Uber cars seized amid crackdown on illegal pickups | Hacker News Reader

Uber cars seized amid crackdown on illegal pickups

nypost.com

35 pointsnissimk43 comments

Note that these seizures are for picking up passengers in response to street hails, not pre-arranged pickups. That is against Uber's own policy as well as the regulations.

Worth noting that it's only against Uber's policy because this is one stronghold of the taxi cartel Uber hasn't been able to crack (and partially how Uber initially differentiated themselves to argue existing regulations shouldn't apply to their service). But a fundamental question remains, why shouldn't I be able to hail an Uber driver off the street or at an airport? There is no valid reason other than it undermines the rents that incumbent firms and bureacrats are generating from anti-consumer regulations.

Because hailing drivers who will then stop in a street full of cars trying to drive somewhere is inherently disruptive and unsafe, at least most of the time. It's challenging with taxis too, but those at least are bright yellow with extra flashing lights on the roof, and theoretically some extra training or at least experience.

If you live in NYC you'll learn quickly that there are a lot of rules and regulations that are just necessary because of the sheer number of people here. Other closely analogous situations are the ruthlessness of parking enforcement, or the draconian laws about street vending, and so on.

People here do understand that the sort of laissez faire approach that would theoretically be more "free" for everyone is not necessarily feasible in a city this dense and interconnected.

Certainly there are valid considerations for infrastructure design and regulations regarding where hailing can be conducted, but if it's okay for a customer to hail a cab from Company A at particular location, I don't see a valid reason for not allowing Uber to do the same. I find your color argument unconvincing, but even if it were valid, I'm sure Uber and their drivers would be open to putting identification on their cars if it granted them access to desirable customers. Additionally, it's not as if increased competition among firms who can respond to a hailing customer will inherently increase congestion due to street hailing. This would only be true if existing companies were (a) underserving the market so significantly that the ability to hail additional cabs from the curb allowed previously unmet demand to be satisfied, or (b) demand for street hailing itself were to increase. I think (a) is possible, though unlikely, because hailing from an app is generally more convenient than standing on a curb and flagging down cabs. I think the same would apply for (b). If anything, companies like Uber provide a way to more safely and efficiently pick up passengers without relying on street hailing.

So all uber drivers would have to do is paint their cars yellow and stick flashing lights on the roof and it would be ok?

Really, I find it hard to believe this is about safety and not about economics.

It's about both, clearly. I was responding to this comment:

> There is no valid reason other than it undermines the rents...

And I pointed out that yes, actually there are other valid reasons.

Not having every square inch of city streets covered by circling taxis and for hire cars is another reason.

The fact that taxis have regulated and inspected meters that prevent people from getting ripped off on the fare charged is yet another reason (and an excellent one I might add).

In response ot the inspected meters.

You can see a fare estimate on the app before you even call in an uber. I think if they were able to do pickups, the driver's phone could easily display some sort of meter for riders, and even do predictions before transaction is even confirmed.

Yes, we have that problem in Mexico city, a long time ago a city Mayor gave the Taxi Union thousands of temporal permits (basically a piece of paper!) just to earn votes for his party, few years forward we have thousands of "pirate" taxis, more than the original permits because you know xerox machines, those unregulated taxis often commit crimes like assaults, thief or rape, and are able to get away because they don't have license plates or have fake ones. The last two mayors have started to crack down on pirate taxis, but you know what actually started to make them disappear? Uber.

First, taxis are not a "cartel." Cartels are characterized by an agreement among participants not to compete with each other. In contrast, taxis are a government-granted monopoly, like your power company or water company. Those monopolies were granted for much the same reason as they were granted to your power or water company: taxis serve as a quasi-public extension of a city's transit infrastructure and cities use the monopoly grant as a carrot to extract concessions from private cab companies (i.e. no surge pricing, commercial insurance, servicing all parts of a city, etc).

Second, the economic arguments in favor of taxi regulation are stronger when you're talking about street hails.[1] The market is inefficient because customers do not really have any way of choosing cabs that offer good service. In turn, cabs have little incentive to offer good service. Furthermore, there are safety concerns. It is not uncommon in certain countries for cab drivers to cooperate with muggers and robbers.

