If the problem they are trying to solve is "too many vehicles" then we need a congestion tax. They should certainly not be limiting vehicles that are more likely to take multiple people with a Pool option.
If the problem they are trying to solve is "drivers aren't making enough" then they should impose a minimum wage on drivers or force an actual employee relationship.
If the problem they are trying to solve is a bail out of the failed and corrupt taxi medallion system, then maybe this will succeed. The real issue here is the cab drivers who are hurting because they provide an inferior service to a clientele who now have better options. I avoid cabs for all but the shortest trips because of the large percentage of bad driving experiences. Some solutions to improve yellow cabs like having a simple feedback mechanism for drivers could go a long way to leveling the playing field between Uber and Taxi.
What if the problem is that you are mayor and got lots of campaign funding from the taxi lobby and now they want their pound of flesh?
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/don-big-bill-article-1.14...
FROM ARTICLE
"A review of all contributions to de Blasio raised by or made by taxi lawyers, owners and other associates in the 2013 campaign tallies $254,451, making them de Blasio’s biggest backers by far. Fleet owner Ron Sherman is the most powerful taxi leader, just as his father Donald was in the 1980s before he was convicted in a federal felony case, and he orchestrated the de Blasio deluge of support."
Yup. I'm no fan of Uber but at least the service is consistent.
I remember on my first trip to NYC many years ago, I wanted to go to the airport during rush hour. No cab would stop and take me, because I looked like someone who wanted to go to the airport, which is out of their way. Apparently this is a known problem, so you're supposed to kind of hide your bag so they don't notice, then get in the cab, close the door, and THEN declare that you want to go to the airport, at which point they are legally obligated to take you. (Having used this option on subsequent trips... it consists of 45 minutes of whining.)
Meanwhile, with Uber you just press a button and they take you to the airport, bags and all.
This is why the taxi industry is dying; these little "hustles" add up and people don't trust yellow cabs anymore. Meanwhile, the app-based cars just take you where you want to go without the complaining. (I suppose they now have the ability to just not accept your trip if they don't feel like going there, which I think is fair. I don't want to listen to an adult whine about how annoying it is to go a particular place, I just want to go there.)
Right now, NYC faces a big problem. There is no viable method of transportation. There is too much traffic to drive anywhere quickly. The subways are overcrowded and broken. You can bike, but there probably won't be a citibike dock at your destination, and the bike lanes will be blocked with parked cars on the way there. It's kind of a nightmare that's going to become a crisis. Does limiting the number of Uber vehicles on the road fix any of this? Nope! But it's the only thing that's politically feasible, I guess. (We can't have congestion charging, because people in New Jersey and upstate will whine about having to pay to get to work. We can't expand the subway, because the MTA is controlled by the state and it only benefits NYC, so the governor and the legislature won't fund it. We can't enforce traffic laws to prevent people from parking in bike lanes because the NYPD is lazy and incompetent. So we're basically screwed. Eventually it will melt down completely, but we're doing an OK job of keeping the city on life support right now.)
Unfortch Bloomberg tried congestion pricing and it got strangled in the cot. That would be my preference too. Simple, market-based, fair, etc. . . .
With the ranks of uber cars in the city growing as much as they have the downtown traffic has become insane and I'm for anything that would relieve that congestion. I've been living along the Prince/Spring corridor for ~10 years now and the change in bumper-to-bumper traffic, particularly on summer Fridays is outrageous.
However it's sliced, though there's a problem with the city being full of too many idling/circling cars. ~10 yellow cabs at 330k rides per day vs Uber's 60k cars at ~200k rides per day, as per the article. That means Yellow cabs are actually driving people somewhere most of the time they are on the road whereas Uber drivers are spending a lot of time idling and/or driving to or from a pickup/dropoff.
All of that said I've been looking everywhere for good supportable numbers on how Uber has been affecting Manhattan traffic and it has been impossible to get anything other than the total number of Ubers on the road which isn't very helpful.
I would love a congestion tax. I take a bike to work, but there's no good cross-town protected bike lanes, so I hit so a lot of damn vehicle traffic that severely slows down my commute. I frequently have to go slow to wend my way through narrow gaps of parked cars and cars stuck in traffic, and sometimes get stuck completely with double parking or construction.
Make more protected bike lanes so that vehicle congestion doesn't impact bike travel, and add a congestion tax on all vehicles so that people only drive into the busiest areas if it's really necessary, and will otherwise consider alternative forms of transportation. I don't just want a cap on rideshares; a privately owned vehicle takes up just as much space on the road as an Uber, so why only target the latter? And what's to say that if you target Ubers you won't just get a corresponding increase in private drivers to pick up the slack, with the end result being the same amount of congestion?
