Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Uber Hit with Cap as New York City Takes Lead in Crackdown

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 303 posts

Re: Uber Hit with Cap as New York City Takes Lead in Crackdown

#131

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

cryptonector wrote: post #122
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: The City Council approved a package of bills that will halt new licenses for Uber and other ride-hail vehicles for a year while the city studies the booming industry. The legislation also allows the city to set a minimum pay rate for drivers. So not quite the leap made in your comment.

The supply absolutely will go down because there will be some drivers over the next year who exit the system anyways, but no new drivers because the city says so.

The comment claims riders will get frustrated and stop heavy reliance on it, which is much stronger version of your claim.

Re: Uber Hit with Cap as New York City Takes Lead in Crackdown

#132

Post by JumpCrisscross »

TuringNYC wrote: post #59
colinbartlett wrote: post #29

If the problem they are trying to solve is "too many vehicles" then we need a congestion tax. They should certainly not be limiting vehicles that are more likely to take multiple people with a Pool option. If the problem they are trying to solve is "drivers aren't making enough" then they should impose a minimum wage on drivers or force an actual employee relationship. If the problem they are trying to solve is a bai…

What if the problem is that you are mayor and got lots of campaign funding from the taxi lobby and now they want their pound of flesh? http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/don-big-bill-article-1.14... FROM ARTICLE "A review of all contributions to de Blasio raised by or made by taxi lawyers, owners and other associates in the 2013 campaign tallies $254,451, making them de Blasio’s biggest backers by far. Fleet owner Ro…

> the 2013 campaign tallies $254,451

By 2014 it was over half a million dollars [1]. This bill's proponents on the City Council were similarly endowed.

[1] https://nypost.com/2014/05/17/taxi-industry-gave-de-blasio-o...

Re: Uber Hit with Cap as New York City Takes Lead in Crackdown

#133

Post by JumpCrisscross »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #111
jrockway wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I'm no fan of Uber but at least the service is consistent. I remember on my first trip to NYC many years ago, I wanted to go to the airport during rush hour. No cab would stop and take me, because I looked like someone who wanted to go to the airport, which is out of their way. Apparently this is a known problem, so you're supposed to kind of hide your bag so they don't notice, then get in the cab, close the doo…

Agree with all of this except the part about enforcing the traffic laws against cars parked in the bike lanes. The NYPD is most certainly lazy and incompetent (as well as corrupt), but the issue is the bike lanes themselves. Most of the city, especially the most congested parts, simple have no room for a bike lane. The vast majority of vehicles blocking the bike lanes are making pickups or deliveries. There is simply…

> There is simply nowhere else for them to pull over

Yes there is. We've just zoned it for streetside parking.

Re: Uber Hit with Cap as New York City Takes Lead in Crackdown

#134

Post by CydeWeys »

jrockway wrote: post #81
colinbartlett wrote: post #29

If the problem they are trying to solve is "too many vehicles" then we need a congestion tax. They should certainly not be limiting vehicles that are more likely to take multiple people with a Pool option. If the problem they are trying to solve is "drivers aren't making enough" then they should impose a minimum wage on drivers or force an actual employee relationship. If the problem they are trying to solve is a bai…

Yup. I'm no fan of Uber but at least the service is consistent. I remember on my first trip to NYC many years ago, I wanted to go to the airport during rush hour. No cab would stop and take me, because I looked like someone who wanted to go to the airport, which is out of their way. Apparently this is a known problem, so you're supposed to kind of hide your bag so they don't notice, then get in the cab, close the doo…

> Meanwhile, with Uber you just press a button and they take you to the airport, bags and all.

Not necessarily. Ubers don't want to go to the airport for the same reason that cabs don't. I've had ride shares cancel on me once the driver's gotten close enough to see that the destination is an airport. Granted it doesn't happen as often as with cabs whose meter is conveniently not working once you mention the airport, but it does still happen.

