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Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

latimes.com

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Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#31

Post by shereadsthenews »

jvanderbot wrote: post #27

Comparing rideshare to public transit, this tells me there's clearly a need for easier, faster transit even with higher pricing. Solution? Try to ruin it. Instead, maybe we should embrace it and provide incentives for ridesharing vs driving alone? E.g. give uber a lane on the highway for 2+ passengers and tax only single rider transits. Give a few lyft ride coupons with every monthly bus pass. Provide benefits to usi…

Can we stop with the "rideshare" junk yet? Uber and Lyft are computer-dispatched taxi services. The overwhelming majority of their trips involve the driver going to someplace they have no need of going, with either zero or one other person in the car.

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#32

Post by dragonwriter »

ars wrote: post #14
nickles wrote: post #3

> Uber and Lyft “are using public roads, and the profit is going to their companies,” Phil Washington, Metro’s chief executive, said at a recent meeting. Public roads are supposed to be paid for through fuel taxes, which every Uber and Lyft driver pays. California has gasoline taxes of: * 55.22c per gallon (second only to Pennsylvania) * 18.4c per gallon (federal) * 2.25% sales tax Additionally, taxing only rideshari…

They really said that? Your local pizza place also uses public roads, and they get the profit. What kind of stupid.........sigh. The point of having public roads is that it benefits the city by increasing economic output. Did he forget that there are PEOPLE in those Uber and Lyft cars? Those same people he is supposed to serve? Or does he think the cars are driving around for no purpose making profit the whole time?

> Did he forget that there are PEOPLE in those Uber and Lyft cars? Those same people he is supposed to serve?

Many of them are tourists or business visitors, not the people local government is supposed to serve. Local government fees designed to milk those people (which incidentally also hit residents) are not at all unusual.

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#33

Post by manfredo »

bsder wrote: post #15
modeless wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If efficient cars are a problem, tax efficient cars, not Uber. But given CA's environmental goals, this would be counterproductive.

Efficient cars aren't the problem. The problem is that Uber/Lyft drivers "cruise" when the demand is slack rather than park. So, for certain areas and times (generally about a hour before when that area is about to go from slack to busy), your street becomes a never-ending stream of ridesharing cars--generally doing stupid traffic maneuvers when they finally get summoned.

> The problem is that Uber/Lyft drivers "cruise" when the demand is slack rather than park

Isn't the whole point that the apps limit cruising time? I recall a study that claimdd the average traditional taxi cruises for half an hour on average between each trip. Are there plans to tax traditional cabs by an amount commensurate with their cruising time? If not, this legislation seems more like protectionism for traditional cabs.

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#34

Post by dkarl »

ars wrote: post #8
burlesona wrote: post #2

This doesn’t fundamentally change the supply and demand problem in LA, which is a city built entirely for cars and nowhere near the road capacity for everyone to be able to make all the car trips they would like to. For cities that want people to be able to get around AND for the roads to be relatively uncontested, the only reasonable solution is to lower demand by raising the cost of driving - ie. significant conges…

> is to lower demand by raising the cost of driving - ie. significant congestion pricing (tolls) across the metro All that does is increase the cost of living. Either people need to drive or they don't. People don't drive just for the fun of it anymore. And if you succeed and do manage to reduce travel you also managed to reduce economic activity. If you goal is to get people to switch, then you have to do it on the…

> Either people need to drive or they don't. People don't drive just for the fun of it anymore.

This isn't true. Some people live in places where it's possible to reduce their driving quite a lot, but when they decide to do that, it isn't as easy as simply choosing not to drive. Once they're motivated, they start to figure out opportunities to drive less. They start to figure out which other forms of transit are practical in their area, and they figure them out one by one. They start to figure out how they can adjust their habits to reduce driving. (Fewer, larger trips to the grocery store, for example.)

There are a lot of degrees of "not driving." You might bike to work in perfect weather at one level of motivation, and bike to work in the rain at a different level of motivation. One level of motivation might prompt you to make fewer, larger trips to the grocery store; at another level of motivation, when you run out of milk unexpectedly, you might walk five blocks to a corner store of driving ten minutes to the supermarket.

The only perspective from which it seems like a clean either/or is for people who haven't yet found a reason to try. People living in the same neighborhood with the same economic means can and do drive drastically different amounts depending on how motivated they are.

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#35

Post by tareqak »

It'd be nice to be able to at least see the math that is used to calculate and budget road repairs then compare them with value that that particular road brings in. More broadly, some kind of (global?) effort to accurately calculate externalized costs of all kinds. Gotta catch'em all!

