Russians Uber Alles

I'm living in the city this month, so I have begun to experiment with Uber.

In fact, my credit card company gave me two free rides for the month of June -- a promotion to recruit Uber riders. Given the controversy around Uber in France, I've been thinking about what the service means for U.S. cities. I have to say it's pretty convenient, and it's also a progressive-thinking way of calling a car and paying for a ride. Among other things, the drivers don't have to have all that cash in their vehicles, and the riders don't need to contemplate change, tipping, etc. These are features that cab companies should have thought of on their own long ago.

Our first ride was with a "black car" driver from the Dominican Republic. We felt quite chic -- black-tinted windows, uniform and cap on the driver, very nice car. Of course, we did have to tell him how to get to the airport, and it cost about ten dollars more than a cab ride. It may be obvious that we only took the black car service because of my incompetence with the smart phone -- I hadn't really realized what I had signed up for.

My second ride was home from the theater late at night in a rainstorm. Scary experience -- our driver (in a VW sedan) seemed like a suburban type, and he was definitely not familiar with the roads. In Philadelphia, especially our neck of the woods, you need to be prepared for all kinds of hazards -- potholes and sudden dips, double-parked cars, construction equipment of every stripe, not to mention walkers, bikers, runners, and the odd electric wheelchair crossing the street against the light. In the dark and the rain, I held my breath all the way home.

The most recent guy felt like a cab, and at $5 home from the grocery was slightly cheaper than a cab. My experience with him -- no help with the trunk, talking on the phone the entire ride, blasting a/c on the humid summer day -- couldn't have been more different than the "black car" experience.

But it did resonate with the video a friend posted later that day.

"Sergei" drives for Uber in this College Humor video

In the U.S. I'm used to the signs at the airport when you arrive. For example: "Welcome to Philadelphia. Don't take rides in unlicensed cabs."

Life back in the USSR was entirely different. In the late 1980s in Moscow, I became an expert at flagging down private cars. I would stand with my arm up, wag my hand slightly, and a vehicle would pull over. Then began the negotiating -- where do I want to go, will you go there, how much will you charge me. At every juncture either party could refuse the transaction, but I excelled at getting a good price at virtually any time of the day or night. 

Mostly, of course, I rode in cars after hours -- when the bus and metro system was running rarely or not at all. At 2 a.m. I would leave some friends' apartment and go flag a car. Sometimes the friends would come out with me and write down the license plate -- a purely nominal gesture, since I didn't have a phone to be able to check in with them when I arrived safely. 

But it was safe. There were no weapons in the hands of private citizens in those days, and not much access to drugs. People were just making a little extra cash. And when I say people, I mean all kinds of people. 

Trolleybus in Moscow

My best round trip ever was trying to go to a party thrown by some Bulgarian students at an apartment in the northwest section of Moscow, an area I had never been to. I took the metro and the trolley, but couldn't figure out how to get to the specific building I needed in the maze of 9-story apartment houses. I looked out the window at every stop and tried to decide where to alight. When I was finally the last passenger remaining in the trolley bus, the driver had pity on me and asked me where I needed to go. He shook his head as he tried to explain how the streets worked and then, pulling into his depot, he took the trolley poles off the electrical lines and drove me to the proper address. 

Later that night, on the way home, I had about five other Americans with me. Never, we thought, would we be able to fit in one vehicle (my trolley bus driver must have been off his shift by then!). But I managed to flag down an ambulance willing to take us all the way to the southwest corner of Moscow to our dorm for a mere ten rubles. Since I flagged the vehicle, I sat in front -- not sure what the comfort level was of the seating in the back...

Tourist buses, hand-operated Ladas for veterans who were amputees, regular passenger cars... I even rode with a few lady drivers, a rarity in the Soviet Union. The rhythm became familiar -- "will you go to ...?" "how much?" "will you go for less?" "Okay." 

Once I had a Russian friend with me in Chicago (in the days of the August putsch of 1991) and I instinctively opened the front door of a cab to see if the driver would take us to the planetarium, and for how much. He looked at me as if I were nuts.

There is something to be said for a regulated taxi system. Generally safe, generally clean. And there's something just a little sketchy, as my daughter might say, about Uber.

In the early 2000s my former professor, an American who is completely fluent in Russian, hailed a private car in St. Petersburg at about nine in the evening. The driver said he was about to get a coffee, would his passenger like one too? Twelve hours later, when the professor had missed a morning meeting at the literary institute, his colleagues began to search for him. He had been drugged, driven out of town, stripped of his wallet, leather coat, valuables, and left on the side of the highway with no identification. In the end he made it out alive, but with severe liver damage. Horrible story, and just thinking about it makes me feel like I was super-lucky during my Soviet travels.

Maybe it's just that unfriendly Russians (like Sergei, above) are more reliable.