Do you “Uber”?

On the plane Kris and I overheard a young woman say to her friend, “Let’s just Uber.” As two who learned German when we were young, we wanted to know what was “over” but, because we had ourselves “Uber-ed” to the airport and were planning on “Uber-ing” back home, we smiled quietly to ourselves. Wondering, however, if she knew the regulations are that Uber — a new ride-sharing system — cannot enter into many airports. Why? That’s the issue. Taxi unions in cooperation with airports and cities like Chicago. From what I’m hearing many taxi drivers are leaving their more traditional taxi services to work with Uber.

A “medallion” permits a taxi to provide taxi services, and a medallion in Chicago — for one car — can cost over 200K. Where does the money go? Chicago.

When Uber picked us up at our home the driver told us he lived in the City, on his way from his home on the north side into the City for work he turned on Uber and waited no more than fifteen minutes for a rider — if he got one he took the person to where they were going in the City … and for his ride home he does something similar. Then he just opens up his Uber ridesharing on some days for hours and goes from one place to another.

Go online to Uber, get an app and see how it works. Inside airports that Uber app will only flag legitimate taxis that are available.

There is here a history of American business and corporations and city governments and taxes and unions and free market strategies for more liberties…. it can get complicated legally, but I’m wondering what you think of ridesharing programs like Uber and Lyft?

Source:

The battle over the future of the taxi industry is in many ways an information war. And the latest salvo in it has launched: an online campaign called “Taxi Facts,” backed by several groups including ride service Uber, the libertarian advocacy group TechFreedom and D.C. based trade group The Internet Association. The hashtag — of course there’s a hashtag — is #hailfail, and whether or not it’s the work of former Obama campaign strategist David Plouffe, it fulfills one of the central rules of politics: define your opponent before your opponent gets a chance to do it.

“In an era of scare tactics and corporate intimidation,” reads the group’s statement of purpose, “we believe the public deserves to know the truth about Big Taxi.”

…

And so a big part of what we’re seeing is a language war. The pro-Uber side is doing its darnedest to brand the existing taxi industry as a monolithic “Big Taxi,” a la Big Oil or Big Tobacco, tapping into the idea that the powers-that-be in the industry aren’t individual drivers but taxi fleet owners and operators.

Rhetoric is central focus on the other side, too. There exists a “Who’s Driving You?” campaign, backed by the Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association. One of that side’s core tactics is to reject the idea that “ride-sharing” is what Uber, Lyft and others are up to. Instead, they are, to borrow their phrase, simply “unregulated taxi services.”