Uber to Lose Private Hire Licence in London(twitter.com) |
Uber to Lose Private Hire Licence in London(twitter.com) |
They have 21 days to appeal and can keep operating until the appeal process itself finishes (Oct 13th then).
> [TFL said] Uber’s approach and conduct demonstrate a lack of corporate responsibility
The 21 days is how long (from now) they have to begin the appeal:-
"The Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998 includes provision to appeal a licensing decision within 21 days of it being communicated to the applicant. Uber London Limited can continue to operate until any appeal processes have been exhausted."
[In that press release] There is no specified time limit on the length of the appeal.
Edit: who are a long-running minicab service who give fixed price bids, have a reasonable app, have their own fleet by dedicated drivers, and are usually price competitive with Uber.
In many ways they are much worse. Their own corporate policies and their CEO encouraged drivers to use bus lanes, to ignore cycle super highways (to drive on them), to ignore all parking and stopping restrictions - if fines were issued the company paid for them to encourage drivers to carry on doing so in protest of not having the same access as black cabs (who in return for their training and being regulated to be accessible, etc are granted access to bus lanes and other stopping locations to ensure that accessibility can be fulfilled).
They also fell foul of using drivers without performing full background checks, etc. And their drivers are reasonably famed for not knowing where they are going (at least Uber technology saves their drivers from needing to know anything about London).
This measure of protection is not afforded to uber drivers, nor are they encouraged to drive illegally by their company.
http://road.cc/content/news/56878-tfl-warns-it-will-take-act...
I sometimes see them racing one another in large lorries, especially around Mount Pleasant. The fact that they have such large vehicles, while also driving unfamiliar routes (i.e. turning down roads that most traffic doesn't) makes them worse.
This is just one data point, but I wasn't impressed.
Buses in London are awful imho, unless you want to go 2 stops. If you want to go more than that then you have to put up with nausea and how slow they are in general getting from A to B.
Underground, its ok for most parts unless its summer... No aircon is a big issue.
Trains... well thats where it gets annoying. I am very biased as I use Southern (the worst train company if you dont know them) which they are totally unreliable.
Thats where uber comes on. As I live in South East london, its either I get an uber on a night out which will take me home with a fair price, or get on a bus spending an average 40 mins more than uber etc. (Not a good experience)
All and all I think TFL's decision sucks, cause its biased on the blackmailing by black cabs. If black cabs want more work etc, they should go out and ask so their faires are lower so people prefer them... Uber takes me £12 to get home, and a black cab is £40 ... I mean seriously what you expect of me to pay the overpriced black cab? I literally don't care that they are buying cars from a specific company and those cars cost a lot etc and their licence takes years to get out etc I don't care. Go out and demonstrate against all that so you can change your job around and become competitive on your prices, don't expect to just drive everyone else out of business. Also I do know cabbies that are millionaires! I hope uber wins this case, I use uber etc, I don't like their policies about drivers and how they treat others etc but well at least it fits my purpose of going around.
./rant over
Edit: the url of the story has now been changed from the original bbc news link to this url
Its up to the government to make the process of getting a licences cab less expensive, and open cabs on having whatever car with X amount of years limited... the monopoly of the company that makes those black cabs and sells them for 150k is absurd.
Hailo allegedly did a piece of research to try and prove that black cabs were better than a private hire vehicle using Google Maps as Hailo had both at the time and had the data to compare.
The point of this was to enable a marketing campaign to sell Hailo for hailing black cabs because bus lane access and the knowledge meant that black cabs would be faster, etc.
But in reality, all they discovered was that for 99% of the time Google Maps was as good as, if not better than, the black cab.
Only in certain parts of London, at the worst of a rush hour or around some sporting event that has fouled up an area... does the black cab come out better by a small fraction, for a short window of time.
Google Maps is for all intents and purposes on par with a black cab and the knowledge.
I can actually walk that in under an hour if I need to.
I've found myself in countless situations where the walk is maybe 10-15 mins longer than any available public transport (Uber included), so I've saved myself the money and taken a hit on a little bit of time.