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Jersey City just had a public referendum on short-term rentals that AirBnB spent millions of dollars lobbying against. It's good to see that the both the public and its elected officials are coming up to speed on the realities companies like Uber and AirBnb force upon them by skirting the law.

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These are the same elected officials who let taxi companies rip off passengers for the better part of a century by limiting competition through the medallion system, and protect hotel interests because they’ve been able to tack a ton of extra taxes onto every hotel bill?

These talking points died in 2016. Now that Uber isn't subsidizing rides with investor's money and raised their fares, Uber is actually more expensive than taxis in NJ.

There's no reason ride hailing companies need to violate labor laws to do business.

Source? At EWR a few weeks ago while waiting for luggage, I wandered over to the taxi stand. The quoted fare (there was no line, by the way) was twice that of either Uber or Lyft to the same destination.

I commute in NJ and used ride hailing apps until it was just cheaper to use taxis. I wouldn't use any liaison service at an airport, they're going to charge an arm and a leg for the purported convenience.

Edit: I'm not doxxing myself, sorry. I'm within commuting distance of NYC.

Maybe if you stated what city/region, your anecdote would be more convincing. NJ is a small state but that's still nearly 10,000 square miles.

Were you going to NYC (or anywhere in NY)? NY and NJ do not have a reciprocity agreement, so taxis from NYC are allowed to charge 2x the fare between NYC and EWR and the same for NJ taxis to NYC. Uber/Lyft can pickup / dropoff in either state and don't appear to operate under the same restrictions.

Lyft/Uber drivers from NJ can't pick up from NY. Whereas NY drivers can pick up from both states. NJ drivers have to drive back empty.

I had to cancel a trip from Fort Lee to Stony Brook when I discovered the driver had NJ plates.

They don't know where they're going until they arrive at location.

LAX to downtown: Uber and Lyft are cheaper in the middle of the day between lunch and the evening rush hour, and again after 9 or 10p M-Th.

Early morning through rush hour, and evening rush hour: 2-5x more expensive than a cab, depending on surge pricing.

Holidays: 3-20x more expensive than a cab, depending on surge. I have seen multiple Uber and Lyft fares that would have cost more than the plane ticket did.

At LAX you can walk 10-15 minutes to a hotel and get an Uber for way less than at the terminal.

You can walk out of LAX? Safely? I didn't think the entry road had sidewalks. Or is there some other route?

And, given that those hotels have shuttles, why would you walk? Just take the hotel's bus. (Or are you feeling that that's not cool, because you're going there not to stay there, but just to take an Uber?)

On the lower level, Century Blvd has a sidewalk and crosswalks on the north side of the road. I walked it with my wife just two months ago, although not to catch an Uber, but instead to get our car from long term parking.

Why are you so incredulous that anyone might choose to walk?

Because, in my limited memory, I didn't remember there being a sidewalk from LAX to, say, Century outside the airport. I don't have a problem with walking that far. I have a problem with walking that far, in traffic, when I don't remember there being a sidewalk. I had assumed that there wasn't one.

For example, walking into SLC airport is not trivial to do. It's designed to be driven to, and that only (or, now you can take the train). I mean, you can walk along the bike trail from the southeast corner of the airport, then work your way through the parking lots of the air cargo places, but I don't think there's a sidewalk from the bike trail to the terminal. And that's the best walking option at SLC.

[Edit: A bit of time in Google Maps shows a sidewalk the majority of the way in SLC, but not all of it.]

But the taxi driver will be paid to drive back home, even if he can't pickup a fair.

It's cheaper for the customer, but Uber drivers get screwed in the long term.

Those talking points are 100% true.

Uber started in San Francisco. You could not get a cab on the weekend for any amount of $. You could not get a cab to come to the "tough" neighborhoods. This is 100% fact. I once called 4x and was told one was coming - falsely (I did live in what was then a "bad" neighborhood). My roommate walked across the entire city.

Uber started with licensed transit vehicles - now called uber black. It was only when other folks started doing private party cars that they copied that with UberX (oddly they briefly had some moves towards pushing for enforcement against the unlicensed folks but saw that customers didn't care).

But the underlying issues - incredibly bad service (talking on phone, smoking, credit card machine "broken") and lack of availability - despite the industry being "regulated" were VERY real. That's what got them going.

