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

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

#291

Post by emodendroket »

csallen wrote: post #290
emodendroket wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we? I was responding to a claim that property owners should have absolute rights to build whatever they please on their property. Nobody builds big smoke stacks in the middle of major cities anymore but you could refer to some 19th-Century writing about London to see how that could be bad as well. Or you could read about the time the Thames stank so bad Parliament all had to leave and was finally compelled to do…

As far as I can gather from jeffbax's comment, yes, that's what he was talking about. Not giving property owners absolute rights to build whatever they please. I don't know how many people would seriously support going to that extreme.

The exact question I was answering was "Why shouldn't land owners be able to build whatever they want on their own property?" I imagine he must be a hardcore libertarian because there are a bunch of them here and that is the question he asked and not some other one about mixed zoning.

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

#292

Post by TeMPOraL »

WalterSear wrote: post #289
TeMPOraL wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You honestly believe that had Bird, initially an unheard of company, gone to say, the city of Los Angeles and said "We'd like to put scooters everywhere, is that cool?" They'd have said "sure"? Yes? I'd assume it would take finding someone friendly who works for the city, getting them interested in the concept, and getting their help and support in navigating the process, but yes, I'd absolutely expect the city to…

You live in a way cooler city than I ever have.

Maybe. But have you checked if your city isn't cool too?

Were I only following the local media and other people's opinion on our city, I'd still be believing it's all bunch of busybodies led serving a no-good city president. But, as a part of leading a local Hackerspace, I ended up involved in city-NGO cooperation space. I've interacted with both city officials and private organizations trying to run publicly beneficial projects in the city, and it turns out my city is really willing to help, to partner, to support.

Of course, the local and national politics sometimes leak through and create issues, so it's not all roses. But I left the space with the impression that one only has to try to start a friendly conversation, and there's plenty of city officials, with budgets behind them, willing to cooperate with your new endeavour.

EDIT: Oh, and yes, there are procedures. Things move much slower than you expect, and if you're trying to get some of the city money for the project, you end up organizing public consultations and preparing recommendation reports to the city, and doing other busywork that may seem, or even be, pointless in the case of your project. It can be frustrating.

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

#293

Post by beerlord »

tylerhou wrote: post #225
ebikelaw wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A car would get a big fat “poor” on every point of that evaluation. And yet, we allow our city to be totally overrun with them! I certainly hope that SFMTA is feverishly working to apply these standards to car companies. No car should be allowed to operate in San Francisco until its maker has demonstrated that they can affirmatively prevent them from blocking sidewalk ramps and until they all have programs to track a…

It's not illegal to buy your own electric bike or scooter and ride it around SF. Not like SF is banning electric bike manufacturers. So your analogy is pretty bad.

The core benefit of rental scooters is to cover the last mile, between public transport and your house or work. If you have to drag the scooter everywhere, the utility is severely diminished.

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

#294

Post by zapita »

tarsinge wrote: post #252
upzone wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s called by-right and lots of cities (maybe all? Not sure if it’s a local/state/federal thing) have that. That doesn’t stop NIMBYism (all you have to do is downzone), but for areas that are reasonably densely zoned, you don’t need any variances for projects that conform to zoning ordinances. The real issue with NIMBYs is how restrictive zoning is. Sure, you can build anything you want if it conforms, but good lu…

>This is the affordable housing crisis at its core, and it’s remarkably procedural and boring. People are unable to afford homes and apartments because of simple tedium that takes place in beige board rooms at 11:00 PM on a Monday (i.e. local politics). What is preventing companies from moving to less expensive cities? By the free market logic, it should decrease demand/rent in hot cities, and provide these companies…

Companies do this all the time with their regional offices and factories. Usually they milk the city for subsidies and tax breaks while dangling the promise of job creation and trickle-down revitalization of local businesses. Then when the tax breaks expire, they move to greener pastures, leaving the city in a bigger financial hole than they left it.

In Silicon Valley the dynamic is different, because it’s mostly global headquarters full of upper management and highly paid engineers. Unlike low-wage employees in regional offices, those people are not considered disposable, and aren’t willing to relocate on a whim. So relocating headquarters to another city or state is extremely hard for large companies.

