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London's black cabs have promised to bring "chaos, congestion and confusion" to London as a protest against the growing presence of smartphone taxi service Uber. They are planning for 10,000 drivers to meet at a London landmark (which hasn't been named yet) in early June.
Steve McNamara, LTDA's [Licensed Taxi Drivers Association] general secretary, told the BBC: "I anticipate that the demonstration against TfL's [Transport for London's] handling of Uber will attract many many thousands of cabs and cause severe chaos, congestion and confusion across the metropolis."
This amid lawsuits in some places and drivers being fined in others.
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Uber vs London Taxis - Protest via Gridlock
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Your aim is high and to the right.
(Score: 1) by Theophrastus on Friday May 09 2014, @11:44PM
At least in the major cities in the states, uber (uber with a random suffix, lyft, etc) are a somewhat viral effort (by some *very* rich folks. often with 'amazon' on their business cards) to take over the admittedly ossified and byzantine arrangement between taxi, limo, towncar and their resident municipal governments. It is not without a lot of significant history that taxis are licensed within a city with a lot of brutal strictures placed upon them (e.g. "medallions"), they have already explored just about every means possible of shafting the customer and their cities have reacted to that.
So there we were, looking at a detente of sorts. Then along comes: "Hey, these guys are in the stone-age! no smart-phone connectivity at all! and we have unemployed young males (mostly) who have cars. let's eat their breakfast and dinner too!" Once again the reasons for the old detente are slowly re-discovered... gimmick-ed fare rates, questionable safety, no insurance, dangerous competitive behavior, nigh kidnapping... and that's where we sit. So if Amazon really wants to use this as a means to ramp into a (pre-drone) quick delivery service, i think they'll actually have to start talking nice to the cities they inhabit (but currently they don't think so)
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday May 09 2014, @11:54PM
On what basis did you link Amazon and Uber?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by Theophrastus on Saturday May 10 2014, @12:09AM
For lack of a more terse reference try searching on: bezos uber
(or search down the page on the Uber wikipedia page)