What do you guys think of Uber's threat to leave Houston

I was in Austin this weekend and getting a yellow cab to 6th street and back took forever. When we called the operators, they said they were completely booked and they would try to fit us in. It took a hour and half to get a cab. Keep in mind this was at 7:00. It was very frustrating dealing with operators and their "app".

 

Sounds like the people of Austin are getting screwed but at least no one has to deal with Uber's flyers anymore.

 

thanks for the clarification. i dont like any of that either...basically, both sides are being children. but it does not change the way i feel about how uber and lyft conducted themselves.

dont know if anyone else brought this up yet, but it seems like in a year or so, when they switch over to driverless cars this will all be a moot point.

i think it is childish to demand the city to allow you to not have to play by the same rules as your competition, and when you cant get your way you take your ball and go home. but im not mad at them for leaving. they are private businesses and dont have to be here if they dont want to. other companies are already here who are willing to play by the rules.

what i did not like was the fact that they spent $9 million on a deceptive and misleading ad campaign to trick the citizens of austin into voting their way. if they had run an honest campaign i probably would not have even bothered voting.

 

Now I can't speak for the 60's-80's, you'd have to ask Deckard, but from the early 90's until about 2 years ago, Austin functioned just fine without Uber. Acting like this is some sort of civilizational breakdown is comical. It will get fixed eventually, you will survive in the meantime.

 

Ah yes. Back in Deckards prime he had to call a horse and carriage via carrier pidgin.

 

This argument is nonsensical. Any new product that becomes popular over two years is going to be missed when it disappears. That's like saying "Up until 1900, Austin functioned just fine without these mechanized carriages! Back to the horse-drawn buggy!"

Two years was enough time for people to begin using Uber and Lyft regularly and instill them as reliable, viable transit options in a city that sorely needs more of those. In those two years, we voted down a light rail bond measure, saw the MoPac "expansion" encounter countless delays and had many more people continue to move here clogging up our roads with no alternative plan in sight. To act like the sudden disappearance of one of our few reliable transportation options is no big deal is ridiculous.

Uber and Lyft are being dicks about this. They could come back today if they were willing to comply with local legislation (but I understand that the former didn't get to a $50+ billion valuation by navigating through a patchwork of local laws). But, the city of Austin has long had its head in the sand about its own growth and I still don't understand why this is the fight our new city council decided to pick when there are so many other pressing issues in this city.

 

For those of you arguing on behalf of Uber and Lyft...would you be supportive of legislation that lifted the finger print background check requirement of yellow taxi as well as Uber/Lyft? There seems to be a lot of disagreement in this thread, but I think the people arguing against the Uber/Lyft group really just thinks there should be a level playing field. That would be one way to do it. If Yellow Cab can perform the same background check service as Uber and continue operating, then Uber doesn't get an unfair advantage.

I recognize this won't happen since the legal part of this has already happened and clearly the people supported it. I'm just curious why the argument keeps going.

 

Sure, if that meant that they would once again have to directly compete against Uber and Lyft. The Yellow Cab product is so, so bad that they deserve the competition.

But, why not pass legislation that requires Yellow Cab to catch up, like app-based, cashless payment? Or app-based geo-tracking of cabs and ratings of drivers? Most of the complaints regarding Yellow Cab boil down to their refusal to pick up passengers whose destinations are "too close," refusing to accept credit card payments because their "machines are broken" and not showing up at all when requested. Their business was deservedly suffering because their market position was institutionalized for years. It was only when companies that took advantage of modern technology showed up that they began to feel the crunch of their own complacency.

 

In my experience, the average Uber driver is less sketchy, has a cleaner car, and is a better driver than the average cab driver. So, sure, I'd have no problem with that.

Plus Uber drivers have ratings from other customers that cab drivers don't. Just pick five-star drivers.

 

Sure remove fingerprint checks for Cab drivers. The existing background check in place prior to city council intervention yielded only one sexual assault claim in Travis County last year. 55 year old man who was the driver invited a woman to his apartment. She agreed. She later claimed he wouldn't let her leave although she admits she was not harmed in any way. Uber fired the guy right away anyways. So city council wanted increased background checks to prevent sexual assaults that were already not happening.

