Taxi Driver Online

The Human Cost of Uber and Lyft: Life in the Dying Taxi Industry

Carl Ditlefsen vacuums out his car as the sun sets on the Green Cab taxi lot. He’s the only cab driver here. Next to the lot is a cluttered two-person office and a tarp lean-to. It covers a portable toilet with a sign that reads “Taxi Driver Parking Only.”

Ditlefsen just finished a slow 11-hour shift, and he’s had only one good ride all day. His pay will be less than minimum wage, and these days, that’s normal. Ditlefsen’s competitors, like Lyft and Uber drivers, routinely make $20 to $30 an hour. “I used to work four or five days a week, and you were able to survive,” Ditlefsen said. “You weren’t on easy street by any means, but you were able to survive. If you keep me busy that’s all I ask.”

Ditlefsen is wearing a blue hoodie that’s worn and pilled. One of his black sneakers has partially separated from the sole. I asked him if he thought he’d retire anytime soon. “Oh, I don’t think there’s retirement in sight,” Ditlefsen said. “You drive until you die. Whether you like it or not, a lot of us don’t have retirements to fall onto.”

Taxi drivers like Ditlefsen are being sent to the brink by Uber and Lyft. Over the years, the companies have pushed down the cost of a ride and the earnings for drivers. Cab drivers have tried to fight back, protesting and forming unions. But Uber and Lyft’s footprints continue to expand.

Recently, Doug Schifter, a for-hire black-car driver in New York City, went to the steps of City Hall and shot himself to protest the industry’s decimation. Before taking his life, Schifter posted on Facebook about the financial pressure put on drivers like him by services like Uber.

The taxi companies themselves are imploding. In San Francisco, Yellow Cab went bankrupt in 2016. Yellow Cab had around 500 medallions, which the city sold for $250,000 apiece. The company ended up selling for around $810,000, a little more than the sticker price for just three medallions.

Yellow Cab, Luxor and Citywide have all been consolidated into one company. Green Cab, Ditlefsen’s company used to have 19 members. Now it’s down to six. And they don’t even drive full time. Mark Gruberg is a taxi driver and co-founder of Green Cab, which is driver-owned. Gruberg said many younger drivers have left the industry and those who remain are mostly career drivers. Many of them are stuck with medallions, which can be a big financial burden. The upshot of all this is that there are fewer cabs on the road.

Mark Gruberg says Uber and Lyft have taken away even the biggest taxi paydays, like Valentine;s Day, Halloween and New Year’s Eve. (Sam Harnett/KQED)
Gruberg shows me the company’s shift schedule. It used to be filled all the time. Now the schedule is shot through with yellow, the color for unfilled shifts.

Gruberg says Uber and Lyft have taken away cab drivers’ biggest paydays: Valentine’s Day, Halloween, St Patrick’s Day, even New Year’s Eve. None of these days bring in the business they used to. Gruberg says drivers have lost between a third and half of their income. At the end of every shift, Deborah Sears, the office manager, adds up what drivers earned. “There’s days when some guy will come in and say, I had three fares today,’ ” Sears said. “It’s like going out there and playing Russian roulette.”

Veena Dubal, a professor of law at UC Hastings, recently conducted an ethnographic study, comparing cab drivers with those for Uber and Lyft. Dubal says identity plays a huge role in the lives of these drivers. “The sort of dignity that people got from their work when they were full-time professional drivers is just not possible with Uber and Lyft.”

Dubal said ride apps like Uber and Lyft are not only destroying the stable long-term jobs of the taxi industry, but also the sense of community in the industry. “Because of how low the fares are they have to drive and drive and drive and drive for an inordinate amount of time in order to eke out a living,” Dubal said. “So there isn’t an opportunity to build community in the same way that there was in the taxi industry.”

Dubal says the “app drivers” are way more atomized, isolated. There’s no taxi lot, less of a sense of community. They just flip on the app and drive, feeding customer demand for cheap, convenient rides. Dubal said “consumers who use these ride services are absolutely complicit” in the destruction of the taxi industry.

Joe Disalvo just arrived at the Green Cab office for his shift. He has a bright, bushy, white mustache and bifocal lenses. “I’ve heard drivers say things like, ‘If I don’t die of old age soon, I’m going to go crazy,’ ” Disalvo said. ‘I’ve heard drivers say things like, ‘If I don’t die of old age soon, I’m going to go crazy.’ ”

Disalvo has been driving since 1984. He’s one of the career drivers who is locked into the job. “I’m 74, and if I was younger I’d just leave,” Disalvo said. “I’d get a second job or go do something else, but my time has passed for that. I have to do what I am doing for as long as I can and make it work somehow.”

