NYC Taxi Commission Nixes Cab-Hailing Apps

An anonymous reader writes "Uber is a company that creates apps to connect taxi and limo drivers with potential passengers. They've been rapidly expanding their service to cities across the country, but they're now getting pushback from New York City. This week the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission issued a public notice saying, 'A driver must not use any electronic communication device (PDF), including a cell phone or smartphone running a hail or payment app, while operating a taxicab.' The commission says its current contractual obligations forbid the use of such technology."

Comments

Uber is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

I use it all the time in DC. I probably use it more because of the fact the DC government doesn't like it.

Re:Uber is awesome

[hawguy]

I hope I'm not breaching protocol by asking, but would you be willing to share any numbers on how much you're spending on the cabs? Just curious how it compares to owning a car.

I'm not the original poster, but SF has a usable transit system (not perfect, not even great, but usable), so for a $70/month transit pass you can use transit to get to work and many other places. If you spend $40/weekend on Uber rides, then you're still way ahead of owning a car, since you can easily spend $150 - $300/month for a parking space depending on where you live (and thanks to increasingly more aggressive parking enforcement by the City, you'll probably end up spending more than that on tickets if you park on the street)

Of course, your Uber expenses are largely dictated by where you live and where you're going -- if you live in the Outer Sunset and are regularly going to North Beach, it's going to cost around $30 per trip on Uber. Make 8 round trips on Uber and you're up to around $500.
 

"while operating a taxicab"

[Culture20]

They can use it while they're parked waiting for a fare, but not while driving. Makes sense for safety.

Re:"while operating a taxicab"

[MichaelSmith]

No I think this is about who controls the allocation of taxis. Somebody has to pay for their call center. Can't have it replaced but a couple of thousand lines of code.

Re:"while operating a taxicab"

[stephanruby]

The article says it's because their current contract with their payment processor gives them exclusivity until February. In February, the ban will no longer be in effect, and they'll be free to experiment with new payment systems and taxi-related phone applications that accept payments.

And yes, I know I cheated. I knew I wasn't supposed to read the article, but I just couldn't help myself.

Re:"while operating a taxicab"

[ShanghaiBill]

Somebody has to pay for their call center.

This makes no sense. The call center is a cost sink for the taxi company. They should be glad to be rid of it.

I think the real reason may have something to do with independent taxis competing on an equal footing with bigger fleets.

Re:"while operating a taxicab"

[gr8_phk]

This makes no sense. The call center is a cost sink for the taxi company. They should be glad to be rid of it.

Dude, the call center IS the taxi company. When it's replaced by an app, licensed cab drivers could use their own taxi and keep the full fare. Someone will have to figure out how to handle taxes though.

Re:"while operating a taxicab"

[Cylix]

....

And yes, I know I cheated. I knew I wasn't supposed to read the article, but I just couldn't help myself.

We tend to be fairly forgiving here so I'll let you off with a warning this time. Just be more cautious in the future and mistakes like this won't happen again.

*Hops back into the RTFM Patrol Car and speeds off down the information super highway.

Re:"while operating a taxicab"

[jmauro]

Yes and no. In NYC to operate a taxi legally you need a medallion on the cab. The current prices for the medallions run about $1 million and as such the industry is heavily concentrated among just a few operators who then lease the medallion to the driver (at a price of roughly $130 per 12 hour shift). Getting rid of the call center would not change the dynamics of the industry at all since the medallion regulation defines the industry more than the call center.

At least in NYC. Cities without medallions like DC it would definately effect them, but the cities without medallions already have large numbers of owner operates (and have a completely different set of problems).

Re:"while operating a taxicab"

[Firethorn]

I'm sorry, but you're spreading some misinformation.

In NYC, in order to 'reduce' traffic* and protect the interests of the taxi drivers, they have their medallion system. Each taxi has to have a medallion to be legal. Medallions are handled like 'real property', in the sense that they can be sold, don't need renewing, etc...

