Whether or not the taxi is operating legally isn’t important to whether or not it’s a taxi.
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This seems ripe for a MapRoulette to determine if it’s for actual carpooling or a black-market taxi, since the distinction is important and I’d be pretty annoyed if I showed up for a carpool and got weird taxi instead.
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I don’t get your point. The intended/possible way of usage is important for the classification. A taxi I can waive from the sidewalk, go to a taxi rank or contact the office and get one dispatched to a certain location. A ride sharing service provides only the last service, not the first two.
How is it not a taxi? By this logic, there are no taxis whatsoever in Portland, and not even Radio Cab and Broadway Cab would count because the City of Portland prohibits taxis from accepting hails outside of city-designated taxi stands (typically found in front of airports, major train stations and downtown hotels). This situation has been true since at least spring 1979.
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This speaks less to the need for distinction by brand or falling for Uber and Lyft’s specious argument that they’re not actually taxis, and more to the fact that perhaps we need a black_market=* tag for them. The only reason these companies exist is to offload the liability of operating a taxi that flouts the rules of taxis to the independent driver, a form of regulatory and labor abuse.
Method of hail is not relevant to whether or not the car is for hire.
in many countries yes, in Italy it is not possible, but for osm it doesn’t matter anyway, because we are not mapping taxis, only taxi ranks 
In many markets, per my previous message, they not only exist but are regulated. And even more, in some places there are specific (and legal) places for pickup/dropoff passengers, hence this discussion.
OK, that just seems to support my position that these are taxis but operator and black market are probably needed for distinction.
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It depends on the locality. In many cities, the trips going to and from the airport are by far the most lucrative (as with any transportation service). The company wouldn’t bother serving the city if it can’t serve the airport. To maintain the privilege of serving the airport, the company has to remain in the local transportation authority’s good graces overall.
A busy airport happens to be where most ridesourcing-specific restrictions and infrastructure are located. Traffic cops can’t be everywhere, but they have a heavy presence at the airport. Fines are much heavier there. I’ve even been to an airport where, I’m told, the driver’s license can be confiscated for a violation. In the U.S., the penalties aren’t quite as severe, but the rules are often physically designed to give traditional taxis and shuttles more priority, so they feel more convenient to passengers. For example:
- SFO makes arriving Uber, Lyft, and YRide customers go back upstairs to the departures level and walk all the way through the short-term parking garage. (Wingz gets better placement.)
- AUS makes arriving Uber, Lyft, Wridz, Wingz, and Earth Rides customers go upstairs and walk a good quarter mile in the blazing Texas heat past the consolidated rental car facility.
- SDF makes arriving Uber, Lyft, and zTrip[1] customers sneak out a small side door and wait at the edge of the parking lot.
SFO’s restrictions have been in place for several years now. At this point, no Uber driver would bother to use the arrivals level, where the taxis and shuttles are, because their passenger won’t be waiting there. The application will’ve already told them to wait at the departures level. If the driver goes to the arrivals level, they have to circle around, making them late enough that the company will cancel the ride and penalize the driver.
Anyways, enforcement is beside the point. I’ve mapped in places where ordinary drivers routinely ignore no-turn-on-red restrictions, U-turn restrictions, speed limits, and more, but we don’t wonder whether to map them. The other day the bus ran right past my stop, totally ignoring me, and I tried in vain to run after it. I’m not going to delete the bus stop.
Problem is we’ve recently decided that those ad-hoc carpools are called hitchhiking. Much earlier, we commandeered taxi for a specific aspect of taxi operation. We’ve already done too much duck-tagging with amenity=car_pooling without exacerbating the issue by conflating taxi stands with… a logo sign and some people under it with their heads stuck in their phones waiting impatiently.
zTrip is a taxi company and its cabs are taxicabs. There’s no dispute there. But zTrip’s empty stalls next to the empty ride sharing stalls at SDF are not a taxi stand.
From previous threads, I’m aware that you object to giving ridesourcing companies any more clout and want us to shun them. But conflating the infrastructure officially designated for them with taxi stands would have the very opposite effect, playing into their marketing. People actually use OSM to find out where the nearest taxi stand is, like anything else that’s available on demand without precondition. The nearest ridesourcing PUDO point, not so much. So conflating the two would shove ridesourcing into the face of someone trying to avoid it.
The idea to clarify the difference with a secondary tag is a sound one, but it comes many years too late. It would be a textbook example of troll tagging. Ironically, the original approved proposal for amenity=taxi came with an optional presence=* tag for indicating the likelihood of a taxicab standing at the taxi stand.[2] Had Lyft moved away from their original carpooling business model by then, maybe we would’ve listed never as one of the options, problem solved. Unfortunately, this key never passed a hundred uses before the only mention of it on the wiki was replaced with opening_hours=* to indicate something slightly different. Nothing uses presence=* and no one remembers it.
As for access keys, conflating ridesharing=* with taxi=* could literally encourage ridesourcing drivers to violate the restrictions meant for them. Lyft is asking us how to encode some new regulations SFMTA just came out with, so they can comply with these very specific regulations. The alternative is for them to… flout the rules of taxis?
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Still don’t get your point. The aim is not to tag the car. The aim is to tag the location, where I have to go to get into one. As explained in the thread the locations are different to normal taxis. Let’s say we would use amenity=taxi for all PUDO-points where a car can wait and pickup or dropoff a passenger. At a common airport you would have one location for taxis, one location for general cars and a third location for Uber/Lyft/… How you would differentiate to which point I have to drive/go?
For me as an arriving passenger it’s a huge difference and depends on whether I booked a Uber/Lyft/…, planned to take a taxi or having a friend picking me up.
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Yeah, no… slug-lines are definitely not hitch hiking, that’s sharing a ride. I think we made a bad call and need to revisit that.
Exactly, no reasonable person would expect to get a taxi from a slugline or carpool location.
No. I’m saying any company with a reputation for acting outside the law and society’s norms in bad faith should be shunned. Uber and Lyft are just classic examples.
This is off-topic, but if you’d like to sigh with me:
These companies straight up ignore basic taxi and traffic regulations habitually in the US and pick up/drop off wherever,
They do also have an internal database of good and bad pickup and drop-off points. Some of these are based on road geometry (avoiding bus stops, fire hydrants, active driveways) and some of them are regulatory (airports).
This thread, in my mind, is about moving some of that internal database into OSM. The road geometry PUDO tags would be generally usable by anyone; the airport stuff would need operator tags.
My understanding is that the main interest is in mapping the PUDO points that have fixed tangible infrastructure, at least a sign by agreement with the local authorities. The PUDO points that are derived by process of elimination from parking restrictions would be less clear candidates for inclusion in OSM, but of course mapping those restrictions would be appropriate.
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Has a decision been made on whether the new tag should be limited to PHVs / ride hailing / whatever you want to call it, or whether it should include passenger drop-off zones that are shared with taxis and the general public dropping off friends and family?
Because amenity=ride_hailing sounds a lot like the former and amenity=passenger_pickup_dropoff sounds like the latter. I guess an access tag like taxi=, rideshare= could be used with it to limit it to specific users.
Hm yeah, I guess the amenity=passenger_pickup_dropoff solution is incomplete in that sense. The example I gave from Manila doesn’t need any further clarification because it’s open to all services, but the typical airport facilities are more specialized. One way or another, we’re going to have to use a term for the ridesourcing services. We can use either a recognizable term that’s a misnomer or one that’s technically correct but laypeople are unfamiliar with.
I happened to take another look at them today. PIN queues do increase them their resemblance to “taxi” ranks. The definition needs to be fine-tuned.