I read it differently. This legislation is good for Uber, because it lays the groundwork for severe regulatory capture where Uber can use the cap to prevent competitors from having any chance to gain critical customer bases.
It’s an anti-competition decision disguised as if city hall is doing something for the people.
Now Uber just has to lobby to have its cap raised or be allocated a greater portion, and steadily push others out.
This way Uber can get the transit monopoly it wants but without having to do the hard work of making the product profitable at a price point that drivers and riders actually value, which it currently papers over with VC funding and distraction stories about branching into other lines of business that are clearly not significant.
Uber drivers are also really bad drivers, compared to the norm. They don't know the streets as well, they make abrupt stops in the middle of the street (cabs at least pull over if possible), they drive just weird and it's annoying.
As a driver and pedestrian, I can spot an uber car immediately without even seeing the sticker. I like to play this guessing game in my head, and 9 times out of 10 I see the uber sticker, "T L & C" license plate, and/or a single passenger in the back seat staring at their phone.
I think there's a 4th factor which is under looked by your comment and it's that the way in which ride sharing is taking away revenue from the MTA. While this is likely caused by the system constantly being under construction and having delays, removing idling cars from the road would very likely also help with reducing bus traffic (although it's pathetic that NYC hasn't implemented BRT on all major corridors such as they are going to do on 14th street.
There are something like 8k restaurants in New York. Imagine if a restaurant lobby was able to limit new restaurants. This is basically what the taxi industry is doing.
The real issue is that cab drivers are committing suicide because of their debts. Simple market analysis ignores the real human toll these technological changes are making. Yes, better service should be rewarded. But those hurting should get some relief. (I personally don't care too much about medallion-owning companies/groups.)
Alternative title: "NYC Taxi mafia strikes back, gives Uber 12 months to come up with a large enough bribe".
Really, the life of nearly everyone (who's not a taxi driver, perhaps) improved a bit since Uber entered the city.
Even the fabled subway in its theoretical best has been dysfunctional in Brooklyn since the takedown of streetcars a hundred years ago (see how all the tracks are running towards Manhattan and very few across?).
And need anyone be reminded of the countless problems with the yellow cabs (good luck hailing one around Kings Highway!), green cabs (too little too late, same problems), car services (aka taxis you order by phone, which may or may not come to pick you up and may or may not go where you need to, and can tell you to, quote, f$#k off when they're late), etc?
Obligatorily, I have a lot of reservations towards whatever Uber is doing elsewhere - but the NYC situation looked unfixable before Uber came a long with a stick (or candy) large enough.
>Really, the life of nearly everyone improved a bit since Uber entered the city.
Except for bus riders and cyclists that deal with much more congestion. And transit riders that deal with services changes as a result of decreased transit ridership.
Not to mention behavior like drivers randomly stopping in places that weren't designed for stopped cars.
i live in nyc and im glad this is happening. we have a traffic congestion problem here - i dont want more ubers, lyfts or yellow cabs on the street, i want less. i wish nyc would copy london and actually tax people for enter every bridge, tunnel etc in rush hours to stop it.
the law of diminishing returns is in full effect here, regardless of what the engineers and SC want to tell themselves.
The flipside is this may actually be good for NYC Uber drivers. Generally I feel like they have to sweat and toil to make a living, more so than Uber drivers in other cities. This may give them some relief as supply stays constant.
Uber made NYC significantly worse. So, for anyone that drives they are a huge downgrade to life in the city.
Core problem an Uber driving from A to pick someone up at B then dropping them off at C is much worse than that person driving from B to C. On top of that they tend to drive around without passengers to get to better locations.
Taxi are also a problem but the limited number of medallions limited their impact.
PS: On top of this lowering the cost of using a car adds even more trips.
There is a lot of ridiculous hyperbole and disingenuousness in this post so it's a little hard to take seriously.
As someone who has lived in New York for the past ten years, the entrance of Uber hasn't changed my life at all, other than some VCs subsidizing/coercing some lower income drivers into taking $10 off my fare when I go to the airport.
Public transportation, which you deride, usage utterly dwarfs taxis/ubers/etc (notice all of the large buildings _in Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn_ where people work?). The MTA definitely has some issues, but calling it dysfunctional because it takes a little extra time to go from Astoria to Prospect Park is absurd.
I don't need to be reminded of the standard, clean, regulated experience I have every time I jump into a yellow or green cab. Boro taxis were introduced into the city _two years after_ Uber entered NYC. How can you possible hand wave them away with "too little too late"? And Uber has its fair share of drivers who have no idea where they're going (actually, definitely more, but I will say they're better about following GPS, which can be both good and bad).
