What should also be addressed is how the city tourism agency continues to remain mum sending out NO PSA to tourist about the safety of staying at some strangers home vs a legit hotel/b&b run by professionals.
2
"If rates for ride-hailing apps were to increase, as Uber has suggested as a possibility, then perhaps this would give yellow cab drivers a bit of a competitive edge."
Nonsense! Those cabbies who committed suicide more than likely paid over $1-million (as much as $1.3-million) for a medallion that now fetches, at most, $200,000.
Even having purchased a medallion at the lower end puts yellow cab drivers in a hole out of which they can't find a way. Any way you look at it, they're screwed.
5
We need to address organizations like the Harlem Chamber of Commerce & Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce who take the hostage money from Airbnb.
Can please stop using the word "sharing" when describing these types of business models. Uber driver and AirBnB owners no more share their cars and apartments with me than United Airline shares it ariplanes with me.
7
excellent statement.
2
Uber should never have gotten the approval to come to NYC in the first place without stricter rules under which they would have had to operate. It was Ill conceived from the start and people drank the “Koolaid.” The name Uber told you everything you had to know!!!!
5
I think there are some big liabilities w/ Uber in particular...also I tend to want to support those taxi/livery car drivers who are professionals . I don't want to undermine their careers and perhaps put myself at risk just to save a few dollars....the sharing economy and multi side gig economy are destructive. People should not have to cobble together several part time gigs just to get by while the company rakes in big profits while undermining committed pros. I see this as directly undermining jobs. This is parasitic exploitation and not actually entrepreneurial. I know people need to stretch their $ now more then ever but this is a slippery slope that I think is quite destructive.
5
Bought a car to drive for UBER? Taxi drivers who can't pay the rent on their care or pay for their medallion? Frankly - sounds like me trying to pay off my student loans. 1 Masters degree later and I am barely scraping by.
I've never used UBER in NYC and never will. Have lived in NYC for 20 years from outer Brooklyn to Washington Heights. I've never really had an issue hailing a cab, yellow (or then green.) UBER Is nonsense in a big city like ours - it is necessary in smaller towns without enough public transportation.
UBER users in NYC should be ashamed of themselves. Stand on the curb, raise your arm and hail a cab - its not rocket science.
8
Uber is a today's sweat shop. They care for no one. No one who cares about people who work hard for a living should patronize them. Even when the subway is crowded. Even when it's raining, and you can't catch a cab. Have people in the Age of Trump no chutzpah left? Buck up, and do the right thing.
DD
Manhattan
4
Uber is the scourge of all who drive as a profession. Men and women who have invested their lives are now threatened by Uber and their ilk. They use compliant sycophants to do the dirty work, undermining professionals just to make some "spare" change. Uber is anti-Union and anti-worker. Their kind of work won't make you free.
DD
Manhattan
5
Why call Uber a "ride sharing service" when it has evolved clearly into a taxi service. The concept of ride sharing is that you are driving to work or to a restaurant (or other destination) and you have room for a passenger. The service connects you to some one who is willing to pay you to share your ride with you.
Clearing people buying car to use Uber and having no other job for income is not Ride Sharing. This has become a way of skirting around the rules and cost of owning a taxi.
There should be more done to return Uber (and similar companies) to their original intent of what Ride Sharing means not to run a Taxi service.
6
What about the proliferation of delivery services? Surely, that alone has added to the congestion. Just look at all the additional Fresh Direct trucks with Whole Foods soon to follow. And, what is the purchase rate of vehicles by folks who live, in say, Manhattan alone? Are more people buying cars or are they less? How many are coming in from Jersey and Connecticut? Why is it just taxis contributing to congestion? And not a word regarding the green taxis? The stench of back-patting politics overwhelms.
2
I hope the city realizes that each dollar spent on an uber ride, 35% goes to California, so it is like a tax levy on NYC by another state. Why doesn't the city levy a TLC tax on uber to try to recapture some of that "tax" and use those funds for drivers.
The transaction cost of uber to process each ride cost pennies, the biggest cost is the credit card processing fees which are less than 3%. So uber is taking a big percentage back to California.
3
Uber loses over a billion dollars a year. So, by your logic, California is subsidizing New York.
1
Capping ride share vehicles misses the forest for the trees. if we want to reduce traffic, fund mass transit (including new bus lines to underserved areas) and fix our crumbling road infrastructure, it's time to talk about congestion charging for all private traffic. The fact that we don't adequately price our road network is the reason the city is falling apart and for hire drivers aren't able to make ends meet. Roads are in demand and all people should pay to use them.
1
What really misses the forest is why these lower income people stay in a high cost area like NYC. Good factory jobs with good benefits are going begging in the heartland. Cost of living much lower, too. People need to move in order to improve themselves. Depending on some city council to come up with a “solution,” minimum wage gimmicks, rent control, and other nonsense that interferes with the market place just screws things up. People can and should vote with their feet. And govts should encourage them to do so, be self-reliant, and get away from all the supposed institutions and interest groups that have cropped up to “solve” these low value skill people’s problems (but really only exist for their own self-interests). Can not think of a place that does more harm to such people than NYC and all the so-called “helping” constituencies that thrive there while these people are harmed.
2
The ride app companies do provide a service, but they keep too high of a percentage of the fare. I support better pay for the drivers. I also tip.
Keeping cost out of this conversation, the key feature is convenience to the rider. Finding a yellow taxi is sometimes impossible, Lyft/Juno solve that problem. The Taxi Commission should have embraced offering on-demand pick-up.
In the outer borough of Staten Island, car service was all we had. There is no 'hailing". You had to call and wait (sometimes hours) for a local ride-assuming you got past a busy signal. And what did eventually arrive were smelly dirty cars. Lyft/Juno solved that problem.
Getting home from Manhattan, late at night, was often a 2-3 hour nightmare. Lyft/Juno now gets me there in under 40 minutes.
I'll be using Juno later today to go to Manhattan.
2
The gig workers are digitally controlled plantation workers. Soon California growers will have apps to offer picking gigs to entrepreneurs paying pennies a pound.
6
Those of us who have lived in the Outer Burroughs or even above 72nd Street have little sympathy for yellow cabs. The author forgets the poor service and abysmal treatment we received from the yellow cabbies . Though I sympathize with their plight, it was self inflicted.
Uber has always been touted as an alternative to make extra income, choosing to make it your full tine employment comes with its drawbacks.
3
@George Whatever happened to those green cabs they authorized for the outer boroughs a couple of years ago. Was that a failure?
2
I share the authors concern on the plight of yellow cab drivers and agree that additional concern is merited. I think there will be a significant increase in fares because Uber drivers are essentially cashing out on the values of their cars as it exists today.
Hopefully the end result is more use of yellow cabs, but there are other problems with cabs that need to be addressed too.
@Dave I prefer to use yellow cabs, am not an uber user. However, it is getting very expensive to take a yellow cab (they have added so many surcharges for different times of day and days of week I can no longer keep them straight), so I use them a lot less than I used to, walking or taking public transit whenever I can, mostly using yellow cabs for the fixed price ride to and from JFK.
1
People like uber b/c it's easy to use - click a button and a car shows up. The whole ride-sharing aspect is besides the point (for riders). Does the average person care who's driving their car? The reason Uber was able to do this so cheaply (although, in my experience, an uber is just as expensive, if not more so, than a yellow cab) is b/c they were able to operate free of NYC regulations. Personally, I want drivers to be qualified and I want them to be able to make a living wage (all drivers, that is). Uber is really not different from a traditional car service. Why shouldn't it be regulated as one?
5
@Maryjane I care who's driving my car and way back in the 80s and early 90s when the yellow cab drivers were terrible and crashing a lot I avoided them a lot. I have told drivers to stop and just gotten out. When my turn came up in lines at the airports, if I didn't like the look of the car I was supposed to get into I'd just say "no" and let the person behind me in line have it and wait for a better one. My favorites have always been the ones that are owner-operated -- safer, smoother ride, etc. -- as opposed to the fleet owned ones that are just leased out. I have my own ways of identifiying the owner-operated ones.
I recall a friend from California telling me during that bad period that she had started taking buses in from JFK to avoid cabs.
At one point the city invested a lot in better training and more aggressive monitoring of incompetent drivers and the situation did improve, at least in my experience. I am generally not as nervous when I get in yellow cab as I used to be -- except perhaps at midnight at an airport, when goodness knows who will be behind the wheel, as most of the people driving at that hour do not have their own rigs and often have little experience.
yeah - I've caught a couple of Uber - mainly just using the discount first ride vouchers - and not since.
my first impression - shiny new cars - and I thought - OK you bought this shiny new expensive car in anticipation of making lots of money driving for Uber - at $10 an hour or whatever how long do you think that's gonna take to pay off - just the new car ... ?
Uber makes more money by having more drivers available, but then drivers make less money.
Who benefits the most - guess ...
1
Did you know Uber keeps MORE THAN 50% fees (on short rides Uber and LYFT have kept more than 67% : I had a $14 fare driving for Lyft- guess what Lyft paid me?$5.67 ! NO TIP - the passenger was herself working poor and it was a luxury for her to pay $14 to get home fast after a long day instead of public transport. I felt so angry at LYFT! I felt so used. I emailed LYFT they "checked their calculations and it's correct" I complained- I sent multiple emails to Lyft saying this is outrageous, when I signed up their commission was supposed to be capped at 25% but this is no longer true. So although a passenger gets a great deal and pays "$4 that used to cost them $14 in a taxi plus tip" your driver made $2 --- is that fair? The driver pays gas, maintance, insurance and all of their car expenses… Uber and Lyft are out of control… Drivers need to unite… And go on strike! why should you get a ride for a 70% discount? How is this fair to the driver? Would you be just as happy getting a 25% discount from a taxi? Or a 40% discount? Uber and Lyft are raping their drivers- and these companies will just keep testing to see what they can get away with without drivers quitting en masse. SOMEONE NEEDS TO MAKE A LYFT AND UBER DRIVER UNION APP. IS DRIVERS STRIKE- THE PRICES SHOULD go back up to about $1.25 per mile (.54 per mile in atlanta right now - plus you have to pay your gas and all car expenses out of that)
8
@Missy I would be happy with a 25% discount on a regular yellow cab (or ANY cab), as they have added so many surcharges I can hardly afford them anymore.
1
Having traveled quite a bit in the developing world, I have seen the Uber model in full flower. By this I mean rampant proliferation of taxis with little regulation. (My theory is that many governments of poor countries hand out taxi licenses exceedingly liberally in order to keep their official unemployment rates artificially lower than they would otherwise appear.) The result is far more taxis plying the streets than demand would dictate, and no one is making a living. Taxi drivers follow westerners, honking their horns, leaning out of their window, offering their services. Of course, one cannot fault this behavior because it is the result of the economics of unregulated taxis and the dearth of any other opportunities. Competition is stiff and the reward is a treadmill of crushing poverty.
Anyone who empathizes with Uber and Lyft should hop a flight to Accra, Antananarivo or Ho Chi Minh City, and ask themselves, "Is this what we want for New York?"
8
According to an article posted by New York Law Journal
https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2018/08/03/as-nyc-council-sets-vot...
The next phase in battling the newly enacted Ride-hailing legislation would involve the courts. Uber and others arguing that the cap may deprive them of a property right.
Medallion owners banked on a permanent monopoly and an artificial government propped up price. The million dollar medallion price bubble was burst by Uber. But our progressive market haters want to claim that driver suffering is due to a low wages. Uber, Lyft and Via drivers anecdotally report a good living. If they are unhappy they are free to switch companies or occupations. Many drove cabs, and they prefer ride sharing jobs. Prior to Uber cabs drivers would only take you to their preferred destinations. The prices were fixed and increased faster than inflation and try to find a cab at 4PM when shifts changed or Queens. In general the subway is my preferred mode but it has deteriorated, is much more crowded, and as even the union supportive New York Times has documented, it costs six times more to build a mile of subway here than in any other major world city. The New York Subway has only expanded a few stations in sixty years. The buses, despite the express lanes, are not reliable. Congestion might have been exacerbated by the recent reduction of lanes on major Manhattan streets and their conversion into bicycle and bus express lanes. The new car sharing tax was imposed by the city. The progressive dream of suppressing cars, market incentives, supporting unions and subsidizing regressive industries, such as the cab industry is evident here as it is in the heavy regulation of apartments while awarding low rents on new apartments to a few favored families.
5
@Harry One of the reasons the city buses, "despite the express lanes, are not reliable" is that the bus lanes and stops are often clogged with idling ubers waiting for their clients.
3
In other major cities, like Rome or Berlin, when using Uber a taxi shows up. As has said by others, the main advantage to Uber and Lyft is the ride hailing capacity and the ease of payment.. Unless you are at a major transit hub or hotel, it’s hard to find a ride. The ability to take advantage of GPS technology is a godsend. The taxi services need to be competitive and get on board. Sadly, this isn’t the first time investments didn’t pan out. Clearly medallions were bad ones (so were tulip bulbs).
3
Medallions were bad investments because the rules changed 1 Uber et all nullified the lock on street hails that the medallion provided 2 the medallion system meant that supply was controlled; now it’s unlimited.
1
Uber has stated that the avg driver nationally drives 11 hrs/wk so the NYC experience is vastly different from most of the country. Uber has helped limo cos (not Taxi companies) in the Jersey Shore by making the mkt exponentially larger. Limo Cos. here are flourishing. The NYC issue seems to be more about the city’s increasing income inequality in all industries and lack of opportunity for low income workers & immigrants to achieve even 1/2 of a living wage. Uber built a better mousetrap, but the city and the taxi industry are the actual culprits. They conspired to control Medallions in the hands of rich investors like Michael Cohen who used them to beggar 40,000 drivers per year. To blame Uber without recognizing the complicity of the other parties in this is a myopic analysis
1
1. The article starts by describing the [driving] gig economy's pitch ("promise"): that driving could be a source of part-time supplemental income.
2. People, in droves, start hustling in an attempt to make it a full-time source of income, many of whom made investments in vehicles.
3. Drivers don't make enough money to live comfortably in an insanely expensive housing market.
4. Because a bunch of people decided to pursue driving and not other lines of work... Uber & Lyft are at fault?
I'm sympathetic to arguments re: Uber's obfuscation of driver income data, which likely played a role in luring drivers in, but honestly the arrangement of contracting with Uber/Lyft and maybe buying a car sounds a lot better than buying a medallion which you spend decades paying off, and is good for nothing other than the privilege of being able to operate a cab in New York City. It's way easier to start - and stop - being an Uber/Lyft driver once you realize the economics aren't there.
If there is an oversupply of drivers [and how many are overqualified?], our problem should be figuring out how to get them into better paying jobs, not paying them more.
In a few years we won't have to worry about drivers not making enough money because it's likely they won't be making ANY - Uber's future is in driverless cars. And if they don't succeed there, somebody else will. I'm sympathetic to the idea of safety nets for job losses, and figuring that out will be much more important then.
5
@Adam Right, an autonomous fleet will make this issue moot.
Ride sharing may very well be the solution to transportation problems in New York. The real question is, what do Uber and Lyft have in common with ride sharing? Not much, it seems. These are taxi corporations hiring employees to work for them.
8
@Scottilla
Excellent point. If it were true "sharing," maybe drivers could set their own rates. Or, they could get together in a group to decide what they should charge customers so they don't undercut each other.
I don't want to denigrate third world countries, but this is the sort of thing that would be best for them. Get your jalopy out on the road and give your poor neighbors a ride to the doctor. The tech companies have already made a gazillion dollars making sure everybody on the planet has a cell phone, so they're all set.
We live in civilized country, or so I thought. Looking around, I see clearly that instead of raising the standard of living for people in the US, tech companies are lowering the standard of living here to that of third world countries. Thanks, guys.
8
@CF
"sharing" in this case means sharing your earnings with a $2B corporation ...
doesn't that give you a warm fuzzy feeling ?
it gives me a fuzzy feeling - but warm ? No.
1
The sharing economy is exactly how capitalism is supposed to work. Less for the laborers and more for the investors. The problem is that capitalism can't answer the moral question to what is a fair wage. Solutions are imperfect but necessary.
