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San Francisco Denies Scooter Permits for Bird, Lime, Uber and Lyft

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141–150 of 321 posts

Re: San Francisco Denies Scooter Permits for Bird, Lime, Uber and Lyft

#141
post #121

Business permits should be shall-issue: if an applicant adheres to a set of rules known in advance, the city ought to have no power to deny its permit application. Want to limit the number of something? Fine. Auction off medallions or something in a transparent, open way. Don't pick and choose businesses the way SF busybodies do. San Francisco has severe and worsening problems primarily due to rampant interference in…

> "due to rampant interference in the operation of the free market" But maybe in another sense, San Francisco is a product, and the feature it's selling includes rampant overregulation. If that's not a good business model, another city can step up and offer better incentives. And people can move there. There are many nice cities and towns in the US. If you insist on living on the dirty tip of a tiny overcrowded penin…

And that's how a city should operate. The citizens should regulate how the city regulates.

Re: San Francisco Denies Scooter Permits for Bird, Lime, Uber and Lyft

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't land owners be able to build whatever they want on their own property? It's not your backyard, it's your neighbors property

Playing devil's advocate here (which is my way of saying "bring on the downvotes"): because what they build can still generate negative externalities that affect their neighbors. So even though a 50-story building might be in compliance with zoning laws, it still blocks neighbor's access to a valuable, albeit non-essential resource (sunlight, cool ocean breeze, etc.) that probably factored into the price the original…

And you’re (Not you personally) free to do what like on your property barring negative outcomes for the entire community. Imposing restrictions on land you don’t own certainly falls in that category.

Hence the stalemate I guess.

Re: San Francisco Denies Scooter Permits for Bird, Lime, Uber and Lyft

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think about it, Uber and Lyft literally built their businesses on breaking taxi laws of every city they operate in.

They did not break the taxi laws of every city they operated in. The taxi laws of many cities only required a "medallion" for taxi-style car services that allowed passengers to "hail" the car on the street. So-called "black" cars where passengers arranged transportation in advance were governed differently, and required no licensing or a different and more permissive kind of licensing. Black car services were already…

When Uber started, they were all black cars anyways. It was a couple of years (iirc) until "normal" cars were allowed to drive for Uber.

Re: San Francisco Denies Scooter Permits for Bird, Lime, Uber and Lyft

#144
post #127
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that nightclubs should be banned altogether? If not, then where do you suggest to put them since they are inherently noisy?

GP point, I believe, is not to ban them as long as the conform to zoning code. If zone code allows his neighbor to convert to a nightclub, good!

"It technically complies with the law"seems like cold comfort. Anyway you're just moving the locus of struggle from the approval process to the zoning regulations, since anyone with their head screwed on is going to demand that the city council use the law to block a development like this.

Re: San Francisco Denies Scooter Permits for Bird, Lime, Uber and Lyft

#145
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>ask for forgiveness rather than permission Do you genuinely think it's good for society when businesses do this?

I do. The government originally instituted the taxi medallion system to protect riders from predatory taxis, but it ended up granting a monopoly to the predatory taxis and locking out potential competition. The free market has worked out much better. Uber/Lyft have to provide competitive service at a low price. If they stop doing this, they too will be replaced.

>The free market has worked out much better.

It's like everyone who preaches this line knows so little history or wants people to forget[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_(horse)

Re: San Francisco Denies Scooter Permits for Bird, Lime, Uber and Lyft

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you owned a home and somebody wanted to put a nightclub on one side of you and an abattoir on the other. Do you think that might affect your quality of life at all? I mean hey, it's their property!

Changing conditions within an incredibly dense metro area are part of the terms and conditions into one moving there. If you want land, there's plenty of space for it -- outside the city as opposed to where people have a pressing need to work and live without spending hours commuting and are willing to put up with the density. It is unreasonable to expect things to stay static when so many lives depend on things chan…

Who's going to buy the home at the original price, let alone an appreciated one, if it's now next to a paper mill?

Re: San Francisco Denies Scooter Permits for Bird, Lime, Uber and Lyft

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you owned a home and somebody wanted to put a nightclub on one side of you and an abattoir on the other. Do you think that might affect your quality of life at all? I mean hey, it's their property!

As long as they follow the noise and disturbance ordinances, then sure.

It could be a night-chess-club, after all?

Re: San Francisco Denies Scooter Permits for Bird, Lime, Uber and Lyft

#148
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use of powered vehicles on sidewalks is illegal, as is blocking entrances with vehicles. The city accused Bird and Lime of doing both.

In that case, Toyota is currently breaking that law on my street.

Maybe this would all be fixed if every Bird scooter had a license plate and you needed to be licensed to drive them?

In contrast to Bird, Scoot hasn't attracted that much criticism in SF despite being a pretty similar service.

Re: San Francisco Denies Scooter Permits for Bird, Lime, Uber and Lyft

#149
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were foolish enough to buy property next to a lot zoned for a 50-storey apartment building, then, yes.

People want to use upzoning to change permissable uses after people have bought. That’s the problem. So you’re either arguing for zoning to remain static to maintain the property rights of surrounding owners, or someone’s getting screwed when zoning changes. The equitable solution would be to compensate surrounding owners for their property losing value or them losing enjoyment when zoning changes (similar to eminent…

> The equitable solution would be to compensate surrounding owners for their property losing value

They already get compensated in the form of lower taxes. Just like how if the neighbors build something that increases their property value, they need to pay more in taxes.

Re: San Francisco Denies Scooter Permits for Bird, Lime, Uber and Lyft

#150
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you owned a home and somebody wanted to put a nightclub on one side of you and an abattoir on the other. Do you think that might affect your quality of life at all? I mean hey, it's their property!

So actually, Japan does something like this. Residences can be built pretty much anywhere (except near super heavy industry), because their zoning is all about how much of a nuisance something is. They also don’t have strict usage restrictions like Euclidean zoning in the states. So for example, if something is zoned for medium commercial (making that up), you can build everything from commercial “down” (so to reside…

Which cities are the best examples?
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