Ride-sharing alternatives such as Uber are taking a bite out of the business models of traditional taxi services across the nation, as well as here at home, according to veteran drivers and cab company owners.
— Photo by Bobbie Toner

By Douglas Yu

Instead of calling a taxi company to send a cab, you can easily tap a few buttons on your smartphone and locate an UberX car that costs about 20 percent less than a normal cab.

However, this well-funded ride-sharing company from San Francisco is threatening the livelihood of Boston area cab drivers and slowly eating away their business.

Donna Blythe-Shaw, a representative for the United Steelworkers and the Boston Taxi Drivers Association, said in an interview with The Boston Globe that ride-sharing businesses, such as Uber and Lyft, were “unregulated,” and their businesses created an unleveled playing field for the Boston taxi industry.

“The ride-sharing business absolutely has a direct impact on regulated taxi businesses, not just in Boston, but also on any taxi-regulated systems all over the country,” Blythe-Shaw said. “Particularly, Uber came in as a strong service, many cab drivers joined Uber because of the problems we have with a highly regulated and antiquated system.”

Traditionally, the Boston taxi industry is regulated by The Hackney Carriage Unit of the Boston Police Department to ensure the safety of and quality of experience for Boston’s cab passengers. The Boston Police Department warns the public to look for the Medallions on Boston taxis, “remember if it doesn’t say ‘Boston Licensed Taxi,’ you could be in for a bad ride.”

Many Boston residents disagree with the idea that taxis without such medallion could provide a bad ride. In fact, some seriously doubt the safety and quality of those with medallions, each of which now costs $700,000 since the launch of UberX.

Boston resident, Ese Ukponmwan said, “I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen my life flash before my eyes while in a cab. They aren’t the safest drivers.” Ukponmwan also complained that, being minority, he could sometimes have a hard time stopping a taxi.

“When they stop sometimes and I say that I’m going to Arlington, they say they aren’t going there,” Ukponmwan said.

In addition to the fact that there are medallion owners who only care about earning cash from selling medallions rather than taking an interest in taxi industry, an outdated digital service mandated by the radio association also bars Boston taxi drivers from earning good profits. In Boston, a medallion owner has to pay $30 to $80 to one of those radio associations on a weekly basis, according to Blythe-Shaw.

“The frustration is that Boston taxi drivers need to find their own fare, find their rent before they are able to put any food on the table,” Blythe-Shaw said. “You set up a broken system in taxi industry and now you also have the new technology coming in.”

Whether or not the taxi industry is going to survive is questionable, Blythe-Shaw said. “The bottom line is workers, no matter what systems they are working under, Uber, Lyft, the taxi industry is going to suffer. Because Uber just wants its profit. And the drivers, on the other hand, are told what they are going to earn. Sometimes, that’s below the minimum wage.”

Blythe-Shaw thinks that, in the long run, ridesharing businesses have a negative impact on the general public as they will eventually create a libertarian economy in the taxi industry. “In a libertarian economy, most of the money goes to profit makers, very little money goes to the workers and no money goes to the infrastructure.” Blythe-Shaw said.

Safety is another important issue that ridesharing businesses put at risk, according to Blythe-Shaw. “You don’t have insurance for the passengers,” she said. “You cannot use your own vehicle for the purpose of charging passengers.”

To ensure passengers’ safety, Uber background checks every ridesharing and livery driver, providing commercial liability insurance and risk-less cashless transactions.

Colorado Watchdog reported that Justin Kintz, head of the public policy in the Americas for Uber Technologies Inc., said, “A lot of the taxi drivers fail our background checks who are cleared in other cities, because our background check is more stringent.”

Recently, Somerville’s Green and Yellow Cab, who has been serving as a taxi business in Somerville for more than 35 years, posted on Facebook that their company had been attacked on its Yelp page by what the company believed to be “Uber employees to boost their unregulated, unlicensed ‘shared ride’ services.”

“We have no issue with Uber or Lyft per se,” Vice President of Green and Yellow Cab, Cheryl Horan wrote in response to an email interview request by The Somerville Times. “The technology is a way of the future and we applaud this technology. We also have a ‘free’ mobil app that is extremely popular with our customers who want that technology.”

The real issue with ridesharing businesses, as Horan mentioned, is that this new technology is facilitating “self regulated” drivers to act identically to taxi drivers with no rules and regulations. “This poses a huge public safety risk,” Horan wrote. “It is a fact that there have been more assaults on women who use these car’s services. There are exclusions on all personal car plates that the insurance company ‘will not pay any claim for personal injury or property damage while this personal vehicle is being used in a ride sharing program.”

Horan also received complaints from their customers who tried ridesharing companies, and they said “they have been charged in excess of four times and more during peak times and inclement weather.”

“Imagine if the taxi industry tried to do that?” Horan wrote.

Barry Knickle has been a taxi driver for almost 30 years in Boston, and he recently joined Uber too, like many other local cabbies.

“The problem is that there isn’t enough cabs to spread out where over they are supposed to be,” Knickle said that people in neighborhoods, such as Mattapan and Dorchester, sometimes aren’t able to get a cab.

When Knickle stopped his taxi at the Four Seasons Hotel in downtown Boston, he pointed at two other taxis in front of his and said, “Look at these two cabs. Nobody is in them. Most drivers go where they can make money, so most of them have a regular daily routine.”

Knickle thinks that the ridesharing business is a good thing, and he personally is not against it. “But I do think that ridesharing businesses and cab business should be under the same regulations,” he added.

Before the interview with Knickle could move on, a Four Seasons Hotel porter asked him to roll down the cab window and then asked, “Hey, go to the Logan Airport?” Knickle waved the passenger into his cab and took off on his daily routine.