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Online Carpooling Service Fined In Canada
TechDirt is reporting on a disappointing development out of Canada. An Ontario transportation board has fined PickupPal, a Web-based service for arranging carpools, because a local bus company complained of the competition. (TechCrunch apparently first broke the story.) "[The transportation board has] established a bunch of draconian rules that any user in Ontario must follow if it uses the service — including no crossing of municipal boundaries — meaning the service is only good within any particular city's limits. It's better than being shut down completely, and the service can still operate elsewhere around the world, but this is yet another case where we see regulations, that are supposedly put in place to improve things for consumers, do the exact opposite."
There is a bill already before the Ontario Legislative Assembly to update the regulations to explicitly allow this practice. It is disappointing that the OTB didn't wait until the bill had passed before passing judgement, but at least we can hope the situation won't last long. The same bill would outlaw some common driver distractions, such as television screens and handheld cell phones.
http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/bills/bills_detail.do?locale=en&BillID=2099
The article is heavily biased, although this isn't terribly surprising.
Pickup Pal is a service that allows individuals to arrange not only carpools. Specifically, it allows drivers and passengers to arrange compensation for trips.
Does this remind you of anything else? Oh, yes, a taxi company (or bus company, take your pick) which is Trentway-Wagar's complaint.
The bus company, which TW is, as an organization that arranges for buses to transport passengers for money, is bound by a series of provincial vehicle travel laws which require its drivers to be insured, to possess the correct licenses for their vehicles, and so on.
There are, in fact, specific exceptions in the specified Acts for car-pooling, but it appears that Pickup Pal does not satisfy them for various reasons (which should actually be quite obvious, prima facie).
The difficulty is that Pickup Pal is obviously not merely offering a carpool service. They are also obviously not offering a public taxi service or a bus service, either, but the carpool service has a defined exception in the law.
The law, the board argues, exists to protect riders. Drivers are to be insured, carry the proper licenses for their vehicles, and so on. (Insurance issues, which is a major public interest in cases such as these, form a major part of the Board's concern. Insuring a public vehicle is very different from insuring a private car and the caps on insurance are often much higher.)
As a result, Pickup Pal was ordered to immediately cease taking any actions that would put them in violation of the Public Vehicles Act.
Pickup Pal argues that they have nothing to do with the service, that they merely arrange this. The Board does not agree, for good reason- a taxicab company could make an identical argument. Such an argument is unpersuasive. There is a compelling public policy argument to regulating public vehicles and carriers and so on. For abiding by these regulations, Trentway-Wagar incurs costs, and they found it unfair that another provider would be able to avoid the regulations and thereby avoid the costs- hence the charge of unfair competition.
The summary writes that the regulations are making things worse for the consumer. I beg to disagree. Unsafe public transportation is worse than expensive public transportation, and there is a compelling public policy reason for regulating public transportation for safety's sake- regulations that Pickup Pal did not abide by.
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I remember hearing about this story a few months ago on NPR (can't find a link, if someone else can it's worth it to listen to). IIRC, they had an executive from the competing company being interviewed.
Basically, his complaint boiled down to the argument that it wasn't fair that the bus company had to comply with a bunch of expensive regulations, but that a carpooling service didn't.
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This is the most media fueled common misconceptions, please stop using it. Apple did not charge because Sarbanes Oxley, they charged because of additional patent/royalty costs. 802.11n has more patents then 802.11g so it costs more to license. It the same with MPEG, H264 cost more the H263 which cost more the base mpeg4 to license. When they originally sold you a router they only licensed it for 802.11G, who would pay more if they don't have to? You essentially were paying Apple's additional IP costs.
Wrong.
The landlord pays property tax and that cost is passed along to tenants as part of the rent.
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Personally, I'm confused as to how they came to these regulations. It's built on a faulty foundation that they could define carpooling as a very strict set of conditions- and then disallow any activity that didn't meet those conditions.
They're not disallowing anything. They're simply defining a carpool. Something that doesn't fit into that definition isn't disallowed, it's just not officially a carpool.
If I want to share a ride with a complete stranger and split the gas, how is that any different from sharing a ride with a family member?
You're more than welcome to do that. The problem here isn't sharing a ride with a stranger. The problem here is a business facilitating that sharing. The decision is basically saying that they are not facilitating carpooling, by the legal definition of carpooling, and that therefore what they are doing is facilitating transportation of passengers in public vehicles. The problem is that operators of public transportation vehicles must be licensed to operate a public vehicle, which these drivers are not.
It's my car and I'd much prefer to do with it what I'd please- I see absolutely no reason the government has any say in this!!
They don't. Carry on transporting whoever you want. Even call it a carpool if you want. No one cares. But don't try to operate a business facilitating public transportation without the appropriate licenses.
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My point was that the ALCB was not being subsidized by taxpayer dollars, as you seemed to be asserting:
It wasn't just paying for itself, but contributing back to the budget, hence benefiting taxpayers.
Thinking about it, there may have been efficiency gains in that they controlled the full distribution chain, meaning fewer middle men.
Heck, I could even be wrong on this one - a fellow Albertan notes further down the chain that he thinks overall liquor has become cheaper. I still firmly stand by my assertion that government run is not inherently inefficient, and I'm rather tired of it being taken as an absolute truth, like gravity.
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This issue is almost already dead. It is OLD news, and there are changes to legislation going through the provincial(state) parliment to fix this problem.
The reason for these rules were to prevent UNLICENCED operators from running a bus or taxi service. Obviously the rules need to be changed, and they are.