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Mayor Bloomberg Battles Fleet Owners Over NYC 'Taxi of Tomorrow'
An anonymous reader writes "In April, Mayor Mike Bloomberg announced that the Nissan NV200 minivan had won a citywide competition to replace the current cab model, the Ford Crown Victoria, in a phased-in period of five years. Cab owners sued, pointing out that New York City law requires that hybrid electric models be available for immediate use for cab medallion owners; that excludes the current Nissan NV200, with its 2.0 liter, 4-cylinder engine rated at a combined 24 mpg. The NV200 also has poor accessibility for wheelchair users. After a state judge blocked the mayor's plan, Bloomberg allegedly told the CEO of Taxi Club Management at a private club, 'Come January 1st, when I am out of office, I am going to destroy your f--king industry.' Tim Fernholz of Quartz speculates that Bloomberg (a billionaire) may be planning to launch a cab-hailing service like Uber, which was just allowed back onto the streets of New York, with significant limitations."
Don't piss off the rich guy.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
When I see the huge lines of cabs at taxi stands and the airports, I find myself wondering if a routing algorithm could better utilize these idle cabs. Any operator who can better utilize the cabs will beat out the others.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
He was rich before he ran for office. The "nanny state" thing is a hobby for him.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Here's a man with so much obscene money than he has a right to, and thinks he can buy what he wants if he can't get it any other way. First it's gun control, then it's a police state, and now it's his own taxi monopoly (along with whatever kickback he and his cronies are getting from this backroom deal). Bloomberg is a plague on society, a grown man who is prone to throwing tantrums when he doesn't get his way, and enough money in his pocket to crush anyone that stands in his way.
I can't wait until the feds get enough hair on their balls to take him down. Anyone with that much money is bound to have broken some law, somewhere, sometime.
And once again, Slashdot lowers itself to the level of the Nationa Enquirer with titalating rumor and inuendo. And this is "News for Nerds"? Oh yes, Slashdot shit-canned that moniker. Probably because it is no longer factually true.
OH! Wait! There's a reference to an electric car! OK, I'm sorry, I'm totally wrong. Great "scoop", Mr. "Editor" Soulskill...
There is a big difference between an allegation and a rumor. A rumor generally arises without an attributed source. An allegation just means whoever is reporting it doesn't want to put their name in the ring as saying it is true (i.e. they don't want to get sued for defamation).
When the rumor is about a billionaire, many people ESPECIALLY don't want to get sued for defamation, because the billionaire can easily sue.
There's actually two stories here. One is Bloomberg vs. taxi owners and others unhappy over the choice of the Nissan as the new standard vehicle. The other is what Bloomberg might do after he leaves office - something tells me he's not planning to get a single digit handicap on the golf course. A digital technology-driven taxi service would fit directly into a lot of his strengths, so I think this story will have legs (er, or wheels).
Obviously Bloomberg is going to fund the installation of a Personal Rapid Transit system with 100% coverage of the metro area, plus extensions to commuter parking lots upstate and in New Jersey. PRT proponents rejoice! Bloomberg will prove once and for all that PRT works!
Or...
Bloomberg is an entitled asshole rich kid who can vent whenever he wants because he's too rich for anybody around him to tell him to STFU.
Gee. I wonder which is more likely...
It was attempted. A system that automates the routing of taxicabs via voice calls and cell phone apps is available and works extremely well. The companies that control the taxi business in NYC made sure it couldn't get a foothold. One of the reasons it is disliked by the entrenched powers is it eliminates the dispatcher. Now you'd think that is a good thing since it reduces overhead while increasing efficiency. Except it also eliminates the bribes the taxi drivers need to pay to the dispatchers if they ever want to get work.
As much as I dislike Bloomberg, I hope he is successful in destroying the current taxi business status quo.
-- Will program for bandwidth
It would be so much better. More taxis, cheaper rates, being able to order taxis from your iPhones... but given that the going rate to buy a medallion is over a million dollars nowadays (based on my convo w/ a taxi driver who had done just that recently), there's a ton of interest against that. If only, if only.
