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New York Could Become First Major U.S. City to Cap Uber and Similar Vehicles

nytimes.com

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Re: New York Could Become First Major U.S. City to Cap Uber and Similar Vehicles

#31

Post by ihsw3 »

robrenaud wrote: post #16
bluedevil2k wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the city buy them back? They sold the assets, they have no obligation to re-purchase them. Investment risk is in the hands of those people (usually companies) who purchase them. Besides, at what price would they even buy them back at? They're certainly not worth the price that some people pay for them (last I checked, about $1M each).

> Why should the city buy them back So otherwise hopeless drivers/single medallion owners who are severely in debt don't end up committing mass suicide.

We live in a free market, they're free to find work elsewhere. Not only that but these cabbies have the unbelievable fortune of being able to unload these medallions through declaring chapter 7/chapter 13 bankruptcy.

There are so many avenues for them to relieve themselves from this burden and better their circumstances that you'd be hard-pressed to take any claims of mass-suicide seriously.

Re: New York Could Become First Major U.S. City to Cap Uber and Similar Vehicles

#32

Post by notsofastbuddy »

dsr_ wrote: post #30
nradov wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A market based mechanism such as a variable congestion charge would probably be a better way to restrict traffic.

A market based mechanism such as a strong labor union of drivers would probably be a better way to ensure livable wages.

This seems orthogonal to the parent comment.

Re: New York Could Become First Major U.S. City to Cap Uber and Similar Vehicles

#33

Post by CPLX »

nradov wrote: post #28
CPLX wrote: post #21

Why is everyone treating this news like it's all or nothing ("oh noes they want us to go back to medallion cabs!") rather than assessing it at face value. The number of TLC cars has skyrocketed recently. Which, in many important ways, is a good thing. But this is a crowded city, literally everything that is at risk of runaway growth in this city is regulated, and for good reason, all the way down to hot dog carts. Th…

A market based mechanism such as a variable congestion charge would probably be a better way to restrict traffic.

Maybe. It could also be highly regressive if applied to for hire cars. This shit is more complicated than a one line "markets uber alles" approach.

Re: New York Could Become First Major U.S. City to Cap Uber and Similar Vehicles

#34

Post by ihsw3 »

jdlyga wrote: post #19
bluedevil2k wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the city buy them back? They sold the assets, they have no obligation to re-purchase them. Investment risk is in the hands of those people (usually companies) who purchase them. Besides, at what price would they even buy them back at? They're certainly not worth the price that some people pay for them (last I checked, about $1M each).

Because Taxi drivers depend on them to make a living and to eventually retire on. It's a big investment.

They can take responsibility for their actions like everybody else, and that includes having the advantage that nobody else in the history of debtors has ever had -- the ability to declare bankruptcy and survive with their hide intact.

Re: New York Could Become First Major U.S. City to Cap Uber and Similar Vehicles

#35

Post by [deleted] »

robrenaud wrote: post #16
bluedevil2k wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the city buy them back? They sold the assets, they have no obligation to re-purchase them. Investment risk is in the hands of those people (usually companies) who purchase them. Besides, at what price would they even buy them back at? They're certainly not worth the price that some people pay for them (last I checked, about $1M each).

> Why should the city buy them back So otherwise hopeless drivers/single medallion owners who are severely in debt don't end up committing mass suicide.

[deleted]

Re: New York Could Become First Major U.S. City to Cap Uber and Similar Vehicles

#36

Post by [deleted] »

CPLX wrote: post #21

Why is everyone treating this news like it's all or nothing ("oh noes they want us to go back to medallion cabs!") rather than assessing it at face value. The number of TLC cars has skyrocketed recently. Which, in many important ways, is a good thing. But this is a crowded city, literally everything that is at risk of runaway growth in this city is regulated, and for good reason, all the way down to hot dog carts. Th…

[deleted]

Re: New York Could Become First Major U.S. City to Cap Uber and Similar Vehicles

#37

Post by Retric »

jamiequint wrote: post #24
Daishiman wrote: post #15

I'm sorry but everyone here is completely ignoring the congestion arguments, which like it or not, are actually very valid, just as much as the race to the bottom and long-term unsustainably low prices. I dislike yellow cabs as much as the next guy but street space is definitely a limited resource and not being regulated in a healthy manner.

