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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

#111

Post by [deleted] »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #87
burke wrote: 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…

[deleted]

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

#112

Post by mc32 »

baddox wrote: post #93
LeoPanthera wrote: post #42

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.

For that to be analogous, it would have to be "Enterprise" or "Hertz" doing it. Not Toyota. If Hertz (Or CityCarShare) just went ahead and just put their cars willy-nilly anywhere they wanted, then you'd have a point.

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

#113

Post by Pyxl101 »

ckocagil wrote: post #82
LeoPanthera wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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 widely available in many cities from lots of different companies, often independent owner/operators - it's just that no one had provided a service that worked across many different cities and was available conveniently as an app.

I won't claim that Uber and Lyft broke no laws, because there are a lot of jurisdictions in the world, and I don't know the laws of all of them, but many cities regular taxies and black cars very differently.

Edit: Why the downvotes? Am I wrong? Evidence would be appreciated.

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

#114

Post by greglindahl »

djrogers wrote: post #24
WisNorCan wrote: post #3

I generally away from regulation, but let me articulate the pro-regulation argument. Markets that are important (like transportation) and have network effects need to be regulated. A monopoly with Uber and/or Lyft dominating local transportation is not good for consumers or cities in the long-term. Cities should take control of their transportation and ensure competition by managing allocation of capacity. I think th…

Wait, so a monopoly with Skip and Scoot is somehow better? Literally the only thing creating any sort of scarcity or monopoly here is regulation, so claiming it's necessary to prevent a monopoly is a bit ludicrous. I don't think many people are in favor of zero regulation, but politicians literally picking winners and losers instead of the market is even worse.

The city held a bidding process to pick two initial winners, which is ... a market. I guess you prefer a different organization to the market, but...

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

#115

Post by lkb2k »

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…

Doesn't that normally start with a pilot to determine what rules are good?

It seems like if you want to come up with a permit process and rules, rather than just making them all up at once you'd grant permission to a small group for a limited period to figure out what rules make sense, then write the rules, then open up the permitting process.

When selecting the pilot group it also makes sense to try to find partners that are likely to co-operate and be responsive to your requirements rather than companies with long histories of completely ignoring local laws.

You're right that SF has a history of abusing permits in the interest of Nimby-ism -- see the 'war on fun' for one example -- so I do agree it could all turn out terribly in the end, but that doesn't make this an unreasonable start.

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

#116

Post by s0rce »

oh-kumudo wrote: post #36

Seems like the Scooter is not popular and only useful for a niche segment of the population. The bike sharing business has caused a hazard in places like China, because of the unrestricted dumping. So there is definitely a point that government needs to chime in and do some stuff.

If they are not popular why is there a need to regulate them, they will simply go out of business. Also, I see people riding them all the time in the East Bay.

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

#117

Post by Meekro »

minikites wrote: post #80
Meekro wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'd started a scooter company before scooter companies were a thing, went to any city and asked for permission, they would have said "wtf? no." (assuming they answered my petition at all) and that would have been the end of it. The only reason we're here arguing about this is companies like Bird chose to ask for forgiveness rather than permission in the past.

>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.

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

#118

Post by upzone »

ohazi wrote: post #12
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…

Same with home renovation / remodeling / addition / construction permits. If your design meets code and zoning, it should automatically get approved. None of this nimby-neighbor-going-to-the-planning-meeting-and-getting-your-project-cancelled-because-your-chimney-will-cast-a-shadow-on-their-backyard bullshit.

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 luck getting it to conform. For example, single-family home neighborhoods are pretty much stuck that way. Want a nice, compact apartment building? Or maybe even a fourplex? Good luck. In my reasonably-sized college town, upzoning happens once PER DECADE.

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).

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

#119

Post by dack »

upzone wrote: post #95
enraged_camel wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So first of all, you don’t have a right not to live in a shadow. Millions of people in cities all over the world deal with it every day. It’s not that bad (tbh it probably helps AC bills too). You have certain rights when you buy property, but “a view” isn’t one of them. If you want scenery, move to the country. It’s gorgeous! Second, it’s frustrating that people only think of themselves. “What about my view?” What a…

I can understand this point of view, and I don't own a house so I'm not really "defending" anything here. I'd love for housing to be cheaper and for more people to build in SF.

However, think about how you'd feel if you bought a house and spent most of your life savings on it (like most are forced to), only to find that it drops in value dramatically putting you underwater on the payments. It's not just about their "view". They paid for amenities which (whether we like it or not) include the view and environment.

I don't even have a solution - but it's not so simple as "give up your view so more people can live near their jobs".

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

#120

Post by tomglynch »

eridius wrote: post #103
austenallred wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco just granted two companies a monopoly when previously there were multiple companies fighting for the same business. That’s the exact opposite of what you’re advocating.

This is a time-limited pilot program that also caps the number of scooters. It's far from a market monopoly. In addition, there's no network effect with scooters. Car sharing has the chicken-and-egg problem where you need enough drivers to meet demand, and you need enough passengers to give drivers a reason to drive for you. But scooters are cheap and easy to dump a whole bunch on a city, so there's no reason why a n…

I disagree. There is a network effect here, people will use the brand that already is installed on their phone PLUS the one that has the most scooters. This is what can occur here.
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