On the whole, I think the customer service and safety concerns are a lot less compelling in 2015 New York than in 1915 New York, and that you should be able to hail an Uber off the street. But there is a logic to the existing regulations, and Uber's arguments against regulation are weakest when applied to street hails, where its reputation system does not come into play.

[1] This paper surveys the economic issues in play: https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/reports/ec....

Cartel members don't need to agree to not compete against each other, they simply need to agree to work together to restrict competition. In this case, incumbent taxi firms could be in cutthroat competition with each other, while still lobbying to prevent new entrants into the market.

I disagree that there is no way for customers to choose cabs which offer good service when street hailing. Sure, there is no way to provide 100% certainty that service will be good, but this is the case even under intense regulation. Considerations like reputation and the desire for future business do have a tremendous regulating effect. That doesn't mean they are perfect and I'm not saying there should be no regulation whatsoever, but I fail to see how restricting competition makes an already inefficient market more efficient.

I don't understand your argument re: choosing cabs. You have no idea what cab will pick you up when you hail one on the street, and you generally don't get to pick and choose given the circumstances. Thus, someone with a good reputation has no way to get more customers than someone with a bad reputation.

IME, and this probably varies from place to place, cab drivers sometimes will give you a business card after a ride, and you can then call then directly. I've worked places where we basically had one driver that was the go-to for the (small) office.

You might not get to pick the cab driver themselves, but you can pick the cab company you are willing to patronize (even more so where there is increased competition). If I have a terrible experience with Company X, I probably won't use them again unless they give me a good reason to change my mind. This is a powerful incentive for companies to ensure their drivers are providing a quality service (or at least it is in a competitive market).

Do you think people hailing a cab can effectively choose between different cab companies (there are dozens here in DC, for example, with different markings) at that instant?

There are also practical concerns.

1) Uber depends heavily on their app for navigation and billing. Street fares short-circuit that and make it difficult for their app to get involved. Also, with no guarantee of the app being involved, there's nothing to stop a driver from demanding payment in cash and pocketing the money; any driver who does that is outright competing with Uber.

2) Only a very few places have hailable cabs to begin with. It requires that both the typical starting point and the typical drop-off point be in a dense urban core, and even then it'll still only work if hailing cabs is part of the local culture. It'll work in New York, but nobody's going to hail an Uber in Dallas because nobody hails cabs here. Dallas is mostly suburb: Downtown-to-Downtown cab rides are rare to nonexistent here, and even when they happen, hailing cabs just isn't part of the local culture.

3) Hailable taxicabs are clearly marked as taxis. Ubers are just people's personal cars. Nobody is going to stand on the street and hail random cars that drive by, and if they do, that's called hitchhiking.

>no valid reason other than it undermines the rents that incumbent firms and bureacrats are generating from anti-consumer regulations

It would appear as though you've answered your own question. Politics is not required to be sane or rational.

Exactly, from the article:

> “Street hails are not permitted on the Uber platform — period,” said the company’s spokesman Matt Wing. “This is a small group of bad actors and the violations add up to less than one hundredth of 1 percent of our rides over the same time period.”

But surely, they're just disrupting Uber, yea? So there should be no problem. Victimless crime. And its only 1% of their drivers that got caught at that.

How would one know that there's an uber car to wave down? Or does the uber driver see someone trying to pick up a taxi and stop?

You're standing on the corner trying to hail a cab and a black car (or random sedan) will pull up, wind down the window and ask if you need a taxi. It's usually off-meter so the rate is negotiated/paid in cash. If you sound foreign (as I do), the rate is usually pretty high unless you argue it down. It's risky, tiring and makes you thankful for industry regulations that make licensed taxis a fair and predictable commodity service.

Taxis in New York (including Ubers) are required to have a special license plate. Also taxis looking for passengers illegally will honk at people who look like they might need a ride.

But isn't ũbers thing is that they are not taxis? Supposedly this has great benefits for Uber and nebulous consequences for their drivers.

There are two main kinds of for-hire cars on NYC streets. Taxis, which are marked with stuff all over them, and "car service" cars which look like any other car, but have license plates that start with the letter T and end with the letter C.

This conversation is about the latter kind, cars that don't look like taxis.

(yes I am aware that there is now option three with the green cabs but it's not really relevant to this discussion)

Not sure about in NY, but in SF, Uber cars tend to have a small (maybe 3"x3"?) but visible sign in a corner of the front windshield. Similarly, Lyft cars tend to be have a little glowing mustache and/or a similarly sized sign in the front.

