Ride services decimate S.F. taxi industry's business

Usually I feel bad for traditional businesses quickly displaced by emerging startups. However, I've been in too many cabs where the driver is constantly on the phone while driving, abusing the speed limit, slamming on the breaks every 8 seconds, foul odors, dirty vehicles, roundabout routes, the list goes on. Good riddance.

&gt; The new companies, unlike taxi operators, have lesser insurance requirements, no restrictions on the number of vehicles they put on the streets, no clean-air standards and less-stringent background checks.<p>There are clean air standards for taxis? I&#x27;m not sure how well they work, since about half of the taxis I have taken recently (worldwide) have had the engine light on, indicating a likely emissions problem. Since taxis drive so much, an emissions issue on a taxi for a month is probably equivalent to a year on many private vehicles.<p>That said, even private vehicles have clean-air standards in any state (like mine) with emissions inspection requirements.

<i>The agency...required electronic information systems in all cabs and encouraged the use of dispatching apps. Most cabs now use electronic hailing apps similar to what the ride services offer.</i><p>So it took some healthy competition from startups to get the Taxi industry to actually improve their product? Next, I&#x27;d like startups to tackle banks, insurance, hospitals, airlines, and nearly every other established industry.

I&#x27;m going to call this submarine marketing (well, really submarine <i>lobbying</i>) on the part of taxi companies.<p>If they were truly in dire straits, they&#x27;d be turning in their medallions and the city would be struggling to find new buyers.

Never has creative destruction ever been so enjoyable to observe and partake. For all the waiting in the cold, rude cabbies, cash only bullshit, and lack of availability, to the taxi industry of SF, I say to you: you have only yourselves and SF City Council to blame.

Yellow Taxi, Green Cab decimated themselves. Living in SF there was one thing you learned quickly: calling the taxi was a complete waste of time. The reason Uber, Lyft, etc won was because they could actually perform a job the taxi&#x27;s had been failing at for years.

&gt; Among biggest impacts of the ride services has been the drop in taxi rides taken by people in ramp taxis, which carry people in wheelchairs. As the ride services have grown and the number of cabs has diminished, so has the availability of wheelchair-accessible taxis, which are costlier to operate.<p>That&#x27;s certainly a negative effect, but why would it result from the rise of ridesharing services? If taxi companies need to scale back the number of cars in their fleet, shouldn&#x27;t they only take from the cars that <i>aren&#x27;t</i> accessible?

I have no sympathy for the SF taxi industry. I can&#x27;t count the number of times I was left stranded at 2 AM on a friday or saturday night, having to walk home in the rain. It&#x27;s about time.

Here is the best I can find on the clean air standards. I think pushing taxi companies to use hybrids, all electric, natural gas vehicles, etc. <a href="http://www.sfmta.com/about-sfmta/blog/sf%E2%80%99s-taxis-can-help-you-go-green" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sfmta.com&#x2F;about-sfmta&#x2F;blog&#x2F;sf%E2%80%99s-taxis-can...</a>

<p><pre><code> no clean-air standards </code></pre> Either the author is attempting to bias their readers or was unintentionally misleading -- California generally requires personal vehicles to be smog tested on a regular basis. I should know; my less than four year old car (at the time) had to be smog tested just this past year.

Want to kill Uber and Lyft?<p>Require drivers to be as ADA-compliant as taxi services.

wait until NFC truly takes off...

&quot;decimate&quot;, so they reduced it by 10%?