Taxis May Be Bouncing Back Despite Competition From Uber And Lyft
http://sfist.com/2015/11/23/taxis_may_be_bouncing_back_despite.php
You may have assumed that taxi cabs were an endangered species and likely bound for extinction in the next few years, but that assumption may be very wrong. As the Wall Street Journal reports, while there was a spike in selling off taxi medallions in 2013, that trend has slowed considerably, with only 16 medallion sales occurring last quarter — a similar rate of medallion sales to 2010, when only 15 changed hands in a quarter.
Also, significantly, the number of people applying for taxi driver licenses, known as A-cards, has gone way up in the last two years. Between 2012 and 2014 there was a 100 percent increase, with 452 applicants in 2012, and over 900 applicants in both the years 2014 and 2015.
The reason, according to Flywheel Taxi (the company formerly known as DeSoto) owner Hansu Kim is that drivers can make more money per hour driving a traditional cab than they could as an UberX driver, and he's seen a spike in Uber drivers coming to him wanting to drive cabs. "There is a stigma attached to taxi cab driving," he says. "But Uber and Lyft have created a lot more people who would now consider driving as a way to make money."...
This is a pretty huge turnaround, especially for Kim, who as recently as 17 months ago was declaring that the local cab industry could collapse within 18 months. He went onto rebrand his fleet with the red Flywheel branding, which happened earlier this year in what he said was a "counterpunch" to Uber and Lyft, which had been kicking the ass of taxis, he said.