The other reality - they have FORCED the taxi industry to up their game. You can almost always now pay with credit cards in a taxi, you can call a taxi with an app, you can sometimes even review your taxi driver.

> I once called 4x and was told [a taxi] was coming - falsely

Same deal in Pittsburgh, though I only called 2x on the first instance and 1x on the second. Then I stopped using taxis unless forced.

> credit card machine "broken"

This happened twice last week to me in SoCal and seems to happen about 50% of the time I use taxis.

I called maybe 20x before "getting" it - the taxi is coming was 100% a lie. They were very likely redlining where I lived.

I paid happily for uber black when it came out - whatever people think of uber costs now - original uber was NOT cheaper than a taxi as I remember - BUT you could actually get it. But I might be wrong - for me, I just wanted to be able to get something so I could avoid owning a car (most of the time bus etc works but not always).

I'm more concerned by the divide in status companies like Uber incur among workers than the comfort of the taxi clients, which by the way is a transportation mode only a select few can afford to use frequently.

Before the smartphone era, the only possible way to ensure availability of personal transportation was to have a functioning taxi & livery industry. The use of medallions was actually to protect the public, ensuring all drivers were at least accountable and traceable and thus somewhat safe, just like today's Uber riders expect the company to perform background checks on drivers. Yes it benefitted embedded interests, but eliminating medallions would have been worse.

Also, tacking on taxes to hotel bills hurts them, by making visits more expensive and thus reducing demand.

But really nice hot takes.

If "protecting the public" was truly the goal, why not make taxi driving as simple as getting a commercial endorsement on your license? Driving 50 people in a public bus only requires X hours in a classroom and an extra exam (or two, depending). Interestingly, the medallions were affixed the the vehicle (thus allowing anybody to use it), the total number of medallions were artificially limited and the choice parts of the city were off limits to competition. Does that really protect the public or does it just protect those who own the medallions?

What you described is basically how it works. Getting a license to drive a taxi requires just a commerical endorsement: https://dmv.ny.gov/driver-license/get-license-drive-taxi-or-.... It's the vehicle itself that requires the medallion.

If you want to argue with the phrase "protect the public," that's fine. The point is that, pre-smartphones, the medallion system ensures a functioning system, a modicum of safety, no fare surprises. It was not intended to produce the _lowest possible fares_ for riders.

You should look at the history of why taxi regulation came about and why the "right" number of taxi badges per city was a system that much of the world arrived at. It also brought minimum service obligations, driver standards and fair pricing.

Deregulated taxis had cartels, increased and varying prices depending on destination and poorer customer service. Bad enough that many countries and cities found they had to regulate.

Now, whether medallions that are separate from vehicle and driver, and thus have a value in their own right are the best way to regulate is another question entirely. In the US specific case it seems emphatically not. Quite why many US cities had such poor taxi service when other countries have managed much better is beyond me.

>The use of medallions was actually to protect the public

Imagine believing this.

https://slate.com/business/2012/06/taxi-medallions-how-new-y...

>The public hasn’t fared much better. Deep-pocketed medallion owners have hijacked public policy through lobbying and legal challenges. Just last week medallion owners won a legal victory blocking Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to create a fleet of “green cabs” to serve New York’s outer boroughs, and last year medallion owners successfully stymied New York’s attempt to shift to hybrid taxis.

Just one example in the article of the great protection medallions offered.

This is like the shoe shine boy giving stock tips in 1929, or the stripper with 6 houses in 2008 -- it represents the exact moment of "peak taxicab." Every major point in the story is now invalidated:

Medallions being valued over $1 million is a pipe dream today. Today they are worth about 11% of that. https://www.crainsnewyork.com/transportation/mystery-buyer-s...

The green cabs exist.

Teslas were just approved for NYC taxi fleets. https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-model-3-taxi-cab-ne...

Taxi emissions have been reduced dramatically: "The scientists report that overall fuel efficiency of the medallion taxi fleet climbed from 15.7 to 33.1 mpg, and corresponding estimates of nitric oxide (NO) and total particulate (PMT) exhaust emissions declined by 82% and 49%, respectively." https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/05/20190530-taxis.html

Nobody claims the medallion system was perfect, or that owners did not attempt to exploit their value. But it did provide a functioning cab network that was safe and predictable for decades. And despite holdign a lot of power, medallion owners are not immune from government regulations and competition aided by technology.

