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Uber becomes legal in NSW, Australia – taxi owners to be compensated

dailytelegraph.com.au

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Re: Uber becomes legal in NSW, Australia – taxi owners to be compensated

#31

Post by victorhooi »

will_hughes wrote: post #23
Scoundreller wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy a government license for $100 and your business fails: tough luck. Buy a government license for $100k and your business fails: here's your money back.

Well, it's closer to 'Bought a taxi plate for $400k, it's now worth ~$280k, here's $20k for your troubles' I'm not sure that the $280k pricetag is going to work given the changes (in Sydney, anyway). The only advantage now that a taxi plate has is that they can stand at ranks, be hailed and operate at the Airport.

Taxi medallion fell in price around 2011, because the government increased the supply (consumers started screaming about high taxi prices - and trust me, as a Sydney-sider, they are ridiculous, and the service is on the whole, pretty shoddy. I challenge you to find anybody who will defend Sydney taxi pricing, or their service).

You don't see the government compensating the taxi drivers for that - taxpayers would be up in arms.

It's only now, that they have somebody external to demonise, that they can get away with giving our money to them.

At the end of the day, nothing was taken away from the taxi drivers - they still have exclusive rights to pick up from ranks, and of course, can still operate as taxis. It's just, the digital age caught up with them, and they now have some real competition. A lot of the Uber drivers I spoke to, do this as a part-time gig (at least in Sydney) - they have a car, spare time, why not make use of it to ferry people around. Everybody wins.

Re: Uber becomes legal in NSW, Australia – taxi owners to be compensated

#33

Post by notatoad »

victorhooi wrote: post #16
cletus wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government has sold taxi licensed/medallions for the right to provide this service. If this were real estate eminent domain would apply and the owners would be compensated. It seems consistent to compensate existing license holders.

Well, not really. It's not like the government took away the rights of taxi drivers to drive people around. It's just that there's a new entrant now, and they actually need to compete. In fact, taxi medallion prices went down post-2011 (before Uber) because the government released more, because consumers (i.e. everyday people) complained about crazy prices. You don't see the government compensating people there. It w…

But the whole selling point of a taxi medallion is that the government will limit supply. If a developer was sold the rights to build 1000 apartments under an agreement that the government would limit future development in the region and they later opened the market, the developer they made that promise to would be right to expect some compensation.

The problem isn't the compensation. The problem is that the government promised artificial scarcity to the taxi companies in the first place.

Re: Uber becomes legal in NSW, Australia – taxi owners to be compensated

#34

Post by timv »

sanswork wrote: post #20
tacostakohashi wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article doesn't go into great detail on funding, but it does say "Both taxi and Uber drivers will also have to pay the government a $1 levy per trip for a maximum of five years to fund the compensation package.". Presumably, the $1 per trip levy is intended to fund the compensation, rather than it coming from general revenue / other tax sources. If that's the case, I think it's great that taxi / uber users will b…

The problem is the compensation package shouldn't exist at all. We shouldn't be paying for failing investments.

The justification for it (which I agree with, but YMMV) is that the government has regulated the Taxi industry for a long time and artificially constrained supply by limiting the number of Taxi licenses.

Since it was a player in the market, and its actions had an affect on the price of those "investments" it has decided that it has a part to play in helping the market adjust to the new regulatory framework.

If this was simply a case of foreseeable market changes coming along and disrupting the established players, then the government should just stay out of it. But this is regulatory change and the government has to at least accept that it is involved in, and a facilitator of, the disruption that's occurring.

Re: Uber becomes legal in NSW, Australia – taxi owners to be compensated

#35

Post by mannykannot »

tarikjn wrote: post #9
ank_the_elder wrote: post #6

Why aren't we addressing the safety aspects of Uber rather than making it legal? Can we not ensure that the cars are professionally insured, professionally driven and kept up to standard and safe to be in? That should be our number one priority before allowing the company to continue operating. Some random examples: http://www.cnet.com/au/news/sydney-ridesharing-driver-charge... http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-o…

> Can we not ensure that the cars are professionally insured, professionally driven and kept up to standard and safe to be in? Could the same question not be asked about taxis? A more objective question would be to ask if they are professionally insured, professionally driven and kept up to standard to a level comparable to taxis in the area. Examples of incidents don't mean much without a statistical comparison with…

> Examples of incidents don't mean much without a statistical comparison with comparable incidents with taxis.

Right; they are only slightly better than rhetorical questions. Fortunately, davewongillies' answer shows that these issues are apparently being addressed in this case.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10755756

Re: Uber becomes legal in NSW, Australia – taxi owners to be compensated

#36

Post by badusername »

jseliger wrote: post #5

Actually, this article raises a point I'd not considered: Why doesn't Uber just start buying medallions, especially in large / angry markets? In NYC, medallions are down to $600,000: http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-taxi-medallion-king . Presumably Uber wouldn't have to buy all the medallions out there, but if it bought enough it could circumvent much of the political opposition from current holders.

