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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

#151

Post by ars »

burlesona wrote: post #16
ars wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Which is why I included the second part of my statement, which you did not quote: we would need to use the proceeds to dramatically increase the quality and quantity of alternatives to driving so that people had a realistic choice. I totally agree with you that people are driving mostly because they have to, not for fun. However, retrofitting car-oriented development to be viable for non-car users is exceptionally di…

> which you did not quote

I did not quote, but I did address "Make the alternatives better than driving."

You have things completely backwards, first you want to make everyone miserable, then hopefully they'll fix things.

> retrofitting car-oriented development to be viable for non-car users is exceptionally difficult.

It's actually not about retrofitting, it's because cars are just that good. Nothing else comes close.

> unless we begin by acknowledging that cars won’t scale up any farther

They'll scale just fine if we space out our cities a bit more.

It's actually pretty self balancing, when we run out of road space, people spread out a bit more. So there's no scaling issues, there's plenty of space in the world.

I mean if your goal is to pack people in like livestock then it doesn't scale, but that's not something I want.

> and that we have to redirect our efforts into things that will.

Such as? So far nothing exists. And I'm not just saying that. I tried it. I exclusively used public transportation for 1.5 months, in a city that is world renounced for probably the best public transportation of anywhere. (There was literally nowhere you couldn't go with public transportation.)

It was horrible. I feel really bad for anyone who has to use public transportation.

That's the reality.

If you want change, change that first. You won't need to tax cars off the road, they'll leave on their own.

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

#152

Post by thisisweirdok »

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…

eeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Uber undercuts both public transit and traditional taxi services with prices that are unsustainable and can't provide a living wage for their drivers.

This was OK initially because taxis in many places were benefiting from localized monopolies and also screwing many drivers, but in the long run it means Uber kills all the competition and then just jacks prices back up anyway.

I don't dig the drunk driving fear mongering either. If I hired the homeless $3 a trip to carry drunk people home that doesn't mean my exploitative program should suddenly be free of municipal adjustment.

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

#153

Post by megaremote »

SilasX wrote: post #39
shereadsthenews wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except there are a 1000 times more cars on the road than trucks, and we actually need trucks. We don't need cars, at all.

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

#154

Post by _cs2017_ »

integrate-this wrote: post #88

I'm a LA resident. People in this city like to talk about congestion as though they see it as a problem, but they don't actually see it as a problem. Only people in the valley see it as a problem because there are limited choke points into and out of LA proper which keep people from getting to work. LA's limited transportation infrastructure prevents DTLA's homeless from getting to Beverly Hills, Long Beach's gang-re…

> LA's limited transportation infrastructure prevents DTLA's homeless from getting to Beverly Hills, Long Beach's gang-related activity from getting to Brentwood, etc.

Gangsters have cars and don't rely on public transportation. DTLA homeless can and do use the MTA bus that goes literally from downtown to Beverly Hills.

Care to clarify your comment?

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

#155

Post by thisisweirdok »

updateYourMind wrote: post #43
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…

This is a very bad solution, especially as share rides decrease the number of cars when people use uber pool

Talk to anyone with a reasonable public transit system about how ridesharing is clearing up the roads (spoiler alert: it's not, they're decreasing public transit ridership and contributing to a constantly worsening congestion issue).

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

#156

Post by dfilppi »

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…

Agreed. Also consider that using taxation as a punitive tool is both immoral and ignores the fact that the government doesn't deserve the resulting revenue.

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

#157

Post by megaremote »

gesman wrote: post #150
SilasX wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And add to that pollution caused by large trucks. Some are literally hard to follow behind due to the cloud of poison they are fuming all over. California's crusade on sedans to cut down on pollution is a joke.

You are joking right? Just because the pollution from cars is not visible, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And there are a 1000x more cars than trucks.

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

#158

Post by megaremote »

briandear wrote: post #66
shereadsthenews wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Those roads are what allow stuff to be delivered. How do you ship an air conditioning unit on a bike path? The point is that the roads serve commerce and a tax on roads is really a tax on everything. Roads aren’t exactly massively subsidized — the commerce they generate results in taxes. Tax revenue generated per mile driven is far greater than any supposed subsidy. We could make an argument that schools are massivel…

> How do you ship an air conditioning unit on a bike path?

Use a trailer? While not possible for everything, we could easily do with 1/10000 of the cars we have.

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

#159

Post by CamperBob2 »

floatrock wrote: post #113
wjossey wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And to your point, they absolutely could solve the chokepoint issues with eminent domain, and adding additional arteries, but they choose not to. For people who think a congestion tax will improve traffic, it won't. Congestion taxes work if they can shift behaviors to alternate modes of transportation. If there aren't any alternatives, it's just a levy.

> and adding additional arteries Time and time again cities learn this does nothing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

So removing existing roads will lessen congestion, right?

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

#160

Post by habosa »

The congestion caused by Uber and Lyft in SF is bad. It's not because of the number of cars on the road, although that's certainly something, it's because of how those cars behave.

Ubers and Lyfts pull over at unpredictable spots (wherever the app says to) and then just throw on their flashers. It doesn't matter if they're blocking a lane in rush hour they just stop.

I will never for my life understand why an Uber or Lyft driver thinks it's any better to double park in an active lane of traffic than to temporarily pull out and block a driveway or a red zone. Both are illegal, but at least one of those doesn't block traffic and endanger other drivers/bikers.

Almost every day I see an Uber driver double-parked within 50' of somewhere they could have pulled over safely.

If the cops would give out a few more tickets for this, the behavior would get better and so would the traffic. And then we wouldn't have to tax the road use. Taxing the road use is crap, everyone should be able to drive their vehicle on public roads as much as they want as long as they follow traffic laws.

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