Black Market Ride-Sharing Increases in Austin
thefederalist.com
thefederalist.com
The whole thing makes no sense to me. The City Council won a fight, but gained nothing, Uber/Lyft lost a market but will happily move on to some other place. Meanwhile, the only real losers are the people living in Austin who are stuck in some of the worst traffic in the nation and now have a worse on demand ride system. What a waste.
This wasn't Austin City Council against Uber and Lyft. It was the citizens of Austin voting for provisions Uber and Lyft needed to comply with (and choose not to).
Also, the ballot question itself apparently was worded so confusingly that it wasn't clear what box to check. Here's the actual ballot question (from http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/local/dont-mess-up-your...):
Shall the City Code be amended to repeal City Ordinance No. 20151217-075 relating to Transportation Network Companies; and replace with an ordinance that would repeal and prohibit required fingerprinting, repeal the requirement to identify the vehicle with a distinctive emblem, repeal the prohibition against loading and unloading passengers in a travel lane, and require other regulations for Transportation Network Companies?
Then there are two boxes below that. Next to one it says “For the Ordinance” and on the other, “Against the Ordinance.”
The writer points out that it's not clear which ordinance the boxes are referring to, or what the net effect of your vote. Usually, on ballots I've seen over the decades, there's a summary phrase on the ballot like "if you vote YES, you are supporting gay marriage" or something like that, nice and clear.
If a clear phrasing had been provided, I wonder whether it still would have gone that way.
I can see people being very confused by this.
The will of the people willing to go out and vote. If you choose not to vote, that's on you.
Then there's the whole vague wording thing as explained above. For all we know, half of the voters didn't understand the ballot question. I'm not so sure I would have voted correctly either. What a fiasco.
Which is about 7% more than usually turn out for May elections, and about the same as chose the currently sitting governor. Please don't suggest it wasn't a valid election.
As to confusing ballot language, I've never seen anyone write any clearer language that passes legal muster. It has to talk about two ordinances, one to be repealed and one to replace it, and the major points of difference between them. Go ahead, give it a shot.
Then there are two boxes below that. Next to one it says “For the Ordinance” and on the other, “Against the Ordinance.”
That is extremely interesting, thank you for posting that.
If you actually want to fix traffic, tax cars, and add some buses/trains.
I know people who did not own a car and instead mostly used buses and/or bikes to get around Austin. They knew they always had a reliable Uber ride to fill in the gaps. Taxis adjust to demand terribly in Austin so they are not reliable or pleasant to use. So, now these people are using cars more often because they don't have a reliable way to fill in the gaps.
2) Uber reduces the need for parking which means more parking lots and garages, which pushes business further away from each other, making walking between places more difficult. As far as I know, increasing density is a reliable way of reducing traffic because it makes alternatives more attractive.
3) I would love to see more buses and trains in Austin. Unfortunately, Austin has failed to pass much on that front largely due to incompetence in government all over the place. If I had my way, we would be investing heavily in buses, trains, walkways, all of it. Uber is a great way to fill in gaps between these. I see the fingerprinting battle as a giant distraction from real traffic problems.
Looks like its time to get involved in your local government! Have you considered campaigning and running for the next city council seat that goes to election?
Some people like the way things are where they live, and if those people make up the majority, you're SOL. That's democracy.
Certainly, any one car being used is less people-dense than a bus or train. But people are more likely to "take the leap" to a lower-car-use life when they have the option of being able to call an Uber to get to a destination that's not well served.
Taxis use up more road spacetime the more time they spend looking for a customer, while private cars use up more road spacetime the more time they spend parked or looking for parking. Realistically, in dense places, private cars spend a lot of time looking for parking, and almost all of their lives parked, but cabs are occupied more often than not. On the other hand in sufficiently undense places, a cab would have to spend a lot of time looking for passengers while private cars never have to look for parking and have off-street parking -- but these kinds of places have low traffic anyway, so who cares? In the places where traffic is actually a pain, cabs improve it.
If Uber was still in austin, i would think about taking the bus from houston instead of driving (or not bothering because its too much trouble).
With Uber, I frequently car pool with my wife, as i can always take uber back on the way, if our times don't match.
With Uber, I much more frequently consider bus / train, as i don't have to worry about transportation to and from the metro station.
>hilariously
>The City Of Austin Is Embarrassing Itself
>ham-fisted
>absurd
>un-ironic cluelessness
>senior correspondent for The Federalist.
That last one was an insult.
The content started just fine but progressively gets worse and worse with the authors opinions and vitriolic anger coloring the work.
I suspect the first time someone is robbed or raped we'll get a cry-bully rant pushing blame onto the city.
The author labels as "onerous [regulations imposed by Austin City]" (in the linked article he wrote) avoiding providing detail for the regulations he judges as onerous:
"It seems there’s no new product or service that meddling liberals won’t figure out a way to regulate out of existence under the pretense of knowing what’s best for you.
"Over the weekend in the liberal bastion of Austin, Texas, a handful of pro-regulation voters opted to keep in place a host of petty, irrational, and burdensome regulations the city council imposed on ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft in December."
Ironically ending the unanalytical article with: "I know it sounds crazy, but it’s almost like they don’t care about solving these problems."
- http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/10/uber-lyft-were-driven-ou...
Look at the poster image - using a commonly maligned ethnic minority as the "face" of this movement. An attempt at bigotry IMO.
The Federalist view generally only has an inkling of the truth to whatever fits their conservative narrative. So if there is a story here, I doubt it is the full message
I find it hard to trust anything on the site when one of its founders, Ben Domenech, plagiarized articles while working at WaPo and had to resign. This was also on top of him lying and saying he had permission from one(?) of the authors.