Yes, Bloomberg is an asshole, and no, he's not the only one. But your garden variety asshole is not necessarily in a position of having more power than god. Assholes with billions of dollars and assholes who are politicians are making their assholism a problem for other people. And assholes with billions of dollars AND political power are making their assholism a problem for EVERYBODY.
The asshole police should have beaten this scum black and blue silly and locked him away forever a LOOONG time ago. Oh wait ... there are no asshole police ...
The phrase is "crony capitalism". To be vociferously distinguished from "free-market capitalism", which it subverts.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Being from Tennessee, I don't see much difference between Bloomberg and out set of politicos. All immediately circumspect out of the gate. The only way to rid the landscape of losers and abusers of the public trust (like Bloomberg) is through organizations like Change.org and social awareness. Bloomberg is just one more petty tyrant. If you want him out, get it done. I used to piss and moan and bitch about everything that is wrong in our country. That's fine as far as it goes. If I complain and watch from the sidelines, nothing gets done. Personally, I'm done with that method of survival. :)
Maybe it's a rumor, but the thing is -- I'm pretty sure it's not. That's Bloomberg. Right there. That's how he is.
Do you forget this was the guy who headed up an illegal gun running operation under the guise of an undercover sting, despite having no jurisdiction or legal authority to run a sting, let alone a sting taking place across STATE lines? His little operation actually ruined the investigative work of REAL law enforcement.
He's King Asshat, that's why NYC seems to keep re-electing him.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
What I don't understand is why there appears to be some monolithic entity designating the specific model of taxi cab for the entire city. Shouldn't each taxi company/cab owner be able to choose what car(s)/van(s) they want to use? Besides designating a paint scheme and setting some requirements (display of medallion, cleanliness of cab, etc) the city should butt out. It sounds to me like there is a lot of shady dealings & backdoor hand shaking going on.
On thing to keep in mind when comparing miles per "gallon" - the UK when it used gallons used the Imperial gallon, which is larger than the US gallon (4.55L vs 3.78L, respectively). A car that gets 24 miles per US gallon would get nearly 29 miles per Imperial gallon.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Not sure how taxi's operate in NYC but the ones I drove here in Oz have a meter that ticks over after a fixed time or distance, whichever comes first, the fees are mandated by state law so all taxis charge the same amount for the same trip. There's also a flagfall fee just for getting in the cab, so really there's no such thing as an unprofitable trip.
Having said that the only way to make a reasonable income from a cab is to make sure a customers arse is in the seat at all times, getting a 5min job that puts you at the back of a 2hr queue is just the luck of the draw. Although I have heard that airport staff here in Melbourne are issuing "short trip" coupons to drivers who get stuck with a local job, it entitles them to come back to the front of the queue, but again that can happen at any rank and most ranks are not staffed/policed like they are at the airport. Also 5min jobs themselves are not the problem, on Friday and Saturday nights you want the 5min jobs because you know you can get another one straight away, doing that all night on your home turf is about as profitable as taxi driving gets.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
In my town they went with a GPS and electronically dispatched system. I asked a driver what changes it made and he said that it nearly instantly doubled his income and then it nearly doubled again over the next couple of months. First he said that the old drivers had some sort of kickback system with the dispatchers. So he could be pretty well parked across the street from a call yet the dispatcher would send a taxi that was presently across town and presently had a fare. So he said that with the modern system the old dispatchers and drivers all quit overnight. Another set of drivers that quit were the illiterate drivers who couldn't work the system. He also said that the silence was bliss. If his computer bleeped he had a fare but otherwise it was reading time.
The slower increase in his income was when everybody discovered that the computer based cab company was much much faster.
Now it was too early at that point but one problem for him would be that the training time to become a fairly good cabbie would be nearly zero. You didn't have to learn to work the radio and with the computer both telling you how to get to your fair and the route to dropping them off you could be pretty well fresh off the boat and still be able to be a halfway decent cabbie in this city.
So when all is said and done the technological solution will benefit the customer and the cab company but not the worker.