7
The city failed regulating yellow cabs. The fact that it cost $1 million to own a license to drive a $40k car and earn $40k a year just shows that the city regulators were captured by the medallion owners. Both the riders and the drivers were hurt by the city. City regulations allowed all cabs to be returned 5pm, just when user demand peaked. And it was impossible to get a cab unless you were white and below 96th street in Manhattan
Uber et al, are succeeding because they are attuned to both riders and drivers. No one has to drive for Uber and no one has to ride with Uber.
Why do diBlasio and Johnson feel if they put their fingers on the scale the world will be more "fair"? They want political donations.
4
@anonymous if you google sir Johnson, you see he has mayoral aspirations... so I guess he's feeding the machine and the city council has voted in lockstep 39-6... smh
1
It is no wonder that cab drivers, facing limitless cheap competition and locked into their medallions, may have to work themselves to death to make a living wage. They are squeezed out by the increasing influx of rideshare drivers and yet can't get out of their rapidly depreciating medallions. Short of radical changes, the economic forces will be hard to overcome.
I had feared this for Singapore where taxis were the livelihood of many low skilled/older workers. Instead, a clever move to allow cab drivers to also participate in the ridesharing apps like Uber and Grab helped to even the playing field. Cab drivers despite their higher costs (licensing, rental) can now participate in a larger market of rideshares and cabs instead of competing with the former, even gaining a slight advantage over the rideshares which cannot get flagged down. Passengers seem happy with the influx of rideshares and their lower prices. Cabs can still eke out an existence participating in the rideshares. Still too soon to tell how it will work in the long run but at least the cab drivers aren't killing themselves. I say this as a proud daughter of a cab driver. We need more creative economic solutions. Can't beat rideshares? Join them!
5
I don't live in NYC (Boston 'burbs, actually... do I hear the chorus of "too bad"?) but I am nearly 70 and have cancer and in some cases can't drive myself to the appointments and home and looked into going from here to the oncology center in Uber cabs that the application on my phone tells me are really close by. It turns out that to have a real professional driver costs WAY more than the cheapo rides that everyone imagines they're going to get just because they called Uber or Lyft. A cabride is a cabride. No? Carbon footprint or not ... in the city or otherwise ...
1
You could have written this exact article in 1915 about horse-drawn carriages, excoriating the evils of the internal combustion engine. The fact is, Uber is a superior technology, and, let's face it, the yellow taxi medallion system was the stupidest regulatory system in the history of regulatory systems.
11
The article suggests that the false hopes of the Sharing Economy are due to the bad promises from the ridesharing companies.
However, a significant angle missing in this analysis is how much the existing regulations in New York are at fault for preventing driver flexibility. These regulations are not the same in other cities and thus the promise of flexibility is achieved more often than in New York.
To drive for Uber or Lyft, drivers have to complete over 2 weeks of full-time training, classes, license upgrades, vehicle inspections, defensive driving courses and then pay $550 to get a TLC license.
This is not the case in other cities where people are able to become drivers after a couple days with rigorous background checks and without paying any money.
It's much easier to have a side hustle when you need to spend 2 hours to get approved vs. 2 weeks. If someone has to commit to 2 weeks with a financial outlay of $550, they're effectively forced into having a full-time job.
Don't take it from me. Just look at Uber's help page for driving in New York vs. the same for California. Which one would be a side hustle for you?
New York: https://www.uber.com/drive/new-york/get-a-license/tlc-checklist/
California: https://www.uber.com/drive/los-angeles/
3
@Adriel Frederick
"To drive for Uber or Lyft, drivers have to complete over 2 weeks of full-time training, classes, license upgrades, vehicle inspections, defensive driving courses and then pay $550 to get a TLC license."
Looks like Uber and Lyft drivers are employees after all.
5
@Sandy Not necessarily, if they are TLC requirements. In NJ, you just sign up with insurance and registration docs, and that's it, no regulatory hurdles... much easier.
What a shockingly biased and uneducated article. It completely ignores the massive benefits of the customers and only focuses on apparently mandated benefits for drivers in the taxi cartel. If you don’t want to use or drive for UBER just DON’T. Nobody is forcing you to.
10
What’s being forced on all of us is congestion. Unlike the medallion system, there are no barriers to entry for an Uber. The result is that consumers of rides are delighted with the increase in supply and better pricing while the rest of us suffer.
4
Congestion pricing in below 60th St in Manhattan would solve the traffic problem. It works great in London. Why not bring it here?
As we can see, we as a society as so enamored with any new application of technology that we fail to ask the question of whether it should be done. Here, the great new tech that uber and its brethren came up with was undercutting an existing industry to replace it with a corporation that exploits its workers. Congratulations.
15
How much money does the Average Uber Driver make per hour.
How much money does Uber make per Driver per hour ?
The answer to those questions will tell you the possible
answers to your transit problem.
Is there any company that has lower overhead than Uber ?
8
It's not like uber drivers have a gun to their head forcing them to drive. They have a choice. Most do it as a flexible second job.
3
@John Brown and less regulation
@confounded Nope! "A study released last month from two economists, James A. Parrott and Michael Reich, indicated that in New York City, Uber’s largest domestic market, nearly two thirds of drivers who worked for ride-hailing services did so full time. "
Uber, Lyft, and taxi can't replace public transportation that must serve mass transit. They can only supplement it.
The are many valid reasons why people prefer an Uber over a taxi. But these reasons could be addressed if taxi adopt same technology that allows identifying passengers and rating drivers.
Taxi drivers don't pick up minorities because they make a necessary judgment call about their safety in the absence of information. Identifying the passenger removes the anonymity thus adding safety.
Identifying bad taxi drivers and quicky banning can ensure good conduct from drivers.
8
Are new Uber drivers and other "gig" (AKA income-volatile) workers included in the rosy employment figures recently released by the Department of Labor?
10
If it was up to liberals they would impose a cap on cars so we can protect worker and folks who’s living depended on buggy whip manufacturing.
Furthermore it’s not like anyone is forcing Uber drivers to work at gun point . Presumably this is their best bet at the moment . Would you rather have them unemployed or earning less ?
7
@Ben
I'd like to see everyone earn a living wage without having to work two jobs.
11
@CF I suppose anyone would like that. But it's up to the worker to get a start and then move up, as most every worker who is north of minimum wage did, now or at any time.
2
I've long promoted an idea I call 'mopedbus', but never got it off the ground. A 'mopedbus' is a bus pulling a trailer. Riders go in the bus, their mopeds (or bikes, Segways, scooters, etc) go in the trailer. Each mopedbus travels only on highways and major thoroughfares (in HOV lanes), and stops only infrequently (every 5 to 20 miles). The rest of a riders commute is done on his/her personal moped. Mopedbus will be of most interest to younger commuters, who can't afford multiple cars. I estimate a rider on a typical mopedbus commute would get 75 mpg (more if the bus is an electric vehicle).
4
Ginia,
Have you considered that many people borrow money so that they can purchase cars? Have you considered that the housing costs problem that you mention is a result of either poor or lack of enforcement by the DeBlasio administration?
What we can expect is, like with your Fairway bankruptcy article, your suppositions are tenuous at best.
3
What a bunch of whining by conservatives and crony capitalists, determined to prevent change and demanding even more government protection for a state-sanctioned monopoly and insular guild.
9
Am I the only one who saw this as an unlicensed taxi cab company from the start..... So you can hail one through an app - so what. All that is, is a fancy text message- something any cell phone can do and what's a text message, but a phone call....
10
If you think that Uber technology is no better than a phone call you have absolutely no understanding of modern times. To further your argument, phone calls are no better than written letters for communication!
Call it what you want. Uber and Lyft provide a more convenient and less expensive transportation than medallion-burdened yellow taxis. Millions of drivers choose to work for these companies all over the world. And the NY City council wants to restrict them so a union of drivers can can get higher wages while keeping other drivers from working for these companies. Wonder what it will do when autonomous taxis appear. Trump wants to save coal jobs and NYC wants to save yellow taxis, both for political reasons.
1
@Mystic Spiral I have to say the one thing I like about a yellow cab is the anonymity. When I hear people complaining about their low ratings from uber drivers and what they do to get better "reviews", on the one hand, and then on the other hand complain about the pressure they feel to give drivers 5 star reviews I just can't believe they would subject themselves to that when all they have to do is stick their arm up ( at least in Manhattan). Plus, if you're unhappy with your driver or the ride, you just tell him to stop and you get out. Maybe you pay him for the meter at the point you get out, or maybe you don't if you're really unhappy, but nobody has your credit card number or name. If they're unhappy their only recourse is to go get the police.
2
Its amazing how little this author understand about the consumer economy.
She admits that the number of jobs produced by ride sharing services are six times any other industry, but then goes on to lament it. Isn't it great that new jobs for the least marketable are being created. Isn't it great that immigrants who could not find other work, have found a way to make a living? Please speak with actual Uber, Lyft drivers before pretending to understand their problems. Maybe she could have spoken with actual riders too, who prefer "big bad corporations" over the dysfunctional government run MTA.
The reality is that caps don't work, because they are always arbitrary. Market demand fluctuates, by the hour, by the day. The providers of services understand this better than useless politicians. When the U.S. Open comes to town, you may need 200,000 cars to drive patrons around. At 3:00AM on a Tuesday, maybe 20,000 cars will suffice. But only the drivers know that.. not the ill advised City Council. The Market always serves both providers and consumer better than government.
Instead of protecting the dying Yellow Cab industry, the city needs to find a way to quicken its demise. The city should buy back these medallions and scrap all yellow cabs. They never did do a good job of serving 4 out of the 5 boroughs. They certainly won't be missed by Bronx residents. But I don't expect downtown Manhattan based political class to understand that.
6
@Ayaz You say “have found a way to make a living” ...
The point of the article is that these drivers are *not* making a living.
5
@Ayaz Uber the unlicensed taxi cab company
Yeah, it's a scam. That edu..whatever will be as well.
And them taking away your pension was also a scam. How's that underfunded 401K workin' out for you?
OTOH, looks like the rich are in for another tax cut.
4
This story seems familiar to any and all industries disrupted in the last 20 years, unfortunately the workers in this case don’t seem to have the means to immediately do something else. The era of low education, low skill / livable incomes is over.
4
The right of convenience services like Uber and Lyft needs to be weighed against the right to breathe, having acceptable noise levels and moving quickly and safely in the City on foot and bicycle. Unfortunately, there's a slider in between those two.
By not (re)acting in the face of the rise of Uber and Lyft, cities like New York City, Chicago, etc. have by default doubled down on the choice for the loud and stinky North American motor city.
Many big European cities have opted for a different model -- one with less noise and pollution (low emission zones, eventually zero), ripping up parking spots and lanes for more and safer biking lanes and green, lowering speed limits and doing away with traffic lights to speed up foot and bicycle traffic, and inevitably, taking a more restrictive approach to services like Uber and Lyft.
We can do better, too.
8
@Anne: Why are there 100,000 Uber drivers out there, if they can't make ends meet? People look at a system that has been working for many years now and say that it is unviable. Maybe it isn't.
6
What some posters are missing is you get what you pay for. Uber and Lyft are cheap for a reason. The drivers are not vetted. Or properly insured. Or trained and licensed. Uber and Lyft don't follow the same regulations or pay the same taxes and fees that yellow cab drivers/medallion owners pay. They're highly subsidzed.
Let us not forget that Uber and Lyft aren't meant to be fulltime. They're meant to be supplementary - a side hustle. Hustlers work in the margins and on the fringes of not illegal but definitely not right. Or fair. Or just. But call it ride sharing and it's all good. The thing is drivers are being hustled now and the passengers will get hustled later when the medallions/yellow cabs, black cars, etc can no longer compete. Then Uber and Lyft will raise their prices and there will be no other options.
26
@Sandy
Are you telling me yellow Cab drivers are: Trained, Vetted and better than Uber or Lyft drivers? Get a life sandy. NYC cabs are terrible, dirty, actually disgusting to get into. The drivers don't speak English and try to scam anybody coming into the city from any airport. I'll take an Uber or Lyft any day. Now, why did medallions cost so much? Because the city capped the number of medallions so Taxi owners would make a fortune. Whoops, the system was just upended and some "investors" will be hurt. Note the word used: "investors" not drivers.
Think about that before passing a bunch of regulations deigned to protect yesterday's work model vs. tomorrows.
2
@Chris Wood
Yes, as a matter of fact, yellow cab drivers are tested, vetted, and registered with the city. You can look up your driver on the TLC (Taxi and Limousine Commission) website. They are licensed and insured to operate a vehicle in a commercial capacity. There are lots of jobs where the contractor and consumer don't speak the same language but they're paid to transport you and not to hold a conversation. If there is an issue, call "311." Your Uber or Lyft driver is licensed as what? Registered where? Who do you turn to if there is an issue? Medallions aren't perfect but "upending" a system isn't hard when the playing field isn't level. And, if you read the article, note: drivers ARE the ones getting hurt. Some passengers too.
1
One aspect missed in the column and by the researchers is the non-monetary aspects. An Uber or Lyft driver is his/her own boss and sets his/her own work schedule. A cabby on the other hand has to report to a dispatcher, supervisor, medallion owner and so on. No cabby ever thinks he is his own boss!
This is about independence vs. shackles!
4
@Jaque
Great, if you're happy about earning too little to make ends meet.
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. Yup, they got nothing. Freedom!
6
@Jaque. Yup, independence to be poor.
3
The problem is that Uber and other 'sharing' models create value by creating economic exploitation of their worker bees against a backdrop of Internet services and information that is all free to use. So from the developer perspective (developers are paid well and do not have much economic risk) having everything be free just makes it all easier. But free does not pay the rent or groceries. If you provide your car and the gas and the repairs essentially for free to Uber/Lyft/etc., and then subject yourself to their system of price controls and app-based subjugation, you will reap a sub-minimum wage job. Therefore, this is not a net positive, because the drivers are subsidizing the riders and Uber in this model. No for-profit business would ever agree to the terms of engagement that an Uber driver agrees to. When will folks wake to realize that poverty-perpetuating businesses are not really what makes capitalism great, and that there is zero desirability in society for businesses that can only afford to provide sub-minimum wages.
19
@Agent GG well SAID! Too many commenters don't understand that Uber is not a marketplace but rather a brokered network that exploits drivers by making false promises to onboard them and then underlying them. From an outraged former driver!
Why doesn't someone start a cooperative version of Uber/Lyft? If there's tons of profit to be made and that profit is not going to the drivers, there's room for a business to undercut the prices of Uber/Lyft and distribute profits to drivers and not-exorbitantly-paid executives. We have a wonderful natural foods grocery store that is a cooperative.
If it can't work, I would like to know why.
If it's the initial funding to write the software and secure insurance, do we not have any wealthy caring foundations or groups of people to fund something like this? Is it taboo to show that coops can work?
4
I think Juno/Gett runs on that model.
It makes perfect sense that a city, i.e., private gated community, continually raising glass sky towers owned by anonymous LLCs and largely unoccupied for most of the year as befits the investment vehicles for parked cash that they are should have swirling around it the dysfunction of the transportation system, the clogged arteries and roadways the rich who own here but do not live here can helicopter over on those rare visits to survey their property rights.
5
Disruption is all fine and well, but Uber punishes those at or near the bottom of the socio-economic scale. Contrary to what many seem to think, cabbies are not raking it in; it's a tough gig and a heck of way to make a living (after shelling out thousands for a permit). Surviving is probably more apt; it's a really thankless job with untold occupational hazards (long hours, low pay, poor health, etc.). And is it really a true disruption of the economic order - not from what I can see: those at the top still benefit the most; and, of course, the bottom still get shafted . . .
12
Rumors of the demise of the sharing economy are greatly exaggerated. AirbnB is in wide use around the world. One can stand in Burlingame near the entrance to the Bay Bridge to San Francisco and get a ride into the city for a nominal fee. A parking service at SFO thrived until recently where the owner of a car could drop it off, it would be rented out daily until the owner returned from his/her trip, the rent would be shared and the car would be returned washed. The older generation shouldn't underestimate the creativity and the entrepreneur instincts of the younger generation, and their increasing understanding is that what is best for some is best for all (including universal health care). The older generation fell short, and Donald and his crew represent the death knell of a period of excessive greed, get what you can and more than you need and the hell with everyone else. P.S. Most of the Uber drivers I've talked with have other jobs or are between jobs. I've invited, but rarely heard complaints about pay.
