Today’s Headlines

Why Is Germany (and Europe) Afraid of Uber? (WaPo)
Gabe Klein Becomes COO of “Pop-Up” Bus Service Bridj (BostInno)
The Rise of Poverty in the Suburbs (Slate)
Amtrak Exec Asks Feds to Help With Freight-Related Delays (The Hill)
Historian Steven Conn Traces the Roots of Anti-Urbanism (Pacific Standard)
Lowering Fares Won’t Solve All Problems for Norfolk’s Light Rail (GGW)
Imagining a More Walkable Rockville Pike (Bethesda Now)
Philly Plans for More Off-Peak Rail Service (Philly Mag)
France Subsidizes Commuters Who Bike Instead of Drive (Efficient Gov)
Provo, Utah, Moves Forward with BRT (Herald Extra)
Minneapolis Slips in Bike Ranking (Star Trib)

Bolwerk

Uber’s tactics have been, um, rather unethical. So really, fuck ’em.

Funny how that article on Slate about suburbs, from a neo-con no less, jives with my comment about suburban poverty yesterday. Though you have to figure a big part of the problem with suburbs, at least outer suburbs, is they were always sort of “disposable.”
C Monroe

I have never had a problem getting a taxi in Germany. They have always been clean, well maintained, had polite drivers, were easy to find(many taxi stands around the cities I lived in) or were prompt when you ordered one. That is the major difference between the states where taxis are horrible and Uber is a welcome change. My city just got Uber and it is a god send, a year ago I had an important medical appointment(one that took months to schedule) so I arranged for a taxi to pick me up about an hour before my appointment the day before. I called the taxi company an hour before the schedule pickup to make sure they still had the order. an hour went by, no taxi, another half hour no taxi, so I called, it was yes were sorry but it is the next call to go out. another 45 minutes later I called and cancelled my doctors appointment already 15 minutes late and called and cancelled the taxi and told them that I was furious and they need to learn customer service. I was then called back and cussed out?

But that is typical of American Taxi companies and not German. I have never had a bad experience or waited more than 10-15 minutes for a taxi in Germany.
Chris

Make sure they have the proper licenses and insurance for their drivers and (almost) no German will complain.

I’d also like to note that in Germany we already have real car sharing for a quite a while: – people offering free seats on their car ride that they were going to do anyway for a small fee. That’s the actual sharing economy, while uber isn’t anything but a fancy new form of the private car for hire that’s been around in many countries around the world for a long time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpooling.com