Uber and Lyft paid SFO about $50M last year | Hacker News Reader

Uber and Lyft paid SFO about $50M last year

sfgate.com

24 pointskaycebasques55 comments

So SFO is recovering 3.5% of its annual budget from rideshare apps. Given the absolute massive amount of traffic flow, that seems perfectly reasonable to me. The last two times I drove into SFO the two lanes into the central parking garage were blocked by rideshare traffic. Maybe the rates should be higher.

Especially if the waiting pool is still overflowing the cellphone lot like it was a few years ago. I haven't gone back there, I time my trips to avoid it now because it was worse than pulling over onto the shoulder on 101 to wait.

(What's really a travesty is the surcharge you pay to take BART from Millbrae to SFO. It's $5.20 per person, rather than per group/vehicle).

Calling Uber and Lyft "ridesharing" is one hell of an euphemism. They're just taxi services. Where the "independent" drivers don't pay taxes.

The drivers 100% pay taxes. Everything is reported to the government. Not sure why you think someone paid by a major corporation would avoid having their income reported.

Because that's exactly what most Uber/Lyft drivers did for many years, which led to them getting banned or forced to properly employ their drivers. They held their drivers in a pseudo-self-employed-contractor state so they also wouldn't have to pay social security, unemployment insurance, etc., why else do you think they were able to be so cheap? If that is different now in California, that's very recent.

They are still required to pay taxes, and Uber/Lyft are required to send 1099s to the IRS to declare the income. Nobody was hiding anything.

>why else do you think they were able to be so cheap?

I thought it was because they were avoiding paying taxi taxes and avoiding medallion restrictions. And maybe also because the Uber/Lyft themselves were operating at a loss, and drivers might have been overlooking the money lost due to car depreciation.

I don't think you understand how 1099's work.

Unfortunately the "official" taxis at SFO have been reduced to using the prime pick up real estate they've been given to scam people who don't know any better. I tried taking a taxi home from there and they quoted me a price more than double the cost of an Uber. I showed the driver the Uber price and told him I'd be willing to pay a little more than that, but his price was ridiculous. He didn't care and wouldn't budge on the price.

I'd guess this consumer-hostile arrangement is maintained via some kind of kickback up the ladder. It's pretty funny to see a long line of empty, desolate taxis sitting right outside the arrival doors, while if you walk 15 minutes to the far side of the terminal where rideshare has been relegated, it's bustling to the point that it's difficult for drivers and passengers to find each other.

So yeah, my view is you can say what you want about rideshare; taxis are far worse.

>> I'd guess this consumer-hostile arrangement is maintained via some kind of kickback up the ladder.

or VC-subsidized rides, or shifting private costs onto the public, or not paying their drivers a sustainable wage, or this is not typical and you rarely find (I've never seen it) the taxi rate double the Uber rate.

So yeah, must be shadowy cabal between high ranking city administrators and fat-cat taxi drivers.

Uber has been free cash flow positive in markets like San Francisco for years. "Shadowy cabal" to describe the taxi industry isn't speculation or fear mongering. It's more or less an accurate description of how that market worked prior to disruption.

Airport taxis in general (and probably at SFO) usually have a long FIFO queue just to get to that prime real estate. Not worth cutting a deal when they've had to waste an hour of their time.

And in a lot of places, an airport taxi doesn't have a taxi license in the city, so they're largely stuck in that system.

I don't think they offer shared rides anymore either? Maybe they don't in any cities anymore?

I always loved the randomness of the ride sharing option, the potential extra time before drop-off easily outweighed the potential for an interesting conversation.

Uber Pool is back after a pandemic-induced hiatus. The main draw isn't the potential for an interesting conversation but the fact that it's cheaper.

Absolutely the prime driver.

It is kind of amazing how random conversations give you a window into how other people think. I remember talking to a radiologist who in the middle of a conversation dropped this nugget - if we knew when people in chronic health problems were going to die and end treatment six months before that and simply try to make their last days as comfortable as possible, we would save a lot of money on healthcare in the US.

Whats wrong with this? This is a true statement.

It is just something I would have never thought about otherwise.

The issue is when that line of thinking becomes warped or pathologized - like seems to be happening here in Canada with the MAID program (assisted death).

Toronto's main airport has a free "monorail" that goes between the 2 terminals, but also to a nearby off-site hotel and carpark.

Sometimes I go there for my pickup and dropoff to avoid the arrivals/departures zoo.

It seems you save a few bucks (Toronto charges $4-$4.50 for pickups/dropoffs to the cars, and $15 for higher end pickups). This monorail loophole used to be the only way to uber/lyft from the airport before they made their arrangement in mid-2018.

I think I also get nicer drivers because they don't go through the queue that Uber/Lyft create for FIFO airport pickups. I just get someone that was on their way to that queue and got to jump it. Dropoff experience is better too.

Say what you will about LAX but LAXIT (their project moving rideshare and taxi out of the main loop to an offsite parking lot with shuttle service) was a bit of a game changer.

$50M at $5.50 per trip means over 17 trips per minute every minute of the year. That’s pretty wild.