4
@LA Lawyer
They may not complain, but the numbers are out there and have been for some time. They are barely getting by.
As a member of that older generation you say fell short, I believe workers should make a living wage. Even this supposed $17.22 is nothing I'd care to work for. And, "other jobs" should tell you these folks can't get by without two jobs. In my day, being "between jobs" was embarrassing. What about family? Are we all expected to work two jobs? We went to a five day forty hour work week for a reason.
I have supported a fair wage (not a poverty minimum wage,) universal health care, and world class public education my whole life. I attended a world class public university when tuition was free. My voting record would tell you I had every intention of keeping it that way so future generations could benefit as I did. Not all of us are like Donald Trump.
You'd better become a little more savvy than you are. The billionaire entrepreneurs you seem to admire are squeezing workers to death.
14
I hate to tell you this but Burlingame is nowhere close to the Bay Bridge.
1
Why are there so any commenters on this article from California? This is an article about TNC in NYC.
2
@mileena Because San Francisco has felt this issue even more severely. It's not an issue limited to NYC, and people are watching us take the lead.
4
@mileena
Because Uber is headquartered in California.
3
A defense of the TLC is not a defense of the taxi driver. Ride share companies are ripping off their drivers? Well who'd they learn that from? City Hall!
Rideshare rides are better than Yellow Taxi rides; I think every New Yorker will agree with that, and most New York visitors too.
City Hall's decision to cap the amout of medallions created an artificial demand which lead to some very dishonest brokering and corruption, often by organized crime.
This new cap on rideshare cars, is it not City Hall repeating its mistakes?
And bring up a suicide to defend an opinion? I call "FOUL" on that. My best friend committed suicide. He was a doctor, married with two kids. His career didn't kill him, mental illness (depression) did.
6
Despite it's own easy to understand written English, the NY Times and - it seems - most readers accept the taxi- medallion system as a god given edict and Uber, Lyft, and the rest as usurpers. The cab drivers who committed suicide were not driven to it by Uber etc, but by the owners of the medallions. Just like many home owners in the past decade who purchased their homes in the early 2000s and then came to understand that they were now "underwater" due to all the undocumented home loans and other criminal aspects of the mortgage industry that induced the global economic crisis of 2008, the cab owners were too "underwater".
Did anyone - the owners of the taxi medallions - or any legislators try to reduce the amount of money the cabbies owed to the medallion owners? Of course not! Rather than blame the suicides on the greed of the taxi medallion owners and their resistance to change it seems to be easier to blame and punish Uber and the other gig drivers.
Not that it matters, but I am a full time Uber driver.... but in Connecticut.
6
@Paul Memoli
Actually, the Medallions have always been a racket. Michael Cohen is involved in some medallion enterprise. If he's involved in it, it's shady. That medallion thing is a separate issue.
I'm focused on the $17.22 an hour, after an increase of 22.5 percent. Laughable. Maybe you can live on that in Connecticut.
I wish you luck with your Uber career, but it's well documented that driving an Uber is not the path to a financially secure future for the majority of drivers.
1
I have no idea who coined gig work as "the Sharing Economy", but it needs to stop. What a nasty spin job.
13
Finally! The Death of Disruption.
2
Man, where was this writer when the NYT was exposing the racket in medallions. Restricted, overpriced, owned by absentees who exploited the poor drivers who rented the use of them. Along comes Uber blowing up the medallion monopoly and the rackets. Outcomes: very bad in some cases. Guess what: that's the result of blowing up a monopoly.
So the "caps" sound a lot like an attempt to rebuild the monopoly on different lines. Put that in your report.
9
As most residents of the city are democrats, as am I, I ask you this: Why do so many of you support the proliferation of for-hire vehicles, considering that virtually all of the drivers are earning below the minimum wage? And does your support for immigrants extend only to those detained at the border? What about the ones already here, such as taxi (and Uber) drivers? What happened to your commitment to fight climate change? There are six times as many for-hire vehicles in the city today as their were in 2015 (not to mention the others). Of course this has led to a dramatic increase in fossil fuel emissions.
Quit lying. I take taxis every day and they’re not filthy. Nor is public transportation ineffectual. If the problem is access, keep for-hires in the outer boros. And if there are gaps in public transport, let’s resolve to fix them.
Ordering an Uber is not cool, as it’s made out to be. The bosses are a bunch of fat cats wanting to steal from their gullible workers’ pockets. The only service they provide is an app. But the silicone valley robber baronswon’t leave it there. Now they want a cut of the food-delivery business. So I can no longer order directly from the restaurant I’ve been patronizing for 30 years, because Uber and others want a piece of the action.
Folks, stop beggaring your neighbors. There will be a price to pay.
23
@Leah Cohen
WELL SAID. Thank you!
4
And medallion owners aren't fat cats? Also, let's give Uber drivers and immigrants a little more respect and not call them "gullible."
I'm a democrat and I support congestion pricing. The public good here is the streets, not the cars.
2
@Pete
Medallion drivers are not all “fat cats.” My first husband and I waited twenty years for.a medallion, while he drove a cab. So did many, many others.
Uber has created some jobs, do they empower their Independent contractors? Kinda you can make a good profit if you work on surge times an live in a low cost city. Uber means that your car can make you some money.
Going back to Taxi's means people are more likely: to drive themselves, be denied service if they're black, pay more for a sub-par product, limit the amount of good drivers because of the Medallion system.
1
It’s NYC. Cut the number of licenses in half, and tell people to walk. It’s good for you.
2
If Uber drivers have a better way to spend their time they wouldn't be driving for Uber. The unemployment rate is 4%. Ginia Bellafante is wrong if thinks she knows how to fix something that is not broken.
4
@WKing is the first commenter to point out that the drivers are free to choose to work or not work under these conditions.
While the columnist cries about the thousands of unfortunate drivers, what about the millions of residents, especially of the outer boroughs, who choose to use Uber and Lyft over the public transit system? It seems that the drivers special interests will prevail over the public interest.
1
I'm pleased to learn of Parrot and Reich's study, but it's more disheartening than anything else.
I've spoken to many people, via preparation of their tax returns, who worked for UBER for brief periods. ALL owned their own vehicles before they started. Not one lasted more than a month.
As a son of immigrants who's transition to this country was aided by local support systems, it's grotesque to learn that it's been mostly recent immigrants who've been robbed by these vultures. It's not just UBER, though I wonder if they get a piece.
Years ago, a whole subculture existed to "assist" recent arrivals in buying medallions, and of course, the related auto sales, insurance sales, storage and repair facilities necessary to keep it all going, at very profitable rates. An accident or an illness and it all just rolled over to the next hapless soul.
To learn that these folks have been roped into the same scam is more than heartbreaking. This time, it's not just them paying the price.
I'm glad to say that last tax season I talked at least two people out of going to the dark side.
I'll say it again: THIRTY YEARS AGO - AS AN INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR - I LOOKED FOR $20 AN HOUR.
Drivers of the world unite! $20 an hour or bust!
P.S. Another possibility is for the city to create a fund to help these folks get out from under the debts they've incurred to buy and operate these vehicles Then strip the cars of their toxic components, dump them in the river, and maybe get some reefs.
7
Thankfully, I live in a small city in the flyover zone where we probably only have 3 or 4 cabs, total. Uber and Lyft are not an issue here. But a few years ago, when I first heard about Uber, I made up my mind that was a way of driving wages for taxi drivers to zero, another race to the bottom, and here we are, a few years later, and these ride-sharers are nothing but a corporate device putting people into poverty.
I can’t tell you how much I loathe Uber.
11
What's being "shared" other than the labor that leverages corporate profit without fair consideration in return? Between the workers and the customers nothing is "shared" as far as I can tell. And "gig" is just another word for income volatility, again without the company assuming any of the risk. The company isn't the only party with something of value to offer, it's just the only party with muscle. That's why government can and should play a role, on behalf of the workers among its constituents.
8
9 out of 10 of these drivers are immigrants (per this article).
The job is not good but apparently better than anything they can get in their home country.
Why are so many other countries not able to enable their citizens to grow and prosper in their home countries?
Why will this always be the case?
3
@Jake I don't know exactly what your point is, but note that, in New York City at least, driving a taxi has traditionally been a first job for many immigrants. And as a matter of fact, one could often tell from what country or ethnic group people were immigrating by who was driving cabs -- Russians, Sikhs, etc.
This whole discussion is ridiculous. The rideshare "driver" is simply a stepping stone towards the ultimate goal--a fleet of automated vehicles. These jobs, just like other jobs soon to be impacted by automation, won't exist in a decade or two. Let's figure out how to deal with that problem and stop fighting over the crumbs of a changing economy.
3
Bellafante misses the obvious. People choose to drive for Uber because they see it as their best alternative for an income. Take away the ride sharing option and those who would otherwise drive will see their incomes drop or become unemployed.
4
I often find this reporter's articles to be knee-jerk liberalism (and I'm a Democrat), but this time she's nailed it and eloquently. I use yellow cabs unless I cannot get one. Two weeks ago I gave an Uber driver a 100 percent cash tip because the fare generated by the app was a fraction of what the driver needed to charge to make a profit. The gig economy is a joke. People deserve a living wage. Uber and Lyft have crated a system to exploit labor. Meanwhile our yellow cabbies suffer.
72
@NR Thank god for people like you. I already extend myself, but I will be more generous with tips. Driving a cab in NY is one of the hardest jobs around. Have never taken an Uber so far.
6
@NR Thank you, as a driver myself we appreciate that, and I hear that from many of our passengers. We are a local entity, we spend and make our money here, far from Silicon Valley.
2
Pray tell, what is the difference between being indebted $500,000 for a speculator's medallion or paying 20% of a miniscule income to Uber?
And how do any of these financial engineering marvels actually solve the problem of moving around in NYC?
4
Yesterday I was thinking about the 50s movie "The Catered Affair" (Bette Davis, Ernest Borgnine, Debbie Reynolds, Barry Fitzgerald) and how devastated the character played by Ernest Borgnine seemed by the prospect of possibly not having the money he needed for a taxi medallion, at the time something that was probably considered a toe hold in the middle class for a working class family in the Bronx like theirs.
That made me think, as I sometimes have in the past, if something happened that caused the NY real estate market to crash -- really crash, like 50-70%, as it has in the distant past, how would our current striving crop of homeowners who bought in the past 10 years react? I know homeowners have a tendency to react extremely negatively when something is proposed for their neighborhoods that they don't like, that would "hurt home values" (think methadone clinics, homeless shelters, AirBnBs). But what if the home values did crash, and with home values so high now, would people expect some kind of reimbursement from the government? I don't know. Maybe everyone would just turn their homes into AirBnBs.
1
@ellienyc, TCA is a wonderful movie.
This seems like the classic response to the grey economy. Crack down on it, but don't bother fixing any of the underlying problems that led to it in the first place. Uber is exploitative to its workers? True, and dismal. But that "lifeline that wasn't a good enough lifeline" WAS a lifeline for people who didn't have other opportunities. Is the city putting resources into making sure they have other options? What about the people using Uber and Lyft because the public transport infrastructure isn't adequate or taxis refuse to come to their neighborhood? Has the city committed resources to fixing those underlying problems? If not, it's not clear how this doesn't just make things worse for the people who were so poor they were easily exploited in the first place.
12
@Jane Mars For some people the "lifeline" is public transit and one thing I would love to see SOMEONE do is make an effort to keep @Ubers out of the bus stops so buses don't get backed up for blocks while some stupid tourists try to figure out what @Uber meant by "northeast corner of 42nd and 3rd". (Also wouldn't hurt if "suri" and her colleagues refined their directions, as iphones are what all the tourists seem to rely on for directions and I would say iphone is doing a pretty lousy job on that in NYC).
Other cars -- including yellow cabs and private drivers -- do this, but Uber seems by far the worst. NYC transit likes to brag about all the accessible transit and "kneeling" buses and such, but in fact in midtown Manhattan the buses often have to stop in the middle of the street (which I don't consider very accessible) on account of all the Uber dopes and their clients in the bus stops.
6
I know a few folks that went to work for Uber and Lyft. Based on the employment opportunities I've observed in each person, it seems that making the decision to work for either company is based more on wanting to make money by giving a half instead of a full pound of flesh each day.
1
Best work by Ginia Bellafante I'v ever read. and the Readers Picks are excellent and at times cover related ground in important ways that illuminate the greater situation.
3
Change the world! Disruption is good. Silicon Valley has all the answers, don't they? So we have a modern economy based on serfdom or indentured servitude. Take your pick.
9
@ProudLib
I'm with you. We're becoming a nation of billionaires and serfs. I've been saying it for years.
I always add that I wouldn't have a problem with these people if they would pay some taxes so we could have decent public schools, infrastructure that's not disintegrating, and some sort of national health care system which every other developed country already has. But, no. They tie their money up in foundations, many of which never actually do much, so they can dodge taxes.
And, they pay their low-level employees, in this case the drivers, as little as they possibly can, so we're not getting much in taxes out of them, either.
I can hardly wait to find out what the "edupreneurs" are going to end up earning.
7
These jobs are glamorized. By the time a driver pays the higher costs of automobile insurance, especially the higher liability premiums for covering the passengers, there is little, if any, net income.
11
Drivers prefer Uber/Lyft because its safer and they make their hours. The reason they are willing to work for so little is there are few other options in New York. No one chooses to work hard for little if one has another, better option. Perhaps the City should spend more time developing opportunities rather than forcing Uber to raise prices, reduce their customer base, and force more people into a poorly maintained mass transit system.
8
@Greg, you make a poiny, but the city and its residents do not benefit from the massive increase in traffic. And the driving gigs pay such low wages the taxpayers end up funding a larger social services burden as well as the environmental costs and wear and tear on the roads.
5
Indentured servitude is right!
2
It's a 100% exploitation game. The billionaire venture capitalists, starting with those in Silicon Valley, have been riding Uber's value up on the backs of these drivers, who must themselves cover all the capital costs (car), insurance, payroll taxes, health insurance, etc. In other words most of the financial risk. Drivers get no benefits, under that scam that they are not employees, but "independent contractors." Meanwhile investors and management flood the streets with more Uber cars, further building their "installed base" in PowerPoint decks, just in time for the investors huge, low-risk payday: the IPO planned for 2019.
14
Ms. Bellafante has the makings of solid pushback to what I agree is a bill which - like most of what the pols produce in Albany, DC & downtown Manhattan - is sadly lacking in substance.
But she couldn't resist penning (fatuously), "[Uber's model depends on drivers engaged in] ferrying 24-year-olds to beer halls or actuaries to the airport."
In reality, the city - almost inexplicably "strapped" for cash - has outsourced mass transit, and it shows.
Hundreds of thousands of workers in NYC find getting to work arduous - not just half-mile hikes but a mass transit system that now does better by the workforce WITHIN IN than it does for the city as a whole. Many NYers well below G.B.'s bogus $50K minimum-income-to-afford-NYC now rely on Uber/Lyft to get to work, at least occasionally.
Ms. Bellafante is right, of course, about these services relying on immigrants. What she overlooks is that 7.5 hrs, M-F may fly if you have a Civil Service job. If you're trying to bring over family from Bangladesh, say, you're behind the wheel - heaven help us all - 60+ hours a week, and suddenly (especially if you live in a kind of dormitory) your head is way above water. Life may not be "good," using your values or mine, but driving for those services is probably much "better" than washing dishes.
If, somehow, the Mayor risked the wrath of the r.e. industry and focused on the tax cheats who put Trump into office and buy apts for $10MM+, NYC might again work for the half below median income.
5
@edtownes There is already a van service operating between my east midtown neighborhood and Williamsburg -- I heard people were starting up things like that for the L train shutdown, but had no idea they were already operating until I saw it with my own eyes.
1
@ellienyc And I saw another operating between Williamsburg and Dumbo, both in Brooklyn, alternatives to slowish G-train & citi bus svc.
