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California Regulators Tell Ride-Shares No Airport Runs
An anonymous reader writes in with news about ride-share crackdowns in California. California regulators are threatening to revoke permits for on-demand ride companies UberX, Lyft, Sidecar, Summon and Wingz unless they stop giving rides to and from airports within two weeks. The move could lead to the state shutting down the companies' operations. Flouting the airport rules also flouts regulations that the CPUC set up for the new generation of ride companies to operate in California. In a clear rebuttal to an argument often made by the ride companies, Peevey wrote: "These safety requirements should not hinder your creativity nor should they impede your innovation."
Why is it not safe for them to drive to the airports, but it's safe for them to drive elsewhere? Are they going to hit a plane or something?
Everybody knows that only your closest cronies will do the airport pickup. It's the sign of a true crony.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
who tell everyone what to do. problem solved.
to drive your friend to the airport without a permit.
area. There were three airports and four train systems (or was it four airports and three train systems?). None of the trains went to any of the airports. I always figured the taxi union lobbied hard when it was time to decided the train line terminations. I think it has improved a little since the early 90s, but probably not much.
"We have heard numerous complaints that (our) safety rules are being ignored,"
Yeah, the cabbies are complaining. I would guess non-cabbies love the service.
Trolling is a art,
to be limited.
But... think of the children !
is the revenue of competing services.
These rules are here to defend taxi companies at their most lucrative source of income. There is not a single reason else.
And frankly, airports are exactly where I would WANT a ride sharing service over the entrenched taxi industry. After dealign with flying, the last thing I want is to deal with a taxi driver not interested for a second where or how far I want to go - and in fact is forced by law to pick up my patronage here because before that law... they would reject my destination for a "better" fare. Let alone the other issues taxis have like the queues and half the time there isnt one availible for too long.
No, fuck em. If I can have a service that is waiting to pick me up, go where I want to go, more often than not in a clean and comfortable car, with a driver who (and I apologise for the next comment but you know this happens too often) understand what you are saying and is interested more in customer service.... I'll take it.
We do have a premium taxi service here that works more like Uber and in general it's a mile better than the regular taxi services. Unfortuantly it's too small to be truly able to handle capacity. You know, if taxis worked more like the premium serives I'd be less sympathic to Uber and Co, but they arent so.... fuck em. Bring the ride sharign services on.
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If I call my friend and ask him to give me a lift to the airport and I give him, say, $20 in exchange which is considerably more than what it would cost in gasoline (almost an order of magnitude more, in fact), is he breaking the law by accepting the transaction? Am I breaking the law by soliciting such assistance? If not, then why is it somehow different if the driver is not somebody personally known to me?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I want to be able to call an Amazon quadcopter to carry me to my destination.
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Yeah, uh, just a little...
oh okay so i cant get a ride to the airport but how about the arbys down the street. it wouldnt be anything for someone to get a ride nearby and just walk to the airport the rest of the way
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Wow. Am I the only one who finds uncanny similarity between the NY taxi licensing and 17th-18th century European officer commissions? The fancy uniform seems to be the only thing missing!
Ezekiel 23:20
It's nothing more than protectionism. Up here in soviet Canuckistan, if you'd like to stop your cab at the Pearson Airport, you'll need to make sure you're paying them their dues. I stopped there to pick up a friend's dad at the airport and had a ticket written, despite being stopped in a zone marked for passenger pickup. Only once I opened my window and asked why I was being written a ticket (I was waiting in the seat) did I learn that it was because I'm not a cab. The ticket was cancelled only because my friend rushed back to the car and proved to the officer he was family.
It comes as no surprise that a group of crony thugs like those that run an airport would be amongst the first to complain!
This kind of crap is where the Lyft cars, with their visible mustaches, are more vulnerable to enforcement. The airport cops will be able to spot them easily and bust the drivers.
"Just dropping off my friend at the airport."
They are looking to expand the train here and they won't put the airport on the main line. Maybe in the future they will decide to make an extension and passengers will have to switch. Everyone knows it's the taxi lobby that doesn't want the train even though it would be replacing the bus line that already goes there.
In my city, Perth, Western Australia taxi's picking up passengers have to pay $2 to open the boomgate to get out, make the Uber drivers go there. That way the airport still gets it's revenue.