I wonder how does that compare with the overall budget of the airport

article says 1.4$bn or 3.5%.

Why is Uber paying this? The concept is that you book a ride with no involvement from SFO, and then the car shows up wherever you happen to be, looking exactly the same as every other car.

It doesn't appear that SFO would have any way to collect their rideshare fees except for honor-system voluntary payment.

SFO’s involvement is that they own or lease the roads and parking lots where the pickups happen, and so have the right to set conditions on their use.

Parking enforcement isn’t automatic at parking lots without barriers either, but that doesn’t mean paying a parking fee to the operator is a “voluntary payment” just because you might not get a ticket if you do skip payment.

As for how they could enforce it, it’s pretty easy to walk around outside the airport and spot the cars with Uber/Lyft decals, or multiple phones, or use ANPR to identify frequent visitors, or just ask passengers as they get into cars. Multiple options for enforcement.

The enforcement might end up targeting the drivers rather than Uber itself, but it would have the same effect.

For arrivals, SFO has signs that direct passengers to a designated rideshare pickup area, and the rideshare apps direct passengers to a designated stall.

It would be possible to monitor how many cars are picking up passengers there with cameras, because non-rideshare cars would not pick up people there. It would also be possible for an auditor to spot-check with the Uber app and see if they get charged the fee or not, and whether the app directs them to the rideshare pick up area. From there it’s easy to see if a company is circumventing the surcharge.

> and the rideshare apps direct passengers to a designated stall.

That's part of their voluntary cooperation. They could also direct passengers to go stand at the curb like everyone else.

As others have commented, it would be relatively simple for airports to deploy ANPR[0] to detect cars picking up passengers at the curb more frequently than an average person would be expected to, at which point they have the usual trespassing remedies at their disposal.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recogni...

Aren't they public roads at the airport?

They're owned by the airport and there are restrictions on their use.

That would be illegal.

This isn’t voluntary, it’s regulation.

Like taxi medallions?

Yes like that.

Also notable, the airlines pay for the gates and the landing slots and so on.

It’s a transportation hub. The various forms of transportation that use it pay a fee.

My point is: you are right but Uber has been known to skirt the law.

and every single passenger also pays an extra fee unrelated to the actual act of travel, the airport improvement fee, aka a tax that's not a tax.

If it’s a fee that’s only charged to passengers who are traveling then it’s related to the act of travel.

So Uber should just ignore it and risk getting sued or their drivers trespassed from the airport property?

> It doesn't appear that SFO would have any way to collect their rideshare fees except for honor-system voluntary payment.

It's called a tax.

By that logic, it doesn't appear that the US government would have any way to collect their income taxes except for honor-system voluntary payment.

> By that logic, it doesn't appear that the US government would have any way to collect their income taxes except for honor-system voluntary payment.

That's why they collect income taxes directly from employers instead of trying to collect from employees.

First, Uber is not paying this, you the rider pay it.

Second, one of the major (valid) complaints has always been that Uber's "disruption" is really just skipping the things other providers are required to do: fleet maintenance, insurance, licensing, taxation, and more. Uber's well past the "break shit and move fast stage", now that they're the dominant player it's in their best interest to pull in regulation barriers and promote any form of moat. They should lobby for HIGHER taxes and fees, pass those on to customers and push for aggressive enforcement - that would be easier than competing with the next startup.

Airport Uber works different. Drivers wait in a designated queue.

Uber and Lyft didn't pay this. Its the passengers arriving at and departing from SFO who paid this extra fees.

This kind of lowbrow commentary adds nothing to the conversation. The fact is, you as a passenger don't make a payment transfer directly to SFO when you use Lyft or Uber, so it is in fact them who make the payment. The fact that Lyft and Uber can't create money out of thin air and therefore the money has to come from somewhere is obvious.

I meant to point out that this kind of fee is finally just making it costlier to fly for everyone at SFO. It barely affects Uber or any of their drivers. It's effectively another hidden fee that airlines and airports are so fond of.

Well based on the geniune question above "Why does Uber bother paying this?" maybe this is needed and you're coming down rather hard on the poster.

I guess you never took Econ 101.

Reminder that there’s a free shuttle to Caltrain and a BART connection at SFO. De-incentivising ride share use and encouraging public transit seems like a good thing.

BART passengers are paying more or less the same amount to BART in a surcharge that (at least in theory) is supposed to pay for the construction.

It’s even worse as BART charges per rider while ride share surcharges are per vehicle. It’s often not even cost competitive to take transit if you’re a couple or family.

I remember the first time I took the BART with luggage. After a few stops, the announcer said effectively "Tunnel is broken, no more BART service" and dumped everyone out.

I have a very high tolerance for this kind of shit, but I have a hard time trusting the BART again.

If only there was public transit...

I took the BART to the airport exactly once in a cold winter night, and can say that I will never do that again. Not until they somehow mitigate the issue of homeless crackheads assaulting random people.

In my experience with the BART it's not just cold nights and long runs, every ride is like that.

Isn’t that like a bagel and coffee at an airport these days?

Gini index/Gini coefficient meassuring income equality.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Income_i...

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