But yours and mine are the "tip of the iceberg." Dollar vans give several bus lines serious competition. Ferries go hand in hand with the current vogue of living near water in NYC.
Make no mistake - NYC subways are circling the drain a la taxis c. 2010. Nobody in NYS is up for a $20B STARTING PRICE for rehabbing 100-year-old infrastructure and technology.
As usual, however, poorer NYers have no good options, but politicians know that they can get by with vacuous 20-year UNFUNDED plans & some gimmickry. Signals were too expensive - "give 'em arrival clocks!"
Score another one for entrepreneurship!
The notion that NY's rideshare cap is about congestion is misleading. To be sure, the cap will likely reduce congestion in Manhattan, but the intent is not to help commuters or ride-share drivers. It is for the benefit of the entrenched elite, who predominantly commute by car (often ironically with a driver), and the Taxi/Livery industry.
If the aim is to reduce congestion as much as possible, then all vehicles ought to be subject to the cap. Why is a taxi driver valued more than ride-share driver? We need to stop propping up failed industries. Taxis have failed to adequately service the greater NY population for decades. The explosion of Uber/Lyft is a consequence of this. Consumers have made their preferences clear, and the city council has not acknowledged this.
That's not to say ride-sharing should not be regulated; of course it needs to be. Some of the measures enacted are steps in the right direction. But so long as entrenched interests are afforded outsized influence and standing, it is the NY consumer who will suffer.
4
The gig economy can only work in a country that provides universal health care. Without that, the continuing direction of companies hiring/using contractors instead of employees is a disastrous trend.
15
@Joe B Yes--universal health care is the key to a flexible labor force. I can't tell you how many people I know who have stayed in jobs simply because of the health insurance when they wanted to start small businesses or work part time or whatever.
5
This one-sided view totally neglects the benefit to consumers of Lyft and Uber. In fact, the view in this articles is less than one-sided because it neglects that many Uber drivers are grateful for the opportunity to drive for Uber.
What can redeem this article. Let's see...
How is the arrival of Uber different than any other technology that supplants the one before it? Maybe that is the point of the article---that new creations destroy entrenched ways of doing things and the we should be sensitive to those whose livelihoods are destroyed.
5
Grateful to not make a living wage? Grateful to not have health insurance?
6
@Dave B Hello...Uber has been around for how many years now? During that time, especially in the start-up couple of years, there were reams of articles praising Uber as an alternative urban transport. Now, when the strains and inequities (the boys in Silicon valley get moist of the spoils while the Uber drivers make something like minimum wage while carrying most of the risk) are starting to show...well, this changing situation is being addressed, as it should be.
Now you can complain about this article not being the one you would write, but then...maybe you should see if the Times will accept your submission; it's a free country after all.
3
What is astonishing is that Uber, despite its callous exploitation of drivers, is not yet profitable.
"Excluding gains from Uber’s deals with Yandex in Russia and Grab in Southeast Asia, the company lost about $480 million in Q1, down from $1.1 billion in losses in the previous quarter and $800 million in the first quarter of 2017."
Speculation has it that self-driving cars will be the key to profitability, which means eliminating drivers entirely.
Instead of exploited drivers making a pittance, there will be more people making nothing at all.
7
Does uber reimburse the taxpayer for use of the roads upon which their business depends? If not then it's another case of privatizing the gain and socializing the loss. Air B & B is doing the same thing when a neighborhood is disrupted by their business. I might feel better about all the added congestion and the double parkers everywhere if I knew uber was paying significant taxes for the use of our infrastructure. I might not even mind the fact that house next door has constant AB&B traffic if I knew the company was paying significant taxes towards our parks, roads, schools, policing etc; Fix the problem of private gain/social loss by forcing these companies to pay the true cost of doing business.
10
@Sara "Does uber reimburse the taxpayer for use of the roads upon which their business depends?"
Uber and its drivers pay taxes too, so do they get a cut of their own reimbursement? Also as long as we're forcing anyone who uses roads to make a living pay additional dividends to the tax payers, let's squeeze UPS, Fedex, and anyone else in the teamster unions for more money. Why stop there? Let's go after all those selfish people who commute to work in the city. Simply paying taxes is not enough. People who actually USE these "public roads" should have to pay for them two or three times over, just to be fair. I'm not sure how exactly it could be justified on the books, but where there's a will there' s a fee or a fine or a tax to be levied.
2
@Sara
Does ANY company - Home Depot, Lowes, Stop and Shop, Peapod, Amazon, Best Buy etc pay special taxes for the use of the roads that it's trucks rely on? What is your problem?
Who’s forcing these poor folks to drive for Uber? What are their better options and why don’t they take them? My car, my time, my choice. Sounds to me like the status quo pushing back, which is expected.
6
Taxi drivers in medallion cabs are also Gig workers. the medallions are owned by rich individuals who lease the cabs out. The odds on getting in a cab with the medallion owner behind the wheel is about nill. Dosen't anyone talk to cab drivers anymore?
14
"We are a long way from figuring out how to disrupt disruption."
I was expecting to at least see the most important development we expect in near future: the arrival of autonomous driving vehicles! The only solution is caps. Increasing the minimum wage would only make it more economic for Uber to ramp up its autonomous vehicles.
1
Bellfante misses completely the essence of the "share" economy, which is the utilization and leveraging of one's own personal assets (ie car [Uber] and \or home [AirBnb]) via technology easily connecting buyer and suppliers in a way that lawfully evades institutional\administrative controls that up to now kept persons from tapping into the economic potential of their personal assets. While a mouthful, that's what the "share economy" is about. That's it.
The "share economy" is not about providing people full-time work -- it's about leveraging and tapping the economic benefits of previously underutilized personal assets for supplemental income. That's it.
To condemn the "share economy" for not generating, on balance, full-time work at gainful wages is as pointless as the premise of such argument is wrong.
18
Yeah, yeah, that sounds real empowering. But "supplemental" income is not what Uber promised. And that low wage costs the sharer more than he/she gets back in terms of insurance, wear-and-tear, potential legal problems, etc. It's a scam dressed up as independent work.
3
@tony.daysog, Except that Uber touts the gig as a way to make a living, which it is not.
3
Zero sympathy for professional drivers - as if “driving” as a profession is or should be immune from the laws of economics. Classic cab drivers are near scam artists by definition. If cities had done more to prevent rip-offs in the first place, then this would be less of a problem. But I suppose bilking tourists brings more money into the city.
These local government crackdowns are classic anti-competitive corruption.
20
@Captain Obvious. Actually there are "professional drivers" just go to London and see how real Professional Cabbies work, they have to prove knowledge of a very large & complex city, and are highly qualified for their careers, not side hustles....give me a professional driver any day over an amateur w/ perhaps no knowledge, perhaps not a legal resident, perhaps criminal background, etc and a GPS.....not enough and what about all the liability issues including background checks for the drivers.
To hell with the old way. Uber is the bright future and you and this Newspaper represent the dark past. Uber has improved my life.
11
Uber is nothing more than a taxi business and nickel & dime employment hustlethat uses a app.
Nothing more.
Call it whatever you want to call it and throw in all the high tech phrases and pretend it is a semi social movement , but the basics of what it does to make money are as old as dirt.
This is a franchise business that is not called a franchise. Many drivers would be better off raising chinchillas or taking on a job without built in overhead.
Uber is a current American get rich quick scheme for the management and a drain for those as drivers that cannot connect the dots before leaping .
17
Seems to tome that the same authors would defend horse carriages against steam engines by calling the latter dirty and polluting while ignoring that horses leave their poop everywhere.
15
Uber drivers may be categorized as "contractors" but this is just a scam by Uber to avoid paying out health insurance, covering driver liabilities like tickets, etc. when a business regularly requires routinely skilled services of many workers, these should be classed as employees and provided benefits so that the state does not have to.
The medallion problem should have been dealt with. Uber should have had to buy in / pay off the devaluation. Of course once again the lowly worker gets the screw.
17
@Nancy Rockford
Thirty years ago I was a driver for a limo company, listed as an "independent contractor" No benefits, etc. and all extraneous costs were shifted to me. As I was paid by commission ( a percentage of the fare) I bore the burden of costs if I was sent to an airport for an airport pickup
and the flight was two hours late. The two hours I spent waiting at the airport were not compensated. Tickets, etc. were paid by me. The job was not worth it. That is why I never believed in Uber and Lyft.
6
Living in California, and being handicapped, I have been ripped off, left in the street, and at times fearing for my safety from taxis. The Taxi companies here are few, and know that the elderly/handicapped who used them were in no real position to fight back unless actual crimes occured. With the advent of Lyft/Uber, I do not get ripped off, I feel safer, and am not driven miles away from my destination. Taking mass transit is not an option, as my handicap makes it too painful to board buses. If the politicians and taxi companies eliminate Uber/Lyft, I will have to limit my mobility even further, until self-driving cars are available.
13
Are Uber drivers slaves? Did they not choose to work for Uber? Case closed.
6
@Radical Inquiry
You may be fortunate to not have to drive for them, but some have no choice. They may have
3
Yellow cabs give awful service for a bad price. I do not care if they do not have jobs.
Stop government interference... Make the service better and I will start using yellow cabs again.
13
The politicians have too much invested in Taxi medallions to allow competition by Uber and Lyft.
5
@USC. Your “facts” are fictional. “No one before Uber was driving to work in San Francisco”? “At most 1/3 of 1% drove to work”? That’s absurd. According to the SFMTA fact sheet, in 2000, 40.5% of SF residents drove alone to work. 10% car pooled. Only 31% used public transportation. By 2012, the figures change by only a few percentage points. Here is a link to the fact sheet.
https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/FactSheet12-30-13_updated.pdf
Boy, talk about alternate realities.
3
When I share something with you, I don't charge you. The myths of the Uber driver making enough money to afford a middle-class lifestyle or the Airbnb little eighty year-old lady renting out a single room to cover her mortgage payment because her husband died last year are both...ludicrous. Uber, Lyft and Airbnb don't share. They take. And I can't wait to see the fiasco that is Wonderschool.
14
@Hugh MacDonald
Hugh, I drive for Uber and of course I would like to be guaranteed a minimum wage - after the expenses of a daily tank of gas and wear and tear on my car were factored in!
I hate to admit this, but I am handicapped. I need both of my knees replaced and I am very afraid of the surgeries involved. I want to fend for myself! But as far as employment goes, Uber is my best option until I have my 2 total knee replacements.
No, I am no longer able to be counted as being in the middle class. But let us face facts, these days, less and less of us are.
4
Is there no middle ground between the mafia-run medallion scheme and the "sharing economy" free-for-all?
6
If Uber promotes itself as a part time job, this would seem to be tacit admission that they are aware you can't make much money. It reminds me of another disrupter, eBay; the user does 95% of the work but collects way less of the proceeds.
3
I began bicycling for Ubereats when some freelance gigs fell through and I didn’t even have grocery money. It was a lifesaver.
Not everyone belongs in a 9 to 5 job. We are willing to trade security for flexibility—there are a lot of single mothers driving—and a lot of us just don’t want a boss. And many immigrant drivers just don’t have Americans’ sense of entitlement to secure corporate jobs and retirement funds.
There is a lot that’s unfair about Uber from a driver’s perspective. We take on 100% of the risk if we get in an accident, for one. Customer service is the worst I’ve ever experienced on the phone. No one had basic information about my account—not even the email or phone attached to it—and after 1.5 hours could only direct me to google questions in driver forums. Clearly they’d been trained to prevaricate and nothing else. And it’s immoral that the heads of the company make what they do compared to us, but that’s the American way.
Uber needs to give us a bigger cut and more support and share our risks, but please don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I need this job.
17
Uber is cheaper than regular taxis and its efficient. The sharing economy is here to stay, deal with it.
In San Fran, there are lots of part timers making money driving. What's wrong with that?
6
I drove a yellow taxi in NYC in the late 60's-early 70's, part-time (usually on weekend nights) when I was a college student. Back then, drivers "split the meter" with the company. Beginners got 40% of the total for their shift plus tips. With experience, you got to 49% plus tips. The garage (medallion owners) paid the insurance, maintenance and gas. If you had a good night, the garage had one, if you didn't, at least you went home with some money in your pocket. You belonged to a union, and every garage had a shop steward to enforce the contract.
During the 70's the business model shifted to leasing the taxi to the driver, who no longer was an employee, but was now an independent contractor. The driver paid for the use of the the vehicle (the "lease") and gas.
On a Saturday night, it meant that you could be out of pocket $150 when you left to start your shift. Yellow taxis gravitated to Manhattan and the airports because that was where the business was. A ride out to Brooklyn ;meant, inevitably, coming back empty. On a slow night you could work a 12 hour shift and actually lose money. The union withered as well.By limiting the number of medallions to 11,787, the number issued in the 30's by the city, a rigged scarcity meant that the number of taxis on the street never exceeded 5,000 a shift. As a result the medallion itself became more valuable than the "product" it was licensing. By 2010, hedge funds were trading them.
The drivers never had a chance.
40
Thank you for sharing. We can see how the artificial shortage and corrupt medallion system created by the TLC hurt drivers way before Uber came along. The city has blood on its hands and needs to compensate those (esp owner-drivers) who put their life savings into buying an artificially inflated medallion.
6
I have been a small business owner for most of the past 40 years. I have also been an Lyft / Uber passenger for the past 2 years. However, I cannot understand the complaints about Uber / Lyft, particularly regarding taxis.
First, no business lasts forever. It is incredibly naive for the taxi drivers to rely on their business model continuing indefinitely. Ride sharing is not exactly new - they should have found a way to deal with it years ago instead of whining. What makes them so "special" that we should sympathize with their rigidity and lack of foresight? Most of us in business know we have to adapt over time or the business will fail.
Second, most Uber / Lyft drivers that I have driven with (over 200, mainly in the Miami and Detroit areas) are happy with their job. They may be wrong, but at least in their minds, they are making a reasonable living. Personally I think Uber / Lyft are taking too much of the pay - it should be 15% at most but it was often 30%.
Third, I left taxis and will never go back because of the bad treatment I received from them. They lied and claimed they could only accept cash because the machines were broken (that is what got me to switch). They were rude and unfriendly. Their driving was erratic. Usually, it was not a pleasant experience. Finally, I never knew what it was going to cost, but with Uber / Lyft, I know, and there is no payment transaction. Also, the rides are generally pleasant, and often interesting.
24
I struggle to find much sympathy for the drivers who took it upon themselves to try to make ride sharing a full time job by taking on debts they couldn't afford. There was never even an implicit promise from these companies that the debt would be anyone's responsibility but the individual.
I don't see these drivers as being taken advantage of; on the contrary, it seems they tried to become small business owners with little capital and no competitive advantage, and the market is providing entirely predictable results. Golden opportunities without barriers to entry tend to lose their luster pretty quickly.
6
Everyone seems to look at Uber through “coal shaded” glasses. Is the sharing economy / Uber really responsible for the disruption of good driver incomes, or is the disruption another in the long line of industries that changed because of market forces rising on the back of a better product. Responsible for suicides? Please, the suicide rate of NYC taxi drivers is in line (or below) the socialtal rate in the U.S. What of the fate of the N.Y. garment business (to overseas factories) and the horse and buggy industry (to the automobile) and on and on... Though it’s true that most NY Uber drivers are professionals, in most locales the opposite is true. The sharing economy has been an amazing advent for those working part time to monetize their idle time on their own terms, with their own flexible hours. Perfect? No? But what is perfect, and the product is still evolving for drivers and riders. If incomes for drivers in NY is too low, they should do something else with their skills - NY is far from a “company town” where alternatives are limited. Uber emerged during a period of high unemployment, but now the rate is near the lowest in history and ample jobs abound. Remove the charcoal glasses and see the opportunity for what it is... N.Y. should be maximizing alternative job opportunities - if Uber is forced to compete for drivers, wages will rise via market forces...
9
If NYC goes Denmark and outright bans Uber, I think that action will speak entirely for itself. As for points against Uber, this article does little more than suggest that Uber needs to pay it's drivers more. In my experience Uber has been a life saver. If this is what the sharing economy is going to bring more of, I can hardly see how it is a failing system. In fact, it seems that the only failing system is the Million dollar Medallion system. That was a crime committed against yellow cab drivers and now they are unfortunately the ones left to deal with it.
