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Brilio.net/en - At the end of 2015, the taxi drivers of New York City had found a new way to catch the peoples attention about their precarious situation. A calendar illustrated by pictures of some of the drivers was launched. It is still available online, offers worldwide shipping in addition to being available in shops all over the US. the initiative was this year aiming to deal with the current economic issues taxi drivers have to face all over the world.
ber, the app that got itself talked a lot about since its launch in 2010 in San Francisco, has raised a lot of conflicts, especially with taxi drivers. ber is indeed directly competing with the latter by offering higher service quality, almost immediate satisfaction of demand and of course, a cheaper price in the end.
In New York, despite the former interdiction coming from the city council to limit the number of ber drivers to ten thousand, there are currently over twenty thousand ber X drivers in New York. Logically meaning less clients for the taxis, and leading to great losses for the taxi system of the city in general.
In all countries where ber has been set up, there have been protests, demonstration and many acts of violence. In New York, there is a main difference with other countries or cities: the great majority of the local taxi drivers are immigrant and a large amount of them recently immigrated. Why does that make a difference? In a difficult situation for most of them, they have to keep a low profile and cant afford to become a newly criticized target of society. Indeed, despite the fact that taxis were facing the same ber effects at the same level than their foreigner colleagues, the taxi drivers organised a reunion in front of the city council to demonstrate their discontentment and disappointment in a very quiet way, far from the ber drivers ambuscades or blocking of the main roads that happened in other countries.
On top of the calendar initiative, the taxi driver association of New York launched a similar app, Arro to try to compete with ber. It remains to be seen if the same quality standards are respected, because the situation of the taxis might be a social concern, however, one cannot blame a competitor to better satisfy customers.
(brl/red)