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

#295

Post by afriday11 »

almost_usual wrote: post #233
stale2002 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd prefer banning personal cars (within city limits), as those take up a massive amount of space, with regards to parking. Taxis on the other hand, have usage rates of ~50 percent. Whereas personal cars, parked on the side of the road, are only being used ~5 % of the time, and the other 95% is wasted.

How about public transit? Don’t understand the argument for banning personal cars but not Uber, Lyft, and Taxi.

Personal cars spend most of their time parked on the side of the road using up valuable real-estate.

Transportation services like Uber or taxis use the road to move people around and don't take up as much space as personal cars. Public transit and bikes are much more space and energy efficient, though don't get the investment they need to work for most people.

US cities are optimized for sprawl and personal car centric transportation, which makes it annoying that new ideas like these scooter startups (which are actually pretty great when you try them) are blocked by officials in favor of a system that is expensive and sub-optimal for the health of society.

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

#296

Post by csallen »

emodendroket wrote: post #291
csallen wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can gather from jeffbax's comment, yes, that's what he was talking about. Not giving property owners absolute rights to build whatever they please. I don't know how many people would seriously support going to that extreme.

The exact question I was answering was "Why shouldn't land owners be able to build whatever they want on their own property?" I imagine he must be a hardcore libertarian because there are a bunch of them here and that is the question he asked and not some other one about mixed zoning.

Oh I see. Yes, he did say that further up, and I think your reply to that was correct. However when he got specific in his next comment and talked about dense metro areas, I don't think your reply was valid, and that's what I've been responding to.

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

#297

Post by emodendroket »

csallen wrote: post #296
emodendroket wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exact question I was answering was "Why shouldn't land owners be able to build whatever they want on their own property?" I imagine he must be a hardcore libertarian because there are a bunch of them here and that is the question he asked and not some other one about mixed zoning.

Oh I see. Yes, he did say that further up, and I think your reply to that was correct. However when he got specific in his next comment and talked about dense metro areas, I don't think your reply was valid, and that's what I've been responding to.

I think, given the context, that what I said is equally true of dense metro areas and suburban neighborhoods that happen to be near shale gas.

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

#298

Post by gojomo »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #26
quotemstr wrote: post #4

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…

The companies in question already had a history of operating illegally in San Francisco. I don't think it's fair to dismiss that as "picking and choosing". Dumping those scooters over the city is effectively littering. Business should be able to operate freely, but they should not be able to break the law until someone catches them.

If companies broke specific laws, convict them in a court of law, and apply statutory penalties or reasonably-computed damages.

This sort of retaliatory "shit list", constructed without due process, from which a company might only be able to extricate themselves by "kissing the ring" of local politicos/bureaucrats, is a recipe for inefficiency and corruption.

I also don't think the "litter" charge against the initial scooter deployments is correct, anyway, for reasons I outlined in a prior thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17268697

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

#299

Post by hannasanarion »

prepend wrote: post #220
ckocagil wrote: post #82

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.

Those laws harmed consumers and would not be changed. Lots of just causes broke unjust laws.

Uber drivers working 80 hours a week to survive because they have no workers rights like taxi drivers do would beg to differ.

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

#300

Post by s0rce »

mavhc wrote: post #244
s0rce wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that this is an issues, in my opinion it is exceedingly minor, especially in comparison to the amount of cars illegally stopped or parked that I see while biking. In fact I had to merge into traffic a few times to go around tonight. A few bikes haphazardly placed is nothing more than a mild nuisance. Never mind the homeless camps and other litter everywhere in the bay area.

Cars, parked badly, you're on the right track..... homeless people = litter?, oh dear.

Homeless people are obviously not litter, and think its a bit of an unfair exaggeration to read my comment in that way, however, I do see how you could infer that. Regardless, in my experience the camps have tons of trash/litter around. It seems not that surprising as my house would have lots of trash if I didn't have garbage collection service. Just drive to some of the camps in Oakland/Berkeley.
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