Illegal parking in bike lanes is a huge problem though. This morning there were several vehicles parked in the bike lane across two consecutive blocks, so I had to ride in the travel lane the whole while. Some asshole unsafely passed me at speed by going into the bike lane, then swerving back into the travel lane at the next parked vehicle, then we got into a yelling match at the next light about when cyclists are allowed to depart the bike lane (hint: you don't have to use it when you're literally unable to because it's blocked).

Enforcement is an absolute joke, and sometimes it's even cop cars that are blocking bike lanes. Bike lanes that aren't physically protected from people parking in them are oftentimes not worth anything, and unfortunately, we don't have any cross-town bike lanes in Manhattan! (They're on the verge of opening the first one, but it's well out of the way of my commute.)

Re: Uber Hit with Cap as New York City Takes Lead in Crackdown

#135

Post by JumpCrisscross »

pradn wrote: post #42
colinbartlett wrote: post #29

If the problem they are trying to solve is "too many vehicles" then we need a congestion tax. They should certainly not be limiting vehicles that are more likely to take multiple people with a Pool option. If the problem they are trying to solve is "drivers aren't making enough" then they should impose a minimum wage on drivers or force an actual employee relationship. If the problem they are trying to solve is a bai…

The real issue is that cab drivers are committing suicide because of their debts. Simple market analysis ignores the real human toll these technological changes are making. Yes, better service should be rewarded. But those hurting should get some relief. (I personally don't care too much about medallion-owning companies/groups.)

> cab drivers are committing suicide because of their debts

This isn't the motivation for this regulation. If it was, the same City Councilman who proposed this cap wouldn't have shot down a minimum-wage proposal for cab drivers. Remember: most medallions aren't owned by cab drivers. And cab drivers don't donate.

Re: Uber Hit with Cap as New York City Takes Lead in Crackdown

#136

Post by CPLX »

dionidium wrote: post #18
CPLX wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's regressive. It takes money away from people who drive, who are often people who are blue collar, spread out in the outer boroughs, or who need to bring tools to do their jobs, those who are forced to cross the city to get anywhere west of town, etc. Sure, that's not the only effect it will have, it will also cost money for bankers that drive in from Westchester and park underneath their midtown offices.…

This is the most common objection, but it's not a very strong one, for at least two reasons: 1. There's no reason we couldn't provide exceptions for the kinds of vans and trucks that blue-collar workers need to drive into the city to make their livings. 2. There's no reason we couldn't offer income-based exceptions to people who absolutely cannot ride transit for this or that reason. As in all proposals to ration som…

Of course we ration scarce resources. But the nature of government services generally is, and should be, that we don’t just ration them by ability to pay. If that led by definition to optimal outcomes then the private sector could handle it. Government is for all the other stuff.

Should we charge $500 to get into national parks? Why not? Should we just charge people for the health care they consume a la carte or should we have a national system for that? Why?

As you can see you’re hitting on a general philosophy question here. My argument would be that trying to set shared government services at market rates tends to lead to deeply regressive outcomes.

There certainly are smart arguments on both sides with congestion pricing. Externalities matter. Are cars inefficient? And so on. But my intention is to illuminate the other side of the coin, which seems perpetually unrepresented.

Re: Uber Hit with Cap as New York City Takes Lead in Crackdown

#137

Post by weeksie »

zone411 wrote: post #98
weeksie wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortch Bloomberg tried congestion pricing and it got strangled in the cot. That would be my preference too. Simple, market-based, fair, etc. . . . With the ranks of uber cars in the city growing as much as they have the downtown traffic has become insane and I'm for anything that would relieve that congestion. I've been living along the Prince/Spring corridor for ~10 years now and the change in bumper-to-bumper tra…

Your data on the number of daily rides seems quite outdated. It was 400k/day for Uber, 112k for Lyft, and 300k for taxis in the latest article I saw ( https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/nyregion/uber-taxi-driver... ) and I don't see your numbers in this article. You'd at least need to know the average trip length and the work time per driver to make any comparisons as to who's more efficient. But I agree with you tha…

That's super weird, maybe I had another NYT article open. Seriously, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. No numbers at all in that one though.

