Why Your Uber in Madrid Might Turn Up as a Red-and-White Taxi
Why Your Uber in Madrid Might Turn Up as a Red-and-White Taxi
(Bloomberg) --
When Uber users in Madrid fire-up their app they could end up in a regular taxi.
The new service starts Friday in the Spanish capital and will be integrated with Uber Technologies Inc.’s regular UberX ride-hailing service as the company tries to make peace with taxi drivers whose protests have driven the company out of other parts of the country. In the initial phase, users will be alerted that they will receive either an Uber or one of the city’s white-and-red taxis.
Opening up to taxis is also a move toward Uber’s aspiration of becoming a hub for all things mobility, ranging from e-scooters and bicycles to cars. More importantly for the Spanish unit, it also seeks to mend bridges with the taxi industry.
Madrid’s taxi industry has had a belligerent relationship with the ride hailing app since it entered Spain a few years ago. Taxi protests drove Uber out of Barcelona after Spain’s second-largest city was pushed to change rules for ride-hailing services that required users to pre-order cars two hours ahead of time.
Madrid will be one of the first cities where Uber’s app is open to taxi drivers. The hybrid service has so far been used in places with lots of restrictions on taxis, such as Japan, or places where drivers can switch freely between operating as hired cars or taxis, like Amsterdam, Juan Galiardo, Uber’s Spanish head, said in an interview.
Madrid cab drivers who appear on Uber’s platform will have to follow the local government’s taxi rules, such as price ranges, following a revamp of regulations earlier this year. Under the new rules, cabs can now charge fixed prices for a trip, so users know the cost before getting in. Car-pooling is also allowed.
Since the rule changes Uber has since worked to cozy up with cab drivers, partnering with a company that provides services to cabs, such as maintenance and cleaning, to reach out to drivers and attract them to its app. The company will seek to run the same checks for taxis and its drivers as it does for the private-minicabs it uses in Spain, including car age and driver’s criminal records.
To contact the reporter on this story: Rodrigo Orihuela in Madrid at rorihuela@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Giles Turner at gturner35@bloomberg.net, Amy Thomson
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