I took my wife to Paris last year. When I turned up a taxi tout (I assume for an un-licensed taxi) offered to get us to our hotel (about 6 km away) for 100 euro. When I demurred he kindly lowered the price to 60 euro. I ordered an uber, which picked us up in ~10 mins and the total cost was 20 euro.<p>So while I sympathize with taxi drivers, they really can't expect consumers to not prefer something that's manifestly better for them.<p>BTW in London, before uber a black cab might cost me £60-70 to get home if I'd missed a train. An uber now can be as little as £25, which is low enough that I can just not worry about the terribly unreliable and sparse trains and plan my trip home that way.
This actually does present a dilemma for working class folks. The article indicates that taxi drivers have experienced a loss in income of 30-40%. I don't imagine French taxi drivers earn a whole lot of money. Moreover, an idea could be that the French taxi drivers could just switch over to Uber. The tax driver may be stuck if they have already paid a certain amount of a car, registration, etc.<p>Also, they may not be able to make as much with Uber. Buzz Feed News estimated that US Uber drivers can make $34,164 per year. French laws may also include benefits for driving a taxi vs. being an independent contractor with no benefits with Uber.<p>Services like AirBnB and Uber can be great for entrepreneurs, investors, part-time workers, and consumers. We should be reminded that disrupting industries sometimes creates losers in the working and middle class that don't have an easy way to switch jobs in some countries or economies.
Uber is an unlawful business that tries to by-pass Labour law. If Uber model is imposed workers will be working for big companies without proper rights or protections. I want cheaper and better services but never at the cost of other people's rights.<p>With time driverless cars will be the norm. Until then I want that the people that drive me home have as many rights as them deserve.<p>(What will happen when machines are able to do all manual work is another more complex discussion)
French Taxi drivers are knowned to be unfriendly and not quite honest, and lazy. They're trying to keep their business protected instead of trying to get better. Now, they even use violence against Uber-drivers & Uber-customers. BTW, they don't give a shit of their own customers...<p>At the beginning, when Uber opened in France, I could understand their problem. But now, they just went to far: instead of being better to keep their business, they just want to keep their business by being the only players, leaving no choice to customers but to use them. And that's plain wrong for me...<p>In fact, I think that I would support an action from Uber against Taxi syndicates & French government support, either in the street or in the European Court of Justice<p>Disclosure: I'm a french parisian and never used Uber (yet) but used Taxi from time to time... ;)
I hate calling for cabs, waiting in a queue, answering all sorts of irrelevant questions beyond where I want to be picked up, only to have the cab show up at the wrong place anyway. So Uber is definitely scratching an itch. An itch that the traditional taxi companies can just as easily scratch with an app of their own.<p>So they'd better clear the road and start hacking, because this strike won't save them in the long run.
Related discussion:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9776613" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9776613</a>
Have a look at those images :<p><a href="http://www.spi0n.com/greve-taxis-vs-uber-paris/" rel="nofollow">http://www.spi0n.com/greve-taxis-vs-uber-paris/</a>
I was in Paris in April and we used Uber twice. Both drivers were super friendly, attentive, and helpful. Neither spoke English, but we got by just fine. I was disappointed that there was no Uber in Rome as well.
A while back I found a grievous bug in CERNLIB, one that withoubt a doubt resulted in erroneous results in the physics journals.<p>The day I blasted this news throughout every corner of the physics community, a CERN staffmember sent me a patch. "Here's what you need, but the guy who maintains that part of CERNLIB wont accept it because Im british and hes french."<p>Dont Fuck With The French.
Look there needs to be a French Uber for this to work. Simple as that. We can't take global revenue forever. It's not fair to these countries. Lucky for them, we're helping them innovate