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Brooklynite here. In theory, I want to be behind taxi drivers. They're a local business owners with ties in the community, and I would rather support them than a Silicon Valley startup with a questionable stance on privacy and poor treatment of their workers. In reality though, taxis need to fix a few issues: 1. I don't need to be able to hail a cab anywhere--I can't really hail Ubers, either. But if I call a cab, I'd like to have them show up within, say, 15 minutes. The reality is that the explicit promise given by dispatchers is usually an hour, and after an hour, the taxi often doesn't show up. And if I am in an inconvenient area, the time I most need to call a cab, that increases the chances of lateness or no-shows. This could be fixed by fining taxis for lateness or no-shows. 2. Auto-playing ads in taxis. The last thing I want after a long day is a screen yelling at me about some TV show I would rather have a root canal than watch. Unfortunately, it seems more likely that Uber will add ads than that taxis will get rid of them, and I don't see a way to prevent this. Advertising ruins everything. 3. Taxis that will actually take you somewhere inconvenient without a fight. When I lived in Flatbush, most cab rides started off with me having to threaten to call 311 to get them to take me home. 4. Racism. As a white person in a black neighborhood, I've watched black people try to flag cabs and almost universally the cabs just drive past empty. I've gotten in the habit of flagging cabs for black people, and even after the cab stops, sometimes when they realize that it's a black person getting in the cab instead of me, they drive off. |
Before ridesharing became common, I had the same experience flagging cabs for black people. One time I watched several cabs drive past a young black woman with a child in a stroller. I stood slightly up the block from her, and flagged a cab for her. The cabbie drove off with their trunk open after they realized that I had flagged them for the mother rather than for myself.
I've actually experienced problems getting Ubers and Lyfts in my neighborhood as well though. I live close to a highway, and I'll often get drivers who are on the highway heading westbound, towards one of the wealthiest suburbs in the Chicago area. I'll watch on my map as they "miss" several exits in a row and keep heading west. I've kept my map open long enough to watch them get off on the exit for the nice suburb. With Lyft and Uber, I have a recourse though, because I know their name, and I can watch where they actually end up.
I've noticed that as time has gone on, more and more of the drivers are from my neighborhood or other similar neighborhoods nearby. This has become one of my favorite things about ride sharing. My neighborhood has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the United States. In certain areas, more than half of the young adult males are unemployed. Lyft and Uber, and the gig economy, have created access to economic opportunities that they wouldn't have otherwise had.
That being said, I think "gig employment" is a poor replacement for normal (W4) jobs, since they don't come with the same legal protections and benefits.