Living in Amsterdam makes me wonder... only $10 extra? Seems like a fair deal. On average it's more than 30 euro extra over here.
To be fair: we have signs displaying cost & travel time for bus, car, taxi and train. Train (for once) is the clear winner by being cheapest & fastest.
He's saying that route is $10 more than the shorter (and quicker) route via taxi.
From McCarran International Airport to the strip you can either go on the highway or via the local streets. The highway is slower and costs $10 more, and yet 1/3rd of cabbies will take you that route.
Well, our taxis take longer routes as well to get to the 30 euro extra.
The train costs 4 euro, by taxi it's on average 45-50 euro, but could also easily be 60 euro's.
For a tourist it's not very clear what is the best way of transportation; hence, very easy to get ripped off. When the price differce is 10-15 times the price of a train ticket that is supposed to make you wonder
For a single rider that's not pressed for time, sure a taxi is going to be 10x costlier than rail, but add in multiple people (esp. kids) and a healthy dose of luggage and suddenly it's 2-3x as expensive and possibly quite worth it.
Is that really the taxi's "fault" though? I mean it is in everyones best interest to get paid the most. And in the end you arrived at your destination. Sure you don't want to pay more. But I don't know if it should be illegal...
I mean there are tons of companies/people who "do stuff" to make more money from you...
That's kind of the point right: with Uber, there was a solution that didn't involve making anything illegal. Customers were allowed to easily express unhappiness with their ride, and Uber is able to provide customers better service. Seems like an ideal solution that, as you put it, simply balances everyone's best interests.
Uber is making the decision to get rid of drivers that take advantage of their customers, not the government forcing anyone to abide by some law. Its the same as how a restaurant can take action against a waitress if they provide bad service. Personally I think that system is way better than trying to create a series of laws that make it illegal to be a bad waiter.
But I don't quite see the solution to the problem here.
The Vegas scam is that they are taking tourists with no idea of the traffic layout on a longer trip than an experienced driver would take.
If an Uber driver takes this longer route, the passengers still don't know that this happened. They got to their hotel in one piece and everyone is happy.
The only levelling factor is that the Uber ride is a fixed price, so it's in the driver's best interest to take the shortest route.
If the Vegas cab authority mandated fixed prices for the rides, this would all go away on their end as well.
Uber emails you a map with your route on it and a final price after each trip. If you are unhappy with the route, you can complain and uber will refund whatever you overpaid compared to optimal trip. They can also easily implement algorithm that checks if driver uses optimal route and fire/warn drivers that don't.
Biggest difference between Uber and any taxi authority is that Uber is interested in providing good service while taxi authority does not.
This is one of the big problems I have with taxis and Uber and Lyft or whatever other company: There's too much profit motive to "cheat" or to try to skim or act just-slightly-unfair. Why is it unreasonable--not aimed at you, mostly a rhetorical question--to expect that a taxi driver not try to screw as many riders as he or she can?
This "interaction," or lack thereof, is why I stick to Metro and other transit in Seattle. If I need to go somewhere in a car, I grab a car2Go or a ZipCar. Metro has a set timetable, set routes, set fares, and set stops. I get on, tap my card, and I'm almost certainly guaranteed to follow a route I know in advance and pay a known price. Walking a couple of blocks at the beginning and end of my trip is worth it, to me, to not have to wonder how badly I'm gonna get taken.
(Yes, I can talk to the taxi or Uber driver to go another way if this is the "long way around." Yes, I can complain to the ride provider. But why do I want to put up with that?)
> Is that really the taxi's "fault" though? I mean it is in everyones best interest to get paid the most.
In a competitive market, no, you're right. But that's a self-solving problem because customers will select the option which gets them there the fastest for the least money. The problem is customer-abusive behavior, which is a hallmark of a captive market; when a consumer has no viable alternatives, they basically have to put up with being scammed, shaken down, and otherwise abused to the limit that they can tolerate (see also: regional monopolies in last-mile internet service).
The issue at hand is fundamentally the lack of competition, which is enforced through government action. If you're going to maintain a state-granted monopoly, then you're going to need to be subject to state-imposed restrictions on how you can use that monopoly.
Of course, even making it illegal doesn't seem to be stopping taxis from doing it.
How the heck is it in "everyone's best interest" when the customer gets screwed by paying a higher fee for a longer route? Not only does the customer have to pay more, but he's had his time wasted as well.
To be fair: we have signs displaying cost & travel time for bus, car, taxi and train. Train (for once) is the clear winner by being cheapest & fastest.