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How Airports Became Ground Zero In the Battle For Peer-to-Peer Car Rentals

Posted by Soulskill on from the nor-the-battle-to-the-strong dept.

curtwoodward writes: "Even in libertarian-infused Silicon Valley, playing nice with the government can be a smart move. That's the attitude at RelayRides, a peer-to-peer car rental service that plans to expand at airports by getting permission first. On the other side is FlightCar, a competitor that would rather fight the power in court. The next couple of years should tell us which approach is smarter. Similar battles are becoming almost routine as startups born of the digital economy confront the real world’s established power systems, particularly in the emerging 'sharing economy,' where online tools help networks of consumers rent things to each other. And as these young companies try to manage rapid growth and fend off threats to their survival, the decision about whether to fight regulators or accommodate them can become another way to gain a competitive edge."

19 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. another great example... by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...of how the constant whining about the "free market" is total bullshit.

    The free market created innovation, so the established players want to shut it down. They go whining to legislators, who will put in a reglation because their donors tell them to.

    Concerns about "saftey" and the like are irrelevant... this is the usual crap we see in the "pro free market" USA.

    1. Re:another great example... by Jack+Griffin · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Don't get too carried away, this is all part of the free market process. As you say, Incumbents try to protect and conserve, new players try to innovate and liberalise. The fact that this condition exists means we live in a healthy free market. Sure innovator may not win every battle, but if yo mapped long or even medium term change then innovation, and the free market is winning.

    2. Re:another great example... by geekoid · · Score: 2

      Taxi's service have a very long history of ripping people off, threatening other taxi companies, dropping people off in the wrong place, and extortion.
      There is no reason to think that won't happen to other service where people pay to be driven door to door.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    3. Re:another great example... by aurizon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      AFter WW2, when tens of thousand of men were demobbed, they had ARmy skills,- Shoot - explode -shell, and almost all were taught to drive.
      So they would get a car and offer rides for a fee, from these our cab companies evolved.
      There were more cars and drivers than there were passengers to support them, as a result little walled gardens of taxi rights appeared. As time wen by radio dispatch came along, and that was another little walled garden.

      Now we have an iphone ap = radio dispatch is now dead, but still walking around and tryint to create barriers to alternate dispatch methods, such as the web and iphones.
      Now along comes these cars, web booked via iphone ap.
      The very turf beneath the feet of the taxi business and radio dispatch business is sinking.

      Radio dispatchers, the greedy little fucks, want $400-$600 per month, the plate ownjers want $3000 per month to rent a plated cab.
      They will fight and bribe all the politicians in city hall to keep their little, very very very high profit turfs.

      These turfs need to die, these turfs live of the back of the cab driver and the public. Get rid if these little turfs and drivers will make more and riders pay less.

      We need to free this market, griffin is wrong, this is not a free marker, it is little absolute monopolies(turfs or fiefs) that screw us all.

    4. Re:another great example... by pepty · · Score: 2

      Radio dispatchers, the greedy little fucks, want $400-$600 per month, the plate ownjers want $3000 per month to rent a plated cab. They will fight and bribe all the politicians in city hall to keep their little, very very very high profit turfs.

      you left out the taxi medallion owners have $100K to $2.5M sunk into each taxi medallion in some markets. NYC just auctioned off 200 taxi medallions for over $200M. There are over 15,000 taxi medallions in NYC; If NYC turns around and deregulates the taxi turfs then they are facing a ~$30 billion dollar class action law suit from those owners. It would be great to transition to a less regulated market; but the current stakeholders (a lot of them individual drivers with medallions that can't be rented out to others and who have all of their savings plus a monster loan tied into their cab) will not be going quietly into bankruptcy.

    5. Re:another great example... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'll quote a bit of fiction (setting is cold war gone hot, the heroine has both won the war and the peace and is now talking to some USSR economic eggheads):

      "Over 100 years ago in my country we were opening the American West.
      Mostly it was dry country but there were rivers the
      wagon trains had to cross. An interesting thing happened. Wherever there was a
      river crossing, there would be someone with a tent and a barrel selling
      whiskey."

