“…From the literature review (Skok & Baker, 2018), only one study (Wood, Parry, Carruthers, & Rose, 2017) focused on London's transportation network, utilising a small sample of customer surveys and focus groups with passengers, taxi, and Uber drivers. A sample of the remaining literature concentrated upon the following types of studies: exploratory (Rayle, Dai, Chan, Cervero, & Shaheen, 2016;Stafford, 2016), case (Skok & Baird, 2005;Skok & Tissut, 2003), descriptive (Dudley, Banister, & Schwanen, 2017;Verboven & Vanherck, 2016), law (Elliott, 2016;Posen, 2015), and discussion (Gabel, 2016;Smith, 2016).…”
Section: Overview Of Existing Studies Related To the Research Problemmentioning
This paper considers how London's private hire vehicle (PHV) industry and the regulatory authority, Transport for London, can react to Uber's well‐funded, aggressive entry into the marketplace, outlines the new challenges they face, and describes the strategic directions that are available to the PHV industry for their survival.
Using a narrative enquiry, the study explores the impact from the co‐evolution of 3 megatrends (information and communication technology advancement, paradigm change, and public preferences) to understand and interpret the methods being deployed to compete, issues faced by drivers, stakeholders' perceptions of regulations, and the options for the future direction of the industry.
The research concludes that the impact has been profound, with themes emerging such as passenger safety, driver employment status, sustaining operators' service levels, and regulatory changes. Moreover, there is a premise that short‐term planning is dominant, which raises concerns regarding the move towards electric and autonomous vehicles.
The research also recommends practical methods for small private hire operators to review their business models in the form of a roadmap.
An app is also proposed in order to aid in implementing a stakeholder engagement strategy and to manage future regulatory requirements.
Finally, suggestions are made for further research to identify the future direction of London's PHV industry, considering the Mayor of London's draft transport strategy, and to clarify drivers' employment status.
The paper may be useful to taxi service operators and regulators in other international cities that are faced with the disruptive nature of smartphone technology to their traditional working practices.
“…From the literature review (Skok & Baker, 2018), only one study (Wood, Parry, Carruthers, & Rose, 2017) focused on London's transportation network, utilising a small sample of customer surveys and focus groups with passengers, taxi, and Uber drivers. A sample of the remaining literature concentrated upon the following types of studies: exploratory (Rayle, Dai, Chan, Cervero, & Shaheen, 2016;Stafford, 2016), case (Skok & Baird, 2005;Skok & Tissut, 2003), descriptive (Dudley, Banister, & Schwanen, 2017;Verboven & Vanherck, 2016), law (Elliott, 2016;Posen, 2015), and discussion (Gabel, 2016;Smith, 2016).…”
Section: Overview Of Existing Studies Related To the Research Problemmentioning
This paper considers how London's private hire vehicle (PHV) industry and the regulatory authority, Transport for London, can react to Uber's well‐funded, aggressive entry into the marketplace, outlines the new challenges they face, and describes the strategic directions that are available to the PHV industry for their survival.
Using a narrative enquiry, the study explores the impact from the co‐evolution of 3 megatrends (information and communication technology advancement, paradigm change, and public preferences) to understand and interpret the methods being deployed to compete, issues faced by drivers, stakeholders' perceptions of regulations, and the options for the future direction of the industry.
The research concludes that the impact has been profound, with themes emerging such as passenger safety, driver employment status, sustaining operators' service levels, and regulatory changes. Moreover, there is a premise that short‐term planning is dominant, which raises concerns regarding the move towards electric and autonomous vehicles.
The research also recommends practical methods for small private hire operators to review their business models in the form of a roadmap.
An app is also proposed in order to aid in implementing a stakeholder engagement strategy and to manage future regulatory requirements.
Finally, suggestions are made for further research to identify the future direction of London's PHV industry, considering the Mayor of London's draft transport strategy, and to clarify drivers' employment status.
The paper may be useful to taxi service operators and regulators in other international cities that are faced with the disruptive nature of smartphone technology to their traditional working practices.
“…At the court case (No: CO/1449/2015), Lord Justice Ouseley ruled: A taximeter, for the purposes of Section 11 of the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998, does not include a device that receives GPS signals in the course of a journey, and forwards GPS data to a server located outside of the vehicle, which server calculates a fare that is partially or wholly determined by reference to distance travelled and time taken, and sends the fare information back to the device.Uber, therefore, retained their app format in London (Watanabe et al, ). In contrast, Allen () and Gabel () propose that there is a symbiotic relationship between regulators and incumbent actors, which manifests itself as a quasi‐monopoly. Although these studies relate to the Australian and U.S. markets, some similarities can be drawn with London's taxis.…”
Section: Literature Reviewmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The discussions observed that incumbent monopolies are being protected (Gabel, ); however, there is a consensus that regulators should ensure that app providers are also monitored to avoid similar market dominance and monopoly control (Harding et al, ; Qian & Ukkusuri, ).…”
Uber is a very well-funded operation that has made innovative use of smartphone technology in the highly regulated and bureaucratic market of international taxi cab operations. The company has often adopted an aggressive approach when entering the marketplace in a given city, so the question arises as to how should the incumbent taxi trade react to such fierce competition that is popular with the public.
This paper describes a literature review related to the taxi and private hire industry inLondon that provides a foundation to answer this question. A second paper will present recommendations to help organisations prepare a response to the new competition.From the collated journals, various themes emerged, and their reference lists were analysed to review recurring authors. The literature was organised into a thematic analysis grid to critique the content and analyse the implications for a project to evaluate the possible way forward for the taxi trade in response to Uber's aggressive approach. Six key themes were identified: disruptive innovation, sharing economy, business model, historical context, regulations, and labour.The literature review was extended to include studies of the same area in the United States. Caution was exercised, as the U.S. market operates different ground transportation services and regulations. Nonetheless, comparisons were drawn regarding factors that were similar.The identification of the six key themes will aid the taxi trade as well as researchers who wish to investigate the impact of Uber as and when it moves into new international markets.
“…To some, regulation has lost its benign roots and today is a mechanism for earning revenue for city governments through the charging of supra-competitive rates [20], or for shoring up the privileged positions of those who have operator licences [27]. This varied perception of regulation around the world has led to deregulation in different ways and to differing degrees.…”
Section: The Taxi/private Hire Market Before and Since Ubermentioning
The history of Uber's interaction with local and national governments is surveyed to provide a case study for the wider issue of the governance of private-sector involvement, technological innovation and disruption in the mobility sector. Uber's tenacious and highly competitive approach to building markets is identified as a significant challenge to authorities and the limited power they have over Uber (beyond simply refusing access) is acknowledged. Uber's entry into the delivery of statutory services is identified as a particularly striking development. The case of Uber provides useful insights concerning technological innovation and disruption, but more important is the company's business model. The analysis enables some findings concerning how authorities can prepare for the "next" Uber: these include working on preparedness (by conducting futures work, for example); on standing arrangements (such as insisting on an open data model); and on responding to the entry of a challenging provider or service, through the use of experimental legislation.
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