a friday or saturday night, having to walk home
in the rain. It's about time.

------
pkaye
Here is the best I can find on the clean air standards. I think pushing taxi
companies to use hybrids, all electric, natural gas vehicles, etc.
[http://www.sfmta.com/about-sfmta/blog/sf%E2%80%99s-taxis-
can...](http://www.sfmta.com/about-sfmta/blog/sf%E2%80%99s-taxis-can-help-you-
go-green)

------
binarycrusader

      no clean-air standards
    

Either the author is attempting to bias their readers or was unintentionally
misleading -- California generally requires personal vehicles to be smog
tested on a regular basis. I should know; my less than four year old car (at
the time) had to be smog tested just this past year.

------
drivingmenuts
Want to kill Uber and Lyft?

Require drivers to be as ADA-compliant as taxi services.

~~~
ghshephard
Given how few rides occur (less than what a single taxi driver sees in a
month), it seems like the sort of thing Uber/Lyft could subsidize,
_particularly_ if all they commit to is the incredibly crappy service levels
you get from the Taxi company.

~~~
drivingmenuts
The really evil part of me is thinking, and maybe I've got the wrong end of
the stick here, like this:

When you request a ride with a taxi-service, it's up to the discretion of the
service which car to send. You need something for a wheelchair? Fine, they
send you what's available from their fleet.

When you request a ride from Uber or Lyft, those two are just middlemen who
put you in touch with one of a thousand little companies. Potentially, each
one is available.

So, here's the evil bit: require each ride-providing service (a taxi company
or an Uber contractor or a Lyft contractor) to provide a minimum of one or two
ADA-compliant vehicles.

The independent contractors for Uber and Lyft immediately go away, except for
the one or two that are so wealthy as to be able to afford a ramp-van or other
compliant vehicle.

------
NN88
wait until NFC truly takes off...

~~~
serge2k
Then we can have taxi drivers whine and argue about NFC in addition to credit
cards?

------
craigyk
"decimate", so they reduced it by 10%?

~~~
Mandelbug
Interestingly, asking Google to define "decimate" returns a modern definition,
"kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage or part of", and a historical
one, "kill one in every ten of (a group of soldiers or others) as a punishment
for the whole group".

The English language has apparently moved on.

~~~
Jedd
Certain uneducated users of the language may have 'moved on'.

Doesn't mean the rest of us should encourage this misuse.

The word devastate much better suits the intent here, which would leave
decimate to continue meaning something quite specific (and useful).

~~~
Mandelbug
Honestly I have never really found a situation where I wanted to exactly (or
even slightly) mean reduce by 10%. It is too specific of a definition to be
truly useful.

I find it much more convenient, and useful, to have a word that means the
current modern definition of decimate. Perhaps decimate is a poor choice to
represent that, but honestly not every word has to sound or have roots that
directly relate to the definition of the word. It is more important words are
used, rather than languish or die in history books.

~~~
Jedd
There's somewhere around 1,000,000 words in the English language.

> Honestly I have never really found a situation where I wanted to exactly (or
> even slightly) mean reduce by 10%. It is too specific of a definition to be
> truly useful.

I hope you realise that your use cases for words isn't the same as every other
English-speaker's.

> I find it much more convenient, and useful, to have a word that means the
> current modern definition of decimate.

The word you're looking for, as mentioned, is devastate. Perhaps ruin,
destroy, wreck, ravage, desolate, demolish, raze, etc. If you're happy with a
phrase rather than a single word there's plenty more to choose from to convey
your desired meaning.

> Perhaps decimate is a poor choice to represent that, but honestly not every
> word has to sound or have roots that directly relate to the definition of
> the word.

Agreed, but where words have a specific use (even if not to you) it's
frustrating to have their meaning modified to a concept that is more than
adequately conveyed by dozens of other, existing, commonly used words.

That's my point.

> It is more important words are used, rather than languish or die in history
> books.

I'm not even sure what to make of that claim.

