Uber Vs Taxi in St. Louis
September 18, 2015 | By John Bracamontes |
Uber has been trying to break into the St. Louis marketing for a while now and have been unsuccessful to this point.
There is a vote tomorrow on whether or not they will be allowed in.
There have been many heated debates over why St. Louis is not allowing Uber to enter our market.
I want to give my opinion on this here and it likely won’t be popular with many of you.
Uber isn’t needed in St. Louis.
It’s not that I don’t think Uber is “cool”, has ease of access through technology and helps individuals generate extra income.
But what I am saying is that St. Louis doesn’t need more paid drivers.
St. Louis has a clean, robust and affordable public transit system and compared to other cities very light public foot traffic throughout the city. This is a very different picture from NYC, LA or Chicago where people crowd the streets and the city footprints are very large. It is hard to get a cab and takes for ever to get from place to place no matter what mode of transportation you decide to take.
I have never once had an issue getting a cab in St. Louis when I needed one.
They are affordable and accessible.
What bringing Uber into St. Louis will do is dilute the use of cabs to the point where the existing cab drivers cannot be sustained and they will lose their jobs. The driving services will be spread across many individuals who will put a couple hundred extra dollars in their pocket each month, but will have totally displaced a number of professional drivers.
Simply put the demand is not here in St. Louis in business terms. It will be cool to use for a while, but will have a larger negative impact overall.
Why can we not implement the efficient technology into our existing cab infrastructure?
Why fight so hard for Uber? Is it really that great?