They're taking about limited the number and providing a minimum wage, hardly life changing stuff.
NYC is closing down the L train next year for a year at the very least. So far, the city has proposed more water taxis as the primary solution to handle rerouting the 300k daily riders. Right now, the water taxi ridership is 1370 people per day. Secondarily, the city has indicated it might make some of the bridges carpool or ride-share only. Either way, all signs point to the shutdown heading towards a painful if not disastrous scenario. Hopefully, voters will point to this type of cronyism and corruption next mayoral election.
This is sad. NYC is one of the few (like 2, maybe 3) America cities with an actual usable rail system and it's rotted into disrepair.
I'm all for limiting rid share vehicles and better wages for drivers, but they need to dump a shit ton of time and money into the rail system, both the subway and intercity. Fix Penn Station, and get the tracks up to spec! That should be the #1 priority for city transport infrastructure.
> So far, the city has proposed more water taxis as the primary solution to handle rerouting the 300k daily riders.
I don't understand what your complaint is. Not every L train ride crosses the river (I'll concede at least half probably do, though). MTA is also adding supplemental bus and train service. Do you think they should instead allow ride share to fill the gap? If so, I have doubts the city's geometry (particularly on the Manhattan end) would permit enough cars on the streets to support 300k additional trips, especially since they are likely concentrated around morning/evening rush hours.
I wonder what percentage of cars on the streets of Manhattan are Uber/Lyft, vs. taxi cabs, vs. private vehicles vs. other commercial ones.
Claiming to limit Uber license to alleviate congestion is a bullshit argument unless you can show that they make up a significant percentage of traffic.
Also, to be clear, I'm not an Uber apologist; they can go fuck themselves as quickly as they move and break things.
"...there are 13,587 yellow cabs on New York City streets. The total number of black cars: 60,000, more than 46,000 of which are connected with Uber, though they may be hooked up to other services as well."
"To the credit of taxis, that’s still more than the number of daily trips taken by app-hailed cars—but not by much. Combined, those cars took a total of 311,305 trips in October 2016. Yellow cabs are on a downward trajectory; app-hailed cars are on an upswing.
The Times breaks down the brand-specific numbers: in a twist surprising to no one, Uber, which started operating in NYC in 2011, is still king of the ride-hailing apps, providing on average of 226,046 rides per day in October 2016. Lyft came in a distant second, with 35,908 rides, according to city data, while Via had 21,698 rides; Juno had 20,426 rides; and Gett, which launched in the city in 2014, came in last with 7,227 rides."
Some of the statistics are dated in a fast-changing industry.
What's wrong with a vast majority of the vehicles on the road not being owned by the people who use them for transportation? It seems that a large amount of people don't want to purchase and maintain a vehicle they might not always be using and instead pay on-demand like they do for many other services where someone specializes to reduce the cost for others?
> The number of new vehicles on the road has surged since the last time a cap was up for debate, growing from 63,000 in 2015 to over 100,000 today. These new vehicles have added an unprecedented number of new miles driven in New York City, according to a recent analysis by traffic analyst Bruce Schaller. Trip volumes have tripled in the last year and a half, and 600 million driving miles were added citywide. In addition, Schaller found evidence that ridership was shifting from public transportation to ride-hailing apps.
As someone who lives in Eastern Queens, Uber has changed my life. There is no other kind of reliable taxi out here, and uber lets me live without a car.
I had to take a yellow cab the other day from a dispatcher at JFK. I normally take Uber all the time. We were going literally 20 min away to Queens.
I tell him we're going to Queens. He literally screams, "Queens?!" and storms out of the car to the dispatcher. He comes back in 2 minutes and starts driving, muttering to himself for 10 minutes after I give him the address, whining like a little bitch that he didn't get to go to Manhattan.
When going from JFK to somewhere else in queens, yellow cabs are supposed to get a voucher from the dispatcher that allows them to skip to the front of the line when they get back to the airport. The fact that he was surprised when you said Queens implies that the dispatcher failed to do this, which explains both his going back to the dispatcher and his annoyance.
The best note on this was from the Republican running for attorney general in the state in that he could not believe that the city was returning to the racist system whereby blacks would be having a reduced mobility option because of the known, yet not handled, yellow cabs not picking up blacks. A better system was identified that helped fix an issue and we have a city council so beholden to the taxi network that they are willing to screw over the populous.
It’s ironic that this was passed this morning, because this morning a power issue at Canal managed to knock out all service on the A/C/E line for hours... leaving me to have to get a Lyft to work. For the second time in a week. I’m all for greater regulation for ridesharing companies, but making it even harder to get around at a time the subway is in full crisis is a terrible idea.
