Imagine your city without the iconic yellow taxi cars that drive by every few seconds. With every city that Uber expands into, that vision becomes one step closer to reality.
Uber, the social mobile-based car hailing service that took major US cities by storm, has recently opened its services in Prague. With Prague as the first central and eastern European city to feature this service, Uber has the potential to disrupt and transform the taxi market in many European regions.
Image courtesy of Flickr user Carolyn Coles.
With the large amount of registered Prague taxi services, Uber faces a big challenge. According to Czech.cz, analysts believe Uber’s biggest competitor in Prague is Tick Tack Taxi. Interestingly, however, neither party seems too concerned about the completive landscape. In a Radio.cz interview of Patrick Studener, Uber’s head of expansion for central Europe, the interviewer brought up a statement from the owner of Tick Tack Taxi claiming that the company “did not expect [Uber] to last very long here [in Prague] because he believes [Uber’s] service breaches the law on taxi services.”
“That’s incorrect,” Mr. Studener retorted. “[Uber is] an unmarked contractual service provider. Those services existed before and we are just making it easier for people to connect to them.” Mr. Studener also emphasized that Uber is legal in every city it operates in.
Despite Uber’s legal claims, cities all over the world have banned Uber’s services. Taxi drivers around the central European region have expressed their unhappiness and have even protested the presence of Uber, claiming unfair competition. Prague’s City Hall officials, on the other hand, seem to think otherwise. City councilor Lukáš Manhart expressed his perspective on this to Lidové noviny, a Czech newspaper. “We support any idea that will increase competitiveness in taxi services. We believe it will have a positive effect on the market. Such apps are one way of combating dishonest taxi drivers,” quotes Radio.cz.
Welcoming Uber with open arms is only one way authorities in the Czech Republic are combatting fraudulent taxi drivers. According to Radio.cz, Czech authorities are pushing to ban taximeters that allow taxi drivers to cheat on their taxes. Prague taxi drivers’ dishonesty affects the lives of daily taxi users as well. According to Telegraph.co.uk, Czech developers created an app that allowed users to essentially have a “virtual meter” on their phones to crosscheck the taxi’s meter after a taxi driver cheated the Prague mayor himself.
Despite these efforts, however, taxi dishonesty is still widespread across the Czech capital. Just the other night, a few friends of mine split up to take three taxis from the same location to the same destination; all three taxis charged different prices.
With the massive influential power of mobile social applications, the expansion of Uber into the central European region poses a big question: is Uber the key to finally cleaning up the taxi industry in Prague? According to the Radio.cz interview, Uber certainly feels they are setting the standard for high quality service and excellent customer experiences, but only time will tell.
Featured image courtesy of Flickr user Damian Morys.
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