Thurrock Council requests change to Uber’s Greater London geofencing

Thurrock Council requests change to Uber’s Greater London geofencing

Councillors have called on Uber to update its ride-hailing app after hearing claims that it could be operating “unlawfully” in one district.

Thurrock Council heard the app told Uber drivers the Essex borough was part of Greater London, where they were licensed to operate.

Councillors agreed to call on Uber to change its “geofence”, the virtual boundary used by the app.

Uber said it used “proactive” boundaries to help local authorities.

According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, John Kent, leader of Thurrock’s opposition Labour group, told a full council meeting: “A driver licensed by Thurrock Council can’t simply get in their cab on morning and go and rank up in Upminster [in the London Borough of Havering].

“The issue is that the Uber Greater London geofence includes Thurrock. That allows their vehicles and drivers, who are not licensed by Thurrock, to in effect operate from here as though they were in Greater London.

“This is wrong and we need to take steps to encourage Uber to redraw their geofence to create a level playing field in Thurrock.”

A representative of the Thurrock Taxi Drivers Association told the meeting that Uber’s operation in Thurrock was “unlawful”.

Conservative councillor James Halden said: “It doesn’t matter if the geofence boundary is Thurrock or the entire nation. If there is an allegation of illegality, we should investigate that fully.”

In response, Uber confirmed that its Greater London region included Thurrock, as well as Luton and Gatwick airports and some towns and cities to the west of London.

 

My Taxi launch electric scooter fleet in Lisbon

My Taxi launch electric scooter fleet in Lisbon

After announcing plans to add electric scooters to their portfolio a month ago, MyTaxi revealed the location of their pilot as Lisbon. Customers in the Portuguese capital can rent a scooter from a fleet of hundreds. For Daimler, this may open a whole new venture labelled Hive.

For now they run the kick scooters under a new label, Hive, and Daimler embedded the service in a dedicated app of the same name. Yet Mytaxi CEO Eckart Diepenhorst told German media that this model will either kick-start a new service via Hive or else they may integrate it into the existing MyTaxi ride-hailing offer.

The pilot is new territory for Daimler and the CEO confirmed as much. While they use electric scooters made by Segway in Lisbon, Diepenhorst stressed that it would be “crucial to develop our own hardware” especially when moving into regions with more adverse weather conditions.

Indeed Hive may expand as early as next year depending on the market and the experiences they are making just now. The MyTaxi CEO also pointed to the importance of a good working relation with the respective city. He added it had been a decisive factor when opting for Portugal.

To rent an electric scooter via the Hive app comes at the cost of a one euro base fee and 15 cent per minute afterwards. Half an hour thus adds up to almost 5 euros. This is the normal market rate and the same Lime in Paris is asking. The electric scooters of both Lime or Hive can be left anywhere.

MyTaxi will consider to rolling out their Hive fleet of electric scooters across Europe if things work out in Lisbon.

We are not sure if Hive is the right choice of names for this venture given the popularity of the Hive smart home devices!

The Battle of Tooley St – Sean Paul Day’s victory speech at Bank Junction.

The Battle of Tooley St – Sean Paul Day’s victory speech at Bank Junction.

Enjoy this morning my merry brothers 🔵

By Jove, I am not covetous for gold
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost…
It yearns me not if men my garments wear
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
We few, we happy few…. we band of brothers
The drivers who worked and now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here
They hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks that fought with us upon Bank Junction day.
   
Taxi News is 18 years old this week

Taxi News is 18 years old this week

Taxi-news.co.uk has reached the the milestone of being 18 years old.

Yes Taxi News has been bringing taxi drivers in London, the UK and the World, News from the Taxi Industry.

Taxi News has gone through various reincarnations over the years but the one thing that remains constant is that we have endured through the years to continue bringing taxi drivers the news from their industry.

Taxi News has been around twice as long as any other online News provider to the Taxi Industry.

If there is a story that you would like us to cover please em,ail newsdesk@taxi-news.co.uk

Thank you for your continued support and please keep visiting Taxi-News.

TFL advise Taxi Drivers refuse to take a card rather than use an alternative Payment Device

TFL advise Taxi Drivers refuse to take a card rather than use an alternative Payment Device

Today has seen outages on the O2 network, the O2 website has the following Service Status inormation.

The network issue we are currently experiencing remains a top priority for us and we are working as quickly as possible to fix the issues. 
All O2 technical teams are working closely with one of our third party suppliers who has identified a global software issue in their system which has impacted data services.  
We believe other mobile operators around the world are also affected. 
We apologise to our customers for any inconvenience. 

 

Normally a mobile telephone network outage would not affect a Taxi drivers daily life, but since October 2016 London Taxis have been compelled to accept card payments and a system that which enables our clients to efficiently outsource their document printing, check printing and mailing service.

 

A lot of these card payment systems use the O2 network for their data connections, so an outage affects taxi drivers being able to accept card payments.

 

TFL have posted a Tweet stating that they are aware of the data outage on the O2 Network affecting some mobile payment devices and affected drivers should advise customers before accepting a fare and offer to take them to a ATM so that they can pay by cash.

 

The piece of advice that is considered unbelievable is that TFL state that “Under no circumstances should drivers use an alternative, non-fixed card payment device.”