Anyway quick googling for 2017 numbers: https://ny.curbed.com/2017/10/13/16468716/uber-yellow-cab-ny...

So we have 10k medallion holders and ~60k uber drivers giving the same number of rides per day. No, there's not enough there to give a rigorous analysis but that is a vast difference in the amount of rides offered per car.

Maybe most of those Uber rides are in the boroughs and that accounts for the difference in ratio, but I'd be very surprised if that was the whole story.

Re: Uber Hit with Cap as New York City Takes Lead in Crackdown

#138

Post by CydeWeys »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #111
jrockway wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I'm no fan of Uber but at least the service is consistent. I remember on my first trip to NYC many years ago, I wanted to go to the airport during rush hour. No cab would stop and take me, because I looked like someone who wanted to go to the airport, which is out of their way. Apparently this is a known problem, so you're supposed to kind of hide your bag so they don't notice, then get in the cab, close the doo…

Agree with all of this except the part about enforcing the traffic laws against cars parked in the bike lanes. The NYPD is most certainly lazy and incompetent (as well as corrupt), but the issue is the bike lanes themselves. Most of the city, especially the most congested parts, simple have no room for a bike lane. The vast majority of vehicles blocking the bike lanes are making pickups or deliveries. There is simply…

Here's the thing though. Those bike lanes are clearly being used by lots of people, as are the travel lanes by lots of drivers. What isn't being utilized well is all of that free parking along the street -- most of those vehicles only move twice a week when they have to because of street sweeping.

So the simple solution is to eliminate all of the free parking and replace it with paid parking and loading zones. And raise the price high enough so that there's always spots free close enough to where you're going so that vehicles have a place to park themselves for short periods of time that's outside of the travel and bike lanes.

Re: Uber Hit with Cap as New York City Takes Lead in Crackdown

#139

Post by jkaplowitz »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #132
TuringNYC wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the problem is that you are mayor and got lots of campaign funding from the taxi lobby and now they want their pound of flesh? http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/don-big-bill-article-1.14... FROM ARTICLE "A review of all contributions to de Blasio raised by or made by taxi lawyers, owners and other associates in the 2013 campaign tallies $254,451, making them de Blasio’s biggest backers by far. Fleet owner Ro…

> the 2013 campaign tallies $254,451 By 2014 it was over half a million dollars [1]. This bill's proponents on the City Council were similarly endowed. [1] https://nypost.com/2014/05/17/taxi-industry-gave-de-blasio-o...

Honest question: what are the equivalent numbers for Uber's side of the battle? Looking at one side of the question without the other doesn't allow a balanced assessment of the situation.

Re: Uber Hit with Cap as New York City Takes Lead in Crackdown

#140

Post by CydeWeys »

weeksie wrote: post #137
zone411 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your data on the number of daily rides seems quite outdated. It was 400k/day for Uber, 112k for Lyft, and 300k for taxis in the latest article I saw ( https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/nyregion/uber-taxi-driver... ) and I don't see your numbers in this article. You'd at least need to know the average trip length and the work time per driver to make any comparisons as to who's more efficient. But I agree with you tha…

That's super weird, maybe I had another NYT article open. Seriously, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. No numbers at all in that one though. Anyway quick googling for 2017 numbers: https://ny.curbed.com/2017/10/13/16468716/uber-yellow-cab-ny... So we have 10k medallion holders and ~60k uber drivers giving the same number of rides per day. No, there's not enough there to give a rigorous analysis but that is a vast d…

Uber cars aren't on the road most of the time. Yellow cabs are. Those taxi medallions are expensive and they operate with shifts of drivers, the goal being to keep the taxi running 24/7, except when it needs maintenance.

It's pretty typical for any given cab to have three different drivers running in 12 hour shifts. That way you keep it on the road all 168 hours of every week. An Uber just requires a relatively inexpesive TLC license plate, not a taxi medallion, so it's typically only driven by one driver, say an average of 40 hours per week.

Post reply on HN