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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

#271

Post by techsin101 »

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.

Serious???? Did you forget parking... Wasting 20 mins to 50 mins on parking

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

#272

Post by techsin101 »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #40
test6554 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of drivers finds equilibrium on its own. Too many drivers = too low wages, so people stop driving. Too few drivers = high wages/wait times, so more people become drivers.

It doesn't solve the congestion problem though since lots of drivers are on the road for other reasons.

Congestion problem stems from broken Subway system. Uber is just responding to pain. Uber is like pain medicine for broken bone that subway system is.

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

#273

Post by euyyn »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #250
euyyn wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares how much money they spend on public ads? On the other hand, it's easy to understand why people care about how much money is donated to the campaigns of the politicians that will make these decisions.

There's no legal problem with them spending as much on ads as they want, of course. But if public opinion is mobilized as a weapon through very selective presentation of the issues in ads, in a disproportionate way that leaves the public with a skewed picture of the pros and cons, it has the same indirect effect of pressuring the politicians to act in the company's interests. The public can't react in their own inter…

> that leaves the public with a skewed picture of the pros and cons,

Then the other side has to also fund public campaigns, instead of just lining the politician's pockets.

> it has the same indirect effect of pressuring the politicians to act in the company's interests.

Yeah but one thing is lobbying and a very different one is "I fund your campaign if you benefit me economically". That's a soft version of bribery. Can't put it in the same level as propaganda ads that change public opinion on a topic.

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

#274

Post by bumholio »

gojomo wrote: post #221
bumholio wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the more one drives inside NYC city limits, the richer one is. Why would you say that? A rich person would not spend hours every day commuting though rush hour traffic, or spend most of their day inside their work vehicle. They would buy or rent a central home, possibly near the central office building where they work. City driving in itself makes for a very low quality of life and most rational people would minimi…

I would say that because I'm familiar with the NYC area! There's expensive tolls, and limited & expensive parking, but excellent public transportation – the USA's most extensive and most-used subway system. NY state has the nation's highest (regressive!) gas taxes. New York is far-and-away the US city with the lowest rate of car ownership: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_... Manhattan is t…

> Car-owning households in NYC are significantly richer than zero-car households.

I have no doubt that's true, as in most other places on the planet.

The thing is, you are making an absolute argument: those who drive in NY are richer than those who don't. I don't deny that. I'm making a relative argument: within the driving group, the poorer ones will be priced out. You say those are not poor, but "merely wealthy". Our grand-father said they are blue collar workers. You both lack data, and I suspect that we will see a wide, gentle slope, with most rich people driving, but also an important minority of the lower classes, depending on personal circumstances.

The thing is, does the exact composition of the driving public mater for the regressivity to be a political problem? Some will be priced out and they will scream bloody murder, because from their perspective they were sacrificed in favor of the rich. You could go out and say "boo hoo, you are merely rich", but that's a politically imprudent move - a thousand personal stories will pop up about those marginal blue collar workers no longer able to feed their families.

So you could be right that it is not regressive in a broad, social justice sense, but that's not the sense in which the problem will be sliced. Rather, the vast majority of the affected merely rich will invoke the principle of the matter, and in principle it's designed to price out the poorer drivers, there's no doubt about that.

An idea I'm toying with is to distribute "tradable driving coupons" to all people holding a drivers license. A flat tax would develop on the market, so the net effect is similar to congestion charging. But now the tax does not go to the city, but to the poorer residents who opt not to drive. Ideally, fiscal credits should be earned, so as to not reward those who don't pay any tax and thus have no contribution to the infrastructure. This beautifully solves the political problem and makes driving a matter of personal choice: you are now rewarded for preserving the public good.

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

#275

Post by [deleted] »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #163
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is simply nowhere else for them to pull over Yes there is. We've just zoned it for streetside parking.

Do you live in New York? Have you been to Manhattan? There is very little parking anywhere. In the busiest places there is no street parking at all.

[deleted]

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

#276

Post by ThrustVectoring »

TuringNYC wrote: post #190
vkou wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is also a larger problem Uber solves (one of many) -- once you lose density (i.e., outside airport/centercity) it is hard to hail a cab, so you have to dial a cab. You dail, they invariably say "wait outside be there in 5 min" -- sometimes they show up in 5min, sometimes 10min, sometimes 30min, sometimes never. Variable pricing and GPS tracking solves this. Variable pricing solves this for people with the abi…

I agree with almost everything you say. However, I do want to note that you can pay with dollars or pay with time. The old way was that you paid with time/uncertainty. You'd wait, and wait, and wait. Now you can get what you want right away, you just need to auction/bid on it to get it immediately. Totally agreed this solves the problem for those who can bear higher prices, so it disfavors the poor. That said, people…

>I do want to note that you can pay with dollars or pay with time.

