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

nytimes.com

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

#141

Post by bgruber »

cm2012 wrote: post #120

As someone who lives in Eastern Queens, Uber has changed my life. There is no other kind of reliable taxi out here, and uber lets me live without a car. I had to take a yellow cab the other day from a dispatcher at JFK. I normally take Uber all the time. We were going literally 20 min away to Queens. I tell him we're going to Queens. He literally screams, "Queens?!" and storms out of the car to the dispatcher. He com…

When going from JFK to somewhere else in queens, yellow cabs are supposed to get a voucher from the dispatcher that allows them to skip to the front of the line when they get back to the airport. The fact that he was surprised when you said Queens implies that the dispatcher failed to do this, which explains both his going back to the dispatcher and his annoyance.

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

#142

Post by CydeWeys »

bunderbunder wrote: post #67
tomtheelder wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A congestion tax? That seems very unlikely to me, I would be shocked if car owners/users were not wealthier almost across the board.

Well, car owners living in Manhattan, anyway. I doubt the same is true for FHV drivers coming in from further out.

There aren't many poor people commuting into Manhattan every day using a car. You'd be spending way more on fuel and parking than the monthly MTA ticket costs.

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

#143

Post by romwell »

jorts wrote: post #114
romwell wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Except for bus riders [..] that deal with much more congestion. Seattle might have a word about that. Or two. The words that start with "bus" and end with "lane". >And cyclists that deal with much more congestion. Pretty please, really? >And transit riders that deal with services changes as a result of decreased transit ridership. Right, blame decreased ridership on Uber, instead of all the problems that make people…

Cars blocking bike lanes is super dangerous, so I think it's a fair point.

For starters, NYC cycling infrastructure (especially, say, in Brooklyn, which I'm more familiar with) is a joke to the extent where bike lanes hardly matter, and probably should be avoided altogether because of dooring.

Really, the advice to cyclists is to stay out of bike lanes[1].

Then, congestion and cars blocking the bike lanes are not directly correlated. It's not like drivers could take the bike lane to avoid traffic.

But anyway, I just don't see the situation for cyclists change in any way due to traffic in NYC. City politics regarding bike paths play a way larger role.

[1]https://www.bike.nyc/advice/riding-tips/bike-lanes/

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

#144

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #139
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> what are the equivalent numbers for Uber's side of the battle?

The bulk of Uber's ~$2 million/year of political spending in New York goes towards ad campaigns [1]. The taxi lobby bought the mayor and City Council; Uber created a grassroots backlash. This was the balance. Then Uber burned off its teflon coating.

Since Lyft never bothered with politics and Juno/Gett is so young, the balance broke and we got this mess.

[1] http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/uber-spent-1-2m-lob...

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

#145

Post by CydeWeys »

misiti3780 wrote: post #79
romwell wrote: post #22

Alternative title: "NYC Taxi mafia strikes back, gives Uber 12 months to come up with a large enough bribe". Really, the life of nearly everyone (who's not a taxi driver, perhaps) improved a bit since Uber entered the city. Even the fabled subway in its theoretical best has been dysfunctional in Brooklyn since the takedown of streetcars a hundred years ago (see how all the tracks are running towards Manhattan and ver…

i live in nyc and im glad this is happening. we have a traffic congestion problem here - i dont want more ubers, lyfts or yellow cabs on the street, i want less. i wish nyc would copy london and actually tax people for enter every bridge, tunnel etc in rush hours to stop it. the law of diminishing returns is in full effect here, regardless of what the engineers and SC want to tell themselves.

I live in NYC too, and I want fewer vehicles on the street full stop. I don't particularly care what kind of vehicle they are though; if I'm not in it, a private vehicle is taking exactly the same space on the road as an Uber or a taxi is, and has exactly the same utility to me: none.

This is a good argument for treating all vehicles equally and reducing congestion with a tax, not by arbitrarily targeting Ubers but not single occupancy private cars. If you only target Ubers then a lot of that reduction will just be made up with more private cars being driven around to take up the slack in the congestion.

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

#146

Post by CydeWeys »

Retric wrote: post #68
ddtaylor wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with a vast majority of the vehicles on the road not being owned by the people who use them for transportation? It seems that a large amount of people don't want to purchase and maintain a vehicle they might not always be using and instead pay on-demand like they do for many other services where someone specializes to reduce the cost for others?

Driving a car from A to B is less miles driven than someone driving from X to A to pick you up before driving to B to drop you off them Y to wait for next ride. Thus Uber increases congestion.

You're underestimating how severely restricted the parking supply here is via simple physics. It's not just driving from A to B, it's driving from A to B and then circling around for 15 or more minutes trying to find a parking spot.

In many places, parking at your destination is more restricted than road space along the way to your destination.

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

#147

Post by kaishiro »

CydeWeys wrote: post #134
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…

> 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,…

"I've had ride shares cancel on me once the driver's gotten close enough to see that the destination is an airport."

I'm not understanding this. If you're using the app correctly then the driver knows the destination before they even accept the ride. If you're setting an address near an airport in an attempt to be duplicitous I would be equally discouraged as a driver.

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

#148

Post by CamperBob2 »

pradn wrote: post #124
CamperBob2 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that Uber, or any other company, is responsible for someone else committing suicide is both bizarre and offensive.

From https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/nyregion/a-taxi-driver-to... : Immigrants from Romania, the couple had bought their New York City taxi medallion nearly three decades ago. Lately, it had been difficult to find fares. Her husband worked 12-hour shifts, but brought home less money. He was worried about the plunging value of their once-lucrative medallion and frustrated about Uber’s takeover of the industry. On a…

Yeah, a real tear-jerker. So, let's fix this. How do you propose to write a law that defines exactly when responsibility for suicide attaches?

In this case, Mr. Ochisor's customers were so desperate for an alternative to his three-decade-old business that they turned to a startup company that works by (literally) dodging taxi regulators. Is that really Uber's fault? The regulators'? The customers? Just how far do we want to take this whole idea of being reponsible for our competitors' mental health, or that of our vendors?

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

#149

Post by uptown »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #55
uptown wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article from January 2017 has some statistics: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/15/nyregion/yellow-cab-long-... https://ny.curbed.com/2017/1/17/14296892/yellow-taxi-nyc-ube... "...there are 13,587 yellow cabs on New York City streets. The total number of black cars: 60,000, more than 46,000 of which are connected with Uber, though they may be hooked up to other services as well." "To the credit of taxis, that’s s…

That data is old. There are now over 100k black cars. The growth is going exponential which is why this is a problem that needs to be addressed soon.

Yeah I’d be happy to link to some newer data if you have it available.

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

#150

Post by CamperBob2 »

pradn wrote: post #130
CamperBob2 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that Uber, or any other company, is responsible for someone else committing suicide is both bizarre and offensive.

Companies are huge economic actors. They can have very large effects on people's livelihoods. If people feel hopeless, they may commit suicide. Here, we have a very direct link between app-hailing and the reduction in taxi driver incomes. There's no denying that a major factor in these people's suicides were these apps.

Same question as I posed in the other post. At what point in the course of business competition do I become responsible for your suicide?

If you mod me down and send me into an emotional crisis, are you responsible for what I do as a result? No? Why not?

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