I'm all signed up with GetMe. Got there early for what I thought was going to be fingerprint registration but it was some dude taking a photo of my vehicle registration, DL # and insurance I had already uploaded online while another employee got my info again on the getme database. Was expecting to get fingerprinted. Instead got given a work badge and a credit card for store purchases through the delivery app. No fingerprinting done. It's already not happening with the existing driver/delivery app that's available in Austin.

 

Cab drivers got it pretty rough. Worse than Uber/Lyft drivers. Yet it's an easy job to get and that's typically why you see a lot of foreigners working the job. That said they make worse than McDonald's employees while dealing with a lot more ****. No excuses for those folk but cab drivers get ****ed worse than Uber/Lyft drivers.

 

How are drivers the ones "getting ****ed" when their the point-of-contact for the rider who deals with their ****? They're the ones who break the law by denying fares arbitrarily based on distance and refusing to accept credit card payments so they can underreport income.

The poor experience of Yellow Cab has been given every institutional advantage through a city council that only sought to be reactive to Austin's transit woes.

 

there was talk of it and surprisingly (or not) the cab companies are against it. i guess they dont want to deregulate b/c it will allow for more competitors to come in.

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/new...recommends-austins-cabs-be-deregulated/nrLLQ/

 

Obviously, competitive advantage goes to the company that can dictate the regulations. Yellow Cab is already built to prosper in a fingerprint regime. Uber chose to build with a different background check regime. If regulations flip from Yellow Cab's model to Uber's model, regulatory advantage flips from Yellow Cab to Uber.

That doesn't mean the government shouldn't do it. The playing field would still be level. But you can't really say the regulatory choice is neutral to competition.

What I said way back I still believe. Cities would have been better served and can still be better served by setting a timeline for regulatory change -- we'll switch to a new regulatory model in x years. Maybe in increments if there are stage-gates that make sense. That gives all competitors time to develop whatever capabilities they need to compete in the new regime, and to recoup whatever investments they made for the old regime.

 

I'd really only use Uber for 3 reasons in Houston.

1) Ride sharing with a bunch of friends to Midtown or another hot spot

2) Getting to the airport (although I wouldn't use this option much either unless I had nobody to drop me off)

3) Emergency situation where I needed to get somewhere and I didn't have my car for whatever reason.

 

Those cabs are often times rented out for up to $75-100 a day. So they're paying to borrow a car. Those card swipers take 10% of their total cut for driving so that's why they push cash so they can keep the entirety of it.

So often times they make less $8/hr with no retirement, no health insurance, you're paying to borrow a yellow cab, and they still take 10%? You're telling me if you were stuck with that **** job you'd be happy going to work everyday?

 

Austin just didn't have that much traffic, and when summer rolled around and the UT students largely went home, there really wasn't much traffic. When we moved here in 1980, the city had an actual 5 pm rush hour. Seriously. Unless there was an accident, traffic was sort of bad for about an hour. Coming from Houston, we were amazed. The streets were vastly better than Houston's and the city was building sidewalks in neighborhoods that didn't have them. I'd been coming to Austin and the Hill Country since the '60's, so I remember when it was basically UT and state government, and that was pretty much it. Two big employers, both of whom had decent pay and good benefits. Many employees who came to Austin for jobs with them stayed after retirement. Rents were absurdly cheap. After the '80's, which saw a real estate bust here, the city started growing like crazy. The tech industry arrived and was booming. Now? We've been the fastest growing "big" city for 5 years running, worst luck, and the city is suffering because of it.

Honestly, I've probably taken a taxi somewhere here maybe half a dozen times in 30+ years, if that. I agree that this will get "fixed." If Uber and Lyft don't work out something with the city, some new companies will fill the void. Give them a little time. There is too much money to be made here running that business model. Uber and Lyft were crazy not to work something out. Meanwhile, my oldest son, the one that doesn't drive, is dealing with taking a taxi to go somewhere and says it's terrible. Not remotely as easy, not nearly as quick, and definitely more expensive, and he thinks the two companies really ****ed up the election.