Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

https://metropolitan.fi/entry/taxi-deregulation-brings-cheap-rides-and-innovation-to-finland-in-2018

by velmu • 8 years ago

78 71 8 years ago

This reads more like a promotional piece for Whim - rather than a neutral article - as well as no reference for the regulation change (although it is happening).

Mad_Mac• 8 years ago

They mention Whim twice + a pic of the app. I don't really see how that's too promotional. Even Fixutaxi is mentioned more.

illuminati19112• 8 years ago

Uber left Finland last summer due to the harassment from the government and police, but it still made huge difference to the Finnish taxi system.

Before the taxi rides were expensive, service was mediocre and there was no apps nor anything else. After Uber started mixing the market, many new companies have started operating in the field offering travel packages etc. and almost all taxis can now be ordered with an app and people can see their location in real time.

Only thing that hasn't changed is the pricing (taxis are extremely expensive in Finland) but thankfully that's about to change soon.

Spacemolte• 8 years ago

Uber seems really shady, but their impact competitionwise seems like a great development.

1. Uber sucks, everything is great as it is now. 2. Uber sucks, but the competition is great. 3. Uber is great

I'm at 2.

dyyni3• 8 years ago

Taxis aren’t that expensive in Finland compared to other Nordic countries or countries with similar living costs as Finland.

Swedish taxis are unregulated and there fares have risen faster than in Finland.

And Uber as a ride hailing service was perfectly legal in Finland. The issue was they were hiring drivers that didn’t have taxi permits (and didn’t pay taxes).

jpatokal2• 8 years ago

C'mon. Getting a taxi permit in Finland requires taking a bunch of mandatory courses on highly Uber-relevant topics like "how to use your taxi meter" (185 EUR) and "local navigation without a GPS" (260 EUR), then passing an exam with questions like "from memory, name all roads between random location X and random location Y", meaning you're looking at a bare minimum of 700 EUR and several weeks of full-time study to get licensed: https://taksikoulu.net/kurssit/#hinnasto

And Uber was way (as in, 30-50%) cheaper than taxis while it operated in Helsinki.

illuminati19112• 8 years ago

If the pricing of taxis is correlated with local purchasing power, taxis are almost (#2 or #3) most expensive in the world in Finland.

It doesn't matter if the prices increase or decrease. The price will get adjusted according to the market needs IF there are no other regulations or interferences. If the prices increase, it means that there are other regulations or restrictions in place which are not publicly known or people don't have a need for taxis in Sweden. The former assumption is probably correct one in this case.

Outside of North Europe in countries with similar living costs as Finland taxis are still much cheaper like Israel or Japan even though their taxi markets are also regulated.

Also in Finland car purchases for taxi drivers used to be subsidised with tax money resulting in most of the taxi cars being expensive luxury cars like Mercedes', Teslas etc. Nothing wrong with luxury cars, but most people just wanna get from A to B and not pay fortune for it.

pluma2• 8 years ago

I can't speak for Finland but to me Uber seems similar to Facebook in many ways (though it currently doesn't seem like Uber is as successful internationally):

Taxi apps started out in 2007/2008 according to Wikipedia, most apps I'm personally aware of (in Western Europe) seem to have popped up at some point in 2010, roughly the same time as Uber launched in the US. I remember using a taxi app in 2011 but the signup was too much of a hassle compared to just dialing the local taxi dispatch number for the city. Currently taxi.eu seems to be the most successful brand in Germany but it's still far from ubiquitous. Uber isn't available (except for UberX, which is using a third-party limousine service, and UberTaxi, which is using regular taxis) for obvious reasons.

Facebook expanded beyond English-speaking students in late 2006. Prior to its launch in Germany there were a number of competitors, most prominently StudiVZ (later MeinVZ) which started in late 2005 and targeted German-speaking students exclusively (StudiVZ was obviously drew inspiration from Facebook at several points but I recall similar networks popping up -- and dying -- even earlier than that). There were also more general social networks like Lokalisten (founded mid 2005) and Werkenntwen (launched in late 2006) that also had similar features to Facebook and attempted to build similar online communities.