My personal feelings with "ride sharing" is that it needs to be governed under the same laws as other taxi/private car services. Drivers need to have a taxi license and insurance (private insurance does not cover you if you're using your car for a business).
The problem is, Uber cant operate under these conditions. They're already floundering in Australia because they dont have many drivers (drivers are barely breaking even in Oz, let alone making money) they aren't much cheaper than a taxi and there are a lot of horror stories about people waiting 45 minutes for a Uber car before just calling a regular taxi.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
At the risk of being modded troll, what innovation? All of the tech that powers these sites was built by other people. The only thing these guys did is get enough capital to fend off lawsuits.
I guess what really bugs me about these ride share guys is the real reason they're so big: massive unemployment and 40 years of declining wages. People don't participate in ride share sites for fun. I know taxi and limo drivers. They're some of the most abused people in the world. They're 'independent contractors' only in so long as it involves not getting the benefits of being employees (unemployment insurance, heath care, etc).
Fix the broke ass economy and all this 'innovation' would go away tomorrow. Christ, $16 billion in ipo value build on the corpse of the American Middle Class.
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The first one is a prostitute
Family Guy reference:
1. Paying someone to have sex with you: Prostitution. Illegal.
2. Paying someone to have sex with you while you run a camera: Production of pornography. Legal.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Everybody knows that only your closest cronies will do the airport pickup. It's the sign of a true crony.
Corruption ? Who would believe that corruption could happened in America ??
BART now runs to SFO, and they're just finishing up an extension to Oakland, so that's good.
Caltrain doesn't connect directly to SFO, but it does stop at the Millbrae BART station which is one of the two stations from which the BART-SFO extension connects.
San Jose is still pretty disconnected from public transit except for some shuttle busses.
BOOP!
I have heard many comments that maybe those rides are unsafe. Well, I challenge that as I once had a ride in a taxi where the driver admitted to being stoned. But not paying him probably was not the thing to do if you didn't want him to come back to settle the score.
But it seems as if all the talk about reducing red tape only applies to businesses and not individuals. Most businesses exist because of red tape to force you to use them. My kid's class parties can only be supplied by store made cakes and snacks. I sort of agree that you might not want to risk causing upset stomachs in kids, but it strikes me as a bit overboard. More kids get hurt via bully violence, but somehow that is not addressed.
How close a friend must someone be for me to drive him or her to the airport? If I get gas money for so doing is it a crime? Why is Uber any different and how can it be legal to treat different people differently? Older modes of doing business will now vanish. It is called progress.
Regulating pick-ups at the airport at least makes a kind of sense, as the airport has the authority to regulate commerce occurring on its property. Whether the fees involved are justified is of course a separate question.
But if you've hired someone to take you *to* the airport, once you're on the airport property it's a little late for the airport to do anything about it.
The ride-share drivers may as well make hay while the sun shines as I suspect their 15 mins of fame is close to done. Once autonomous vehicles are approved for use (yes I expect the same lobbies to fight it) neither ride share drivers not cabbies will be required to provide safe transportation and all this crying over this and that issue will be moot. All one needs is a fleet of self driving cars taking the human factor out of the equation for good!
Picking up your friend, even in exchange for some compensation, is you and your friend exercising your general freedom to do stuff. Your friend doing that for strangers as his main source of income is a profession, and it makes more sense to regulate. You wouldn't actually like it if either everything that someone does professionally got regulations that apply to everyone, nor if everything that someone does non-professionally got entirely deregulated. Either extreme would be terrible, either for personal freedom or for the reliability of professionals.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Ridership on BART's SFO extension (actually all of the San Mateo County extension) is well below their projections (leaving San Mateo County / SamTrans on the hook for operational costs). There's no direct service (well, not usually) from Millbrae to SFO due to work rules and the cost of running such a bloated rail system. You typically have to go from Millbrae -> San Bruno -> SFO. Don't forget that BART doesn't time their schedule to coincide with Caltrain arrivals at Millbrae.
BART already runs to OAK. The shuttle bus drops you at the terminals. The fancy cable car connector you're thinking of is going to cost riders double ($6 each way, they just announced this), and will drop you at the far end of the parking lot, away from the terminals. This is progress?
