Taxi-industry leaders ripped the Uber cab app Wednesday — with one yellow-cab mogul even claiming that only rich Jews could afford the car service’s surge-pricing program.
“We’re here to serve the public,” said Gene Friedman, owner of over 1000 New York City cab medallions. “We’re not here to serve the upper-middle-class Jewish businessman from the Upper East Side that’s willing to pay $200 to get anywhere.”
Friedman’s inflammatory crack — made at a John Jay College panel sponsored by Crain’s New York Business — clearly showed the level of anger that Uber is stoking among taxi bigwigs.
Friedman’s spokesman later tried to downplay his anti-Semitic-sounding comment as a joke.
“He’s a Jewish immigrant whose family fled Russia due to anti-Semitism,” said Ron Torossian.
Friedman wasn’t the only industry honcho to attack Uber at the event. Former Taxi and Limousine Commissioner Matt Daus, who now works in transportation law, blasted the company as a cartel that is destroying the black-car industry.
“I hate surge pricing,” he said. “Hundreds of millions of dollars is being spent in this hostile takeover by a Silicon Valley cartel, not a taxi cartel. A Silicon Valley cartel, a bully.”
An Uber spokesman later described the attacks on the company as the empty rhetoric of “Big Taxi,” and said that Friedman’s implication that only rich Manhattanites use the service are false.
“Uber does more trips to Brooklyn, Queens, Harlem and The Bronx than yellow taxis,” said Lane Kasselman. “Period.”
Uber declared a price war on yellow cabs earlier this month — using a $1.2 billion venture-capital war chest to slash prices on its black cars 20 percent.
Company CEO Travis Kalanick made his intentions clear at a California conference in May, when he said: “We’re in a political campaign, and the candidate is Uber and the opponent is an a–hole named taxi.”
The cut makes Uber trips cheaper than yellow cabs if surge pricing is not used.
They are also using their financial muscle to begin a major lobbying campaign across the country, a move criticized by Daus.
“In Illinois, they just decided to hire every lobbyist,” he said. “They have money to burn. The yellows are going to be fine. The black cars and limousines have been decimated because all the drivers were stolen from them.”
Uber also recently grabbed attention after one driver kidnapped the CEO of Manhattan company in Washington, D.C., and took him on a high-speed chase across state lines.
A San Francisco driver was also accused of assaulting a rider.
Less than a week later, the company teamed up with Rudy Giuliani’s security consulting firm to tighten up background checks on its drivers.
Ride-sharing app Lyft, which was blocked from launching in New York City on July 11 because its drivers are not licensed by the TLC, also took heat from the industry during the John Jay talk.
The service, that lets people give rides to strangers for donations, has launched in 65 other cities.
“Lyft gives pink a bad name,” Daus said of the service, whose cars sport bright pink mustaches. “They’re looking, as well as Uber, to deregulate the industry.”