Many of these sites were initially far more popular than Facebook. Because Facebook wasn't initially available in German, Facebook was simply not relevant at the time. It was just one network among many and it didn't have much appeal.

Over time more people joined Facebook for various reasons and eventually the alternatives faded into obscurity. Many of the networks that were widely known at the time don't even have a Wikipedia article and didn't get much news coverage at the time, so it's easy to forget they even existed. Instead Facebook is credited as having been revolutionary in ways that simply don't hold up to scrutiny.

It seems the perception of Uber is similar to that of Facebook, except the competitors are still around. I don't think Uber was a necessary nor sufficient factor in popularising taxi apps. I'm not familiar with the situation in Finland but considering what is happening elsewhere, I'm not convinced Uber caused taxi apps to become a thing, taxi apps were already becoming a thing alongside Uber and maybe you're just seeing a causation where there's only a correlation at best.

orangehour• 8 years ago

It doesn't help that StudiVZ is based off of Facebook, so it's not really revolutionary either.

wott2• 8 years ago

I lived 8 years in Finland.

Taxis were not expensive, they were also easily available and convenient, and an incredible lot of people used them. I mean, you could easily get taxis in the middle of the night in small towns (below 5000 inhabitants) or even more remote villages, and regular low to middle income people would use them with no second thought. Also drivers would not even complain if they called for a short distance trip.

It was a shock for me, coming from France, where nobody 'normal' would ever use a taxi in a 'normal' situation. And if you ever try, you generally do not try again: no availability, extremely expensive price, and generally, as a driver, a moron who complains about you or anything. So most French people only use a taxi every other year to get a ride to the airport, and that habit was so ingrained in me that I never got to initiate taxi rides in Finland because it does not fit in my mental model when I want to get somewhere. But Finns had no such problem :-)

mandelken• 8 years ago

Taxi's don't scale in an urban environment. Their use is exactly for night or irregular use. Go to Mumbai, Jakarta, or any low income country and you'll find yourself stuck for hours in a cheap taxi. We need regulation because the market will not build railroads and metro's.

"A developed country is not where the poor drive a car, but where the rich take public transportation". Visit and compare Switzerland with Egypt/India/... and you'll see.

jpatokal2• 8 years ago

This argument seems like a non-sequitur. Helsinki already has a well-developed public transport system, particularly considering its size, and nobody's about to abandon it and switch to taxis, regulated or not. Jakarta and Mumbai have crappy public transport because of a toxic mix of poverty and incompetent governance, and in both taxis are a luxury for the richest of the rich.

I always figured the primary point of taxi regulation in Finland was to ensure that the service would be available even in remote areas that couldn't otherwise sustain it -- but Uber makes it far easier to service those as well.

qplex• 8 years ago

The overall quality of the taxi service _will_ go down with the price cuts. There isn't any way around this.

It was obvious already when Uber was testing their service in Helsinki without adhering to any of the legal requirements.

But it's not just Uber - many other taxi companies operate in Finland already with comparable smartphone apps etc. And they also manage to do it without breaking the law ...

TomMarius4• 8 years ago

The market would build railroads and metros given the chance.

oblio• 8 years ago

The market did build those. Look up robber barons.

Reason0773• 8 years ago

Building a metro requires enormous investment, with a huge but very long-term payback. Most of that return is not direct in the form of ticket revenues, but externalised in the form of economic growth along the metro routes, as well as environmental and social benefits.

Even where you have private companies building and operating metros, it's usually with the direction and financial support (such as land grants and loan guarantees) from governments.

mattmanser2• 8 years ago

I disagree, from experience. I live in an urban environment in the UK with extensive public transport and haven't had a car for the last 5 years.

I have friends and family who live in the 'burbs. There are plenty of times I take a taxi over public transport, including:

    1. I'm in a rush
    2. I need to transport something not small
    3. I'm feeling lazy

Note, that all public transport suffers from some fundamental problems (at the moment[1]). I live in the south of the city. For anywhere I want to travel to in the north I have to walk 10 minutes to get to the bus stop. In certain hours buses get out of sync with their timetables, so you can add another 10/15 minutes of waiting.