And Caltrain? Well, there's a shuttle bus between the Santa Clara Caltrain station and the San Jose airport. Because funding public transit is a political football, Caltrain only runs hourly service much of the day. Oh, and despite the recently relocated Caltrain San Bruno station being on the same stretch of road as BART's San Bruno station, they're still about a mile apart (closer than before, but not by much).
It's not the taxis that are to blame for the abysmal public transit to airport scene, it's the folks that design these transit systems (folks like friggin Quentin Kopp).
The revolution will be mocked
While researching your point, I came across this pro-driving is a right not privilege article which seems to set out the history of drivers licences. One part struck me though :-
Doesn't licensing make sense in this context?
- to ensure that the majority of drivers on the road have at least demonstrated minimal competency in driving by passing a mandatory test
- to ensure that drivers are covered by insurance (which i think is a pre-req to getting a licence in most places)
- to link vehicles with their drivers for the purposes of identification, for liability settlement in case there is an accident, theft etc
It doesn't seem that unreasonable in light of the amount of damage already caused by licensed drivers every year. Completely doing away with licensing and thereby allowing even those who have failed their driving tests to drive would seem counter productive.
Please explain why heavy traffic around LAX is relevant to the discussion, seeing that both established cab companies and ride companies want to brave the heavy traffic to pick up passengers at the airport.
The city in fact is trying to keep ride companies out.
I've had my worst cab experiences going either to or from an airport from a safety related perspective. I find the "safety" arguments from the CPUC ridiculous and only put there to preserve their licensed monopoly on airport access to cabs, hired cars (limos) and shuttle vans. Make no mistake, airports get a lot of revenue for letting these companies onsite and don't want to see that revenue disappear.
Here's just a few safety issues I've had:
1) trying to catch an early morning flight, the driver fell asleep twice at the wheel and ran a red light.
2) pickup from an airport to go to a meeting, unfortunately it was snowing and the driver felt that the ride was "too short" for the amount of
time he'd spent in the cab line. Still, it was a $30 fare but he nearly crashed into two cars on the slick roads because he was mumbling under
his breath about how he had sat there blah blah...
3) pickup from the airport and made the guy stop before we left the airport, why? His car was clunking so bad it was driving like a clown car you see in
parades, it's like it had oval rear tires.
4) Shuttle ride to Dulles one time, driver was late so he was speeding and was pulled over by a cop on the Dulles toll road.
I can't possibly see how Uber or Lyft can be much worse.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
That's not a 'safety requirement' as such.
Even if what you mention is the case, why is it safe to drive other places and not to the airport?
Methinks city revenues and cab driver unhappiness are behind this. The Taxi Guild is a powerful lobby because it pumps money into CIty Hall's coffers. Neat new disruptive technology is all well and good until it threatens the city's bottom line....
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I can't find a place in Beta to change my default posting mode and obviously the post above is pooched - <br> inserted but not correctly parsed.
How do I fix this within Beta?
I didn't insert these HTML codes, something in the submission interface must have but I can't see any preferences under profile or account in the Beta that will let me amend this.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
I use Uber every time I fly out of SFO, and these shitheads want to stop it because Uber doesn't pay bribes the way the cabbies do. Fuck every last thing about this.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
>Once autonomous vehicles are approved for use
... and the reason is simple:
... the cab fare will be the same except there won't be a human receiving the wages.
Like how a Snickers bar costs $1.25 in a vending machine.
Not that there will be commonplace autonomous cars in the next 20 years, they will remain as common as the flying cars hypothesized in the 1960s
Q) Why won't there be autonomous cars?
A) Because even a car that can handle 99% of normal driving situations is incredibly dangerous in that other 1% scenario. And that 1% scenario --- power is out and stop lights don't work or ad-hoc road construction or a very destructive pothole or severe rain that blunts sensors --- those happen on a very regular basis.
The only autonomous cars will be the ones we already have --- they are called trains! Not that they are "smart", but because their driving conditions are extremely simplified --- yet they STILL have drivers!!!
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The corruption of the taxi industry is humanities last hope.
