Which is cheaper, Uber or cabs?

The Battle of the Cavs is heating up in St. John’s this week with a new player entering the scene. But who’s cheaper, faster, or more fun? We took a few rides to find out. First up on our list, Jiffy Caves. We ordered our ride on a Wednesday afternoon using Jiffy’s Pretty Simple app to order our car. It came, of course, in a jiffy and only careened around a few corners. But the problem We paid $17.00, which was about 40% higher than the 1280 quoted by Uber. Next up, Citywide Taxi took a little bit longer to get to us, but got us swiftly to our destination. And we paid exactly what the app quoted us, which was $3 more than Uber’s price. Now our driver told us he wasn’t too worried about Uber, but might jump ship if it starts to steal away customers. And he wasn’t the only taxi cab driver with that backup plan. We popped by Memorial University to see what Tom Cooper thought of that problem. In a number of ways, this benefits consumers very, very well. It may not benefit the taxi companies, but it depends on how willing they are to strategically collaborate with Uber. I would say that if the local taxi companies continue to provide good service, good price, good technology, all those sort of things, then there can continue to be competitive. Tom’s optimistic, but it’s also possible that Uber could take over completely by undercutting cab companies and then jacking up the rates. In fact, according to this author, that’s been the company’s intention all along. So it was a very heavily regulated industry and Uber would move in and simply say those don’t apply to us. And so basically they were hugely disruptive of the existing industry. Eric says Uber doesn’t have to pay drivers a minimum wage, and they offer artificially low rates to push out the competition. It’s their business model and it’s working. What Uber was doing was burning through billions of dollars of investors money in order to try to acquire something close to a monopoly position. They would charge low cost fares and therefore drive out the taxi industry and then once they achieved a certain level of market saturation, then they would start raising prices. It’s a terrifying picture that Eric Tucker paints. Luckily, the ride itself wasn’t so scary. Our Uber got to us in under 3 minutes and our driver was a bundle of fun, but said he was only driving for Uber because he needed a second job thanks to the rising cost of living. And after all said and done, he’s probably only making $10.00 an hour. So was it cheaper? Not really. The Uber app told us the ride would cost $18.28, but it ended up costing US $21.00, which is exactly what the taxi apps quoted us. So will Uber coexist peacefully with cab companies or become our private transportation overlords? The experts say that as long as the rules of the game remain fair, Saint John’s can avoid Uber remorse.