Latest auction prices for the least restrictive medallions is around $1M. Ones marked only for 'independent operators' where the taxi driver is the owner are a bit cheaper, but still more expensive than the car they drive. Cheaper yet(at the moment) are the 'green' medallions that require you to drive a hybrid (Ford Escape, last time I read about it). As such, it's not a $1M 'fee' where you'll never get the money back. It's a $1M investment that you can get back next week by putting it up for auction again.

*Not that it's really worked; the market will find a way. In this case with non-livery cars that you call and they pick you up. Legally only actual taxis can respond to street hails.

radio

[bob zee]

is the radio considered an electronic communication device? it is one-way communication for sure, but "communication" nonetheless.

Re:radio

[CohibaVancouver]

read the article

You must be new here.

TLC

[clarkkent09]

Why is there a commission to decide whether I can drive you from A to B for a fee and whether you can call or text me on the phone to arrange it and to whom I have to pay a very substantial annual fee for the privilege of doing so? The answer: its a legalized racket, just like all business licensing.

Re:TLC

[clarkkent09]

Why not consider a possibility that licensing and regulation are two different words because they mean two different things before you start writing knee jerk posts you anonymous coward.

Re:TLC

[guises]

I'd say it's more of a cartel. If it was just licensing than anyone could go to city hall fill out a form and become a taxi driver. But they keep a cap on how many taxis there are. Then they have price controls on the fares to prevent competition.

You've got it backwards - the price controls are there to keep fares from rising too high, they prevent gouging. That's a danger whenever you limit competition by restricting who can perform a service. It's like how every country in the world (except the US) which allows drug companies to patent drugs also sets limits on how much the companies can charge for those drugs. It's there to prevent abuse of their monopoly.

If they removed the state granted monopoly on taxis, then they could also remove the price controls and the fare price would likely fall. The reason they don't do this is probably mostly because of the company lobbyists, but there's some good reason to believe that this scenario wouldn't work out as well as you'd hope. Just a few years ago pedicabs (bicycle taxis) were completely unregulated in New York. There were tons of them and it was rather difficult to make a living that way, particularly if you weren't a very good salesman: the largest pedicab company in the city was (still is) run by a turkish man who would bring in people from turkey on a three month visa with the promise that they would be able to pay their way, and pay their way back home, as pedicab drivers. Since their English wasn't very good in general they had a lot of trouble getting rides, they would fall deeper and deeper into debt since there was no other way (legal way) for them to make money here and no way to get back home, etc. Just a bad scenario.

Anyway, the point is that they limit the number of cabs in order to keep rates high enough that drivers can make a living wage, and they restrict what the cabs can charge in order to keep the drivers from gouging people. It's not ideal, but a simple solution based on ideals rather than facts is not going to improve the situation.

Re:TLC

[khallow]

And then when New York's streets are chocked cabs and congestion sucks

You probably just described New York City for the past two hundred years. While I admire someone who can actually find a problem and recognize it is a problem, who seriously believes that rigging the cab market so that it is deliberately overpriced and uncompetitive is in any way solving congestion?

Re:TLC

[arth1]

It only raises the cost of living if you ride around in cabs all the time. You're talking about what's basically a luxury service,

Sincerely, fuck you. When I hop around on crutches, public transportation isn't a real choice, and taking a taxi isn't luxury.

Taxis serve a useful public service.

Re:TLC

[yndrd1984]

Except it isn't a small minority. Its the majority. In 2010, it was estimated that 58 percent of all workers in the US were earning minimum wage. http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2010.htm [bls.gov]

From your own source:

In 2010, 72.9 million American workers age 16 and over were paid at hourly rates, representing 58.8 percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those paid by the hour, 1.8 million earned exactly the prevailing Federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 2.5 million had wages below the minimum.2 Together, these 4.4 million workers with wages at or below the Federal minimum made up 6.0 percent of all hourly-paid workers.

3.6% isn't even close to 60%.

Re:TLC

[Hazel Bergeron]

Because the people own the street so choose how their property is used, i.e. property rights. If the people want to restrict taxis on the street so not any rapist or conman can respond to a hail, that's up to them.