Personally I am a huge fan of technological improvements but society is not well structured to prevent people from really getting hurt by all this. As robotics take this all to the next logical step there will be a point where very few owners are able to have huge businesses with almost zero workers. While individually this will be great for the producers and providers, the real base of any economy is consumption not production. So without employed people there will be little consumption and much rioting and crime. Society needs to be restructured so as to make sure that inequality doesn't get out of control. This would even hurt those who would like to be unequal.
A 2 litre engined vehicle that only manages 24mpg?
Well, it weighs 3200 pounds, so that 4 cylinder probably has to suck down all the gas it can get just to get the thing moving. Plus it will probably die early carrying around that much weight. Not something you would want for a taxi. Also, for being all that heavy, they don't have a lot of interior room. I sure wouldn't want to give up a Crown Vic for one of these things, even though the Crown Vic obviously sucks down much more gas. Oh, wait, not it doesn't. It sucks down only 4 more tablespoons of gas per mile than the anemic four cylinder in the Nissan in the city and gets the same mileage as the NV200 on the highway.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Actually that was exactly my meaning society needs to be restructured. I don't believe in boring tax and spend but I would love to see taxes that are based upon levels of employment and ratio of wages and profits. So if you have say a grocery chain that eliminates most of their employees and replaces them with robots resulting in massive profits; their income taxes on both profits and management salaries should approach 100%. This would then appeal to the greed of the shareholders and management to not only hire more people but to pay them well. Most companies would not just hire people and have them stand around. They would look to put them to effective work. This might even involve horrible things like providing on the job training and education.
This is basic game theory. Each company will act in their best interests by reducing costs which will generally mean more and more technological replacement of human employees. But this does not actually work out in the end if there is mass unemployment. Tax and spend just results in insane Soviet inefficiencies. Banning technology is also just stupid as it just drive up the cost of living. The only thing left is to insent companies to hire more humans. Taxes are an excellent way to do just that. Finding the right balance generally will be hard but a simple formula would be to base it somewhat on the unemployment rate. If you are running a fantastically profitable company in an area with 15% unemployment then whoosh, up go your taxes. If you in an area with 2% unemployment then the tax incentive can be somewhat withdrawn. You have to be careful that companies don't just all move somewhere expensive to live that has a low unemployment rate so much would just be based upon national rates combined with the range of their products. So a locally owned store would be more regional while Apple would be more national.
Any country that gets this right will flourish in the mid to late 21st century. Any country that doesn't will end up in a Game Theory Nash Equilibrium where a tiny number of heavily automated companies are fighting over the few employed customers remaining in their country while nearly non-stop civil unrest drives up their security costs. Plus they will end up paying high taxes as the few remaining taxpayers anyway.
Yep. The new system is pretty damn good. The app is great. Here's a basic step through.
1. Press "taxi" icon
2. Press "Send cab"
3. Press "Now" (or enter a time)
4. It asks "at your currently location?" (uses your phones gps)
5. Press "Yes"
6. I think it asks for destination, but I don't remember the details.
7. Responds with "Cab in route. Approximate arrival time is 4 minutes 33 seconds"
8. A few minutes later your phone buzzes and a message shows, "Your cab has arrived".
It doesn't get any simpler than that. The taxi drivers love it (for the reasons you stated). The riders love it because it's faster and easier than the old phone system. The dispatchers hate it because they can no longer skim the drivers' fares. In NYC, I'm sure the cab companies skim from the dispatchers. The thing is, the cab companies probably see increased profits, except it will all be "on the books". The entire taxi infrastructure of NYC is rotten to the core (pun intended). A side note. The cab companies in NYC have hired lobbyists to get Washington, DC to implement a NYC medallion system. The tax drivers are fighting that tooth and nail.
My roommate could have gotten in on the ground floor of the company that makes this system, but he turned it down (he's still kicking himself over that).