Also a lot of public transport has moved to the "hub" model, where you have a central hub which connects different routes. While perhaps more efficient in some ways, it's incredibly inefficient for the traveller. It adds a minimum of 20 minutes to any journey where you have to go through a hub. My sister used to joke it takes an hour and 20 minutes to visit a friend living on a different tube line in London. My home town is either 3 lines switches away, adding an hour and a half of waiting to a journey, or I go through the London Hub, inexplicably having to pay a premium.

So while I like and appreciate our public transport, it can be a huge timesink and when you don't want to pay the "time tax" of public transport, taxis fill the role.

[1]I say at the moment as we can imagine a point in the future where you request public transport with your phone and it can on-the-fly accommodate you.

xya3453• 8 years ago

Taxis are only quick in the UK because everyone else is using public transport.

In any undeveloped capital you're forced to use a taxi (or unregulated alternative) to travel any significant distance. Getting anywhere can take hours (travelling at 5km/h is common), is dangerous and uncomfortable (AC is not even ubiquitous in 40c heat).

dagw2• 8 years ago

So while I like and appreciate our public transport, it can be a huge timesink and when you don't want to pay the "time tax" of public transport, taxis fill the role.

Last time I was in London for work I naively hopped in a Taxi at Paddington Station because I was late for a meeting and the tube would take 30 minutes. The taxi took 35 minutes and cost an order of magnitude more.

golergka• 8 years ago

Their use is exactly for night or irregular use

I have exactly the opposite experience. Although public transport here is pretty good (by US standards, anyway - especially the subway system), I usually take the taxi. After all the apps appeared and started to compete with one another, it became extremely cheap (usual ride is about $3, expensive one is $6-7), clean and convenient.

And on top of it, taxis can use public transport lanes - so the traffic isn't that much of an issue.

tuukkah• 8 years ago

This taxi deregulation is just a part of wider transport deregulation in Finland. The aim is at Mobility-as-a-Service startups to provide novel apps that integrate taxis, public transport as well as new services like Uber Pool into a seamless and efficient transport network.

For example, all public transport in Finland will be required to provide a ticket sales API for these new apps. The app can sell you a trip from A to B and fulfill by ordering a taxi to the railway station plus a train ticket to your destination. Here's the press release for an open API from Helsinki Regional Transport Authority HSL: https://www.hsl.fi/en/news/2017/hsl-launch-worlds-first-publ...

nitwit005• 8 years ago

Taxi's don't scale in an urban environment.

You mean, cars don't scale in an urban environment.

The limits on the number of taxis is typically to force up the cost so the taxi drivers could make more, not to improve traffic.

fulafel2• 8 years ago

Cars don't scale outside urban areas either: Widespread daily private car use is not environmentally sustainable even with EVs, which still have about 50% of the lifetime CO2 footprint of fossil cars.

Taxis have the advantage that you can use them very sporadically, so they're a good solution for a world with less cars.

davnn• 8 years ago

I thought Finland was one of the few places where taxi prices were high enough that taxi drivers could make a fair living off it. Those days are probably gone.. I don't see the great innovations that ride hailing services bring to the table at this point.

Having another person drive you around should expensive in my opinion.

indubitable• 8 years ago

You have to keep in mind that prices are, generally, not magical. The price is a balance between what people are willing to sell something for and what people are willing to buy it for. Of course that's elementary, but thinking about this will explain why drivers, in general, will not be well paid.

Driving is a low value skill that the vast majority of people have, and if they don't have - they can learn it rapidly. Let's imagine now being a driver was lucrative. Well you'd have a ton of people racing to become drivers, no pun intended. But with so many people willing to drive people around, it'd mean a shortage of work for all the drivers. And so somebody would offer to drive people for a little bit less. And that'd repeat on downward until we reached the equilibrium point at which not enough drivers were willing to go below.

There are some exceptions like truck driving where people spend hours and hours on the road driving vehicles that do require some degree of skill to manage. And so the wages there are still pretty decent. It's not just driving per se, but unpleasant work that requires some degree of skill.