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#36

Post by dragonwriter »

manfredo wrote: post #33
bsder wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Efficient cars aren't the problem. The problem is that Uber/Lyft drivers "cruise" when the demand is slack rather than park. So, for certain areas and times (generally about a hour before when that area is about to go from slack to busy), your street becomes a never-ending stream of ridesharing cars--generally doing stupid traffic maneuvers when they finally get summoned.

> The problem is that Uber/Lyft drivers "cruise" when the demand is slack rather than park Isn't the whole point that the apps limit cruising time? I recall a study that claimdd the average traditional taxi cruises for half an hour on average between each trip. Are there plans to tax traditional cabs by an amount commensurate with their cruising time? If not, this legislation seems more like protectionism for traditi…

> Are there plans to tax traditional cabs by an amount commensurate with their cruising time?

Traditional taxis already pay a steep annual franchise fee to the city (even after it was cut down on recent years, probably in part because less-taxed rideshares reduced the level of franchise fee that was supportable).

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#37

Post by deaddodo »

longerthoughts wrote: post #26
sbarre wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since there are no viable alternatives to driving in LA, either rideshare or private car. The article seems to imply otherwise, that tons of money has been spent on improving public transit. Not agreeing with you or the article either way, just pointing that out.

Seems like the article is going out of its way to make public transit sound attractive with phrasing like "Metro’s sprawling bus network". Anecdotally, nobody I know in LA considers public transit as a realistic option and they routinely make jokes about how bad it is.

LA Public Transit is fine if you have a very specific set of routes (WeHo/HollywoodSFV, PasadenaSFV, Most anywheredowntown, etc); but it's terrible for one off/ad hoc routes or uncommon commutes.

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#38

Post by themoonbus »

jvanderbot wrote: post #27

Comparing rideshare to public transit, this tells me there's clearly a need for easier, faster transit even with higher pricing. Solution? Try to ruin it. Instead, maybe we should embrace it and provide incentives for ridesharing vs driving alone? E.g. give uber a lane on the highway for 2+ passengers and tax only single rider transits. Give a few lyft ride coupons with every monthly bus pass. Provide benefits to usi…

You say "even with higher pricing", but are also saying that higher pricing (due to taxes) would ruin the services?

Uber and Lyft fares are unsustainably low right now, and at their current prices, they depress public transit interest and ridership. But what happens in 5 years when these ride sharing companies need to turn a profit? Self driving cars is potentially a solution, I suppose, but will it be ready at that scale by then?

Not only that, but in the meantime, they may be causing more environmental harm than good: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/04/how-uber-and-...

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#39

Post by SilasX »

shereadsthenews wrote: post #29
nickles wrote: post #3

> Uber and Lyft “are using public roads, and the profit is going to their companies,” Phil Washington, Metro’s chief executive, said at a recent meeting. Public roads are supposed to be paid for through fuel taxes, which every Uber and Lyft driver pays. California has gasoline taxes of: * 55.22c per gallon (second only to Pennsylvania) * 18.4c per gallon (federal) * 2.25% sales tax Additionally, taxing only rideshari…

Fuel tax revenue and other direct user fees like annual registration in California amount to less than 25% of what the state and its cities pay to maintain the roads and streets. Roads are massively subsidized from general revenues. If you are proposing a $5/gallon fuel tax then I completely agree. That would be about equivalent to what other rich countries tax motor fuel and consistent with the state's greenhouse ga…

That's misleading -- yes, in the aggregate, gas taxes cover only part of the expenses, but that's not because of personal cars. Damage on the roads -- and thus maintenance costs -- scales with the 4th power of weight per axle. So the damage is virtually all from large trucks, with sedans and SUVs as a rounding error.

If you were to apportion out the maintenance cost due to personal cars, they are overpaying.

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#40

Post by manfredo »

dragonwriter wrote: post #36
manfredo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that Uber/Lyft drivers "cruise" when the demand is slack rather than park Isn't the whole point that the apps limit cruising time? I recall a study that claimdd the average traditional taxi cruises for half an hour on average between each trip. Are there plans to tax traditional cabs by an amount commensurate with their cruising time? If not, this legislation seems more like protectionism for traditi…

> Are there plans to tax traditional cabs by an amount commensurate with their cruising time? Traditional taxis already pay a steep annual franchise fee to the city (even after it was cut down on recent years, probably in part because less-taxed rideshares reduced the level of franchise fee that was supportable).

Franchise fees also benefits the taxi companies. It constrains the supply to taxis, thus shielding the taxi companies from potential competition. They're paying for protection from competition.
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