Why should employees give up rights just because it's the 21st century? Make no mistake, that's Uber/Lyft's entire advantage over traditional taxis: skirting hard-won employment regulation to lower costs at the expense of workers.
It's easy to see all the folks here who don't remember having to wait an hour for a taxi to show after calling, if it ever did. Pushing a button on your phone and getting a ride five minutes later is magic in comparison.
Don't forget that this thing is subsidized. It never proved to be profitable. These companies invested huge amounts of money in lobbying all over the world, fermenting social unrest and subverting democracy for a failed business model.
They try and play a long game where we both lose workers rights, and have only bad monopolistic transportation available.
I understand your point but I'm not sure it's relevant. Taxis managed to survive for a long time without any artificial money injection, it's probably at a stable equalibrium. Allowing this artificial market to keep growing is just a endorsing a bubble. The bigger it gets the worst the collateral will be when it'll finally collapse.
I don't live in CA but used to do a fair amount of work travel out there. If they don't have Uber/Lyft in the future, I'll just make work get me a rental car.
The Bay area is finally electrifying Caltrain, which has the potential to connect the South bay in more ways then the current commuter connection. BART is also being expanded both in the East bay and the South Bay. And the only reason you are not getting a high speed rail to South California is because politics got in the way. But this high speed train will go between Bakersfield and Merced, making it the first true high speed train in the USA. All this while the Metro in LA is expanding and adding much needed connections in South California.
This all said, Marin County is an incredibly affluent part of the Bay area, it could really easily fix their connectivity issues to the rest of the Bay area with better and more frequent buses (I wonder why they don’t).
Sure, I will admit, California has some problems when it comes to their public transit projects. But pointing to the richest communities and how they are not getting trains is not a good example of those problems.
EDIT: Previously wrongly stated that there was a BART station close by.
Also the acceleration and deceleration will clear the tracks far easier and quicker for the next train to arrive, leaving less congestion during peak hours and less load on the system overall.
Why does this keep getting repeated? They're not contractors. They have little-to-no control over who their "clients" are. They don't develop relationships for repeat service with those clients; don't set their rates (I'd gladly pay some drivers more than others); are forced to jump through hoops to maintain 4.X ratings or they're booted. The only thing they do have control over is when to start and stop working. That's just a much more flexible part-time job as far as I can tell.
Nobody is guaranteed a contract either. If you don't perform satisfactorily then the contract is terminated. No different than tech support that are rated poorly in communications.
Drivers control their rates [1], when they work, where they work, how long they work, and which rides they accept (with user, time and direction shown first). Only thing missing is destination upfront, however that can change anyway. No different than tech support dealing customer requests regardless of effort.