Reply to post:

Courtney Love in the crossfire! Paris turns ugly over Uber

Yag
Mushroom

The whole french taxi situation is a total mess.

They must have a licence to operate, and until recently the number of those licences were limited. This lead to retiring taxis selling theirs for up to 150K€.

As now the taxi consider their licence as an "investment" that can be sold later, they require the state either keep the system "as it" or buy the licence back - for the ludicrously inflated price, of course.

Nowadays, the number of licences is not limited any longer, but there's a catch : the new licences issued by the administration are valid for 5 years, no more, and cannot be transfered.

Of course, the older licences are still unlimited and sellable... Their prices went down to 60-100K however.

Also, I don't know how it works abroad, but in France, it's MORE expensive to call a cab than to find a random one. There's a rule stating that the taxi can (and will) ask the customer for the trip from its current position to the customer's location.

This clearly imply that the french taxis have NO incentive to roam around - it's even the opposite. So they just hang in their depots or around the airports and railroad stations. Good luck finding any taxi out of those locations, unless they just dropped a customer and goes back to their den...

Yeah, I'm still bitter from the 18€ fare for a 5km trip...

I'ld say nuke them from orbit - it's the only way to be sure.

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