-- Will program for bandwidth
Fascism is about more than just authoritarian laws. Fascism is a difficult creature to define, but definitions usually involve- Corporate Syndicalism, veneration of the State (i.e. ultra-Nationalism), distrust of democracy, and a dislike of free-market capitalism. You can usually throw in eugenics and racial supremacy too, although it's debatable whether this is integral to fascism or whether it is just a function of ultra-Nationalism.
I'm not American and so not exposed to much news on the subject of Michael Bloomberg, but a quick scan of his Wikipedia entry doesn't hint at any policies that would fall into that "fascism" camp. It mostly seems like he's prone to passing "nanny state" laws, and has also been involved with some corruption allegations (something or other about gun-running). That doesn't make him a pleasant guy, but it also doesn't make him a fascist. Until he starts arguing about deporting immigrants and dissolving Wall Street, I don't think you can really put him in that philosophical bucket.
8. A few minutes later your phone buzzes and a message shows, "Your cab has arrived".
It doesn't get any simpler than that. The taxi drivers love it (for the reasons you stated). The riders love it because it's faster and easier than the old phone system. The dispatchers hate it because they can no longer skim the drivers' fares. In NYC, I'm sure the cab companies skim from the dispatchers. The thing is, the cab companies probably see increased profits, except it will all be "on the books".
Yes, but "on the books" works both ways. I would think that having the fares of your drivers logged on a server would probably stop some skimming that goes on at the driver level. Besides, from what I understand many drivers these days pay a base 'rental' rate for taking out a car (they rent the car from the company that owns the medallions), plus they pay for their own fuel any other incidentals. At the end of the day, driver brings the car back to company, and most don't make a whole lot after the costs of car rent and gas.
So, I don't know that the drivers would "love it", and I'm not sure the concept of dispatcher taking calls and sending drivers to locations like you'd see in smaller towns applies at all, atleast not as far as the medallion cars go. Overall, most of the resistance is about the extra logging of data across the board, as well as general reluctance to change
The cab companies in NYC have hired lobbyists to get Washington, DC to implement a NYC medallion system.
Hmmm.. the thing is, the New York system WORKED REALLY WELL for the consumer. New York cabs were metered, clearly displayed the fare information, and were pretty easily acquired just about anywhere at any hour you needed one. The laws were extremely pro-consumer, and the majority of the drivers new they were in a service industry where good service with a smile would usually net them a good tip. As a native New Yorker, I was in for a surprise when I moved to Washington, DC some 10 years ago.
If you were ever unfortunate enough to deal with the DC taxi system the way it USED to be until just a couple of years ago, now THAT was a complete cluster frak. Fares were based on convoluted zones drawn specifically in such a way that the lowest fares just so happened to coincide with travel between certain government building areas and the capitol hill area neighborhoods where the politicians lived. (..fancy that..) Then, add to that the absolutely insane allowance for drivers to pick up additional fares along the way, so you'd end up crammed in with other passengers half in your lap and snaking your way on detours to drop off these complete strangers before eventually getting to where YOU should have been 20 minutes ago. Then after all that having the driver try to swindle you because the zone system meant NO METERS.
Those drivers fought pretty hard and managed to keep meters out of the taxis for quite a long time. They were quite vigilante. At the same time, the addition of meters also came with elimination of picking up additional fares during someone elses trip. Naturally, the ones loudest in opposition were usually the most corrupt drivers on the take that equated the changes with financial loss and harder work. In the end, the drivers I've spoken to have all said how much they came to love the changes because people who would simply NOT deal with the previous taxi situation (including myself.. ) now started taking taxis because they knew they would be charged fairly, and wouldn't have to squeeze in so 6 more people going to three different locations could fit in the car. So there were MORE customers, who were getting better service and thus TIPPING for a change
HMMM... I read TFA, but having just gone back to it and then followed the linkage along to the ACTUAL story, I really want to kick myself now for having anything to do with discussion of something that originated in the NEW YORK F*CKING POST! UGH! I need a shower now... might as well have TMZ tag in for sloppy seconds while you're at it Slashdot... thanks!
Having wasted this amount of time already ranting on, guess I'll just click that Submit button and move on with my regularly scheduled life..