Both Uber and Lyft are making fans in Las Vegas, Lyft maybe more so. What we've heard about Uber tracks with the experience of Business Insider columnist Maya Kosoff, who had no trouble rendezvousing with her Lyft drivers but "my Uber driver couldn't find me, and it ultimately took 15 minutes of his driving around and my walking around for us to meet up" at Mandalay Bay Convention Center. A similar attempt to use Uber at Aria turned into a 15-minute, rain-soaked exercise in futility.
Part of the discrepancy was explained to Kosoff by Uber/Lyft driver "Ryan," who told Kosoff that Lyft uses GPS technology that provides highly accurate coordinates using Waze, Apple Maps, or Google Maps "after the pin is dropped." Uber, by contrast, "uses an in-app map. We aren't given an address 'just in case'. We can see a pin but cannot zoom in to the in-app map. The app also announces our arrival automatically, even if we're not sure which door you're at, leaving some awkward people scanning to see who's on their phone, then looking up."
Both services made new fans by dropping their fees in time for the Consumer Electronics Show. Kosoff encountered a Vegas cabbie who was "annoyed" by the ride-sharing services but said that his business wasn't hurting because of them. Another cabbie, however, brandished a pamphlet at a Recode.net correspondent that said Vegas taxi drivers had lost 115,000 rides to Uber and Lyft. "You can take Uber and Lyft back [to] San Francisco with you," she added. A ride-sharing driver said cabbies had favored him with choice epithets like, "Go to Hell!", "Go die!" and "I hope you crash!"
Pleasantries aside, ride-hailing drivers say they are making better money and needing less time to do it. (A limo driver, for all of his cache, makes $7.25 an hour, plus tips.)
Uber and Lyft got off to a bad start by imposing "surge pricing" during the iHeart Radio festival. That meant that a $10 ride could ratchet up to $40, depending on supply and demand. Both companies apparently learned a little bit from the bad PR and cut prices by 30 percent ahead of CES, although the surge-pricing option remained in effect. (There were anecdotal complaints of price surges of as much as 620 percent.)
Meanwhile, taxi companies are pushing back, seeking some form of cost parity by asking authorities to reclassify ride-hailing drivers as Lyft and Uber employees, thereby imposing Social Security taxes and benefit packages on the two firms, eating into their profit margins. Bell Transportation President Brent Bell told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "what [drivers are] finding is that because Uber and Lyft lowered their rates before the holidays, they didn't make as much, [but] if they get into an accident, there's no workers' comp, there's no vacation time, no 401(k) and when they get their 1099 forms and realize they have to pay taxes on their income, they're in for a surprise."
The taxi industry doth protest too much, however. In the early months of Uber and Lyft, taxis actually grossed more (3.7% more in November 2015) than they had the previous year. It also scored a victory with the Las Vegas City Council, persuading the latter to charge ride-hailing services $50 per driver as a business-licensing fee. Lyft is suing the city over the fee. As for the Nevada Taxicab Authority, its propaganda victory was short-lived: A recent audit by the State of Nevada found that taxicabs had overcharged passengers to the tune of $47 million and recommended disbanding the NTA.
As for how the ride-hailing companies performed during their big CES showdown with the taxi industry, neither Uber nor Lyft was willing to say anything meaningful. Lyft General Manager Yacob Girma said his company "did really, really well" and an Uber spokesman called the week "extremely successful." By contrast, taxi operator Bell called business flat with the previous year. The only firm numbers available were from McCarran International Airport, which recorded 47,751 taxi pickups during CES against 7,488 ride-hailing ones.
To take some of the sting out of variable Uber fees, when you type in a route using Google maps, it now gives you a set of Uber quotes. For instance, someone going to Red Rock Resort could get there for $30-$39 from uberX, who's nine minutes away, whereas uberXL, three minutes away, wants $40 to $53.
Unfortunately, an apples-to-apples comparison is not possible because ride providers like Uber and Lyft are not required to report their number of fares, unlike the taxi industry, which must, according to Teri Williams of the Nevada Department of Business & Industry.
Judging from the NTA's latest statistics, ride-hailing services are taking a big bite out of the cab business. In the first quarter of 2016, taxi trips were down 13.5 percent in January, 11 percent in February, and 15 percent in March. Only Deluxe (up 28.5 percent) and A-Cab (up 8 percent) posted ride increases over that period. Revenue per trip, however, increased for all companies except those two, for an average of 6.6 percent more in the fare box. The pool of drivers was also diluted, with 51 percent more medallions issued in 2016 to date than in the same period of 2015.
So the ride-sharing services seem to be having an adverse effect on the cabs. However, whether more competition within the cab industry itself is also to blame is a question that would appear to be answered in the affirmative.
