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California Becomes First State In Nation To Regulate Ride-Sharing

Posted by samzenpus on from the take-a-ride dept.

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."

10 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. the taxi services have a right to be pissed by hguorbray · · Score: 5, Interesting

    considering that a medallion in San Francisco can cost upwards of $200k

    http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/flag-might-drop-on-more-taxi-medallions/Content?oid=2193759

    -I'm just sayin'

    1. Re:the taxi services have a right to be pissed by ThatsMyNick · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The taxi services were enjoying the monopoly and have a share of the blame too. It is not as if they were trying to fight the medallion system. I personally cant wait for the medallion system to collapse, or prices to plummet.

    2. Re:the taxi services have a right to be pissed by tlambert · · Score: 3, Interesting

      considering that a medallion in San Francisco can cost upwards of $200k

      http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/flag-might-drop-on-more-taxi-medallions/Content?oid=2193759

      -I'm just sayin'

      Only if they damn well show up when I call them, rather than taking nearby, more lucrative fares when they get flagged down on their way to me. If their dispatcher agrees on their behalf that they will show up, they need to damn well show up.

      If they don't show I, I really don't give a flying what they paid for their medallion (and most Taxi drivers in SF are contract workers, with the medallion being owned by the taxi company; the driver is just an employee with no benefits who has to follow radio orders).

    3. Re:the taxi services have a right to be pissed by Thomasje · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Don't hold your breath waiting for prices to plummet when taxis are deregulated. This has already been tried in the Netherlands, and the result was that prices went up, not down, and service got worse, not better, capitalist dogma notwithstanding.
      The problem is that taxi drivers need to make a certain amount of money to pay their cost of living, and if the number of cabs goes up while the number of passengers doesn't, they end up spending more time waiting for fares, and less time actually driving. And they can't just hop off to a second job while they are waiting. So, they have to *increase* their rates in order to make up for their reduced number of trips, so taking a cab becomes more expensive, and they will tend to refuse short trips, trying to hold out for the more profitable longer ones, so taxi availability gets worse.

    4. Re:the taxi services have a right to be pissed by Truth_Quark · · Score: 3, Interesting

      On the other hand, it worked quite well in Wellington, New Zealand.

    5. Re:the taxi services have a right to be pissed by Zenin · · Score: 5, Interesting

      In San Francisco "taxi services" do not own medallions generally, individual drivers do. This is a distinction that matters a lot.

      It means that a customer can call a taxi service and request a cab...and the service will put the call out on the air...and no cabs will care to pick it up (bad neighborhood, too out of the way, whatever). The service can't hold the drivers accountable (the drivers own the medallions) and the customer just gets to stand on the corner forever at times...completely unable to get a cab from any of the "5 pages" of taxi services (since they're all asking largely the same pool of medallion-carrying drivers). -The "services" get kick backs from the drivers for routing them calls, that's how they make money: The drivers are their customers, not the passengers.

      And...Most drivers however, aren't even medallion holders. I know, I just said they were, but they're not. Drivers with medallions rent their medallions out to other drivers (thus ensuring the expensive medallion is making money 24/7 for the owner). Those sub-sub-contracted drivers are most of the actual drivers in the city.

      The actual owner is required to "drive" some number of hours each week to maintain the medallion. But they're lazy...they own a medallion (read: free money), so why should they actually work? So they do their hours by sitting in the taxi waiting line at the airports, watching YouTube on their phones.

      DOZENS of them...all in a line for ages at the airports...transporting no one...for hours at a time. Meanwhile the actual CITY of San Francisco suffers a severe lack of taxi service.

      -----

      And no one is accountable. Not the "taxi services" (they can't fire or refuse to "hire" a given cab). Not the medallion holders (who largely see their medallion as a free-ride and so long as the sub-contracted driver pays their rent who cares). And definitely not the consumers (who have no ability to select or rate drivers...and it wouldn't matter if they could because again, most drivers aren't medallion owners and the owners don't give a damn).

      And it's been this completely fucked up for at least half a century, probably longer.

      The medallion system is completely indefensible.

      --
      My /. uid is better then your /. uid
  2. Re:Why is it called ride sharing? by erice · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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 taxi takes you where you want to go. 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. Think of it more like paid hitch hiking. That's the idea as Lyft presented to New Tech Meetup a few months ago.

    It gets less clear when drivers use the service to make trips they would not otherwise have done, just to collect the fare. As I understand it, "professionals" doing just that for trips to and from SFO.

  3. Re:Why is it called ride sharing? by joocemann · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So what you're saying is that they are using a loophole by relying on their drivers to lie about what they were doing. A lawyer might even argue that, of course, the driver was going in that direction because money was waiting for them when they arrive! How keen!

    Pffft. Why not just deregulate taxi driving and be honest about it. I know Lyft drivers. They are *not* picking people up randomly. They treat it as a job and appreciate the income.

  4. Re:Why is it called ride sharing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Taxis also don't get to pick and choose their fares...if they stop to pick someone up, they have to take them wherever they're going. These sharing services allow drivers to screen based on destination, so people heading to bad neighborhoods could be SOL.

  5. Re:Why is it called ride sharing? by fnj · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A taxi takes you where you want to go. 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. Think of it more like paid hitch hiking. That's the idea as Lyft presented to New Tech Meetup a few months ago.

    So in other words:

    (1) a taxi takes you where you want to go for money within limits (i.e., no taxi is likely to take you from Maine to Tierra del Fuego, and you can't always rely on them picking up and discharging in certain neighborhoods).

    (2) a ride share takes you where you want to go for money within limits.

    Yet you evidently somehow see a difference between the two fundamental enough to justify classifying (and regulating or not) them differently [shakes head in bafflement and wonder]. What I see is some people attempting to work around onerous over-regulation of taxis and financial burdens on same which they must pass on to customers. I can't imagine why anyone would object to the opportunity they are attempting to provide to both drivers and riders, but the method seems foredoomed because of existing taxi regulations. I do understand that it is difficult to attack those regulations because they arise locally in thousands of separate jurisdictions. It's like a lot of manifestations of runaway government. I don't see how to effectively control it without what ... overthrowing the entire system ... in favor of what?

    Oh, and a vanishingly small percentage of drivers demand money to give a lift to a hitchhiker. That one is just a pure red herring.