Uber customers in New York will soon be able to see yellow cabs arriving after ordering a ride. An agreement has just been sealed by the Californian company with the application developers CMT and Curb Mobility, which equip New York taxis, to integrate them into the services offered by the Uber platform.
The agreement will make it possible to expand the number of cars available for Uber, and the races for yellow taxis: in 2021, nearly 14,000 taxis and 95,000 VTCs held a license to operate in New York, for around one million trips by day, according to the Taxis and Limousine Commission (TLC), the industry regulator.
Price impact uncertain
The agreement, the first of this magnitude for Uber in the United States, was well received on the stock market. And Uber shouldn’t stop there. “We want every taxi in the world to use our platform by 2025,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi recently told CNBC. Arrived about ten years ago in New York, Uber quickly took a large market share: taxis carried out some 45% of trips in Manhattan in 2020, according to the TLC, but VTCs have an overwhelming presence in all other “boroughs” of the city.
For fight back against competition from Uber , the yellow taxis of New York developed their own reservation applications several years ago. Curb, the most used, also allows you to reserve a vehicle, with a price fixed in advance. Customers who prefer to hail a taxi on the street still pay at the meter, but they can also pay for the fare via their app during the trip. Arro, developed by CMT, offers more or less the same services.
The agreement is concluded at a time when both parties have an interest in joining forces. Yellow cabs have been hit hard by the pandemic, which has been coupled with a high and persistent reliance on working from home. Uber, for its part, is hampered by tensions in the job market in the United States. And the prices of VTCs can thus climb very quickly and exceed the price of a taxi ride on the meter. The impact on competition and prices for consumers, however, remains uncertain: drivers will have an interest in taking the most profitable system for them.
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