In the future, when robots and AI has taken over every available job a human being could do, the one remaining bulwark that saves the human race from destruction will be the taxi lobby. At that time, the only job for a human will be a taxi driver, and we will drive around robots (other humans will not be able to afford it).
Ya, it's a joke. But people believe this. I've seen no evidence whatsoever though that licensed limo/taxi drivers are worse than unlicensed freelance drivers-for-hire.
area. I think it has improved a little since the early 90s, but probably not much.
BART finally made it to SFO. the bart station there is one of the stops on the shuttle tram that connects the terminals with each other and the parking structure. it's pretty sweet that you don't need a cab to get to the city.
At OAK bart runs an "air bart" shuttle that directly goes between the coliseum station and the airport. it's seamless in that the shuttle accepts bart tickets as payment and the stations are nicely located.
SJC: you take a free bus (SCVTA to caltrain, 20 mins. I used to commute on this, from caltrain to an office park on the other side of the airport. No connection yet between SJC and east bay bart. BART is building into san jose right now, and should have a station in the city by 2018. Still though, I'm not sure why anybody would want to go to east bay.
"Beta", what's "Beta"?
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Who takes taxis though? I think most people take shuttles as they're a fraction of the cost. Many airports in California are situated far from city centers so taxi fares would be through the roof.
I don't think so. Your friend is not making this a business, and he's your friend. Uber and other ride share services just pretend that these are mutual acquaintances acting like car pools or friendly lifts, but they are trying to be full blown taxi/limo companies in everything but name. You aren't breaking the laws though, these companies are the ones doing that.
It is very different from someone not personally known to you if that person is earning his living driving people around all day.
If you don't like it then petition your legislators to change the laws.
Cabbies should quit and just provide service for ride sharing sites then. If it doesn't pay enough to be a taxi driver, then maybe taxi companies would respond to competitive pressures.
It's about who gets the business and who holds the insurance.
In the drone world, you got established companies: DoD/Aerospace/Big Defense selling UAVs at 100K+ figures where a 15K unit can do better. And you get all these commercial startups and hobbyists are 9 out of 10 times flying with out insurance.... and if they do have insurance--how is an insurance company really going to pay out when your 2K DJI flies away and causes a car accident with million dollar lawsuits, e.g. a fatality in the middle of San Francisco's mission district? There's a reason the rocketry guys aren't flying their aerial cameras via launching the estes model unit in the local walmart parking lot.
These car sharing services, mind that all the resource sharing services (airbnb and aereo come to mind) have the same 2 problems: uneven competition (maybe fair OR unfair--courts will decide) to established businesses and regs, and when something goes wrong, who pays? You think uber has a walk in the park with safety and insurance? These are not mutually exclusive problems, but more tightly coupled than one would think.
Hence as a devil's advocate, Airports are controlled areas, congested x10, and have all sorts of complexities: emergency evac, pedestrians, basic security, basic logistics, lots of people not familiar with the area and a controlled taxi system. All that plays into the 2 above needs... and as like the drone world, safety is used as easy justification to put a kibosh on the whole deal.
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I think it has improved a little since the early 90s, but probably not much.
Not much indeed. Now one of the train systems goes to the airport, but being at the end of a line, it's not actually convenient. The truth is that you often can't get to a borough 15 minutes away by car without taking two buses and a train, the public transportation system in the bay area is just pure shit. Everything about it except electric buses (which are only in one area, after all) is shit. And of course, the buses aren't controlled at all. They are dirty, and smelly, and uncleaned (do they even clean them before a shift? Doesn't seem like it) and drivers typically do nothing whatsoever about crimes committed on their buses unless they affect the driver.
San Francisco is a city desperately trying to strangle itself.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If drivers violate the permitting rules, seize their vehicles and sell them at auction. Make the companies compelled to share that info with every driver so no one can claim "But I didn't know...."
After the first few, the rest will get the message.
More and more I read how my state (California) is becoming more and more regulated, taxed, bureaucratic. Hell I'm just going to call it now while I'm looking about for my towel. All hail California, the Vogon state!
I thought that was B4?
not the riders. The drivers are usually taking it as a second (or third) job to make ends meet.
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How does being at the end of a line make it inconvenient?