And it's generally far better overall to pay with money. If you pay with money, then someone gets that money - Uber drivers earn more through surge pricing, in this instance.

If you pay with time, then that time is simply gone forever.

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

#277

Post by Eridrus »

tonysdg wrote: post #6

Given the problem, this seems like a reasonable action on the part of the NYC City Council. But I'm confused by section on congestion pricing: > Many experts believe congestion pricing is the best way for New York City to fix congestion and secure the funds needed to fix the subway. Mr. Johnson supports the idea, but Mr. de Blasio has opposed it. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who controls the subway, has said he will push fo…

I think it's pretty clear why de Blasio doesn't like congestion pricing: people who are used to driving would feel acute pain, he's quite cozy with the Taxi lobby and raising prices/wages on Uber/etc is politically popular on the left.

I don't know what de Blasio's plans are after his mayoral term is up, but this ticks all the right political boxes for him.

Advocating for congestion pricing would mean no more Taxi campaign contributions, Uber the company is unpopular, and he would piss off those who benefit from toll free roads; as a politician that would actually take courage, so why do it?

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

#278

Post by Retric »

manigandham wrote: post #257
Retric wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parking spaces don’t get added at street level so they don’t make congestion worse. Really A to under ground parking at B back to underground parking at A is vastly better than Uber for the same trip. Overall NYC has token street level parking because it’s such a bad use of limited land.

It's still traffic to get into and out of those spaces. It's more cars on the road, whether parked or not, which means delays given limited throughput. Having a shared Uber pool encourages the actual namesake of "ride-sharing" and gets multiple people using the same cars, hopefully at the same time, or at least waiting on the street where they take up much less space than a car. Even a small amount of passenger pooli…

You can’t defend Uber by reference to Uber pool when most Uber rides are not shared. If you want more busses that’s cool, they really help but having a few cars with a couple extra passengers occasionally does little.

That said if you want to limit Uber to always using Uber pool you are going to get strong objections.

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

#279

Post by Eridrus »

mkolodny wrote: post #26

It looks like the city snuck in a ride-sharing vehicles cap by pairing it with a pay floor for for-hire vehicle drivers. "[Caption] Drivers of for-hire vehicles on Wednesday demonstrated in support of a cap on ride-hail vehicles outside City Hall." Then the signs in the picture above the caption are all focused on the pay floor... "VOTE yes to create a pay floor for FHV drivers" The pay floor and the ride-sharing cap…

I don't think these issues are actually that separate; both of them seek to limit Uber trips; one does it on the demand side by increasing the price, the other does it on the supply side, by directly constraining supply.

The exact mechanisms are different, but the direction they are pushing is basically the same so that if one doesn't work the other should.

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

#280

Post by wpietri »

bumholio wrote: post #31
wpietri wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congestion pricing is generally politically unpopular in that it trades clear price increases and the attendant hassle around charging for hazy-sounding benefits. At least until it's implemented, anyhow. Once people see congestion drastically reduced, it becomes more popular: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/12/06/for-politicians-conge... It also pretty obviously favors the rich, which is not a big vote-getter.

> It also pretty obviously favors the rich, which is not a big vote-getter. In many ways, a congested city works like a income-adjusted congestion tax, where you pay with your time. Since the time of rich people is more valuable, the burden seems "fair". The only problem is that the time is wasted, no tax is collected. Maybe we should accept that political reality and setup income adjusted congestion taxes, putting t…

The notion that "the time of rich people is more valuable" seems obviously wrong to me. In some cases the time of rich people has a higher price. E.g. a famous surgeon is rich and also charges a lot by the hour. But there are plenty of rich people that couldn't get minimum wage based on their skills and work ethic.

I think value is an individual metric. E.g., I value good chocolate highly, but chocolate gives my girlfriend migraines, so for her it has negative value. So I think the time of rich people is exactly as valuable to them as it is to poor people. Or maybe less so, in that the rich people I know are on average much more willing to waste time than the poor ones.

Given that, your other schemes are more plausible, but I don't know that they'd be better in practice; the nth-order effects are hard to calculate, but could easily be pathological. Given that the real problem in doing this is the way some people have orders of magnitude more money than people, the cleanest solution is just to tax heavily enough that the wealth difference isn't nearly as large. Which, given the sensitivity of US politicians to the desires of the wealthy, is entirely unlikely to happen.

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