[From article]
When Uber arrived in London in March 2012, the city’s transportation market was already full of cars for hire,
[. . .]
“None of the laws were written for the modern mobile phone and app era,” said Sir Peter Hendy, the mayor’s transport commissioner. He declared Uber legal.
[. . .]
London mayor Boris Johnson has acknowledged the taxicab industry’s concerns, expressing his own fears about “brash American Internet companies and the way they think they can come over and disrupt the market in this country.”
[. . .]
Uber’s influence has already changed the market. Nearly 5,000 black cabs now offer low, fixed prices on off-peak journeys booked through a new app, Gett. The Licensed Taxi Drivers Association concedes that its app is a direct response to Uber. Without the backing of London’s mayor for an outright ban on Uber, the taxi industry has recognized that it must compete on quality and price.
[comment from Canadian]
letstalkcandidly October 01, 2015 at 10:43 AM
We are having the same fight by cabbies against Uber, here. There were two days recently when cabbies took over City Hall, stripping off their shirts, screaming, spitting, demanding Council shut down Uber. That is not going to happen. Our cab industry is awful. It has been treating customers like scabs, charging outrageous prices, driving away in the dead of winter if a customer wasn't a big fare, no cabs to take kids home from the bar at 2am, people having to wait hours in the cold, rude drivers who can't speak a word of English and growl when you talk to them; we even have the new phenomenon of cabbies refusing rides to Hasidic Jews and people with seeing-eye dogs. People here will NOT go back to that. Uber is doing a brisk business and we love it.
http://www.city-journal.org/2015/eon0930mh.html
Michael Hendrix
A Tale of Two Taxi Cities
London and New York struggle to get along with Uber.
September 30, 2015
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