      Grinning at Mike, she said, "My fiancé is Irish. Many Irishmen came over in
      the 1840's and 1850's. They fought in our Civil War, and many of them helped to
      build the transcontinental railroad. They just kept pushing the railroad track
      across the country. As they went, their camps moved forward with them. In every
      camp there were saloons, dance halls, and gambling parlors. They were not
      provided by the railroad. How did they get there? Why was there always a man
      selling liquor at the river crossings? Because money could be made, and no
      permissions were necessary      . All it took was someone with an idea and a little
      money to get started.

      we don't have a free market, we don't have anything anywhere near it,
      heck a 12-year old running a lemonade stand now needs a permit

      when any group (2 or more) of people can at any time come to a voluntary exchange of goods or services, then that's a free market.
      When you constantly need to ask permission for any such exchange to a 3th party, it's not a free market
      Whether that 3th party is the government or a local robber barron is irrelevant.

      Note also that the capitalist economic ideal is a 'perfectly competitive free market'
      The adjectives are important, not something to be ignored, and yes you can't quite get to the 'perfectly' but you sure could get a hell of a lot closer then where we currently are

    6. Re:another great example... by jratcliffe · · Score: 2

      If NYC turns around and deregulates the taxi turfs then they are facing a ~$30 billion dollar class action law suit from those owners. It would be great to transition to a less regulated market; but the current stakeholders (a lot of them individual drivers with medallions that can't be rented out to others and who have all of their savings plus a monster loan tied into their cab) will not be going quietly into bankruptcy.

      While I agree that any attempt to deregulate would result in the current medallion owners screaming bloody murder, they wouldn't have a leg to stand on, legally. The city has never made any commitments as to the number of medallions it will issue. It could have another auction tomorrow with a minimum bid of $0.01 and 1 billion medallions up for sale. Of course, it's not going to, particularly since the Mayor De Blasio is 100% in the pocket of the taxi companies, who have been major campaign contributors.

  2. City Airports aren't run by libertarians by billstewart · · Score: 2

    It shouldn't be much of a surprise, but just because Silicon Valley is libertarian-leaning, that doesn't mean that the government-run airports in San Jose, San Francisco, or Oakland are libertarian. Of course, even if they were libertarian-run, they might still view taxi service to/from the airport as a profit center, but San Francisco airport in particular is much more likely to restrict access by services that compete with city-medallion taxis.

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  3. What is it with curtwoodward? by ddtstudio · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In the last few days he's posted two highly biased, agenda-driven things on Slashdot's main page. Both take the perspective that it's eeeevil guvmint trying to crack down on plucky, innovative, honest corporations who just wanna do right by you. In the way he presents these highly questionable narratives, there's no no room for the facts that city governments have had long-standing regulations for cab and ride services that require adequate levels of insurance and other means of covering liability when Bad Things Happen.

    One such case of Things happened New Years's Eve here in San Francisco, when a ride-service (yeah, it's not "sharing" if you exchange a service for a fee) driver ran over and killed a child. The company in question, because it had been throwing tantrums and refusing to comply with existing regulations (not to mention publicly ranting that the city was trying to "kill innovation"), didn't have coverage and refused all liability, putting it all on the driver.

    If these companies cannot afford to comply with existing safety regulations, the way cab companies have and do, maybe they aren't a viable business model and need to innovate all over again.

    1. Re:What is it with curtwoodward? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      With regards to the Uber-X New Years Day accident, you are leaving out some important details. Such as the driver at fault didn't have a paying Uber customer in his car, nor was he on the way to pick one up.

      The best the city could come up with is that his phone was logged into the Uber app....so it's not entirely clear (legally) if his own liability insurance should pay or Uber's. Aside from that it was just a tragic accident, not anything to do with safety of the program. It's akin to an off-duty cop getting into an accident. Because he had his radio, badge, gun etc does that mean the city is liable?

         

    2. Re:What is it with curtwoodward? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      if a cab does not have a fare riding in it, is it suddenly a private vehicle and not the cab company's responsibility?

      Was the Uber driver out driving that night for any reason other than wishing to land an Uber fare contract in order to earn some money?

    3. Re:What is it with curtwoodward? by dcollins117 · · Score: 2

      I don't know if the headline came from the submitter or an editor, but "How Airports Became Ground Zero In the Battle For Peer-to-Peer Car Rentals" is one of the most egregious examples of needlessly inflammatory clickbait I have seen.