Ride sharing apps bring market efficiency. If you're willing to drive for $x and people are willing to pay $x, well - why shouldn't you be able to? They're still centralized of course, but I think it takes us one step closer to decentralizing the entire industry which would be amazing, as it entirely removes the middle man and let's people simply directly offer and purchase each others' labor. Of course this ideal is pointless in this particular case as automation is imminent and will super-centralize the industry. Although there prices will likely be lower than even a decentralized market could offer.

jimmywanger3• 8 years ago

I thought Finland was one of the few places where taxi prices were high enough that taxi drivers could make a fair living off it.

Please explain why taxi drivers, or any occupation should be able to make a "fair living" (ill defined term) off of it.

In the majority of cases, the only thing regulation of an industry does is raise artificial walls and lower overall use of the good/service. Or maybe you think the DPRK, Venezuela, and Cuba are good examples.

staticelf• 8 years ago

Finland is just killing it lately, I wish Sweden could be more like Finland.

dagw2• 8 years ago

In what sense? Sweden has had a deregulated taxi market for ages

stevekemp• 8 years ago

Could you be more specific? Sure Finland has a lot of great things, despite its small size, but it seems odd that you'd say "lately".

deanclatworthy2• 8 years ago

It’s funny the outsiders perspective of Finland. I can assure you there are plenty of problems here. The government being broke for one and making obscene cuts across the board.

sol_remmy• 8 years ago

i.e. The government is reducing taxes and reducing services.

That's precisely WHY some people like Finland. The government is stepping out of the way (as we can see in this article)

ersii• 8 years ago

That actually sounds perfect in my book, where they are supposed to be as broke as possible and do as little as possible or nothing. :-)

(Yes yes, I'm well aware that most other HNers are of another opinion than I am.)

fulafel2• 8 years ago

By the numbers Finland looks like one of the not-so-broke governments in EU: https://www.statista.com/statistics/269684/national-debt-in-...

A common neoliberal political strategy is to kick up drama about state finances to justify tax cuts and reductions in public services in spite of popular support for welfare, maybe the same here?

acompetency2• 8 years ago

With the healthcare system being privatized, higher education receiving massive cutbacks, falling PISA scores, social welfare being slashed and shoehorned into a new model conditional on employment status, mass surveillance bills being pushed through parliament, a rising far right etc. etc... I agree that it would be wonderful if any country could be more like Finland now, but I doubt you'd want to head the way the country is currently going.

TorKlingberg• 8 years ago

Swedish taxis have been deregulated for ages. It means you have to be careful at the airport, because the taxis waiting can charge you absolutely what they want to take you into the city.

dang• 8 years ago

I realize you're not saying that as a putdown, but please don't post unsubstantive comments about nationalities to HN—it provokes off-topic, often flamewarrish subthreads.

joncrane• 8 years ago

I wonder where Finland draws the line between "taxi" and "ride sharing" (stuff like the Waze commute thing).

alkonaut2• 8 years ago

If they deregulate it’s not unthinkable that they are looking across the water to Sweden. In Sweden there is no difference between different operators, Uber is a Taxi company. You can’t drive anyone for money without being a taxi company.

Actual ride sharing where no one makes money is obviously not taxi. What Waze commute will count as I suspect is still up in the air so long as neither of the people in the car makes any money.

kisstheblade• 8 years ago

Taxi service has been great in finland. Competent drivers (they know their way around the city) and clean cars. Pretty good availability, except for the one hour when the bars close when you have to fight for your life at the taxi stop :)

And you could actually make a decent living driving cabs.

This will probably change and the foreigners who now deliver our food (Foodora et.al.) will start driving taxis.

So drivers getting lost and crashing in the winter months because of lacking skills in snow driving. And of course not speaking finnish so handling the eldery and school transports which are a big service taxis provide here might get more difficult. We'll see... But in my opinnion it is not possible to operate taxis much more cheaply (and with the same quality) as we have now.

AnsemWise2• 8 years ago

Finland doesn't exists.

AnsemWise2• 8 years ago

Exist

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Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

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