11
There are innumerable jobs that are pitched to potential employees (or independent contractors) as get rich fast schemes, and yet, the jobs that truly pay well and can lead to genuine material wealth require no solicitation. My email in-box is filled with fast-money-job offers, billboards tout miserable jobs for their wonderful pay and benefits, the internet fairly shouts with offers to earn gobs of money with little training, no educational credentials and almost no effort.
The obvious point is that less-attractive jobs require more aggressive recruiting efforts. This truism is as old as the hills. The difference with Uber is that (a) it's a genuinely good consumer product that quickly displaced an ossified, corrupt and outdated incumbent; and (b) it made a lot of money for a CEO and founder with a very bad personality. Beyond that, the amount of progressive angst generated over ridesharing in general, and Uber in particular, appears to be rising in direct proportion to its popularity with mainstream (i.e., not obsessively political) consumers who got tired of being abused by medallion taxis and the politicians who exploited them. NYC is the municipal embodiment of political progressives, and this move will be viewed as politically motivated because it is. Will it save the drivers and serve as a replacement for high-paying union jobs of the industrial era? Of course not. But it will increase prices and diminish the quality of rideshare services.
4
Please stop calling it the 'sharing' economy - it is a system of modern servitude (being a serf or a servant). People are driving others not because they want to 'share' their cars but because they need an income and may not be able to get other work.
19
What about those that choose to drive for Uber/Lyft that DO have other opportunities but would rather drive people around to "get rich?"
1
Being a full time Uber or Lyft driver is a form of underemployment. There aren't enough jobs to go around. The majority of them don't pay a livable wage for the areas they are in unless you happen to write C#, C++, R, SQL, or Python. And there's the fact wages have stagnated across the country. Being a ride share driver is one of the few options open to anyone to earn the money they need to keep their families fed in our steadily slowing economy while wealth and property gets concentrated in the hands of the very few.
Don is right. This is basically freelancing. It's nothing new. What is new is the pervasive cynicism that allows us to call freelancing "ride sharing", torture "enhanced interrogation", lies from the president "misstatements". We've become Orwellian in the face of a dystopia of our own making and it hurts to be honest about it.
16
The medallion system was a response to a need. The dogs in the manger Uber/Lyft just step in front of the queue hoping nobody sees them? Cabbies need lobbyists, but with the high price of operating, who's going to do that? Maybe the underserved outer borough commuters should expect to pay higher fees (using Uber/Lyft), or maybe plan more time for commuting.
5
Uber, Lyft and other sharing services do not care about individual worker income. They make their money by taking from each and every worker, across hundreds of thousands of them. Their model encourages cannibalization and low income. They made no attempt to hide it. Individual income for these workers, with few exceptions, will always be subpar because it is not meant to supply a huge workforce with a living wage. Its sole purpose is to make investors rich off of gig-sourcing.
14
Transitioning to a "gig" economy, we really need to go with single payer health care and expand social security. A national sales tax would be the best way to pay for it.
11
The medallion systems controlled by city governments created Uber & Lyft by suppressing the supply of taxis and inflating the price of taxi service. How else could a medallion, a government issued license, be worth millions of dollars?
13
@ClydeS the medallion system got totally corrupted. if you look at the origins of that system it was out of the public good. It was to solve the problems that companies like Uber "reintroduced", remember Uber wanted to pass on all liabilities on to the drivers. If passengers got injured they wanted the consumer to go after the drivers. Let's not even talk about vetting drivers and automobiles.
The problem with today's buzz word society is we're so quick to throw out the baby with the bath water, instead of fixing a corrupted system.
12
I have no problem with regulation. It's unquestionably needed in much of the sharing economy. However had ride sharing companies sought conventional governmental approvals at the outset, ride sharing would never have come into existence. The stakes were too high to allow it.
So government is now doing what it is expected of it. Regulate for public safety without crushing free enterprise. If this results in a precipitous drop in the value of these sharing economy businesses, so be it. It's completely unreasonable for these companies to expect to operate without incurring the expense of public safety constraints. And no, it should not fall solely on the drivers as such an approach would be an extraordinarily inefficient means of regulation and accountability.
Too bad all those super smart Wall Street analysts weren't underwriting these obvious and necessary expenses into their valuations. And too bad that medallion owners bought into an obviously crooked monopoly that existed by the whim/controll of city government.
What kind of discussion would we be having if UBER & Lyft didn't exist? How sympathetic were medallion holders to the plight of the underserved public before UBER & Lyft? How likely is it that city government would have tripled or quadrupled the number of medallions to more effectively serve the public good?
Obviously you have never been in NYC. Suppressing the supply of taxis? Have you ever tried to find a cab in San Francisco?
I wish economists and journalists would stop with the Silicon Valley buzz words. For a decade I keep hearing about gaming changing "sharing economic" or "gig economy" as if this is something new.
People, it's called freelancing and independent contracting. It's been around forever, it's been a fixture of the creative industry and will be ad infinitum. What most people didn't stop to think was the struggles people who worked in these industries have. Health insurance, business insurance, personal liability, self financing retirement investments, taxes, long hours; instead venture capitalists and tech journalists jumped on the buzz phrase "sharing economy".
Let's call it what it really is "freelancing". Companies use freelancers to avoid paying benefits and pass on liabilities. There's nothing wrong with it (I did it on and off through my career in advertising). But, we knew what we were getting into, there wasn't this collective sugar coating by Tech Bros.
Industries like taxis are highly regulated and unionized for a reason, liability and the ability to collectively bargain rates. This is something all these "gig" workers are realizing. As a freelancer I didn't have a union help me, I had to stand tall against a corporation.
29
It’s called a gypsy cab and has been around since the auto first hit the road.
1
All these NYC residents who consider Uber or yellow cabs necessary ... I just don't get it. I've lived here 15 years and maybe taken five cabs during that time, and only because it was someone else's idea. And Uber never.
You know, we do have a very extensive public transit system here.
12
Agreed @Margarets Dad. Having grown up in The Bronx and migrated north, it was obvious that the best way to get around within Manhattan was by far and away the subway, yet many people I know are intimidated by or afraid of doing that. So I've been repeatedly dragged into taxis (over my objections) by work supervisors for trips from downtown to midtown that have left us late for meetings at triple the cost of public transportation that would easily get us there on time. But in the suburbs, where public transportation is much more limited and pre-Uber/Lyft taxi services are sketchy (in multiple senses of the word), I welcome their arrival. I can now go out and enjoy a couple of drinks and have a legitimate option to get home at a reasonable cost and in timely fashion.
1
@Margarets Dad
I'm with you (although - the R train... meh). Sometimes the subway stops en route and we sit - a minute here, a minute there, ten or fifteen minutes longer for the trip than if we'd sailed along without problem. What have we done to deserve to be picked up by dedicated automobile within five minutes and delivered to the doorstep of our destination, cheaply, easily and without ever having to take our eyes off the phone screen?
The problem is that subways still have a rep for being dirty and unsafe--a hangover from the 70s when NYC was in financial crisis and infrastructure started to crumble. As well, there's a snob aspect to it too--people whose time/money are supposedly valuable take taxis; everyone else goes mass transit.
"the devolution into poverty of so many conventional yellow-cab drivers whose livelihoods have been devastated by ride-sharing". Is it really the ride-sharing that caused this, or was it that yellow cabs had a monopoly for so long and never ever improved or innovated, and let their cars become cesspools, which then in turn opened the door for other models to come in and meet consumer needs and expectations?
If you are serving the same bad food in your restaurant for years, don't say it's the new restaurant that opened up down the block that put you out of business.
23
“... curtailing the previously unchecked powers of Uber and other ride-hailing services...”
This author has backwards her head on.
Uber/Lyft liberated consumers who desperately needed alternatives and drivers who wanted to work by breaking the government monopoly on yellow taxi medallions. They liberated redlined poor communities in outer boroughs that lack proximity to subways. They ended the discrimination against African-Americans. They provided a backstop to the failing MTA that state and city politicians have plundered to fund pet projects.
The writer has some gall to pass judgment on someone else’s choices of honest work.
No job can nor should be guaranteed, whether the job itself or the wages. But Uber and Lyft created tremendous opportunities for those willing to work.
If you are truly concerned about drivers’ earnings, you would speak out against the corrupt medallion system that’s based on an artificial government created shortage that barred new drivers from entering the market to earn money.
You would support market demand based pricing AKA surge pricing so that drivers can maximize their earnings instead of supporting a ceiling — AKA minimum wage — set arbitrarily by a government bureaucrat.
If you were truly concerned about road congestion you would support road pricing, fixing and expanding the subway system, heavily tax urban car ownership and street parking.
People like the author purport to help the poor by limiting their job opportunities.
31
@Father Of Two
Oh, so the Libertarian sees more taxes and restrictions on someone else's private vehicle as the way to subsidize his vehicle and his natural right to work.
3
Don’t call me names. Who said I’m a libertarian?
Uber and its ilk came along because the city controlled and regulated and highly anti-competitive taxi business in most big cities like NYC, DC, SF or LA was an utter failure. Taxis were and still are often dirty, inconvenient and unavailable to many customers, frequently overtly discriminatory on the basis of geography and race, and on the whole it delivered shoddy unreliable service. City controlled monopolies in particular, just don't work, all they become is revenue stream for local governments and over time the business usually becomes concentrated in the hands of a few controllers of many medallions. If NYC thinks it can regulate Uber, etc., as means of rescuing an already once failed regulated business and its employees, that just foolish, wishful thinking.
And that vapid plan doesn't even take into account the paternalistic premise that the drivers themselves might not want the city intervening in their jobs or their freedom to work as they choose.
Hiking the minimum wage is no solution either, if Uber drivers are truly oppressed as the author suggests, there is an age old and highly effective solution--organize and unionize and secure better wages, working conditions through collective bargaining.
7
@Cazanoma
I am not a lawyer but I have been a freelance and i believe that BECAUSE they are classified as independent contractors, organizing and collective bargaining would be illegal price-fixing. The rules about what makes someone an employee or a contractor are complicated, arbitrary and occasionally contradictory.
2
" Uber drivers are truly oppressed as the author suggests, there is an age old and highly effective solution--organize and unionize and secure better wages, working conditions through collective bargaining."... or just stop doing it and get a different job. Enough already with the argument that drivers and and anyone else that chooses to work for what others think is less than a fair wage, are somehow victims. With unemployment at practicality an all time low, they are not lacking choices. I ask every Uber driver about their experience and I've yet to speak to one that believes themselves to be a victim. How about giving these folks some credit for having enough sense to be able to choose what they want to do with their lives.
1
Sadly, in San Francisco Uber and Lyft have completely and utterly bogged down our streets with endless traffic.
The drivers are full-time - But, what you need to remember is this:
A. profitable times during the day are early morning and afternoon / night; B. drivers come from outside the city; drivers then sit in their car and sleep / eat / watch iPhone movies from around 10am to 3pm (down-time); which has meant obtaining a parking spot during this time is now a pain (long time resident, I can promise you this is new).
Secondly, Uber has said their service is environmentally friendly because it removes cars from the road. - Not in major cities, the opposite is true.
A. No one before Uber was driving to work in San Francisco. At most 1/3rd of 1% drove to work; B. The bus system in San Francisco is now much more empty during this time....why is that? Uber Pool, where people wait outside their house and get picked up for a $5 ride. However, the bus system still runs and now runs much, much slower. A bus ride that would take 20 mins to get to the Financial District now takes 45 mins.
Total mess.
Let's hope the City of San Francisco follows with even heavier regulations:
1. Limit the cars
2. Charge a Business Registration license fee that makes sense. - Minimum amount should be $1,000.
2a - Use the fees to offset prices for Public Transportation.
3. Create incentive for locals to drive. Not people from 2 hours away who then inundate our city with cars.
18
@UCSBcpa Huh? What does it matter if the TNC drivers are local or not? A car is still a car. People who commute from Stockton as TNC drivers need to money more so than people from SF.
@USC. Your “facts” are fictional. “No one before Uber was driving to work in San Francisco”? “At most 1/3 of 1% drove to work”? That’s absurd. According to the SFMTA fact sheet, in 2000, 40.5% of SF residents drove alone to work. 10% car pooled. Only 31% used public transportation. By 2012, the figures change by only a few percentage points. Here is a link to the fact sheet.
https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/FactSheet12-30-13_updated.pdf
Boy, talk about alternate realities.
4
Looking at the big picture, have Uber and other similar services really made anything better, or have they just disrupted the system and created a bunch of problems without making anything better?
8
Oh please. Remember when everyone was upset about surge pricing during snow storms or New Years Eve? That is essentially saying "Dear Uber driver, please take me to dinner in a blizzard, but you shouldn't get paid more for going out in this mess."
The gig economy has it's problems, but keep in mind that most of us have the capacity to be hypocritical inconsiderate cheapskates at times. We can't blame it entirely on some soulless startup because they don't grow like that without giving us what we want.
4
@Pete
Uber may be soulless, but it is no startup.
1
True, not a startup anymore, but I think that prices my point. If it was a product no one wanted, it wouldn't have grown so much!
I posted a comment with the wrong word. I meant to use "insufficient." The sentence should read
Living close to Silicon Valley I have come to believe over time that the tech industry backed by hedge fund investors embraced the idea of "disruption" and "going public" as glorious goals with INSUFFICIENT regard for the idea of "first do no harm" to others.
4
History will appreciate this little gesture.
Another reason I would not move back to NYC.
5
The taxi companies did it to themselves. In San Francisco you could not schedule a pick up (well, you could schedule it but they didn’t show up). They drove right by minority clients and refused to go to the suburbs. The credit card machines were perpetually “broken.” The cars were dirty and the fees too high.
So I’m supposed to be sorry for them now?
18
Sure, the taxi industry had, and has, problems, but the day Uber started its service, it transferred the wealth of millions of taxi drivers mostly into the pockets of a few people, Uber's creators.
They call it the "sharing economy" because that sounds nice, but the reality is the this is class warfare, and the working class is losing.
31
My great grandfather made a solid middle class income as a buggy painter. Automobiles quickly erased his source of income. He had to find a new way to support his family. This happens in generation after generation. Trying to protect cab owners who invested in an old financial model late in it's life cycle will not prevent the inevitable.
15
@Old blue, false analogy and misleading logic. This article is about the concentration of wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands, and that is not limited to the public and private transportation industry.
6
@Old blue Well today I learned that buggy painter was once a viable career path. And uh, something that existed.
2
Sharing economy is what was promised, a sort of 'going my way?' solution to things BUT what it turned out to be was a way of contracting out yet more work so that employers had even less responsibility. Uber and Lyft drivers are contractors whose fees and fares are managed by the company but who are not even vetted. Outside of the data, these companies have no 'real' assets - the cars belong to the drivers, the hours are determined by the drivers and the costs are born by the drivers. And it has become a theft-by-service industry where 'what the market will bear' proves to be highway robbery.
8
I'm a big fan of Uber and Lyft in most cities because it truly is a way for people to make an extra buck while giving me a ride in a clean car with a friendly driver. In Manhatten, it is far more convenient to take the subway even with all its issues. It's fair for NYC to regulate these services, but it would have been better off adding a congestion fee first, so that outlying areas could continue to be served. The taxi industry is in a downward spiral - whether it's through the sharing economy now or driverless cars in 10 years.
The question is: why Uber and Lyft could not come up with an approach with the council where everyone could win?
1
The problem is that Uber/Lyft and Airbnb didn't really invent anything. They just used 21st century technology to connect people and services and charge a LOT more for it than before, while trying to circumvent all the rules which Taxi's, Hotels or B and B's have to follow.
Some will make the big bucks while most of us will pay the price for it.
8
Charge a lot more? That’s just wrong. Uber and Lyft charge considerably less than taxis while Airbnb charges less than hotels and traditional B&Bs. Critics of these companies need to at least get their facts straight.