      "Airports", "Ground Zero", "Battle", what images do these words suggest? (Hint: Lower Manhattan, tall buildings, September 11, 2001.) Is it appropriate to invoke those images when discussing a relatively silly and inconsequential spat between taxi providers? (Another hint: this is a rhetorical question; the correct answer is no.)

    4. Re:What is it with curtwoodward? by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2

      Maybe that's because government *is* evil and will happily crush anyone in its path? Especially in highly left-wing cities like San Francisco, where by default people -especially those who couldn't cut it in real life and resorted to government jobs - *really do* think that companies are evil, evil, evil and want to make profit by throwing babies into wood chippers.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  4. We are becoming Third World by jtara · · Score: 3, Informative

    Great. Now we have a bunch of under-insured, illegal jitney drivers, just like any third-world nation...

    Read the tales of woe of Uber-X drivers who have lost their personal insurance. Yes, riders and the other driver in an accident are covered by Uber-X, up to an inadequate $100,000.

    California Livery law requires $1,000,000 insurance, though, and specific licensing to drive passengers for hire.

    These drivers typically have neither of these, though. And personal policies generally specifically exclude driving for hire. So, driver gets in an accident, Uber pays, and driver is now out of a job (or side job) and is uninsurable.

    1. Re:We are becoming Third World by spasm · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I moved to the US 14 years ago from another developed nation, but had spent a lot of my childhood in developing nations; I quickly found that anything that baffled me in the US abruptly made a *lot* more sense when viewed as if the US is a third world nation.

    2. Re:We are becoming Third World by bws111 · · Score: 2

      First, I don't know what you mean that there is no premium difference between someone who drives 200000 miles a year and someone who only drives 1000. There certainly is a difference.

      Second, of course it matters if you drive for hire. Your liability insurance does not cover you, it covers others you injure. If you crash your car a don't injure anyone other than yourself your insurance pays nothing. That same crash with a paid passenger could cost the insurance company hundreds of thousands of dollars.

      Last, that is exactly how it works today - the company carries the insurance. But these wonderful new 'innovative' companies think they should be exempt from all that. Because, you know, it's DIGITAL, so normal rules do not apply.

    3. Re:We are becoming Third World by pepty · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The solution should be something along the lines of forcing insurance companies to cover for hire drivers like they would have to for any other passenger. Why does 'for hire' make any difference what-so-ever in the first place? If I drive 200,000 miles a year and my neighbor drives less than 1000 and both are personal there isn't a premium for one over the other even though the 200,000 miles makes it more risky to insure the one over the other.

      If forced to cover for hire drivers they probably would add a huge extra fee to cover the added risk and higher coverage ($1 million minimum in CA); more of their customers will be driving more miles, so the company will end up with more claims overall. The claims will also involve more passengers, so the average expense per claim would rise a bit. They would probably also raise rates after moving violations even more than they do now. I don't think they charge for insurance per-mile because it would be a pain to keep track and would encourage tampering with the odometer/ECU.

  5. The Internet will meet its match by bytesex · · Score: 2

    Never mind spying governments, Microsoft and/or Apple, or the RIAA - anywhere where the Internet will try to compete with the mafia, the Internet will fail. Because just like the mafia, the Internet is an unregulated bunch, but unlike the mafia, the Internet does not use fists and/or real-life weaponry when it doesn't get what it wants.

    Taxi-business, garbage-collection - Internet people shouldn't even try it. They'll come after you.

    --
    Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
  6. Are things so different in the US? by spacec0w · · Score: 2

    In Spain 100% of the cab rides (50+) I've taken have had courteous, social drivers (at least as far as Spanish people are courteous), fast, fairly metered, in modern cars with air conditioning, etc. I think a few times they may have taken a slight detour, but nothing I would get upset about. And cabs are pretty much always available, pretty much all times of day. And the prices are fine, cheap even. So, I don't know if this is an American problem but I definitely would not welcome so called peer-to-peer car services destroying what is a functioning, well-regulated, economy here. I think what it would put in its place would be a city with a similar service, for a similar price (although probably fluxuating much more wildly, with price-gouging effectively condoned) but with the car drivers not being able to actually count on what they do as a full time job. I can already book a cab in real time with a mobile app, and get them to pick me up at a certain time by phone. So how does this really benefit me, or anyone, in the long term? It seems like it's just making one more sector a horrible one to work in. At least in terms of stability.