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California Becomes First State In Nation To Regulate Ride-Sharing
Virtucon writes "Ride Sharing Services such as Uber, Lyft and Sidecar received a big boost today when the California Public Utilities Commission approved rules that would allow them to continue to operate as long as they followed a few rules. This makes California the first state to adopt such rules and is expected to preempt local governments who are trying to clamp down on these services and regulate them like local taxi companies."
Legally the difference is that taxi cabs can be hailed on the street. No other type of private transportation (limos, airport shuttles, ridesharing, etc.) can be hired this way -- they require a separate, prior arrangement.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I must be missing something about this concept. If you're getting paid (with a net profit) to drive people around, why is it called ride sharing? How is it not a taxi service?
...A ride share takes you where you want to go providing it isn't too far out of the way from where the driver was going anyway...
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No. I've used Lyft on multiple occasions, and every single time it was exactly like a taxi--"Take me to location X". There was no waiting around for someone travelling a similar route or anything along those lines.
What I actually really like about it is the rating system. Lyft provides a "suggested donation" for the traveler. The traveler can pay as much as they want (with a minimum of $5, IIRC), but Lyft tracks the value as a % of the suggested donation (which is *always* less than the cost of a taxi). Lyft drivers, then, have the ability to look up passengers that average, say, minimum 80% of the suggested donation. So if you're continually paying very little, you're going to quickly find yourself out of a ride. And on the flip side, travelers get to rate the driver--how friendly were they, how clean was their car, etc. And living in Chicago, I can tell you that I have taken far more filthy taxi rides with complete asshole drivers (who refuse to take the route I tell them) than I care to count. So while I haven't used the other services, I have nothing but good things to say about Lyft.
The SFMTA reports that there are only twenty-nine taxi companies that legally operate in San Francisco. Those 29 taxi companies operate a total of 1,707 cabs. (One medallion allows one cab to be operated.)
I can tell you from hard, long experience that this is far too few cabs for the city.
Data source, straight from the horse's mouth: http://www.sfmta.com/services/taxi-industry/medallions/medallion-holders
There are currently 1,430 people waiting to acquire a taxi medallion. http://www.sfmta.com/services/taxi-industry/medallions/waiting-list
It is said that one is often on the waiting list for ten years. In order to acquire a medallion, you have to meet a boatload of somewhat reasonable requirements, then be able to pony up $300k. From that $300k, the city takes $100k, and the remainder is given to the previous medallion holder.
As of this moment, the city does *not* create new taxi medallions. This is the very definition of "lucrative, performance insensitive monopoly".