3
Ok--so the sharing economy has problems--some serious. But why did it emerge in the first place? Some of the proposed remedies seem to perpetuate a service economy that either breaks down or caters only to the extremely wealthy.
2
First of all, it is not unusual for people to make financial commitments they can not meet. Personal Bankruptcy is a better option than suicide, but that is another matter. One thing I really dislike about the city is how it is always trying to fix things in the economy, as if they had any ability to do so. Essentially you need to let prices rise and fall and if people can not make a living in NYC they should move to other places. If you try to raise everyone's wage in order to meet rents in the Bronx all that you will do is raise rents in the Bronx. Duh. Supply and Demand. Do you folks not get it?
6
@john betancourt, until the laws of supply and demand basically destroy all the demand...that is, when the city has become basically a gated community of the rich and connected and is of little use or interest to the people who made NYC so great in the first place: the creative class, the spirited class, the class of urbanites who make cities wonderful places in which to live because of their diversity, their intensity and their and joy of being in one another's company. That's what made SoHo and Tribeca great until the affluenza classes destroyed both neighborhoods.
4
@Freestyler Basically, the story of San Fran in a nutshell.
I agree with Frank. You cannot, through regulation, bring back the NYC of old. The city that drew young, creatives from all over country no longer exists, except maybe in sitcoms. it has become the playground of the Uber wealthy. Look at how quickly Williamsburg went from being a downbeat outpost for artists to unaffordable for all but the very rich. NYC is over. Maybe Lumberville PA will pick up the torch.
1
Once again government intervenes not to fix the problem, but a symptom of the problem. The real problem: Insufficient public transportation that is competitive with cars in price, accessibility, and expediency. This is a problem that won't go away until officials (and taxpayers) realize that they actually need to spend money to save time and money (i.e. invest in the future).
7
Not addressed in this opinion piece or article is that all studies coming out now are showing that Uber and Lyft contribute many more cars to our roadways, adding to severe gridlock everywhere . It's not a sustainable human model. So this is a multi-faceted problem in terms of all human beings having life sustaining job opportunities as well as assessing what will create a more human environment in terms of numbers of vehicles. Living close to Silicon Valley I have come to believe over time that the tech industry backed by hedge fund investors embraced the idea of "disruption" and "going public" as glorious goals with sufficient regard for the idea of "first do no harm" to others. Maybe we need to tax significant disrupters.
7
I am a psychiatrist who works with low income people, who rely upon Medicaid for health insurance. When Uber and Lyft became popular, I had a number of patients sign up to be drivers. I saw first hand how my patients share none of the massive profits and employee protections and benefits of the people who run these companies, how they take on incredible risk and expense to earn some cash. I see how the streets are clogged, and there is a display of income inequality (and often a racial disparity) at many corners in the city, with some people hopping into Ubers and others waiting for crowded and perpetually late buses. I am amazed at how many of my liberal friends freely use these services without any pause to consider what they have done to our city and the ways the drivers, some of whom are my patients, are made more vulnerable. I applaud NYC city council, and hope SF considers similar measures.
11
@Lysie What exactly are we supposed to do? Sit on the curb forever waiting for a cab? The old model doesn't work, period.
4
@Lysie I applaud you. We ar beggaring our neighbors.
1
I speak to my drivers every day, as I use a ride hailing app every day to get to work. Not one is displeased with Uber, Lyft, or Juno. Nearly every driver has expressed their appreciation for being able to have the privilage of flexibility in their temporary or permanent career and have expressed contentment with pay. I also appreciate them, for their amazing customer service, clean cars, reasonable rates, and for speaking with me about our different life experiences. No yellow cab driver (who are now unaffordable and don't come around Brooklyn anyway), even had the consideration to use air conditioning. Ride-sharing apps are thriving in NYC because they are a necessity. I find it hard to believe that anyone who is anti-ride sharing app, has made an effort to talk to drivers who are not activists speaking on behalf of a lobbying group. A few drivers also informed me that the licensing test for drivers (the TLC test) was so simple that anyone could pass. So maybe TLC needs to up its game (but that would be too obvious).
11
@Eless
They would, of course, not confide their problems to a customer.
5
Businesses have to fulfill real needs profitably and with good value for customers to become established and enduring. Businesses that trick customers into buying things which do not serve their needs don’t last. Yet, for every good business established there are several that simply fail. The situation where people start businesses that cannot succeed is less frequent but it is astonishing how how such endeavors attract investors who have succeeded in totally different kinds of endeavors. These ride sharing endeavors really are the same as chain letter schemes. The profits come to those who start the endeavors not those who join in at the end.
1
Can't we just let the market work here? Focus on kids who cannot read, not drivers who choose to drive and earn money.
8
@Observer of the Zeitgeist
Okay. How do you expect this market to work? How is it working now? Is that not how this market works? Do you think that all these drivers who are headed to insolvency and driving taxis out of the market are going to exist separately from everything else, or are they going to affect everyone else?
@Observer of the Zeitgeist, the Middle of America, with a few notable exceptions does not have to live with the sort of traffic congestion, and its attendant health problems, that most of the large U.S. east coast cities have to contend with. As much as this move by the NYC City Council has to do with pay fairness and treatment, the really serious problem is traffic congestion. Of course, that is not limited to ride share traffic, but traffic of all kinds. NYC really, really needs to crack down on unnecessary auto traffic, especially in Manhattan.
3
The market is already rigged. There’s a concept in economics called externalities. It’s when a burden shared by society in effect subsidizes a benefit for the few. The classic example is be when a utility burns low grade coal. Its customers enjoy low rates but all of us suffer from reduced air quality.
The Uber equivalent is that they are undercompensating the city for the use of its roads. A few enjoy a relatively cheep fast ride but all of us suffer from increased congestion.
8
Promising people great riches from activities that anyone can do but not with any real likelihood of acquiring the riches promised is an old con. Uber and Lyft are lucrative for those who run them by selling their service to hundreds of thousands of drivers, but the drivers are going to remain poor. These services are deliberately misleading endeavors, intended to hook foolish people who are desperate for income that they just cannot achieve. In the end these businesses are going to ruin the lives of nearly everyone involved in both these firms and taxis. As long as people make decisions based upon hope rather than reason, the owners will continue to get rich. When the reality is appreciated, there will be little difference between traditional taxis and these services.
9
@Casual Observer
"As long as people make decisions based upon hope rather than reason, the owners will continue to get rich."
In our society making decisions based on hope has always been encouraged and celebrated. Without hope we have no reason to do anything.
In our society, earning tons of money for all different types of hard work (or not so hard work) has always been encouraged and celebrated. 'Owners' is not a dirty word.
Stop demonizing hope and stop demonizing rich people.
1
@lowereastside
I don't demonize rich people but I know when I'm dealing with people who have no consciences. People who gamble against the odds are choosing hope over reason and they always lose more than they win.
Medallions badly distorted the market. They created an artificial commodity without inherent value, and then working-class folks with no expertise were encouraged to invest in them. That is the tragedy, and the lesson learned should be to be extremely careful and reluctant to create artificial monopolies. Volatile investments + encouraging unsophisticated investors to participate = huge losses and tragedy, in any market. See 2007 housing bubble.
The fact that so many people want to be Uber drivers despite the 'bad conditions' (although wages are now significantly higher than the minimum wage, or what you'd make in many service roles), means that there is a much broader problem with the economy. We need to invest in education & training programs, and support people moving to new locations to find jobs that match their skills. Don't cap the number of Uber driver positions and at the same time make it harder to everyone to get to work affordably.
9
No inherent value? They allowed a street hail. Unfortunately technology provided an end run around that.
2
Look, Uber is just a manifestation of a "two-sided marketplace". Suppose you have a proverbial 5-mile trip. If drivers are only willing to drive for $30 rather than $20 , there will probably be a set of customers who's "maximum willingness to pay" is $30 or above who are their potential customers. Likewise, if there are no customers willing to pay $30 an adjustment will happen in this market to match supply with demand. As long as you have two willing parties you match in this market.
People talk about the "medallions". That's like requiring somebody to take a horse or a hansom cab rather than a car just because a group of people invested in an outdated system. We should be better than that.
13
I worked in the "gig economy" as a patent lawyer in Germany with my own living room law firm for a few years. What is really priceless is the feeling to wake up on a Monday morning and to know "if I don't want to work today, I do not have to". While I have never missed a day, to be that free is great. I think as a Uber driver you can have that as well. It might not be important for everyone, but for some it is surely a factor in deciding to work in the gig economy. Such life decisions should not be blocked by legislation.
7
@Peter The freedom to drive for uber or not is what is attractive to a lot of folks. I know lots of people who drive part-time, and while the money is not great ($20/hr less gas and maintenance), it's enough for some working people, students, housewives, stay at home mom's, and even some professionals, to give up some hours a week to drive and make a couple of bucks to pay some bills, or have some pocket money if only to order a pizza on friday night and take the kids to a movie.
3
@Peter, you were able to make ends meet, no? Uber drivers too often can't.
2
Not very honest broker on either side of this macabre game. However once Uber tried to bypass NYC from growing its badly needed revenues by way of inviting Albany as a fascist business partner, that left NYC very little choice. It is Uber's wrong maneuvering by picking the wrong partner that got it into this. Albany at the behest of Uber, beginning Jan 1, 2019, will begin by adding a congestion surcharge on all forms of for hire ground transportation. Where was the public outcry then?
3
The problem is that Uber et al are cheaper rides for many people in and around the city who are themselves struggling. In that sense, it is the poor hammering the poorer. Added to that is the gig economy offers most workers low wages and no fringe benefits. It is the taxpayers who supply the latter. There are so many things wrong with our economy. The gig economy is just the latest manifestation. With the hollowing out of the middle class and perpetual tax cuts to the 1%, we hare headed down a dangerous path. Not only is this unsustainable, but it leads to a great deal of anger. At the moment, many are uncertain where to direct their anger but rest assured, eventually, they will figure it out.
23
@j
Plus, to what extent is the Uber fare subsidized by the venture capitalists?
1
@SmotriWhat?!
For the consumer, Lyft, Uber and ridesharing in general is a win. But the largely unregulated system that allows this win produces externalities--unintended or undesirable outcomes, namely exploitation of drivers.
Setting minimum community-based standards for driver compensation is a fair remedy. It would preserve the positive features of ride share services--convenience, competition--while reducing driver exploitation. Cost would go up for consumers to some extent--fine, it should--which would presumably make legacy taxi services a bit more competitive. Aside from the individual drivers and their greatly devalued investments, there's not much to say about legacy cab services. They had an opportunity to create a better level of service, but largely missed it.
5
@Jim
Exploitation of drivers? give me a break! no one is being forced to drive a car or take the job, they decide to do that on their own. If the drivers don;t like their situation, they have a couple of choices: 1. they can quit their job and find another; 2. as an alternative, they can do what legions of American workers employed in private businesses have done for decades, organize and unionize and bargain for better wages, working conditions and benefits.
City's simply should not be in the business of private transportation or as you call it, "setting minimum community based standards ... for compensation." Cities should run local government and basic services and leave the economy to the grown ups--setting wages in the private sector is not within that brief--workers have a clear and lawful remedy here through unionizing if they choose to do so.
I'm not at all clear about what the "sharing" part is with respect to Uber and similar operations. Is it the dim possibility of having software amalgamate passengers to save money and road miles? Other than that (tail)-pipe dream, Uber is just an automated auction algorithm. But please allow me to describe a REAL sharing economy system: Citibike. Every year, 30,000 to 40,000 people (1) save about $1,200 per year, (2) improve their fitness while marginally reducing potential losses to their insurance carriers and reducing losses to carriers covering lung diseases, and (3) free up road footpring and subway seats. We participate in the system along with the owner. Their are Bike Ambassadors and Bike Angels. We all have the chance to ride free by helping out. Watch a docking station; you'll see people assisting with tricky docks/undocks, seat adjustment, securing loads. Hopefully, with pedal-assist bikes now normalized, the need for monster trucks to roam the concrete steppes of New York will decrease.
6
@analog If 30,000 to 40,000 is anywhere close to the total number of Citibike members, then it's likely few are "saving $1200" per year. That would be like assuming that all members of a gym are burning the maximum number of calories possible assuming 2x/daily visits -- which their membership may entitle them to, but which few are doing in practice. I suspect many are riding uberpool frequently (especially in hot or bad weather) while using their Citibike memberships only occasionally -- so they could be double dipping in terms of additional encroachments on the city's street footprint compared to the pre-2010 street footprint.
@analog
Citibike does whatever it does by taking parking from those who need (handicapped, service jobs requiring call on client, etc.) and giving a bonanza to parking garage owners.
All those rows of bike racks--most often empty--warm the hearts of the garage owners--and look how the rents have escalated.
The gig economy is but one of the newest lies on which our society is built, a set of lies built to protect the wealthy and powerful from having to share even one penny more than necessary with those in real need and struggling just to survive.
We can break free of this web of lies only through *non-violent* revolution, a nationwide Gandhi-esque general strike which would include protests in every major city in America.
It's not about voting (although we should vote, nonetheless). It certainly isn't about demanding of our representatives they create a more compassionate and fair capitalism. Those at the pinnacle of economic power understand only force. But it must be a moral, not a physical, force. The powerful will continue to throw us crumbs unless we pry their fingers from the levers of power ourselves.
Gandhi did it. We can do it.
11
@Sixofone In your "compassionate and fair capitalism," can I still work part time giving people rides in my car?
@Sixofone
Morality was invented by the church to keep its power over people.
Like many I am ambivalent. There are good reasons to cap the number of vehicles in the city by some method -- a core areas tax, a hard cap, etc. On the other hand, the taxi companies were utterly complacent and about 3 years late in developing capabilities similar to the Uber app because they were an entrenched monopoly with all the customer-unfriendliness that entails.
Many industries have been disrupted by the internet and by apps. We don't talk about subsidizing local bookstores because first Barnes & Noble and then Amazon put them out of business. We don't see attempts to baio out TomTom or Garmin because phones have replaced dedicated GPS hardware. We shouldn't be bailing out taxi medallion owners just because they were myopic about the threat from Uber and Lyft. We should, instead, be doing what is right for the city.
14
Everyone should prepare for the day when driveless vehicles make cab drivers, Uber drivers, truck drivers, etc obsolete.
6
@nerdrage
Thereby expanding Trump's and the Alt-Right's base.
If we don't figure out alternatives for meaningful, living wage labor for those "disrupted" by gig economy sectors like cab driving and/or driverless cars, we'll face political turmoil and immiseration that's worse than what we're seeing already today.
5
@nerdrage
Have you been to NYC lately (or ever)? Manhattan streets are incredibly chaotic - unlike any other American city I'd wager - with thousands of pedestrians, bicyclists, buses, trucks, firetrucks, ambulances etc. converging on any 10 block radius in any given moment. Traffic laws are routinely ignored by everyone - drivers, walkers, cyclists (including municipal entities driving buses, ambulances and police cars).
It will be many many many years before driverless vehicles are on these streets. And its not the technology that will preclude it from happening, but the trust and cooperation of all the players that will.
4
Boo!
Typical internet company behavior whereby people that do the work and provide the content are made the loss leaders, while the techies get rich. Same happens to musicians with streaming companies like Spotify etc. Tech has become an evil force in society and needs to be put in check for the greater good of working people!
9
What i want to know is why Uber specifically attracts big name liberals to champion and serve this elitist, anti-labor, anti-regulation, rip-off company.
It started in San Francisco, making their drivers buy expensive, gas-hog Town Cars, dressing them in footman's livery to pick up techie children from private school. Half their appeal was to wannabe millionaires who didn't want to get soiled in democratic cabs. Those techies also thought it was just fine to double-charge for rain or riots.
The other half was their phone app, which the cab company owners didn't want because it would give their drivers too much independence. If the cab companies had pioneered that, Uber would've been left at the gate.
But what I really don't get is hotshots like Arianna Huffington and David Plouffe shilling for them. Stephen Colbert, to his eternal shame, had Travis Kalanick on his very second show. The whole democratic shutdown required to hire an Uber is abhorrent. No wonder the Democrats lost in 2016.
9
@I Remember America You didn't make one single real argument against ride-sharing. Not one single coherent talking point as to why they are "elitist, anti-labor, anti-regulation, rip-off compan[ies]."