I don't think these issues are actually that separate; both of them seek to limit Uber trips; one does it on the demand side by increasing the price, the other does it on the supply side, by directly constraining supply.
The exact mechanisms are different, but the direction they are pushing is basically the same so that if one doesn't work the other should.
De Blasio seems to really like adding regulations to industries that were largely responses to NYC (and similar large cities') regulation that strangled the previous version of that industry, leaving competition excessively expensive, inefficient and unpleasant.
Maybe there are some things he could do to make taxi's more competitive with Uber?
- Develop a cross-service hailing app including taxis?
- Regulate to prevent annoying TV screen ads
- Streamline payment process
I feel like this is a step towards Uber being regulated into becoming a clone of the poor taxi services it was rebelling against: unmaintained interiors, no customer service, unreliable hailing.
The only regulation I want to see on Uber is statutory penalties if "time to arrival" wait times consistently exceed the provided estimates. I use Uber much less now because I several times I've gotten an estimate of "3 minutes" and waited over 15. This is false advertisement.
This benefits the drivers at the expense of consumers. Maybe that's worth doing, maybe not. I don't think there is a right answer to that since it depends on your perspective. In either case, it seems like the problem they're trying to address is congestion, which could be better addressed by taxing drivers more highly. Then only the more productive rideshare and taxi drivers would be on the streets, plus you'd get rid of a lot of the other drivers who don't value their ability to drive that highly. I used to drive into NYC fairly regularly, since I liked being able to park near where I was going, but if it cost more I would have just taken the train and the subway.
The number of drivers finds equilibrium on its own. Too many drivers = too low wages, so people stop driving. Too few drivers = high wages/wait times, so more people become drivers.
I'd expected better from NYC. They are again trying to put back "Medallion" culture back in so that only powerful few can operate taxi business and essentially are licenced to exploit drivers from 3rd world. The city should have seen its taxi system as shameful arrangement where rich people created laws to get license for what was a slave market for all purpose and intent. People like Michael Cohen had exploited this system to make 10s of millions of dollars from the sweat of taxi drivers for practically zero effort. There are no reason to artificially limit the number of taxis. The demand and supply are far more efficient and desirable than politicians.
Given the problem, this seems like a reasonable action on the part of the NYC City Council. But I'm confused by section on congestion pricing:
> Many experts believe congestion pricing is the best way for New York City to fix congestion and secure the funds needed to fix the subway. Mr. Johnson supports the idea, but Mr. de Blasio has opposed it. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who controls the subway, has said he will push for congestion pricing...
Why does de Blasio oppose it? It seems like another reasonable approach to tackling congestion -- heck, it's the public version of building private toll roads -- with the added bonus of providing funds to improve public transportation.
Because it's regressive. It takes money away from people who drive, who are often people who are blue collar, spread out in the outer boroughs, or who need to bring tools to do their jobs, those who are forced to cross the city to get anywhere west of town, etc.
Sure, that's not the only effect it will have, it will also cost money for bankers that drive in from Westchester and park underneath their midtown offices. But, as you can imagine, it won't change their behavior much -- by definition the only people that it will affect are people who can't easily afford it.
If you look at it in a different way, congestion pricing takes a public good that everyone paid to create, the roads and streets of the central business district, and reserves them so they can only be used by drivers with lots of money. There are problems with that approach.
Of course there's another side to the argument, obviously. But I feel like many people don't realize this issue cuts in two directions, rather than just being an obvious "good idea".
Congestion pricing is generally politically unpopular in that it trades clear price increases and the attendant hassle around charging for hazy-sounding benefits.
The charitable explanation is that "rich people take Ubers, poor people in the outer borroughs drive their own cars." The cynic would point out that "Mayor Minivan" is notorious for driving an SUV from Manhattan to his favorite gym in deep Brooklyn every morning, making him precisely the kind of person who would take a hit from congestion pricing.
As the subway crumbles, ride-share and taxis are the only practical way most people can get around. The cab-limiting "medallion" system led to infamous corruption (Michael Cohen, a name you might have heard from the news, owns an entire fleet of them); most New Yorkers thus consider ride-share to be a godsend. I don't see how capping ride share will result in anything but making Ubers as terrible as yellow cabs.
btw, if ride-share is capped at current levels, that means that traffic would merely not-get-any-worse than it already is. This will do nothing to reduce traffic; congestion pricing would accomplish something.
It seems that he believes that it would put an undue burden on poorer people commuting into Manhattan:
> The de Blasio administration has steadfastly maintained that it can’t get behind a congestion pricing plan because it unfairly burdens low-income New Yorkers traveling into Manhattan from the outer boroughs. On Friday, the Mayor seemed to soften on his prior opposition.
