You see this in NYC. Yellow cabs are fairly easy to find in Manhattan (below 96th Street anyway) but you'll never see them in many areas of the city.
The medallion system was invented to stop too many taxis appearing such that drivers couldn't earn an income. There are a ton of problems with this system and then the city decided to protect the "assets" (taxi medallions). Often ordinary people had bought these.
Anyway, to combat this Manhattan-only problem, they invented the green cabs. These were much cheaper (medallion-wise) but couldn't pick people up off the street in Manhattan (below 96th).
The result? Green cab drivers just picked new high-traffic areas and didn't want to take people to Manhattan. Why? Because once dropping someone off they couldn't pick someone up so they'd have to lose time and money driving out of the area.
And on top of all this it used to be impossible to get a cab at all around shift change times (3-4pm was the bad one). They had to invent solutions for this (eg taxis stationed at certain areas like hotels so you could still get to the airport).
And even if you get a cab you then have to communicate where you're going. The number of times I've had a driver mis-hear street numbers (eg 14th vs 40th) is astounding.
While in the cab you're subjected to a loop of advertising (because, hey, more revenue). You can mute it but it's an added annoyance.
After all that you then have to pay and for some reason cabs seem to be a common source of having your credit card skimmed (anecdotally; I have no proof of this).
Uber/Lyft take away all the friction of finding a cab, telling it where to go and paying. The reputation system does a decent (but obviously not perfect) job of curbing the worst actors (drivers and riders).
How anyone could think this doesn't have value is beyond me.
Cost structure wise there's no $1 million medallion to pay for built into the Uber price. The price is still below cost but that gap seems to be narrowing.
> Uber/Lyft take away all the friction of finding a cab, telling it where to go and paying. The reputation system does a decent (but obviously not perfect) job of curbing the worst actors (drivers and riders).
Except for all the drivers who cancel on you, all the trips that it refuses to find a driver for, the drivers who go the wrong way and don't speak English... oh and while they're at it, not only do they screw over the customer, but they also screw over the driver.
You see this in NYC. Yellow cabs are fairly easy to find in Manhattan (below 96th Street anyway) but you'll never see them in many areas of the city.
The medallion system was invented to stop too many taxis appearing such that drivers couldn't earn an income. There are a ton of problems with this system and then the city decided to protect the "assets" (taxi medallions). Often ordinary people had bought these.
Anyway, to combat this Manhattan-only problem, they invented the green cabs. These were much cheaper (medallion-wise) but couldn't pick people up off the street in Manhattan (below 96th).
The result? Green cab drivers just picked new high-traffic areas and didn't want to take people to Manhattan. Why? Because once dropping someone off they couldn't pick someone up so they'd have to lose time and money driving out of the area.
And on top of all this it used to be impossible to get a cab at all around shift change times (3-4pm was the bad one). They had to invent solutions for this (eg taxis stationed at certain areas like hotels so you could still get to the airport).
And even if you get a cab you then have to communicate where you're going. The number of times I've had a driver mis-hear street numbers (eg 14th vs 40th) is astounding.
While in the cab you're subjected to a loop of advertising (because, hey, more revenue). You can mute it but it's an added annoyance.
After all that you then have to pay and for some reason cabs seem to be a common source of having your credit card skimmed (anecdotally; I have no proof of this).
Uber/Lyft take away all the friction of finding a cab, telling it where to go and paying. The reputation system does a decent (but obviously not perfect) job of curbing the worst actors (drivers and riders).
How anyone could think this doesn't have value is beyond me.
Cost structure wise there's no $1 million medallion to pay for built into the Uber price. The price is still below cost but that gap seems to be narrowing.