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Uber and Lyft Want You Banned From Using Your Own Self-Driving Car in Urban Areas (siliconbeat.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Mercury News:
The rabble can't be trusted with self-driving cars, and only companies operating fleets of them should be able to use them in dense urban areas. So say Uber and Lyft, as signatories to a new list of transportation goals developed by a group of international non-governmental organizations and titled "Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities"... According to Principle No. 10, "Shared fleets can provide more affordable access to all, maximize public safety and emissions benefits, ensure that maintenance and software upgrades are managed by professionals..."
It's stated reason is to "actualize the promise of reductions in vehicles, parking, and congestion, in line with broader policy trends to reduce the use of personal cars in dense urban areas." But others remain suspicious.
Gizmodo complains that the proposal "doesn't exactly sound like the freedom-filled future sci-fi writers have been promising, now does it?" and concludes that Uber and Lyft "have a hot new idea for screwing over city-dwellers."
It's stated reason is to "actualize the promise of reductions in vehicles, parking, and congestion, in line with broader policy trends to reduce the use of personal cars in dense urban areas." But others remain suspicious.
Gizmodo complains that the proposal "doesn't exactly sound like the freedom-filled future sci-fi writers have been promising, now does it?" and concludes that Uber and Lyft "have a hot new idea for screwing over city-dwellers."
this is going to really cut the legs out from under a lot of their supporters
Right, because lots of people "support" Uber because of their reputation for ethical behavior. Sure. Whatever.
Seriously, get some perspective. If you made a list of all the unethical and illegal crap that Uber has done, this wouldn't even make the top one hundred.
For the past 30 or more years, there's been a "progressivist" initiative in urban planning to significantly reduce the number of private motor vehicles on the road in densified urban areas (for which read "downtown" - to distinguish it from "inner urban" areas, for which read "slums"). It - along with housing densification itself - is one of the core goals of New Urbanism.
New Urbanism, in turn, is dedicated to reducing urban sprawl (for which read "suburbs"), in part by mandating high-density, multi-family housing, mixed-use planning (for which read "medium- and high-rises with residential units on top and retail at street level"). It regards with disdain that portion of the population that does not care for apartment living and mass transit as a lifestyle, and seeks to enforce its vision by changing planning law and packing planning commissions, not just in big cities, but in small and medium ones, as well.
A prime example of a city whose planning process is now wholly based on New Urbanist principles is San Francisco, which has systematically constrained parking by consistently approving major new construction only on condition that it be designed with new parking that's deliberately inadequate for the expected demand. (The idea being to make finding a parking place so difficult that it will basically force commuters to take public transit, rather than drive.) Ask any San Francisco resident or commuter (other than a fanatic bike geek) how that has worked out.
Uber and Lyft are merely taking advantage of the New Urbanist movement to try to mandate that cities run by progressives enact traffic-reduction policies that will result in their companies making the maximum possible profit from the hapless residents of and commuters to these cities.
I only hope that the New Urbanist masterminds stab them in the back by mandating fleets of city-owned self-driving cars to serve their residents and visitors ...
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