> But it did provide a functioning cab network that was safe and predictable for decades.

I don't even know what world you're describing right now. With issues like "the credit card machine is down" to a cab never showing up despite how many calls I made.. the last word I'd ever use to describe cabs is "predictable." Even today, post-Uber.

Carry some freaking cash.

"For decades" -- like, from the 1940s to the 2000s.

Fares were predictable. Still are in fact, they are actually painted on the exterior of the cab itself. Maybe you've noticed?

Taxis have hacked meters forever, take longer routes, and 'forget to turn on the meter' or the 'meter is broken' even today. There's a reason taxis have a fixed fare to manhattan from the airport.

>> a fixed fare

like I said originally, "predictable." thx 4 confirming

We can have both Uber's app experience and drivers being classified as employees. They are not mutually exclusive.

But we can't classify them as employees and have Uber's current driver experience, they would have to regulate their drivers more like a normal taxi service due to minimum wage laws and fixed overhead per employee.

> Jersey City just had a public referendum on short-term rentals that AirBnB spent millions of dollars lobbying against.

Lobbied against and still lost by an enormous margin (70 percent of voters supported the new regulation).

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/05/nyregion/airbnb-jersey-ci...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21459486

Yep, nearly 70% of voters voted against allowing short-term rentals. AirBnb spent over $4 million on that local election alone[1].

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/06/airbnb-suffers-setback-in-je...

Proof that voting works (IMHO). Local residents won against a distant corporate entity.

Proof that it can.

AirBnB aren't top competition.

well preying on ignorance is the game of politicians and they won. Yes I am saying it was a loss for the rest of us.

why? politicians and their allies successfully portrayed the home sharing industry as the reason for rising rents when in fact it has long been because politicians and those using their connections which have been the cause. oh they hide it well but the idea is to keep their investments up and keep "those" people out. Those people being any group which they don't want to see where they live.

If you got this far, good for you. Are there bad actors in the home sharing space. Yes, however you target them more directly but the restriction of requiring owners to be on site during the rental period severely limits the rights of the good ones.

so yes there is some regulation needed but if it does not protect the little guy, and they weren't in this as they got rolled in with the rest, then it harms us all as whole.

rents won't go down until more units are built and they won't be built for the same reasons they were not being built before home sharing industries showed up at the door.

home sharing industry

Is it “sharing” or is it “industry”? It can’t be both.

You can blame some conspiracy theory involving politicians colluding to trick their constituents, or you can listen to the lived experiences of residents in Jersey City that have to live next to nuisance short-term rentals.

Parties all night during the week, drunk people trying to enter the wrong apartments at 3AM, arguments between loud tourists in your once quiet building, and somehow sleeping 10 people in a two bedroom apartment.

I don't blame residents for not wanting to live and work around that everyday. Most people don't want to live in flop houses.

I think there already are laws against these kind of actions. Punish directly the ones that are wrong. The whole planet should not have to suffer because someone made a scandal at 3AM.

I think it's perfectly reasonable for people to not want their apartment building to become a hotel.

I agree more units need to be built and development should be encouraged. Given a referendum I'd vote against allowing short term rentals not because I'm nervous they raise rents but because I don't want my building to be a hotel.

Shouldn't that be up to the resident of the apartment building and the rules they have to abide by?

I'm not saying I disagree but I think a referendum vote is fine. Everyone has a chance to give their opinion then we count the votes and choose the will of the people. The property owner does have certain privileges as they should but renting is a 2-way relationship and tenants should have a voice in how their community operates.

So although I generally agree with your line of thought, I disagree in this instance.

NIMBYs always win.

The official election results put it at 86% (46,062) in favor of the regulations (voted 'Yes' for public question #1).

Even more interesting is the number of 'No' votes (7,416) is less than the number of signatures on the petition that forced the ordinance into a public referendum (~20,000 with ~9,000 certified).

https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/NJ/Hudson/98893/Web...

https://www.nj.com/hudson/2019/08/referendum-on-airbnb-regul...

The difference is that AirBnB makes lives of the neighbors much worse. Is a parasitic business model. Uber just allows for deals between drivers and customers which a lot of people like. Let's have referendum on Uber and see what the results are before lumping those companies together.

As a user of AirBnB accross Europe I did not make anyone's life worse. This is quite an offense. Are there bad people? Sure. But punish them directly. We already have laws for anti-social acts.

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