Me - I don’t live in London either, but I visit a few times a year, usually using trains & the underground. On average, I probably use a London black cab, about 2 or 3 times a year. I’ll also use a greater London Minicab, maybe once every year or three.
Those personal experiences form the basis of my own opinions of London Taxis.
All opinions are valid of course.
I would have much less of an issue if the mayor was not assisting part of the free market against another part of the free market and providing large cash subsidies. Without this happening the TFL actions looked dubious but was all speculation, now I know what the mayor has been doing it has gone from dubious to just dodgy.
Its a bit easier to have higher standards when you getting a 42 million cash injection and other forms of favourable treatment, as well as an excuse for pricing "we have to boss, its the regulator who sets it".
The safety and other aspects is just about public manipulation, reasons have to be found to justify what they doing and these reasons have to be popular with the public. They hardly going to say we looking to ban uber because our black cab taxi drivers dont like the idea of losing work and the prospect of charging less.
Kitz you seem to be of the impression that the only reason people use uber is pricing, I dont know why you still have that impression after everything that has been posted. Uber isnt that much cheaper except in certain cases. Uber is a lot cheaper on things like airport runs, but journeys within the city they are only a bit cheaper. I also dont know what kind of salary you are used to, but £6.75 an hour whilst considered low by todays standards can still easily be lived on. Different parts of the population have different expectations of what is acceptable income, and much of that of course is also down to lifestyle of said person. Most uber drivers, I have used are not of white british origin, which I think is telling, as I know from various places I have worked in Leicester that people from different origins have very different expectations of what is an acceptable wage as well as working hours, which of course is a big part of the immigration debates that go on. Some people e.g. might be fine with living in shared accommodation which reduces living costs, they may also be fine working longer hours. I expect many people may even only use uber as a second job so they have another income as well. If we had a situation where uber was the only service in town and this was the only option for a driver, then yes its a problem, but its not, there is competition and its a free market. If uber was as bad as people claim it to be in terms of working conditions, they would have no drivers.
Drivers who I have spoken to have voluntarily left private hire firms to work for uber, citing these benefits.
1 - payment is guaranteed 'almost' as its automated digital payment. Non payment in legacy taxi services is quite high, higher than many may think, especially for things like night time city work.
2 - customers can tip drivers, whilst this can happen on legacy services, according to drivers I spoke to its much more frequent with uber.
3 - customers and drivers can communicate directly, so if one cannot find the other they can resolve it instead of a cancelled pick up which does neither a favour.
4 - customers can see which direction the taxi is coming from and be on the right side of the road, avoiding things like u-turns to pick customers up.
5 - drivers can pick a pickup close to where they just dropped off, whilst with firms this often doesnt happen. So the cost in between journeys is a lot less, I think this one is a major issue actually, as I know from experience how bad existing firms can work, they so inefficient with routing drivers between customers.
I have also spoken to drivers where the taxi firms they previously worked for would tell them if they refused to do long shifts, they would be let go, they would get docked money for been late on pickups, forced to go out when work needed on vehicles, and no compensation if customer either didnt pay or cancelled pickup when they on their way. Employment conditions based on what I have been told are worser when driving for a firm instead of uber.
The arguments about wages just seem really detached from reality, perhaps looking at it from an affluent perspective.
Now we have talk about consumers turning a blind eye to so called bad practices, but I have observe on here a blind eye is been turned to state manipulation of a market.
Exceptions been ronski and black sheep who seemed to have seen it for what it is.