I think it's pretty clear why de Blasio doesn't like congestion pricing: people who are used to driving would feel acute pain, he's quite cozy with the Taxi lobby and raising prices/wages on Uber/etc is politically popular on the left.
I don't know what de Blasio's plans are after his mayoral term is up, but this ticks all the right political boxes for him.
Advocating for congestion pricing would mean no more Taxi campaign contributions, Uber the company is unpopular, and he would piss off those who benefit from toll free roads; as a politician that would actually take courage, so why do it?
> The price of a taxi medallion, which is required to operate a taxi in New York, has plunged from more than $1 million to less than $200,000.
Clearly, a cap on ride hailing licenses can only mean that the already licensed drivers stand to gain a similar amount by pimping their license to various competing services until they get the best deal. It's simple economics, assuming taxis and Ubers are comparable to the average consumer.
My suspicion is that Uber could out-bribe the taxi lobby by 10x, without moving the needle on profitability. This cap signifies that Uber either a) doesn't bribe politicians, or b) bribed the wrong politicians.
This is plain bribery. I live in Brooklyn. Now I'm less late because of Uber. Before I've gotten fired because of situations where I can do nothing but just let fate run it course as I'm stuck in B train. Or wait for a bus that hasn't even left the station.
Uber and Lyft actually offered to support a $100M bribe-er, I mean, "hardship" fund to support underwater individual (i.e., not those taxi business that own multiple medallions) medallion owners, but the city refused. Which makes sense since how are the politicians suppose to get money from that?
"The City Council approved a package of bills that will halt new licenses for Uber and other ride-hail vehicles for a year while the city studies the booming industry."
While yes, this does impact Uber, it also impacts Lyft, etc.
You know, it would be one thing if this ruling was motivated by serious labor concerns but it really has to do with a bunch of crybabies that bought medallions as financial instrument and are upset that customers are choosing a service that's cheaper, better, and more hip.
colinbartlett|7 years ago
If the problem they are trying to solve is "drivers aren't making enough" then they should impose a minimum wage on drivers or force an actual employee relationship.
If the problem they are trying to solve is a bail out of the failed and corrupt taxi medallion system, then maybe this will succeed. The real issue here is the cab drivers who are hurting because they provide an inferior service to a clientele who now have better options. I avoid cabs for all but the shortest trips because of the large percentage of bad driving experiences. Some solutions to improve yellow cabs like having a simple feedback mechanism for drivers could go a long way to leveling the playing field between Uber and Taxi.
TuringNYC|7 years ago
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/don-big-bill-article-1.14... FROM ARTICLE "A review of all contributions to de Blasio raised by or made by taxi lawyers, owners and other associates in the 2013 campaign tallies $254,451, making them de Blasio’s biggest backers by far. Fleet owner Ron Sherman is the most powerful taxi leader, just as his father Donald was in the 1980s before he was convicted in a federal felony case, and he orchestrated the de Blasio deluge of support."
jrockway|7 years ago
I remember on my first trip to NYC many years ago, I wanted to go to the airport during rush hour. No cab would stop and take me, because I looked like someone who wanted to go to the airport, which is out of their way. Apparently this is a known problem, so you're supposed to kind of hide your bag so they don't notice, then get in the cab, close the door, and THEN declare that you want to go to the airport, at which point they are legally obligated to take you. (Having used this option on subsequent trips... it consists of 45 minutes of whining.)
Meanwhile, with Uber you just press a button and they take you to the airport, bags and all.
This is why the taxi industry is dying; these little "hustles" add up and people don't trust yellow cabs anymore. Meanwhile, the app-based cars just take you where you want to go without the complaining. (I suppose they now have the ability to just not accept your trip if they don't feel like going there, which I think is fair. I don't want to listen to an adult whine about how annoying it is to go a particular place, I just want to go there.)
Right now, NYC faces a big problem. There is no viable method of transportation. There is too much traffic to drive anywhere quickly. The subways are overcrowded and broken. You can bike, but there probably won't be a citibike dock at your destination, and the bike lanes will be blocked with parked cars on the way there. It's kind of a nightmare that's going to become a crisis. Does limiting the number of Uber vehicles on the road fix any of this? Nope! But it's the only thing that's politically feasible, I guess. (We can't have congestion charging, because people in New Jersey and upstate will whine about having to pay to get to work. We can't expand the subway, because the MTA is controlled by the state and it only benefits NYC, so the governor and the legislature won't fund it. We can't enforce traffic laws to prevent people from parking in bike lanes because the NYPD is lazy and incompetent. So we're basically screwed. Eventually it will melt down completely, but we're doing an OK job of keeping the city on life support right now.)
weeksie|7 years ago
With the ranks of uber cars in the city growing as much as they have the downtown traffic has become insane and I'm for anything that would relieve that congestion. I've been living along the Prince/Spring corridor for ~10 years now and the change in bumper-to-bumper traffic, particularly on summer Fridays is outrageous.