In fact, you provide a very good point as to why these companies flourished and why the taxi cab monopolies are struggling--the utilization of the smart phone.
As for Uber's roots, it didn't "make" anyone do anything. It didn't exploit anyone. It was a company with an idea--if you don't want to buy a town car and put on a tie, then you could work somewhere else. I'd have to double check the requirement that all drivers originally had to buy their own town cars, but let's say they did. Great! Who cares? As for uniforms . . . McDonald's also has the same requirement.
As we all know, the business model did democratize, providing for rides in everything from luxury SUVs to the dirty Honda Civic I rode in a few weeks ago (and promptly gave the driver a bad review for her lack of cleanliness). Just as Facebook originally was intended for only Harvard and then all Ivy students, today cleaning ladies in Tanzania use it.
If a working-class person is not making enough extra money w/Uber, they need to simply look for a better-paying side job. I'm not opposed to scrutinizing its practices and adding more regulations, if necessary. But it is intended to give customers a quick, easy, and cheap ride. Not to make any driver rich.
3
This isn't about "false hopes." Uber is an ingenuous concept and service. The problem is its disruption of incumbent "taxi" and limo services that have been ripping off consumers for decades, while the City rips them off in fees. Uber is simply too successful: everyone wants their cut, including of course, unions. The City "studying" this for a year, means the City figuring out a way to squeeze money out of it, or to collude with taxi corporations who will bribe them as a favor to intervene in the marketplace. One might not be unreasonable in asserting that an antitrust cause of action exists between the City of New York and the cab corporations it is protecting, and the consumers it is injuring. Observers often believe antitrust violations are always between tow or more commercial companies. The reality is that, the biggest source of collusion is between government and a favored company, may that it tries to protect, and thereby retards the economy.
3
Behind every new "technology" supported company is a huckster and a crime.
Turn to your commercial tv stations (if you must) and all you will see is an endless flow of commercials selling junk and nonsense: buy mine, no buy mine, no buy mine. Feel sick? Take this pill. Feel well? Take this pill, it will make you feel better.
No wonder Traitor Trump commands the allegiance of the mob.
3
I don't quite understand your argument. We need to worry about cab drivers because a better method came along? Perhaps if they had some sort of accountability (such as routes and rates agreed in advance) maybe they wouldn't be in such a poor spot. Should we go back to typewriters instead of computers? And the complaint that Uber drivers don't make enough? The medallions went down in value? So have millions of homes. What should we do for them? Perhaps they don't, but in many cases this is all they have. It is a starting point. And better than that, one that can be started at any time and on a schedule of your choosing. I'm willing to wager they make more driving for Uber than they would on unemployment. There are valid points in your article, but plenty of holes too.
5
While i am not a fan of the overall gig economy I have to say that what Uber and Lyft have is the user friendliness of the whole experience. Reserve via the app. Know the car that is coming and when. No hailing on the street and being passed by 5 taxis before one stops. Not having these dirty partitions, the constant ads and the annoying TVs. Never having to deal with "broken" credit card machines because the driver wants cash. Having a bit more choices than these tips of 15 or 20% almost magically appear. The cars are usually newer and much cleaner to whithout taxi "smell". And while the low fares are maybe unfair it's the other advantages that make me prefer Uber and Lyft.
6
@collegemom Agree with all your points. The only unfortunate thing is the sinking feeling that, with prices so low, someone is getting scammed (and most likely the driver -- shelling out for those newer cars, not properly calculating costs of wear/tear, insurance, gas, lower earnings than expected, medium-term likelihood of being replaced by self-driving cars). True, cab drivers had a bleak existence before too, but I think there's a tendency to be more sympathetic to a fleet owner who risks his own capital to buy medallions and taxis vs a faceless (or Kalanick-faced) startup that's valued at billions and bullying governments around the world.
3
I would disagree that we are a long way from figuring out how to solve the uber-problem.
We are a long away from figuring out how to make public policies without successful interference from those with a financial stake in the policies.
There is an action that governments could take on Uber that would have major benefits. Given that "rideshare" has become de facto public transportation in many areas, it could become publicly-owned. Let the cities buy a fleet of electric cars and directly employ drivers. Then close out the law-shirking big tech middle-men.
Alternatively, local governments could phase in a ban on all ride-share cars that are fossil-fuel powered. Uber would finally have the opportunity to prove that it is indeed worth tens of billions of dollars by making the largest ever investment in electric vehicles.
3
Econ 101. The value of a medallion at one point in time was 1 million dollars actually tells you how much cab fares were overpriced. In an efficient market, the price should be zero. That said, even when the price was 1 million, that does not mean the profits accrued to the driver, but rather the owner of the medallion. The owner of the capital receives the return on the capital while the worker receives his marginal productivity of labor.
People in America and especially who are unskilled those coming to America have a very naive idea that they will make a good living in these jobs. The reality is that the jobs where you are considered a contractor such as UBER transfer a substantial part of the risk and not the benefit (such as unemployment insurance) to the worker.
Drivers for UBER and in fact, I'm guessing most employees at these Gig companies are not equity holders, so they get zero benefit of the IPO.
3
This article paints ride-hailing services such as Uber & Lyft as exploitative.
In reality, the old medallion-based taxi-cab system is more so for both drivers & riders.
$1-million for a medallion is a cost which
- requires drivers to go into huge debt to get started -or- work for a taxi cab syndicate with even more exploitative terms of employment
- amounts to $40-60k per year interest expense for the medallion itself
- extra cost which then gets passed to the consumer
The only winner in the old system are the taxi-cab syndicates who naturally want to preserve their artificial monopoly.
1
This reminds of me the music industry in late 1990s. After living on the cash cow of CD’s at 18 dollars a pop for a decade with tapes and records prior, a little thing called Napster came along and suddenly music was revolutionized to the point of blatant pirating. The music industry did everything is could to stifle innovation until they eventually lost and had to reorganize and adapt differently to cater to new technology.
Uber is the Napster of taxis. It’s taken a service people wanted and made it cheaper, more efficient, with less waiting or hunting for said service. Things will change and balance but the days of the medallions reigning supreme are over.
4
When Uber came to Dallas, it insisted that it was "prohibitively expensive" to run the type of thorough background checks on its drivers that the city requires of cab companies. So the city let Uber skate. Several women have been assaulted by drivers with violent pasts that Uber said, oops, slipped through its process. Uber doesn't care about its passengers or its drivers. It only cares about its bottom line.
7
What's wrong with the government insisting that the corporations making the bulk of the profits from these services "share" a curtain percentage with their employees? Society at large can then continue to benefit from the service, the worker can make enough to live and prosper and the CEOs can still make a good profit, just not to the extent that the broader public, which everyone is a part of, suffers. Corporations owe more to the general public than jobs and the government needs to do it's job and figure out something that's manageable.
2
So many complaints that Uber under-pays drivers. If that's an issue, why not regulate their minimum pay? Fares could go up to cover it. Fine by me. It's a vastly superior system.
8
I am a fan of Uber mostly because of the (so far) good service and convenience. I can’t tell you how many times how hard it was to get cabs to go to certain parts of the city or the airport. They just tell you “no” or drive off, or don’t even stop. Plus cabs are many times dirty and sometimes don’t smell fresh. Or AC is broken, seats are worn out; most have not pleasant experiences and not cheap.
On the contrary every Uber car I’ve been in has been clean, they have been on time, they don’t say “I’m not going there”, and have all been pleasant experiences at affordable prices. I don’t agree with the business model of the company and I think drivers should get a bigger share of the fares. They are not treated like valued employees since they’re contractors.
I also think the streets of NYC are way too crowded. The gridlock is sometimes unbelievable here lately. I can’t imagine that Uber drivers are “enjoying their jobs” making very little extra money in those conditions. Plus drivers bear all costs of the vehicle - Uber is not reimbursing for insurance, registration, repairs (its not a company car), gas, parking, car washes.
What’s the solution? Maybe Uber needs a “per market” model. NYC is a unique market. Some companies have flagship stores in NYC just to have a presence there - and those stores lose money big time. NYC can limit the number of cars on the streets. There can’t be unlimited number of cars just because Uber wants to make more money.
5
@Left Coast Man That's really fascinating. In midtown Manhattan, where I live, I see Ubers that are dirty little old Toyotas, sleazy looking drivers, and drivers getting out of cars and screaming at passengers. One thing I like about yellow cabs is that, nowadays at least, they are pretty clean, ANONYMOUS, and you don't have to worry about writing reviews or having reviews written about you. i have also never had a driver scream at me. They also don't have "surge pricing," which seems pretty common in Manhattan.
3
Forgotten in this discussion is the reason why yellow cab medallions became so valuable. City Hall was the bumbling architect of their rise and their collapse.
By limiting the number of medallions, the City established a monopoly, created scarcity and then let investors drive up prices. At one point, a taxi medallion was worth more than a seat on the stock exchange.
In return, yellow cabs dominated just the parts of the City that were most profitable and abandoned the rest.
When Uber and Lyft upended this, the City failed to make good on the monopoly it created and compensating for its loss, thereby leaving small cab owners suicidaly in debt.
Legally, the City has indemnity, but this issue will not go away.
Government still has the right to create false monopolies that technology will continue to disrupt. Very few politicians understand this other than creating new regulations that are generally too out of touch to matter.
It is also quite likely those regulations will be deeply influenced by special interests, leading to further public distrust.
Uber has shown that, by being truly useful to the public, even government with all its power and moneyed lobbyists can't stop them.
The real problem is not Uber but government itself and the outdated limitations of the two-party, management vs. labor debate and the backroom system supporting it.
Today's generation sees Blockchain, open ledger legislation, voting and Cryptocurrency as opening up government to the people.
9
Uber's business model: "You do the work, take all the risks, and we'll keep the money!" Nice work if you can find it.
Also, a million plus for a taxi medallion purchased from a legalized protection racket that's suddenly worthless because of zero enforcement? Medallion owners should bring a trillion dollar class action lawsuit against New York for the bait and switch.
6
Uber drivers are not sharecroppers. They can quit any time they wish by simply deleting the app. NYC unemployment rate is at historic lows (4.2%) Surely these drivers have options if they are qualified and choose to find better paying, more stable employment. If drivers can't make at least $2300 per month (minimum wage) they are crazy to drive for Uber. The taxi business thrived on their monopoly for years. Now they cry unfair in the face of competition. What's unfair is that politicians getting protection money from monopolists.
4
@tomp I'm not a fan of Uber/Lyft, but you don't grasp that having a job is better than the alternative. A friend's partner is an Uber driver -12+-hr a day, 7 days a week - driving around San Francisco/Marin. It's the only sustaining job he could find. My friend lost her job in the 2008 recession & has since been stuck in retail. Both are past 60. They live a few paychecks beyond homelessness. In such a situation, just deleting the app is not an option.
5
I sympathize with the drivers, but they don't get it. In 10 years, their jobs will completely disappear, replaced by autonomous driving. They should worry less about minimum wage and concern themselves more with the reality that they will need to find other work, soon.
3
@Raul Acevedo You don't get it. Many - most? - of these drivers don't have the luxury of worrying 10 years out. They're working to hard to make this month's rent and put food on the table.
Serious question: How many jobs are you/your firm creating? If the answer is none, you're part of the problem.
4
As I understand it, Uber and Lyft charge users of their services less for the service's actual cost.
In other words, the investors in Uber and Lyft fund the "dumping" of a service.
This (IMHO) unfair price competition is at the heart of taxi drivers' current travails.
I wish that the media would pay more attention to this important aspect of the Uber/Lyft business model and the impact that it has on cabbies.
9
Welcome to the amoral world of technology. AirBnB is just hotels avoiding hotel laws, Uber is just a taxi company avoiding taxi laws, PayPal is a bank avoiding banking laws, and Facebook is a news reporter avoiding ethics laws. At least some people are starting to accept this.
66
Dude, you went right to it. Great summary.
3
If you really want to reduce cars on the road then congestion pricing, major revamp of MTA and capital projects to expanded mass transit. Also ban single occupant cars in Manhattan during rush hours morning and evening.
9
This is not a well thought out opinion piece. I am no fan of Uber's disgusting tactics, but reading this half-baked hit job really raised my hackles. It reads like something from Jacobin or the nether reaches of Huffington Post, not the world's best newspaper.
1. Taxi driver suicides should be laid at the T&LC doorstep first. As others have noted, having to go into massive debt just to start driving a taxi is a textbook example of the kind of corrupt and inefficient monopoly that (I thought) the NYT would love to hate. A one-time fund to support drivers whose medallions have dropped in value is exactly the solution, not propping up the corrupt system.
2. What does it matter that 9 out of 10 Uber drivers are immigrants??? It's New York City, for heaven's sake. Why wouldn't they all be immigrants? I don't get it.
3. "54 percent are responsible for providing more than half their family incomes." What sort of meaningless statistic is this?? It literally tells me nothing of value, and certainly is not worth the "gotcha" presentation it gets in this piece.
4. The fact that New York City is expensive is not Uber's fault, nor should they be responsible for fixing it.
5. Minor point, but regarding traffic, ride sharing may be contributing, but so has all of the narrowing of avenues (aka "road diets") that have been implemented in Manhattan and elsewhere.
Unimpressed!
12
I agree.... a week piece of journalism. While focusing on the plight of drivers it completely misses the substantial benefit to ....RIDERS! Clean, air conditioned vehicles, courteous drivers, great service and prices and I.d. Security. Capping the number of vehicles will again create a false scarcity and unrealistic values for exploiters ( like Trump’s lawyer Cohen) to take advantage of. As an older widely traveling couple, Uber has changed our ability to be “ out-and-about” in times of our choosing, in underserved neighborhoods, in security. A disruptor....yes, an enormous consumer benefit.....certainly!
5
I suspect driverless vehicles will be reaching the scene by the time legislation truly gets worked out. This would cut Uber's costs and prices and may be why they are so opposed to a toehold for drivers' rights.
1
Not clear on why Uber and Lyft have not been subject to laws on the books regarding other livery services. The method for calling the ride should not invalidate rules that served the public and the government well for decades in regulating a business that requires honest, licensed drivers and limits the street congestion of too many drivers.
This kind of business that asks forgiveness rather than permission is a plague that needs to be stopped with serious financial sanctions for not following the rules long before it becomes entrenched.
12
I'm all for the government setting up funds to help folks who are chained to a dying industry (so long as they're not jumping into that industry, knowing it's going down the tubes, and then looking for a lifeline). But that's part of the social contract we owe one another. It's not for us to drag down innovators just because they are innovating.
If Uber rides get more expensive in NYC, I'll have to decide whether to walk or take an Uber. I won't give into these monopolists by talking a yellow cab. And NYC doesn't deserve its subway riders.
Dumb regulations. Won't solve a thing.
1
The Times is culpable here. This is where I first saw the name Uber attached to stories about drivers making over 90k a year. And an Uber puff piece about senior make 150.00 in three hours.
At .77 per mile less fuel, insurance and maintenance, try driving 200,000 plus miles to net 50k.....
Maybe, on a good day, Uber/ 8 bucks an hour.
Uber driver compensation is fraud in Trumpian proportions.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/02/mit-study-shows-how-much-driving-for-u...
5
Just spoke with our Uber driver in San Antonio last night. He dives his own car a few hours after work most days and some weekend hours, too. He makes, by his own calculation, $23 / hour on busy nights and $14/hr when it’s slow. He picked us up within three minutes, late at night, in a dark neighborhood. While NYC’s attempts to ameliorate the plight of the taxistas are well intentioned, they will undoubtedly hurt a broader population... riders.
1
@George Fields
I've been driving Uber since I retired 4 years. I worked in marketing for 3 multi-nationals for 35+ years. Nationally Uber is less than 8 an hour not withstanding depreciation/fuel/insurance.
Uber is wonderful for riders, it is criminally exploitive of labor, your particular anecdotal experience aside. Sadly, 'labor' is as worthless as they can make it.
This is a dark dark Corp, culturally and socially Trumpian.
