Shortish arrticle on the New Statesman's website. Most of it nothing particularly new, but a couple of nuggets. And not just a rehash, so worth a read.
Why is there an Uber shortage?https://www.newstatesman.com/the-explai ... r-shortageHave you noticed getting a taxi has become more difficult and expensive? You are not alone.Uber, Lyft and Bolt upended the taxi market with cheap fares and near-instant cabs. But now, members of the public say they worry about getting home from nights out as taxis become increasingly unavailable, and when a ride can be found, it’s often much more expensive than normal. The tech companies say too many drivers are quitting – is this the whole story?
Uber drivers are rejecting more jobs because they aren’t earning as muchNader Awaad, Uber driver and chair of the United Private Hire Drivers’ branch of the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain, has an acceptance rate of 18 per cent, meaning he takes on fewer than one in five of the jobs he’s offered through the platform. The others are all unsustainable at the rate-per-mile Uber now offers, which the union says has dropped by around 20 per cent since the Supreme Court ruled in February that Uber drivers were to be considered employees.
As we spoke, Awaad was offered a 24-mile job – 48 miles in Friday afternoon traffic around Luton – for £29. Some jobs offer less than £1 per mile. “Hundreds of drivers are the same, because the jobs that are coming in have no value,” he told me.
Awaad said Uber’s new fixed-price fares are also a problem for drivers. “If you get stuck in traffic, if the road is closed and you do a diversion for two, three miles, if the customer decides on his way to stop at McDonald’s for five or seven minutes – it’s not counted.
“So drivers feel they’ve been ripped off, and drivers are retaliating by declining jobs.”
When lots of people try to get a cab in one location, companies often apply surge pricing – during which time drivers do earn more, but customers face much higher prices.
Ridesharing has been unrealistically cheap for yearsIn the second quarter of 2019, Uber lost $5.24bn on 1.68 billion trips, effectively paying consumers an average of $3.12 per trip to take over large swathes of the global taxi market. But while it may have eliminated thousands of minicab firms, it did not eliminate competition from other app-based rivals, such as Lyft and Bolt, which pursued similar pricing strategies. This means the areas where these companies have been most successful are most exposed to price hikes, because there is no other competition left.
Driver numbers have fallen, thanks to the pandemic and BrexitThe number of licensed vehicles – taxis and private hire vehicles such as Ubers – in England fell by 15.9 per cent from 2020-21. During lockdown, when cab drivers couldn’t work, many sought other employment – especially for the e-commerce and delivery firms that boomed as the world shopped online. The pandemic has also caused a reported backlog in registrations for those trying to enter the industry, squeezing driver numbers at both ends.
Brexit is also a factor: more than 200,000 EU citizens have left the UK, and the taxi industry (especially in the form of ridesharing platforms) made work quick and easy to find for people coming into the UK before Brexit; in 2016, a quarter of the Romanians and Bulgarians living in the UK were self-employed, mostly in construction and transport.
The cost of driving has risen drasticallyAuto Trader’s average price for a three-year-old Toyota Prius hybrid was £11,600 in March; six months later, the same car averaged £17,759 – an increase of more than 53 per cent. The surging cost of second-hand cars, driven by increased demand and lower production of new cars (thanks to the global chip shortage, among other factors), has steeply increased the entry cost of working for ridesharing apps such as Uber or Lyft.
The price of crude oil has also doubled in the past year, and by 5 November petrol prices far exceeded their previous record to average 145p per litre. While most ridesharing drivers use hybrids to reduce their exposure to petrol price rises, this significant increase in costs bites still further into their profits.
Would you want to drive drunk people around at 3am?As in the HGV industry and the pig farming industry, which is threatened by a lack of butchers, the nature of the job itself also makes it susceptible to turnover. Long, antisocial hours, traffic and rowdy customers mean that when circumstances – such as pay, costs, conditions or the wider economy – change, many drivers will take the opportunity to move on.
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