The rise of the “ridesharing” service UberX is bleeding traditional taxicabs in Washington - at least according to cabbies. Taxicab company managers and individual drivers said their business is down at least 20 percent — and in some cases much more — because they cannot compete with the unregulated, low-price competition of UberX.
“Calls coming in for dispatch trips and for the total trips overall, we are seeing a consistent 30 percent decline,” said Roy Spooner, general manager of Yellow Cab, the largest independent cab company in the District.
Street hails are down 22 percent and dispatches are down 20 percent, said Jeff Schaeffer, the president of District Cab and 15 smaller taxicab fleets. The impact has been particularly severe in Northwest Washington, "where ridesharing services target," Schaeffer said. Precise District-wide data is not available.
A similar lament can be heard at VIP Cab’s nearby headquarters in Northeast Washington, where manager Ali Tahmaseb was discussing the tough times with a group of unhappy cab drivers.
“Uber thinks they are above the law and can do whatever they want,” Tahmaseb said. “We're down about 30 percent. Business is most definitely down because I hear from the drivers themselves.”
For some of the drivers who were stopping by Tahmaseb’s office to cash in their receipts, their individual situations seemed dire.
“Every day the business is going down. I can say about 40 percent, sometimes 50 percent. We are losing a lot,” said Taye Lemma, a cabbie for eight years. “We have to work longer hours, and even if you work long hours you can’t get enough money to make your life.”
“I have been out since 8 a.m. this morning. I had only five jobs, $60, and it’s late afternoon,” said a dejected Rad Akorli, a dispatch driver for Diamond Cab, who said he has lost 75 percent of his usual business.
“When you drive around you see UberX vehicles just stopping by, picking up just like ordinary taxicabs,” said Akorli, repeating a common accusation that UberX drivers routinely swipe passengers by picking up street hails.
DCTC denies shift
Despite such evidence that UberX is significantly depleting the cab industry’s customer base, the D.C. Taxicab Commission issued a statement saying “empirical observations of D.C. do not provide hard data at this point to indicate a shift by riders.”
Linton said the District’s taxi fleet has lost about 10 percent of its trips, dropping from 20 million annual rides to 18 million, attributing the loss to the reduction of available vehicles, 6,700 to 5,700.
“It should be noted that approximately 90 percent of these rides are generated by street hails. Ridesharing vehicles are prohibited from accepting street hails which only metered vehicles are allowed to accept and the Commission has the responsibility to prevent illegal street hails,” Linton said.
Cab companies say although their vehicles can now be e-hailed through their own apps or through third-party apps like Hailo or MyTaxi, UberX has a distinct advantage because it operates entirely outside the existing regulatory structure. It also is unclear how many drivers and trips UberX is compiling in D.C. because the company does not disclose proprietary business data.
“These companies like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar are not telling you how many vehicles they have in the market,” said District Cab’s Schaeffer. “You can't just flood a market for numerous reasons. You have safety concerns, congestion, EPA, just to move around the city is getting absurd.”
The D.C. Council is expected to take up legislation in the next few weeks that would create a regulatory structure for the “ridesharing” services.
The bill being drafted by D.C. Council member Mary Cheh is expected to require either “ridesharing” drivers or their companies to obtain primary commercial liability insurance for at least part of the time they are on the road, and to conduct more stringent background checks, among other measures.