A city doesn't cap the number of restaurants. Why should they cap the number of Uber drivers, or taxis for that matter. When the city puts a cap on taxi licenses that means that the license owners get to charge a fee to their drivers so drivers don't get the benefits of less competition just rent seekers.

Cities do cap the number of restaurants, albeit indirectly. City planning uses zoning and permitting to adjust the density of restaurants in various neighbourhoods and allows and denies liquor licenses and the like to keep noise and traffic to an acceptable level.

Of course the city caps the number of restaurants.

I have a sneaking suspicion that you live in a place that would not be accurately described as a "city" if you believe this.

If high schools could jam in a segment on economic civics, perhaps using some version of "SimCity" to drive the situation home, then nicely informed voters wouldn't be so like to make overly broad statements. I don't know how many times i've heard the microphone at a city council meeting occupied by someone who is simultaneously demanding for reduced business taxes and that something be done about the homeless camping in their doorway; (and if the cognitive dissonance is pointed out to them, they inevitably stammer something about it all being a matter of governmental waste) Please consider the history of any large city and what happened when the taxi industry was initially unregulated. It wasn't pretty.

Because having supply > demand is bad, resulting in cars idling in the streets, increasing pollution and gridlock.

That makes no sense. Idle cars don't make money and therefore have no incentive to stay in the business for long. The biggest problem with Ubers and taxis right now is that demand for drivers is way, way higher than supply. More Ubers/taxis on the road means less waiting time, more carpooling, less car ownership and less idling, not to mention lower prices.

Why? it won't last for long ... it'll balance out as drivers realize it's not profitable.

Let market forces do their job. It's reasonable for government to regulate safety, but not supply.

You're assuming it's a binary condition.

I think there is a substantial gap between "excessive supply" and "SO much excess supply that the drivers are losing money".

> “Our officers noted an uptick in illegal activity attributable to licensed for-hire vehicles acting outside their authority,” said agency spokesman Allan Fromberg. “And seizures have a greater deterrent value than summonses alone.”

So are they going to seize the yellow cabs driving in the bike lanes now too?

Interesting how the trade group is pushing for more regulation of uber:

Bhairavi Desai, who reps both yellow cab and Uber drivers for the union.

Desai wants the TLC to cap the number of Uber drivers allowed to operate in the city, and require the app to give them a minimum fare requirement, as well as a guaranteed number of trips.

It's the most common pattern of all.

Once someone is a provider in a given industry, it's in their best interest to build barriers behind them. This is the pattern with almost any professional licensing board. The established players join/start the board to "protect the public," then establish guidelines - licenses, required training, insurance bonds, etc - to limit people who want to enter the industry, and then grandfather themselves in. Undertakers, florists, carpenters, etc.

In some cases, they might be "protecting the public" but they're protecting themselves in the process.

Ref: http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2015/01/26-tim...

Interesting how the trade group is pushing for more regulation of uber:

Interesting, yes. But not at all surprising. Google for "bootleggers and baptists".

> as well as a guaranteed number of trips

Maybe someone can explain this - Uber or Taxi drivers have no control over the amount of people who request their services.

Both Uber and Taxi companies could control the number of drivers operating in an area at any time, which I suspect is the idea. Oversupply could help response times but hurt the bottom line of drivers so there is an unavoidable compromise to be made.

Yeah unless you're the person desperate for a ride who can't find a cab. The compromise is absolutely avoidable. Even with today's "oversupply" people are signing up to become uber drivers, so it must be at least somewhat equitable.

No the trade off is fundamental. Various addition or removal of constraints on the market will presumably move the equilibrium in the direction of fewer drivers/higher pay or in more drivers/lower pay, but you can't get rid of it, fundamentally (there are other factors, e.g. rate).

I have no position on what would be (more) desirable, I was just trying to expand for the parent - you can adjust the supply more easily than the demand, but the interest of the drivers and of the companies are not cleanly aligned.

Sounds like Uber needs to start hacking politics a bit more if it wants to continue operating. Trying to skirt the law is working less and less for them.

>hacking politics

Well, now they're apparently asking to be treated like taxis, but only when being considered a taxi is an advantage:

http://sfist.com/2015/06/12/now_that_taxis_have_a_small_adva...

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