However it's sliced, though there's a problem with the city being full of too many idling/circling cars. ~10 yellow cabs at 330k rides per day vs Uber's 60k cars at ~200k rides per day, as per the article. That means Yellow cabs are actually driving people somewhere most of the time they are on the road whereas Uber drivers are spending a lot of time idling and/or driving to or from a pickup/dropoff.
All of that said I've been looking everywhere for good supportable numbers on how Uber has been affecting Manhattan traffic and it has been impossible to get anything other than the total number of Ubers on the road which isn't very helpful.
CydeWeys|7 years ago
Make more protected bike lanes so that vehicle congestion doesn't impact bike travel, and add a congestion tax on all vehicles so that people only drive into the busiest areas if it's really necessary, and will otherwise consider alternative forms of transportation. I don't just want a cap on rideshares; a privately owned vehicle takes up just as much space on the road as an Uber, so why only target the latter? And what's to say that if you target Ubers you won't just get a corresponding increase in private drivers to pick up the slack, with the end result being the same amount of congestion?
JumpCrisscross|7 years ago
This is a bill for bail out medallion owners, not cab drivers. Most NYC taxi medallions are corporate owned.
mlthoughts2018|7 years ago
It’s an anti-competition decision disguised as if city hall is doing something for the people.
Now Uber just has to lobby to have its cap raised or be allocated a greater portion, and steadily push others out.
This way Uber can get the transit monopoly it wants but without having to do the hard work of making the product profitable at a price point that drivers and riders actually value, which it currently papers over with VC funding and distraction stories about branching into other lines of business that are clearly not significant.
asah|7 years ago
EDIT: congestion tax = more expensive mobility (incl taxis and ride sharing) = less affordability
It's similar to local sales taxes: the 1% aren't affected by the cost of basic items, but the 99% are.
dajohnson89|7 years ago
As a driver and pedestrian, I can spot an uber car immediately without even seeing the sticker. I like to play this guessing game in my head, and 9 times out of 10 I see the uber sticker, "T L & C" license plate, and/or a single passenger in the back seat staring at their phone.
zjaffee|7 years ago
rdlecler1|7 years ago
naveen99|7 years ago
pradn|7 years ago
romwell|7 years ago
Really, the life of nearly everyone (who's not a taxi driver, perhaps) improved a bit since Uber entered the city.
Even the fabled subway in its theoretical best has been dysfunctional in Brooklyn since the takedown of streetcars a hundred years ago (see how all the tracks are running towards Manhattan and very few across?).
And need anyone be reminded of the countless problems with the yellow cabs (good luck hailing one around Kings Highway!), green cabs (too little too late, same problems), car services (aka taxis you order by phone, which may or may not come to pick you up and may or may not go where you need to, and can tell you to, quote, f$#k off when they're late), etc?
Obligatorily, I have a lot of reservations towards whatever Uber is doing elsewhere - but the NYC situation looked unfixable before Uber came a long with a stick (or candy) large enough.
strict9|7 years ago
Except for bus riders and cyclists that deal with much more congestion. And transit riders that deal with services changes as a result of decreased transit ridership.
Not to mention behavior like drivers randomly stopping in places that weren't designed for stopped cars.
misiti3780|7 years ago
the law of diminishing returns is in full effect here, regardless of what the engineers and SC want to tell themselves.
kevin_thibedeau|7 years ago
There is a limit where all these cars become a true public nuisance. It might be less than 100k.
ahoy|7 years ago
anonu|7 years ago
megablast|7 years ago
More cars on the road hasn't helped me at all.
unknown|7 years ago
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Retric|7 years ago
Core problem an Uber driving from A to pick someone up at B then dropping them off at C is much worse than that person driving from B to C. On top of that they tend to drive around without passengers to get to better locations.
Taxi are also a problem but the limited number of medallions limited their impact.
PS: On top of this lowering the cost of using a car adds even more trips.
jroblak|7 years ago
As someone who has lived in New York for the past ten years, the entrance of Uber hasn't changed my life at all, other than some VCs subsidizing/coercing some lower income drivers into taking $10 off my fare when I go to the airport.