Not that I support the Austin's City Council about the Uber/Lyft situation. But at the sign of anything happening they instantly write an article to reflect how "bad" the city council's decision was. See also: anything about Seattle's increased minimum wage.
"Hacking" involves driving along popular roads looking for people who use their index and middle finger to claw at the air ("hawkin'") to indicate they'd like a ride. Fares are hashed out before the ride begins, usually a flat rate, and well under the price of a cab. These illegal cabs sometimes take advantage of the riders because they can't complain to the police. Though in many cases one might develop a relationship with a particular hack and call them directly for rides.
Wouldn't it be more efficient for public transportation to be provided via taxes and user fees versus Uber and Lyft siphoning off of the flow of transportation payments for their shareholders? That seems inefficient to me.
Billion dollar light rail trains that roll empty are not a terribly efficient use of money. Buses are more flexible, but waiting for a bus then having to walk from the bus stop home is apparently an unsatisfactory use of time to many passengers.
A system that connects a passenger with the nearest available driver and doesn't take too much for their part in the transaction would seem to be efficient in time and money for both the passenger and driver. In addition, it provides a source of employment for people who are looking for work and meet the criteria.
Not saying that Uber, Lyft, and other "ride sharing" services are all on the side of the angels, but their success points to a need which they are meeting.
1. Uber drivers are compensated sufficiently for their time and expenses (research has shown this isn't true, Uber drivers scrape by just like cabbies)
2. That a consumer's time is more valuable than having public transportation available to everyone (Ridesharing > Buses/bike shares/etc)
3. That expensive rail is one of the only options.
The solution is a mix of buses, bicycle sharing, and electric self-driving cars. How we get there is the tricky part.
Definitely, "the solution is a mix", but the components and proportions of that mix are best left to the consumers, not solely to central planners, whether in governments or in large corporations. Indeed, since the vote, local rideshare companies have sprung up in Austin, perhaps better suited to the needs of Austinites.
So what you're saying is a regulated free market is driving innovation. Go figure.
And given that both Uber and Lyft have headquarters in San Francisco, they could hardly be less "tax-fleeing"!
And I was replying to the parent who referred to ex-West coast liberals migrating to Austin. If these people expected a "progressive" government like they might find in San Francisco, they were probably disappointed by the actions of the Austin City Council and its support from Austin voters.
The free market interprets regulation as damage and routes around it.
Wanting to control either of both is an exercise in futility.
It is not futility at all. It is a vital energy input to the system. Broken to you -- fixed (as in "rigged") to them.
Business owners see labor laws as damage and route around it.
Business Owners and Gun Owners operate in the free market and presumably use the internet. Wherease everyone who is operating within a freemarket or active on the internet may not be a gun owner or business owner.
The parent is talking about at a system level. You are talking, at least my charrachterization of it, about a layer of abstraction within a system.
I like water, meat, and medical services, but prefer some amount of regulation on them. I'm sure there's a fine line between reasonable regulation and protectionism or irrationality when it comes to these things.
> Here’s the big idea: We can cut out the corporate middlemen — and make government regulations obsolete — by transparently providing rider and driver with clear information about the other party to each transaction, including a strong reputation and ratings system where riders and drivers ‘level up’ after community-vetted good behavior on the platform.
Who's going to take a chance on the drivers and riders with no reputation?
Uber and Lyft's track record for safety in the US is quite strong. As is the willingness of riders and drivers to participate in the system from no reputation.
The need for regulation has not been justified. Regulations shouldn't be passed unless there is a clear reason to do so and measurable way to declare that regulation a success or failure.
Fake users.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/cab-medallion-own...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2014/09/08/wish-yo...
> When a ballot proposal that would have replaced the city ordinance failed, Uber and Lyft left town as promised. Since May 9, there have been no ride-sharing services available in this city of almost a million people.
and then a few paragraphs later makes this claim, directly contradicting the above claim:
> The city’s response is only making things worse. Last week it held a job fair for out-of-work Uber and Lyft drivers, at which it encouraged drivers to get fingerprinted and sign up for the only remaining ridesharing company in town, a local app called Get Me.
Gold. Reminds me of how Slowgle is getting disrupted by Paris.
I wouldn't go that far. They're not handling this very well, but this article is a bit of demagoguery in the skin of "news".
Uber and Lyft were the ones who pulled out. The regulation that Austin passed was in no way overbearing; it just required fingerprints. They claim this "destroys the ridesharing economy" but in my experience, Uber is basically a part-time job for most drivers. Most people will go get fingerprinted for a part-time job. Very few people are ridesharing; but maybe this undercuts the argument that Lyft and Uber use for the drivers not being employees...
That's how it starts. Then the government starts mandating transdermal implants at birth that contain a GPS chipset, and a kill switch. We're headed to a level of dystopian control that would make a brutal banana republic dictator shudder.
If you're not, congratulations, you got me.
In an era when the government has access to our cell phone data via easily obtained FISA court permission, we're already a good chunk of the way there.
After all, it was not so long ago in this country when people of a certain ethnic descent were locked up en masse.
Maybe a kill switch is too far: how about an electrical charge to block the activity of your optic nerve and brain stem?
The whole thing is weird to me. I've used Uber a few times and the car that showed up has always been a licensed limo (just dumb luck, I suppose). Pretty sure I'd turn down a ride in some clapped-out Civic, should that be the car that showed up (but, perhaps that's why I usually use car services and not Uber).
Uber and Lyft threw a hissy fit because it undermines their complete control over the driver ecosystem. Best I can tell, they're afraid that licensing drivers would cause them to expect to be treated like employees, while making it ever-so-slightly harder for Uber/Lyft to recruit drivers. IMO it's more about labor relations than regulation.
And decentralizing eliminates one of the best things going for Uber/Lyft, the background checks and tracking.