Cabbies vow to ‘hunt down’ rivals
MEXICO CITY— Uber, beware: Mexican taxi drivers are stalking you.
A leader of Mexico State’s taxi drivers issued this public warning: “We are not going to leave (Uber cars) alone. We are tracking these colleagues and hunting them down.”
Esteban Meza, who represents about13,000 cabbies, made the comment to the country’s top-selling newspaper, El Universal. He says his cohort will hand Uber drivers over to the authorities — as opposed to, say, beating them up. But he also did warn that “without doubt this is going to create big trouble.”
Mexico is the site of the latest turf war since the meteoric rise of ride-booking companies, such as Uber, Lyft or Cabify, whose smartphone apps and no-cash payment systems are quickly transforming private transportation internationally. Taxi drivers worldwide complain they’re losing their livelihood to services they accuse of swerving around traditional licensing and fare rules. Many are taking legal action, and judges from Brazil to Italy have ruled in the old-school taxis’ favour.
Now some Mexican taxi drivers have promised to take that fight from the court to the street.
Past rivalries between competing taxi groups have led to bloody street battles in Mexico. One person was killed in fighting between drivers of car taxis and motorcycle taxis in Oaxaca state.
Another Mexico State taxi leader also said his affiliates were combating the Ub- er threat on the street.
“We have detected their presence and taken measures to stop them from coming into this part of Mexico State,” said Heriberto Oviedo, who represents thousands of taxi and bus drivers, according to El Universal. He didn’t say what those measures were.
Mexico State incorporates much of the urban sprawl of Mexico City.
In the whole of Mexico City, home to 20 million people, about 300,000 people have now downloaded the Uber app, according to Mexico’s Radio Formula.
The traditional taxi drivers say they aren’t against competition, but complain that Uber drivers haven’t gone through the same expensive and time-consuming efforts to get the limited number of available licences.