Public transportation, which you deride, usage utterly dwarfs taxis/ubers/etc (notice all of the large buildings _in Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn_ where people work?). The MTA definitely has some issues, but calling it dysfunctional because it takes a little extra time to go from Astoria to Prospect Park is absurd.
I don't need to be reminded of the standard, clean, regulated experience I have every time I jump into a yellow or green cab. Boro taxis were introduced into the city _two years after_ Uber entered NYC. How can you possible hand wave them away with "too little too late"? And Uber has its fair share of drivers who have no idea where they're going (actually, definitely more, but I will say they're better about following GPS, which can be both good and bad).
They're taking about limited the number and providing a minimum wage, hardly life changing stuff.
pmart123|7 years ago
djsumdog|7 years ago
I'm all for limiting rid share vehicles and better wages for drivers, but they need to dump a shit ton of time and money into the rail system, both the subway and intercity. Fix Penn Station, and get the tracks up to spec! That should be the #1 priority for city transport infrastructure.
lnrdgmz|7 years ago
tomjakubowski|7 years ago
I don't understand what your complaint is. Not every L train ride crosses the river (I'll concede at least half probably do, though). MTA is also adding supplemental bus and train service. Do you think they should instead allow ride share to fill the gap? If so, I have doubts the city's geometry (particularly on the Manhattan end) would permit enough cars on the streets to support 300k additional trips, especially since they are likely concentrated around morning/evening rush hours.
pavel_lishin|7 years ago
pavel_lishin|7 years ago
Claiming to limit Uber license to alleviate congestion is a bullshit argument unless you can show that they make up a significant percentage of traffic.
Also, to be clear, I'm not an Uber apologist; they can go fuck themselves as quickly as they move and break things.
uptown|7 years ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/15/nyregion/yellow-cab-long-...
https://ny.curbed.com/2017/1/17/14296892/yellow-taxi-nyc-ube...
"...there are 13,587 yellow cabs on New York City streets. The total number of black cars: 60,000, more than 46,000 of which are connected with Uber, though they may be hooked up to other services as well."
"To the credit of taxis, that’s still more than the number of daily trips taken by app-hailed cars—but not by much. Combined, those cars took a total of 311,305 trips in October 2016. Yellow cabs are on a downward trajectory; app-hailed cars are on an upswing.
The Times breaks down the brand-specific numbers: in a twist surprising to no one, Uber, which started operating in NYC in 2011, is still king of the ride-hailing apps, providing on average of 226,046 rides per day in October 2016. Lyft came in a distant second, with 35,908 rides, according to city data, while Via had 21,698 rides; Juno had 20,426 rides; and Gett, which launched in the city in 2014, came in last with 7,227 rides."
Some of the statistics are dated in a fast-changing industry.
ddtaylor|7 years ago
bobthepanda|7 years ago
> The number of new vehicles on the road has surged since the last time a cap was up for debate, growing from 63,000 in 2015 to over 100,000 today. These new vehicles have added an unprecedented number of new miles driven in New York City, according to a recent analysis by traffic analyst Bruce Schaller. Trip volumes have tripled in the last year and a half, and 600 million driving miles were added citywide. In addition, Schaller found evidence that ridership was shifting from public transportation to ride-hailing apps.
cm2012|7 years ago
I had to take a yellow cab the other day from a dispatcher at JFK. I normally take Uber all the time. We were going literally 20 min away to Queens.
I tell him we're going to Queens. He literally screams, "Queens?!" and storms out of the car to the dispatcher. He comes back in 2 minutes and starts driving, muttering to himself for 10 minutes after I give him the address, whining like a little bitch that he didn't get to go to Manhattan.
Fuck yellow cabs.
bgruber|7 years ago
CPLX|7 years ago
Agustus|7 years ago
pavel_lishin|7 years ago
Itaxpica|7 years ago
mkolodny|7 years ago
"[Caption] Drivers of for-hire vehicles on Wednesday demonstrated in support of a cap on ride-hail vehicles outside City Hall."
Then the signs in the picture above the caption are all focused on the pay floor...
"VOTE yes to create a pay floor for FHV drivers"
The pay floor and the ride-sharing cap are very separate issues, but it seems like the city pulled a fast one by pairing their legislation.
With the L train shutting down for a year+, this could be disastrous for getting from Brooklyn to Manhattan.
Eridrus|7 years ago
The exact mechanisms are different, but the direction they are pushing is basically the same so that if one doesn't work the other should.
cwkoss|7 years ago
De Blasio seems to really like adding regulations to industries that were largely responses to NYC (and similar large cities') regulation that strangled the previous version of that industry, leaving competition excessively expensive, inefficient and unpleasant.