It takes a particularly stupid sort of libertarian (but I repeat myself) to go around blaming The Government for absolutely everything wrong in the world. So, for your sake, imagine that The Government is actually a private business - let's call it The Corporation. Imagine that The Corporation owns everything "public" and has an contractual interest in everything else in the country, allowing it to collect fees for certain operations.

There. That's the whole country, unchanged, but now libertarian.

Happy?

Lame

[girlintraining]

So if you can't use electronics, how do you dispatch them? Do they return to the depot after every pickup to receive little strips of paper? (-_-)

Another case of capitalism gone full retard -- "We forbid you to use anything that could make your job more efficient and convenient for your customers!"

Re:Lame

[alen]

NYC has a different types of cabs and they all have different rules on picking up.

Yellow is street hails
Then there limo services where you call them to schedule a pickup. Not real limos but that's what they are called
I think there are one or two other kind of medallions as well

The medallions are owned by Regular people and very expensive so there are lots of interests in keeping the system as it is

Re:Lame

[BlueStrat]

Another case of government corruption & cronyism gone full retard

FTFY

These regulations have nothing whatsoever to do with capitalism, except that they contribute to distorting, corrupting, abusing, impeding, and destroying capitalism.

Strat

Re:Lame

[TubeSteak]

The medallions are owned by Regular people and very expensive so there are lots of interests in keeping the system as it is

The medallions are owned by Really Rich people and are extremely expensive so there are lots of interests in keeping the system as it is.
In 2012, the lowest winning bid for a medallion was $1.201 million
The Regular people who drive cabs have to lease from millionaires who can afford the medallion.

The NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission screwed things up in in the early 80s when it allowed cabbies to be treated as independent contractors, which broke the taxi union and changed the balance of power.
Combine that with the few (if any) new medallions issued and you essentially have a cartel of medallion owners that are screwing the drivers and the public.

Turf Wars ... limo vs cabs

[Anonymous Coward]

This is all about turf wars between limo services and cab services in NY. Basically a cabbie in new york, according to regulations, HAS to stop for anybody that hails them. Where as a limo service is appointment only and CAN'T stop to pick people up on the road ... they have to only pick up the appointment.

So bascially, this app makes cabbies into a pusedo limo service. They by pass people on the street hailing them, and go pick up the appointment.

There is a bunch of noise about discrimination against people without smart phones ... but what is boils down to is, once again, government regulations stopping free enterprise. They need to drop this silly non-sense about limo service vs taxi service.

Re:Turf Wars ... limo vs cabs

[TubeSteak]

Basically a cabbie in new york, according to regulations, HAS to stop for anybody that hails them.

So bascially, this app makes cabbies into a pusedo limo service. They by pass people on the street hailing them, and go pick up the appointment.

but what is boils down to is, once again, government regulations stopping free enterprise. They need to drop this silly non-sense about limo service vs taxi service.

If you don't understand why taxis are legally required to pick up anyone hailing them,
then I guess this doesn't make sense and you can shoehorn this into the traditional
"government regulations are stifling free enterprise" world view.

There's a reason that the police and Taxi & Limosine Commision conducts sting operations to make sure that drivers are following the law.
The main ones being: you can't charge handicapped passengers more, you can't kick someone out for wanting to go to a hospital,
you can't discriminate based on race, and you can't refuse service based on destination.

More often than not, regulations are there because "free enterprise" misbehaved,
not because the big bad government is out to stop free enterprises from making money.

Re:Turf Wars ... limo vs cabs

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, 'cause the absolute first thing I do when a capital intensive business pisses me off is to start my own competing business. You should see my empire now. I've got my own cell phone company, taxi and limo company, electric power utility, food distribution service, and of course health care system. Oh, wait, I can't just start those things up on my own, so my choices are to have a society with rules or just take whatever corporations and business owners think I deserve. Guess which one serves my interests better?

Libertarian types can be such dumbasses sometimes,

Re:Turf Wars ... limo vs cabs

[TubeSteak]

More often than not, these well-meaning regulations are twisted to serve special interests once the regulations have outlived their useful purpose.