They should charge a congestion fee then and let the market sort it out, as opposed to artificially regulating one small source of cars (100k for hire vehicles vs 2.7m vehicles entering the city per day). Why would the thought even be to regulate 3% of cars vs. attacking the actual core problem (2.7m cars/day). It makes absolutely no sense (aside from protectionism of the taxi industry)

Those 2.7m cars don't spend 10+ hours driving each day.

So, those 100k for higher vehicles make up a large fraction of total vehicles on the streets. Further, congestion charges would need to be per hour on the road not just in the city to adjust for this issue.

Re: New York Could Become First Major U.S. City to Cap Uber and Similar Vehicles

#38

Post by dmitriy_ko »

Daishiman wrote: post #15

I'm sorry but everyone here is completely ignoring the congestion arguments, which like it or not, are actually very valid, just as much as the race to the bottom and long-term unsustainably low prices. I dislike yellow cabs as much as the next guy but street space is definitely a limited resource and not being regulated in a healthy manner.

Uber/Lyft use limited road space more efficiently vs traditional cabs due to 1. Shared rides (Uber Pool and Lyft Line) 2. Lower deadheading factor, as Uber and Lyft work on larger scale and use better dispatching algorithms, so they need to drive less to pickup next passenger

Re: New York Could Become First Major U.S. City to Cap Uber and Similar Vehicles

#39

Post by logicchains »

forapurpose wrote: post #13
logicchains wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An oversupply according to whom, the taxi drivers? Given how much eager so many riders were to pick them over cabs, they were obviously supplying something that was missing.

> An oversupply according to whom The article raised several negative consequences due to oversupply, which are generally well known. How should we address them?

Regarding the negative effect on taxi drivers, the economic consensus is that this is weaker than the positive effect on consumers. Generally as a society we prefer benefiting consumers over producers, as if all producers had monopolies and no competition, everyone's quality of life would be worse (producers are consumers too). There's a nice work from a few hundred years ago by early French economist Bastiat that explores the issue: http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html.

That aside, their situation could be improved by the same general solution as other unemployment hardships: better welfare or some kind of basic income. This distorts the market less than giving taxi drivers an artificial monopoly and forcing New Yorkers to suffer allegedly sub-par service.

Regarding increased congestion, the standard solution is a congestion charge of some sort, applied equally to all non-critical passenger vehicles. This is what large cities like Shanghai and Singapore do (with massive taxes and/or licensing fees). Just because Uber contributed to the problem most recently, doesn't mean that their usecase is somehow worse than the cars that were already there. Increased use of such services can actually be a positive in the long term, if it reduces the time spent parking and the city's need to waste land on parking spaces, encourages carpooling, or increases quality of life of residents by allowing them to more easily get across the city. Increasing the cost of driving in the city via congestion charges or taxes will cut off the least important use-cases first (those that people are least willing to pay for), which is more efficient than arbitrarily banning ride sharing without data on the value it adds vs existing car usage.

Re: New York Could Become First Major U.S. City to Cap Uber and Similar Vehicles

#40

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #5

Before becoming mayor, de Blasio lived here in Park Slope. I guess he never used these yellow cabs he’s so interested in preserving because getting one to go to Brooklyn from Manhattan is fucking impossible. Seriously, everything about yellow cab service is worse. Why don’t they buy back the medallions instead?

Manhattan is plagued with Uber cars. They outnumber yellow cabs 5:1. At this point it is a serious public safety issue if an evacuation is ever necessary. Your problem can be addressed with incentives for more borough cabs.
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