If taxi companies didn’t keep raping passengers on fares.
Taxis were charging outrageous per mile rates
Cab companies were not and are not "raping" passengers on the fares. It costs money to be in this business. The rates are what they are for a reason. Why do you think that the drivers on this forum are complaining about the too low Uber/Lyft rates? Further, in most jurisdictions, the rates are set by regulation.
You drive a car all day every day. Get twenty people, with varying hygenic habits, some of whom smoke, some of whom have pungent carryout or other foul smelling items with them, some of whom have animals in and out of your car each day. Add to that the weather and other things that these people track into the vehicle with them. Consider the trash that people leave or hide in your vehicle. Repeat all of the above each day, all day, for several years and see how your vehicle smells after that. See how it smells despite your cleaning the vinyl seats and rubber floors regullarly, but you do not find that half eaten loaded burrito that someone stuffed between the back and bench of that back seat for several days afterward.
I have had more than one smelly UberX car in which I rode.
Uber lyft now charges the pax about the same as taxis.
This obtains in my market, as well. Too many of these TNC drivers equate what they receive with what the customer pays to the TNC. They caterwaul about how superior the TNCs are to the cabs because the cost is half of a cab. NOT CORRECT! The TNC driver receives half of what a cab driver would, but when you add what the TNC keeps, there is not that much difference. If there is even a mild surge, the kind where the customer pays a small multiplier but the TNC gives the driver nothing, the Uber/Lyft car costs more.
The only time that the TNC customer saves anything is on long trips.
What taxi companies brought upon themselves, was not upgrading their dispatch systems.
The digital/computer/satellite/GPS Call Assugnment Systems are more efficient in that they can "talk" to several drivers at once and assign numerous calls all at once. Electrons move at the speed of light. I was quite the motormouth as a dispatcher, but, even I could not talk that fast. The drawback is that the system can make no judgment about one job over another. You tried to assign each driver the best job available. You tried to look out for your regulars. You put priority on airport calls. You used to "spot" (give out some information about the job) calls that you needed covered. A computer can not do that.
In The Capital of Your Nation, dispatch policies favoured the drivers. When the companies went to the digital Call Assignment, it was difficult for the providers to program that into the system. There were some things that they simply could not put into it. Once the systems were in place, ownership no longer wanted to pay dispatchers who knew what they were doing. These days, you get a minimum wage telephone operator on the microphone who is no help. I do not even turn ON my radio, any more,
Obviously a person does not know s*** about the taxi industry if this is what they believe. There is a price point set for a reason. Insurance, maintenance, advertising,
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My cab has vinyl covered seats and rubber floors. Those cost money. The cab rates generate enough money to cover the cost of that. I have not put rubber floors or covered the seats in vinyl in my Uber/Lyft car. The reason for that is that I can not find a shop that will do the work for 1979 prices. Uber and Lyft pay 1979 cab rates. Why should I pay 2019 prices on that car if I can not collect 2019 rates?
I can use Uber to fill in where I am slow. When my wheels are turning I'm getting paid.
This is what I do. If the cab is going to be slow, I drive the Uber/Lyft car. Right now, Congress is out which means that it is slow for the cab. Until the freshmen start to report for orientation, I will drive the cab one day per week to cover expenses for it and earn a little extra. Other than that, it is Uber/Lyft. I do not want to sit fourteenth out on the Hyatt and wait for the Harrassmen-ER-uh-
HACK Inspector to pull up and start writing summonses. Here, if the Hack Inspector approaches your cab, you HAVE a summons; usually three or four.
The other advantage that we have is that we actually know what we are doing out here. We know how to play the system to make it pay. There are more than a few posters here who think that all that there is to this business is: turn the key, take off the brake, put the car into gear, hug the Jippy Yess. They then complain that they are not making any money.
100% correct. When the price advantage disapppears (which it is slowly being whittled away) The customers are much more likely to take a smelly cab, especially when it's pouring down rain or there isn't a price advantage and the cabs are queued up.
The TNCs have to keep jacking up what they collect, because they are slowly realising that they
ain't charging enough for their services. Of course, they will not allow the drivers to charge enough for the services that they render.
"Your lucky, if you hadn't been right at the lobby right when we needed a ride to the airport we would have called an uber"
"You mean at the hotel taxi stand at 5:00 AM? We kinda Queue up at these major hotels because there's always people who need rides to the airport, especially on big checkout days like today, there's over 1000 checkouts from the Hyatt today"
Mears taxi has had an app based dispatch operating YEARS before uber came to town, first it was Taxi-magic than an in house proprietary system.
The first computer Call Assignment System appeared in Toronto in the late 1970s. Computer-assisted became popular in this area in the early 1980s. The first voiceless system appeared here in one suburb in the mid-1980s. By the early 1990s, almost all suburban jurisdictions had the digital call assignment. The City did not have them, because no provider could adapt one to our Zone System. In the last year before the meters, one cab company did go to a digital call assignment system. The drivers hated it. The other three radio companies gained more than one driver each over this. Once the meters came in 2008, the other companies did go to call assignment.
The problem with cabs stems from the fact that the cab companies customer IS the driver, not the pax. Hence no efforts were really made across the industry to improve the experience for pax.
My company did address complaints against drivers, even if it arose from a street hail. We were, at one time, the premier radio company in the city, so we did have a reputation to protect. We did it more for the company than for the customer, though.
.............in the Capital of Your Nation, it is the exception rather than the rule...........................
There currently are three radio fleets in the Capital of Your Nation. One shuts down its service at eleven P.M. and resumes at six A.M. One outsources it overnight. There is only one that is twenty four hours and staffed locally.