Maybe there are some things he could do to make taxi's more competitive with Uber?
- Develop a cross-service hailing app including taxis?
- Regulate to prevent annoying TV screen ads
- Streamline payment process
I feel like this is a step towards Uber being regulated into becoming a clone of the poor taxi services it was rebelling against: unmaintained interiors, no customer service, unreliable hailing.
The only regulation I want to see on Uber is statutory penalties if "time to arrival" wait times consistently exceed the provided estimates. I use Uber much less now because I several times I've gotten an estimate of "3 minutes" and waited over 15. This is false advertisement.
jeffreyrogers|7 years ago
test6554|7 years ago
sytelus|7 years ago
tonysdg|7 years ago
> Many experts believe congestion pricing is the best way for New York City to fix congestion and secure the funds needed to fix the subway. Mr. Johnson supports the idea, but Mr. de Blasio has opposed it. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who controls the subway, has said he will push for congestion pricing...
Why does de Blasio oppose it? It seems like another reasonable approach to tackling congestion -- heck, it's the public version of building private toll roads -- with the added bonus of providing funds to improve public transportation.
CPLX|7 years ago
Sure, that's not the only effect it will have, it will also cost money for bankers that drive in from Westchester and park underneath their midtown offices. But, as you can imagine, it won't change their behavior much -- by definition the only people that it will affect are people who can't easily afford it.
If you look at it in a different way, congestion pricing takes a public good that everyone paid to create, the roads and streets of the central business district, and reserves them so they can only be used by drivers with lots of money. There are problems with that approach.
Of course there's another side to the argument, obviously. But I feel like many people don't realize this issue cuts in two directions, rather than just being an obvious "good idea".
wpietri|7 years ago
At least until it's implemented, anyhow. Once people see congestion drastically reduced, it becomes more popular: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/12/06/for-politicians-conge...
It also pretty obviously favors the rich, which is not a big vote-getter.
Eric_WVGG|7 years ago
As the subway crumbles, ride-share and taxis are the only practical way most people can get around. The cab-limiting "medallion" system led to infamous corruption (Michael Cohen, a name you might have heard from the news, owns an entire fleet of them); most New Yorkers thus consider ride-share to be a godsend. I don't see how capping ride share will result in anything but making Ubers as terrible as yellow cabs.
btw, if ride-share is capped at current levels, that means that traffic would merely not-get-any-worse than it already is. This will do nothing to reduce traffic; congestion pricing would accomplish something.
pavel_lishin|7 years ago
> The de Blasio administration has steadfastly maintained that it can’t get behind a congestion pricing plan because it unfairly burdens low-income New Yorkers traveling into Manhattan from the outer boroughs. On Friday, the Mayor seemed to soften on his prior opposition.
https://ny.curbed.com/2018/1/19/16910546/nyc-congestion-pric...
But I can't actually find a quote of him saying that; everything I can find just says he thinks it's not fair, but doesn't specify why: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/21/nyregion/de-blasio-conges...
Eridrus|7 years ago
I don't know what de Blasio's plans are after his mayoral term is up, but this ticks all the right political boxes for him.
Advocating for congestion pricing would mean no more Taxi campaign contributions, Uber the company is unpopular, and he would piss off those who benefit from toll free roads; as a politician that would actually take courage, so why do it?
bumholio|7 years ago
Clearly, a cap on ride hailing licenses can only mean that the already licensed drivers stand to gain a similar amount by pimping their license to various competing services until they get the best deal. It's simple economics, assuming taxis and Ubers are comparable to the average consumer.
sebleon|7 years ago
dilap|7 years ago
techsin101|7 years ago
I know cab drivers are behind this.
Uber pool has saved me so much money.
When is next election for NYC mayor
unknown|7 years ago
[deleted]
fatjokes|7 years ago
blondie9x|7 years ago
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2018/02/ride-sharing-actua...
We have to find a way to have better more effective cities built for people that utilize walking, biking, and transit. The less cars the better: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-11/fight-cli...
We have to find a way to stop the laziness/traffic/transit abandonment that spreads with ride sharing. http://devonzuegel.com/post/we-should-be-building-cities-for...
Dowwie|7 years ago
sbuttgereit|7 years ago
"The City Council approved a package of bills that will halt new licenses for Uber and other ride-hail vehicles for a year while the city studies the booming industry."
While yes, this does impact Uber, it also impacts Lyft, etc.
romwell|7 years ago
unknown|7 years ago
[deleted]
8bitsrule|7 years ago
or graft...
TheSpiceIsLife|7 years ago
How much would a ride-hailing license cost to buy from an existing operator right now in NYC.
drawersheet|7 years ago