Traffic was worse than usual in Europe’s major cities on Wednesday, as tens of thousands of taxi and limo drivers in London, Paris, Madrid, and Berlin went on strike to protest the competition they are facing from ride-share services, particularly the astronomically valuated Uber, Alison Griswold outlines their beef:
Taxicab drivers throughout Europe are calling for their governments to crack down on Uber with tougher regulations. London has emerged as the epicenter of the demonstrations: Thousands of drivers are rankled that the city’s public transit authority, Transport for London, or TfL, has determined that the smartphone app used by Uber drivers cannot be classified as a meter because it is not installed in the vehicle. That technical distinction is everything because TfL rules state that only licensed taxis can use a meter—a privilege that comes with strict regulatory hurdles. Drivers feel that because Uber’s app determines fare based on time and distance (and the occasional price surge), it functions like a de facto meter and should be regulated accordingly.
But Richard Read argues that the protesters are missing the point, and that “the taxi industry is overdue for a shake-up” anyway:
Many cab companies still operate using a 20th century model: travelers call for service, step outside, and wait for the cab to arrive. That may be appealing to our parents and grandparents, but for folks under 40, it’s a different story. Like newspapers and record labels, the industry has resisted change for so long, it may be too late to fix it. We understand that there are millions of hard-working cab drivers around the world who find this news unsettling. But Uber isn’t booting them out of a job, it’s changing the way they work to be more in keeping with modern technology and lifestyles.
Ultimately, protests like the ones staged yesterday in Europe make for good news stories, but they do little if anything to reform the industry or boost customer satisfaction. As proof, consider this: Uber said that the protests in London alone resulted in an 850% growth in the company’s user base, as frustrated travelers tried to work around the traffic jams caused by cab drivers.
Likewise, Jim Epstein tells the cabbies they’re wasting their time – in more ways than one:
London mandates that its cabbies pass a 149-year-old exam called “The Knowledge” that requires them to master the city’s maze-like streets and know the precise location of museums, police stations, and theaters. As part of the test, they have to verbally recite detailed explanations of how best to travel from one location to another through the city’s roughly 25,000 arteries. Passing “The Knowledge” takes years of study, and most drivers fail at their first few tries. The test causes the gray matter in applicants’ brains to expand, according to one London researcher.
Perhaps the most compelling case for letting Uber thrive is that London’s brainy cabbies should devote their oversize hippocampi to contributing to fields like computer science and medical research. In an age of ubiquitous GPS devices, many of which also incorporate real-time traffic data, circling the city in a car is a profound waste of such exceptional minds. London may as well also require that cabbies master the art of saddling a horse and mending a harness.
The Dish 