Are you claiming that the regulations requiring taxis to pick up all passengers has outlived its useful purpose?
I cannot deny that regulations can end up serving special interests instead of the general public.
My rebuttal is that we should have better regulation, not no regulation.

In this particular case, the regulations governing taxis generally serve the public and the regulations should remain that way.

The difference is, with free enterprise, you can opt out of a corrupt or discriminatory business or even create your own competing one.

The balance of power is not equal between someone who wants a service and someone who provides a service.
This is why we have regulations.

Without regulations, there are monopolies and oligopies, not competition and free markets.
This is what history shows us and ideology frequently strives to ignore or deny.

Big Government

[websaber]

This is why people have trouble trusting the government, their only interest is to sell Medallions for their own profit.

Defnition of "Electronic Communication Device"?

[Taco Cowboy]

... A driver must not use any electronic communication device ...

I am not from New York, but I had been to New York (and NYC) many times, and have lost count of the times I took NYC cabs
 
I remember that in the NY cabs that I were in, even during pre-cellphone era, there was already an "electronic communication device" - a CB-radio
 
And the cabbies were using it to communicate with their HQ and to others, even while they were zig-zagging in and out of the city traffic!!
 
It's totally ridiculous to place a ban on the use of "electronic communication device" while they were already using "electronic communication devices" !
 
Unless of course, the CB radio they were using were not electronics - maybe they are still using vacuum tubes in their CeeBees
 

Re:Defnition of "Electronic Communication Device"?

[fm6]

I'd say RTFA, but since not even the editor or submitter seems to have done so, it's seems a little lame. Suffice to say that this is not a new regulation banning Uber, but simply a memo reminding cabbies that they're not supposed to use cell phone apps while driving.

Re:Defnition of "Electronic Communication Device"?

[tsotha]

Maybe so, but you can use a radio without taking your eyes off traffic. How many of those cab-hailing apps are the same?

Re:Defnition of "Electronic Communication Device"?

[Maximus633]

Not to be a jerk here... But the memo doesn't state that they can't use the cell phone apps while driving (that line is at the end). The memo states that those type of apps like Uber are not allowed due to a contractual obligation that they (The commission) has made with payment processors. It also points out that it could also cause problems with the rules for prearranged rides provision in the law.

Re:Defnition of "Electronic Communication Device"?

[anubi]

I think this app is great if implemented properly.

Its the customer, not the cabbie, who should be fiddling around with a cellphone.

The fare would be given the opportunity to link to a routing computer over the phone. The routing computer would know the status of every subscribing cab, its availability, location, and direction, and be able to notify the proper cab of an awaiting fare.

The cabbie gets a GPS display, much like the existing ones, but this one would be linked to the routing computer and flash where his fare is waiting. There is no reason to annoy the cabbie with anything more than where his fare is, and select one cabbie so they all don't do a mad rush. The cabbie may be given a few seconds to accept the fare, else the routing computer will select another cabbie. The computer would know which cabbies are busy delivering, which are idle, and the idea is to keep the idle ones busy and minimizing non-passenger distance. The routing computer will then inform the caller which cabbie it has arranged to pick them up, along with estimated time to arrival.

Note: This is how I would do it - exactly how they intend to implement this, I am quite ignorant. The whole concept looks great to me - it puzzles me as to why anyone would object.

Re:Dear NYC:

[pla]

These laws exist to keep people safe from gypsy cabs that may extort or kidnap you.

Umm... Come again?

Forgive me for suspecting you as an NYC "Taxi and Limousine Commission" shill, but seriously? Kidnapping???


And seriously, as a resident of lower Manhattan, I can tell you that Boston and LA have nothing on NYC!

Yeah, no kidding! Apparently, they lack the same risk of kidnapping, that taxi companies can have a government-sponsored monopoly as a way to minimize the risk to people in need of a ride. Daaaamn, remind me never to visit NYC again!


I realize that in some parts of the world (Middle East, Africa, Central America) you may well end up kidnapped and ransomed. I've taken plenty of unregulated cabs in the US, however, and at worst, I've found they take a slightly longer route than optimal - Which still comes out way cheaper than the average NYC cab ride. Can you sense my lack of sympathy here?