> head back to their garages after each fare
What an odd rule in general
What an odd rule in general
I assume the reason for this law is part of an attempt to distinguish call-a-ride services (that can't accept line-of-sight street hails) from taxis (which can).
The fear would then be that someone doing the former can do some of the nuisance stuff associated with the latter, but without passing the appropriate regulatory hurdles -- i.e., they might cruise around hoping to be near a ride, which medallion limits exist to prevent.
Even then, I would think regulators would adapt this kind of thing to a world where a call-a-ride car is very likely to be near a person who specifically asks for them. At the very least, they should change it to something like, "you have to be pulled over when looking for rides".
(Admittedly, that's all speculation.)
I'd be interested to see how the extra traffic caused by drivers cruising around compares to the extra traffic caused by drivers needing to drive back to a garage, only to be called out again.
As to pollution, it's common for taxi's to circulate on public roads while waiting for a fair. So, forcing people to go park may be better from a pollution standpoint.
Not issuing new taxi medaillons, creating a lack of taxis in Paris and making taxi drivers slaves to taxi companies (like G7) who rent them the medaillons (or slaves to banks when they have to pay back a huge loan to buy their own on the black market) is not.
It's not good for consumers, it's not good for taxi drivers, it's only good for monopolistic taxi companies. Yet the drivers don't understand that and think their enemy is Uber.
The problem, is taxi companies benefit by further constricting supply beyond that point and regulatory capture means incumbents have far to much say. IMO, rather than let some companies sidestep the market by pretending not to be taxi while acting like taxi the correct solution is to issue more Taxi Medallions.