Buying worthless taxicab medallions to circumvent political opposition seems like a fool's errand. 13,605 NYC taxicab medallions at a cost of $600,00 is $8.1 Billion, for an asset that's destined to be worth zero in a few years.

Re: Uber becomes legal in NSW, Australia – taxi owners to be compensated

#37

Post by Coincoin »

ank_the_elder wrote: post #6

Why aren't we addressing the safety aspects of Uber rather than making it legal? Can we not ensure that the cars are professionally insured, professionally driven and kept up to standard and safe to be in? That should be our number one priority before allowing the company to continue operating. Some random examples: http://www.cnet.com/au/news/sydney-ridesharing-driver-charge... http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-o…

Your examples are not random, they are cherry picked.

I can do that too:

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/taxi-driver-charged-with-indecentl...

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_28107135/denver-police-say...

http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/5257828/cab-driver-charge...

Re: Uber becomes legal in NSW, Australia – taxi owners to be compensated

#38

Post by victorhooi »

ank_the_elder wrote: post #28
victorhooi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but these examples are pretty laughable. Do you live in Sydney, or even Australia? As a Uber customer in Australia, safety is not something I need to worry about getting into an Uber. I can see the photo of the driver before I get in, I can see his rating, and I know the entire ride including GPS location etc. will be stored in the cloud. Your examples only prove my point. That's a lot more accountability that…

None of those examples strike me as funny; I am somewhat concerned that you can laugh in the face of human suffering. I am also not defending taxi drivers. The other day I had to take a taxi for a $9 ride and the guy was less than graceful about the fact that I wasn't going very far from his taxi line. But the solution is not knee-jerk deregulation - although I agree that a shakeup is necessary and warranted.

Nice attempt at a strawman fallacy there, ank_the_elder....

Nobody ever said "human suffering was laughable" - you just made that up. It's the equivalent of uttering "think of the children!", when it has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

I said that your examples were laughable - and you have said nothing to make me change my view.

I made numerous points - in Uber, you see a photograph of your driver before they arrive. In Uber, you see their rating (and can rate them afterwards). In Uber, the drivers are constantly tracked by GPS, which is stored in the cloud. You addressed none of these points in your reply.

Please list to me your reasons how a taxi driver is somehow more accountable than an Uber driver?

I have had numerous bad experiences with taxi drivers, both as a passenger, and as a fellow driver or cyclist on the road. I can assure you that attempting to contact the taxi companies (at least in Sydney) is usually an exercise in futility. It's only when you involve the police, that things get a bit more traction, and the taxi companies are suddenly ever so co-operative - fortunately I have only had to do that once.

In contrast, Uber customer support is fantastic. Even better, they have GPS records of everything - so if you say, the driver never showed, it is very easy to prove or disprove. Try doing that with a cab. (I've never actually had that issue with Uber, to be honest, of a driver not showing - only with taxis.)

Or one time, I left some headphones in an Uber. Immediately contacted the driver via the app, who then drove back to me for free, to give them to me. Try doing that in a cab.

Re: Uber becomes legal in NSW, Australia – taxi owners to be compensated

#39

Post by crdb »

will_hughes wrote: post #23
Scoundreller wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy a government license for $100 and your business fails: tough luck. Buy a government license for $100k and your business fails: here's your money back.

Well, it's closer to 'Bought a taxi plate for $400k, it's now worth ~$280k, here's $20k for your troubles' I'm not sure that the $280k pricetag is going to work given the changes (in Sydney, anyway). The only advantage now that a taxi plate has is that they can stand at ranks, be hailed and operate at the Airport.

Tip for travellers to Sydney: after I complained about a trip costing $35 from the airport to Botany (could have been more, but I realised he was going the long ways early enough), one of my UberX drivers pointed out that the trick is to order the UberX right outside the airport (the bridge works), then phone the driver and arrange for pickup inside.

Re: Uber becomes legal in NSW, Australia – taxi owners to be compensated

#40

Post by wycx »

lukevdp wrote: post #25
sanswork wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the compensation package shouldn't exist at all. We shouldn't be paying for failing investments.

The problem is that taxi plates were so expensive and the fees went to the government as a requirement to be able to drive a taxi. A taxi driver that spent 100k to the government for an exclusive right to drive passengers should be compensated by the government when they break their end of the deal.

Was that 100k to the NSW govt, or 100k on the secondary market?

I am not sure the govt should compensate beyond the initial sale price. Everything else is speculative inflation.

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