David Nelson (Tableau)

Ride Apprentice from Newshare

2 Driver

I drove taxi for 10+ years until about 2012 while I went to College. It was often a hard job which usually paid modestly. The bad reputation of cab companies and drivers is partly deserved. That said, the advent of TNC Taxis was largely a gimmick (albeit a useful gimmick) accompanied by a completely opportunistic business model. Sure, competition is a good thing. Sure, taxis needed to move into the future. That doesn't mean the rollout of TNCs was good for the industry or society as a whole. It's a complex discussion.

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     3 years ago in  It's time to call Rideshare what it is: Taxi

    I'm not up to speed at this point whether Uber and Lyft have rules which cover everything I wrote about. Some localities have instituted regulations to cover these issues to one degree or another. One thing is for sure: having good ethics is an ongoing challenge for all businesses and individuals. When we assume everything is fine, you can be pretty sure we are losing our grip on keeping up.

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     3 years ago in  It's time to call Rideshare what it is: Taxi

    I drove taxi for ten years. When TNCs came to town, they didn't have to provide 24/7/365 service, did not have to be trained for customer safety and sensitivity, and did not have to provide service area wide which left out many people. They also didn't have to provide service to people in wheelchairs and so on. Basically, it was independent contracting using a network model in a spirit of opportunism completely lacking in oversight. There have been some changes, but much of this is still true. It is facile to distill reality down to two issues - level of service (for some not all) and cost. Let's see how those change if we bring a good set of ethics into the equation.

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