Disalvo is also stuck financially. He took out a loan to buy a medallion. For Disalvo and many others, it was the de facto taxi retirement plan. Now Disalvo says a medallion is pretty much a worthless piece of tin and a huge financial burden. “There are drivers who are applying for food stamps and welfare,” Disalvo said, “I haven’t done it, I haven’t had to, but this is the first year I’ve been underwater.”

Disalvo finishes the tiny paper cup of water he’s drinking, crunches it and drops it in the trash. He thanks me for letting him vent. That, he said, will at least keep him going for a little while longer.

_________________
IDFIMH

You have to have a degree of sympathy for these fellas.

About the same degree that I use to have for the immigrants driving their cabs for starvation wages.

Those same immigrants are now driving their own cars on Uber/Lyft (possibly both) earning hopefully a little bit more.

And do I have sympathy for the firm that bought up 500 medallions (plates)? I don't f***ing think so.

_________________
IDFIMH

Of course, pre-booking always a threat to HCs doing street work. Twenty years ago in Dundee when the hacks basically did all the work a private hire company was formed and used E-class Mercs and uniformed drivers and charged the same fares as hacks. This seemed to have some impact on the street work, and I remember thinking that in theory customers could stop street hires altogether. It never happened, obviously, and the whole thing was over-ambitious and eventually ended up part of the hack circuits.

Same in Edinburgh, where the black cabs had the whole thing sewn up for years, then the private hire sector ballooned and were undercutting the hacks on price.

So in a way Uber just continuing that process, although the total disappearance of on-street hirings a long way off yet, assuming it ever does happen.

And remember claims that mobile phones would mean people would stop hiring cars on the streets? To a degree that probably did happen, but of course the impact was limited.

So app-based booking and Uber just an extension of that process, and obviously it's had more of an impact in some places than others, as has private hire generally. And as well as the app itself and the convenience of the booking process, there are other factors to consider like price and quality - the reason Uber has done so well in London is because it's a bit easier to challenge the black cabs on price, and the PH sector there seems a bit hit or miss. And there's also a shift from other modes of transport in London that's probably not the case so much in the likes of Glasgow and Edinburgh, which is perhaps why Uber maybe not having quite so much impact outside the capital.

And as regards the situation in the US outlined in the article, because of the different rules there it's difficult to think of things in the same terms as we do. For example, in some US cities it seems there's no PH been allowed at all, so hacks did the street work and controlled all the circuits. So along comes Uber and the rules have been changed to accommodate them and, voila, a huge PH sector appears overnight, so it's bound to hit the medallion holders harder than the hacks in the likes of Liverpool and Edinburgh.

It would appear that what is really happening is private hire whatever its form is creating the perfect storm of the rush to be bottom,why keep undercutting fares,private hire is not a charity,the persons who work on these circuits have the right to earn a reasonable living not to be subsidised by benefits.The operators are creaming it while the person with the biggest outlay sees their returns reducing week on week.

Indeed, but nothing particularly new about that.

Problem is there's no 'right to earn a reasonable living'.

I remember a pub near where I lived, it was shut for months, someone reopened it and it was closed again within a few days, presumably because of lack of custom.

Unfortunately that's the way the world works, an it isn't changing anytime soon.

Having used Uber/Lyft in the USA, and Uber/Ola in India, they are as cheap as chips.

Basically due to them currently being unregulated.

_________________
IDFIMH

Shame on you,using an unregulated service.

Issue is not just down to price, the issue is also down to service and availability.

And in India air-con.

_________________
IDFIMH

Certainly helps the customers in terms of price and availability if unregulated. Would also encourage part-time/occasional drivers.

Of course, USA regulation very messy even compared to our own, so not sure if they're unregulated everywhere. Think they are in some jurisdictions, in others they operate as equivalent to PH, in some the rules have been changed to accommodate them, in others completely banned.

But think Uber had their fingers burnt with bannings, bad publicity and even imprisonment for officials before the really got going in the UK, so by and large they seem to have just conformed to the licensing regime here, although you can't compare the UK with a relatively light touch licensing regime ready made for them with a US city where PH aren't even allowed to exist.

Likewise, even in the UK there's a world of difference between some areas where a PH driver's licence entails little more than filling in a form, while on the other hand in places like Aberdeen and Brighton there's a stiff knowledge test and it's the same as for the HCs (I think).

Of course, ways have been found to get round this in recent years, but that's another story...

this is what Uber are striving for destroy the competition capture the market and in 10 years time they will make apples profits look tiny by comparison which is why investors are queueing up to pour money in

Uber are far too well financed and too big to fail no matter what current results show

_________________
lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

In time they will run out of money.

Their business model, IMO, is not sustainable.

_________________
IDFIMH