The sharing economy is not an equitable economy. There is no longer any correlation between the profits companies earn and how well their employees are paid. We read of people being laid off by companies that have had a good year. We read of CEOs leaving failing companies and getting paid, having stock options, and so on. We learn about companies complaining that they can't find skilled Americans to fill their job openings. We're told that college students need to major in STEM (and we heard similar things back in the 70s and 80s). We're also told that being a temp or a contract worker is better than being a permanent employee. We're not told that it's better for the employer.
One of two things needs to happen with respect to jobs in America. The increasing lack of permanent, steady, decent paying jobs and increasing poverty or inability to pay bills on time has to be remedied, perhaps with some well thought out government regulations. Or we need to have our economy stop functioning on the belief that we can pay our bills every month when we don't have jobs every month. Uber is symptom of what's wrong with our economy. Our economy is not working for working Americans any longer. People can't find jobs, they can't jobs that pay, and we're all living on the edge.
19
This research done by Parrott and Reich shows the disconnect between the marketing of the "sharing economy" and the reality of trying to survive in America. The fact that people are making Uber their full time job means that they are in for a long road. Do they have health insurance of any kind? do they have anything other than a subsistence life?
But most importantly what happens to those full time drivers when the autonomous vehicle takes over and the future is driverless? The real goal of uber is get a brand built and generate data for the driverless future.
4
The "gig" economy only benefits the corporations, who no longer have to provide benefits, workplaces, training, or equipment (unless they get welfare from the government to do so). People work harder and longer for less money, fewer benefits, no advancement potential, and minimal respect. Don't buy in.
19
A number of comments here read like talking points from the Uber PR playbook. The company's claims must be right, then. Or else people have bought a line. Or maybe those commenters are actually people working in a PR role for Uber. I don't know.
3
Air-conditioned sweat shops on wheels.
12
@Buziano Really? I have used Uber and lyft in Boston, Manhattan, and in South Florida. In every case the drivers were happy and said so. They appreciated the tips I gave in addition to the fare, but I did not see any signs of wage exploitation.
3
The writer just inadvertently made a convincing anti-immigration argument. She states that 9 out of 10 drivers are immigrants, who are experiencing a hardship because "jobs for uneducated workers are hardly in abundance".
So, uneducated immigrants are coming into the US and we don't have enough decent paying jobs to support them. Then why are we bringing them in? Don't liberals tell us that immigrants take the low paying, low skilled jobs that Americans don't want? That argument disappears if government is going to step in and legislate that they're paid $18/hr.
4
@max "Bringing them in"? I guess if by "bringing them in" you mean decades of foreign policy that systemically exploited the natural resources and labor of foreign countries for our benefit while setting up banana republic governments leaving their domestic economies devastated and the people desperate and with few options but to emigrate, then yeah, we're "bringing them in."
8
@max, Why does this have to be a liberal versus article? It appears if an Uber driver is paid $18 an hour, who works 40 hours a week, would make about $37,000+ a year if no days were missed or vacation taken. That is not, IMHO, sufficient for a family to live on in the NYC area.
For me, the major point is that ride sharing firms promised many things, but only they are making money. At what point do we critically examine disruption that makes a few people wealthy, reduces wages and offers no benefits, and leads to more middle class Americans who are unemployed and have been by-passed by innovation who want our current President to make life great again?
7
@Gabriel H
Leaving aside the debate as to whether the economic and political status of every poor country is our fault, the bottom line is we can't support an endless supply of low skilled workers.
Our economy is a GREED economy and it’s destroying the country while making a very few very rich.
14
There should be a tax imposed on anyone who drives into San Francisco. There are sufficient public transportation options. Congestion has become unbearable.
4
One of the biggest problems with commenters is that no one is obliged to reveal any conflicts of interest. Anyone can can pretend to be a disinterested bystander, so we have no idea, for example, how many money-laundering real estate dealers write in support of Trump, or how many Uber execs or employees write in support of Uber. Or how many folks with multiple taxi medallions write in support of taxis...
2
@TDU, Sufficient Bay Area public transit options, debatable. Clean and safe options, hardly. SF congestion is unbearable, but MUNI and BART are losing ridership due to mismanagement and neglect. The uncontrolled proliferation of rideshare vehicles only compounds congestion and reduces public pressure to improve mass
transit.
I can't talk about NY cabbies, but I can about Montreal ones. Up here, lots of people like Uber. There's an App to call them, you can see their path as they come to your door, and they're fast. From what I hear about Montreal cabbies, their cars sometimes smell, and often the cabbies do not know where they are supposed to go. True, Montreal cabbies pay exorbitant amounts of money for a license, spend lots of hours to barely make ends meet and are highly monitored with lots of bureaucracy. Bottom line, there's accommodation for both system. By the way, the City of Montreal, has also placed a pile of bureaucracy on the Uber drivers. So much for competition, and the potential for Montreal cabbies to try and improve themselves to compete with Uber.
4
So the government will get involved and everything will become less efficient and more expensive. Great.
More indifferent taxi drivers, fewer options at busy times, less competition. Great.
As for the "misery" of the drivers, Uber and Lyft would not be able to maintain a sufficient number of drivers if the situation were as bad as depicted here...yet they do.
8
@Chris To your second point: Have you heard of desperation?
Having just spend two hours on the phone with representatives of a private medical insurance company, I will tell you that government is not always less efficient and more expensive.
4
@Chris Yes, rules and regulations are such a waste. With no rules nor regulations things are so simple and who cares about safety, clean air and water and fairness for workers. Let's just sacrifice and get lower prices.
4
@Kathryn Paley
To your counterpoint: Try contacting a state run agency on an important matter and I think you will find it much harder and take much longer to get needed information. You will probably be transfer at least a few times to people who dont know the answer to your questions even though that is their job.
I send packages for a living. You know who seems to know the least about our USPS postal rules and regulations regarding sending packages? The people working at the post office counters (and forget their website for trying to get information - unless you have hours to try to figure out how to navigate it).
Jim
This issue seems to happen in every big city around the world:
If the problem is traffic, then limits should be imposed over EVERY car (private cars included).
Regarding people transportation, regulation should take care of minimum service levels, qualification of drivers and so on. That's an indirect way to rise income.
If you want to guarantee a minimum income, the solution should be applicable to every worker, no matter his/her activity (why taxi drivers yes, but cooks not?)
No one forces you to enter a particular market. This sort of measures can only be explained by the action of lobbyists.
9
I don't understand how New York City could possibly regulate this. A Uber or Lyft driver with a car registered in NJ or CT could pick a passenger from JFK and drop them to their apartment and city would have no way of knowing this because theoretically the financial transaction would take place outside the city. The only way the city could regulate this is by suing the ride share companies and getting them to cooperate. Even if that happens, soon enough an App would emerge that connects the drivers to the passengers by cutting out the ride share companies. An even scarier scenario is that a ride share driver has an accident while doing business in the city and had an accident. Their insurance could refuse to pay the damages leaving the other party on the hook for damages. This legislation is unlikely to stop the ride share but is likely to cause a lot of unintended other problems.
1
This all sounds like establishment trying to use antiquated rules to hold onto their perception of what “their” city should look like and operate. Can’t put the genie back in the bottle. What’s next, telling people they can’t buy a car?
4
Interesting that Ms Bellafante doesn't mention that the research she cited was funded by the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission.
Their "policy recommendation" is to impose a minimum wage for ride share drivers, raising ride share prices, and forcing more riders to take taxis and public transit.
At higher compensation rates, more people will want to work in the ride-sharing industry. However, the city will block this, imposing higher costs and less ride availability on all riders, and especially on the poor who look to Uber and Lyft as their best option.
5
@Greg It's sad that it's one of the few options for poor people, who are so desperate that they'll work 80 hours a week to make enough to live on, while undermining the taxi system which used to provide a pretty solid middle-class life.
1
Ms. Bellafante's piece completely overlooks the importance of a person's job in providing meaning in their lives. Many immigrants drive for Uber full-time and buy their cars, not because they are foolish or easily manipulated, but so they can earn a living and feel a sense of ownership over their career.
They drive for Uber full-time because its what they want to do, the same way educated, white-collar professionals choose to write for the New York Times over another paper. Drivers take on debt in order to turn a profit in the future, the exact same reason Uber itself regularly goes into debt. Immigrant or not, individuals are very good at finding ways to make money.
Let us not forget that poor immigrants - much like the educated class that seeks to help them - derive purpose from hard work and the more prosperous future it brings.
7
Meanwhile...Travis Kalanick cashed out to the tune of 1BILLION+ already. It's time to reconsider who is really paying the price for this.
12
Crocodile tears - ever try and get a Yellow Cab in Queens? That was the era of gypsy cab drivers. Why did the journalist not report on the substantial financial support the medallion industry gave DeBlasio for his election campaign and which potentially influenced his 2015 anti-ride hailing effort?
20
Most defenses of Uber I see here amount to: "It's more convenient for me, so it's good. End of Story."
is there any care for the common good any more?
Selfishness run amok is what is killing what's good about capatalism and the goose that laid the golden egg.
I know such logic stumps the reptilain brains of some libertarians, but for free enterprise—and a free society—to work over the long haul, there needs to be give and take. Not just take, take, take.
Wake up before the pitchfork toting mob shows up at your door.
20
@Shel
Waiting a half hour or more for a dirty taxi and then paying a steep price is not a common good -- unless you own the taxi company.
It's progress, not selfishness, that showed up at your door. Open it.
3
@Chris
So a rapacious capatalistic entity like Uber is the only solution?
That's not very enterprising thinking.
I know capatalism and Ayn Randian propoganda thrives on the notion that there is no grey area—only kill or be killed.
Nevertheless, there is grey area and solutions that can benefit more of society that Uber's winner-take-all model.
Again, you may find Uber convenient. But in dense cities like SF and NY it compounds gridlock and pollution, which is most certainly not to the benefit of the larger citizenry.
@Shel
This is ride or no ride, not kill or be killed. And melodrama aside, life is indeed far better with Uber than without.
I have a problem calling Uber or Lyft "ride sharing ". The vast majority of Uber or Lyft rides are not "shared". They are app-based car service companies, and don't promote car pooling or similar efforts that might actually reduce traffic volume and pollution. Hence, these services tend to worsen congestion in busy areas (midtown and downtown Manhattan), not reduce it. Why are we still calling them ride-sharing companies, if that's not what they are?
26
I think it's unfair to expect Uber to provide full time, gainful employment to people. It was never designed to provide that. Buying an expensive car in order to use it for Uber driving is insane. Uber should discourage that, if they can. In times when I've needed to take a part time job for some extra cash, I would have loved to have a job like Uber, where I can make my own hours and not have to deal with a boss who thinks flipping burgers is akin to making fine art. These sharing economy jobs are made for people who want extra income, not only income.
10
@MarkKA "Buying an expensive car in order to use it for Uber driving is insane."
And yet drivers will tell you that a new, spotless car is required in order to participate in these services. Uber has minimum requirements, and the rating system will punish you if you car is not perceived as pleasant and desirable. Next time you use one of them, pay attention to the car itself.
1
@MarkKA
Yeah - everyone wants to earn "extra" money in an economy that promotes a life style originally designed for the rich and famous, but in which we're now all brainwashed into thinking that we're entitled. It's unsustainable and spinning out of control. Consume, consume, consume!
1
Just 3 years ago in Vegas, if you were to use your credit card for a cab ride, you'd be charged $2.50 for card processing fees.
Thankfully, Uber got rid of such bad behaviour.
I wish I had that choice in all cities and countries. If it is capitalism you are against, why single out Uber ?
Yes, the consumer is benefiting, dont lose sight of that.
Just like Walmart and Amazon gove you the best prices but kill the other retailers and mom and pop stores..
So would you gladly give up your Amazon Prime if you were forced to shop at your nearby store ?
5
Some folks seem to settle this issue for themselves with an observation about how amazingly convenient the services provided through these companies are. But if many people are left economically broken and the city's car-congestion increases significantly as a result of that convenience then the service as currently structured is not an acceptable solution.
People are also making a point, as this author did, that the City Council's vote did nothing to address the problems of mass transportation. That seems silly - did they expect the new rule on car service licenses to include a rider that solved the subway's woes? There's a major subway upgrade plan on the table and, while that deserves great scrutiny, it can't be expected to be part of this aspect of the overall process.
2
I wonder what would have happened to the tech industry if government imposed a cap on computers in an attempt to preserve jobs of those manufacturing typewriters? Our "progressives" again illustrate just how regressive they truly are.
6
We love Uber in Chicago. And in the suburbs there is a huge positive that no one seems to mention — Uber helps keep drivers who have had a drink off the roads. Try to get a taxi to and fro at night in the burbs vs an Uber that shows up in minutes. My generation drove to parties, bars, and the like. My kids take an Uber. I’ll that model any day.
19
I am sympathetic for the need for drivers to make a livable wage, but artificially increasing the price and lowering the availability of Uber and Lyft is precisely the wrong way to do it.
As so many commenters on this and other threads have mentioned, the taxi experience in NYC is horrendous and sometimes dangerous. The subway and buses are dysfunctional. But rather than try to FIX anything, the mayor and city council, beholden to the taxi lobby, makes things worse. Passengers and residents are being punished to prop up a business that offers an absolutely inferior product. Not how a world class city should solve things.
18
Uber isn't "ride sharing."
Hitchhiking is ride sharing. Carpooling is ride sharing. Taking a city bus is ride sharing.
Paying a stranger to drive you to your destination isn't ride sharing. It's a taxi service.
New York taxi drivers pay huge sums to obtain one of the fixed numbers of taxi medallions. Then Uber comes along and sidesteps that limit.
Either Uber needs to pay market rates for medallions, or New York needs to buy back the existing medallions at market rates to taxi drivers. Then they all will be on a level playing field.
40
In many ways the "sharing economy" functions as the ultimate union buster. Any gains made by labor being organized (even if it was only via medallions) are thrown out. Every worker is just left scrambling on their own. This is not an advancement for our society...quite the opposite in fact.
13
Whatever happened to common sense? In a free market the things not yet invented will be invented by ideas not yet thought of; ideas that may be subsequently developed and introduced. Uber is not the first technology and service to disrupt the status quo, and it will not be the last. If cities want to limit vehicle traffic then they ought to zero in on the most significant source of traffic. That's not ride-share vehicles, but us - everyday commuters in our own cars. And then it stands to reason that the ride-share vehicles will be in even more demand, generating the income the drivers need.
3
>>>yet regulation does not change the current status quo much at all.<<<
That statement is oblivious to the extremely high attrition rate of rideshare drivers, half of whom last no more than 6 months in the system. Whether that's due to a change in their employment, the failure of their vehicle or a personal preference is irrelevant. The fact is that after a year, unless the trends change dramatically, there will indeed be far fewer rideshare drivers available in NYC.
2
Traveling around this country for business, I've noted that most major cities have seamlessly incorporated Uber and Lyft into their transportation plan. True, the cab drivers have suffered, but that's the cost of progress. In smaller big cities (other than NYC), you hardly see a cab. I live in Philadelphia, and can attest that nobody here misses the days of stinky, overpriced cabs driven by sometimes rude cab drivers yapping away in their cell phones. The ride-share services are a huge improvement. When the cabs protested, the people here didn't get behind them, and they did that for a reason.
NYC continues to try to regulate its way out of the problem. The only result is that it is behind the curve. And this is all added misery to the mismanaged subway system.
7
Uber & smilar companies needs to get more regulated and share more of the real costs of having employees. However, taxis and cab were businesses that were begging for disruption long time ago, expensive, unreliable and usually unfriendly. I am not fan of Uber co. but when needing a ride a taxi is at the bottom of my list of options.
5
I remember well the yellow cabs that used to pass me up only to pick up a white hailer a few feet away from me. Ubers and Lyfts don't discriminate. I have no sympathy for the medallion cabs.
14
Thank you Uber CEO .... that line of using it as a civil rights issue would have worked in the dangerous 1970s. NYC is safe , the subways are open to all.
Nine out of 10 drivers are immigrants. Wow. Another job Americans don't want. How would we survive without immigrants?
12
@George
Gee I guess Uber would have to pay higher wages to get American drivers and the government wouldn't have to meddle in the free market.
1
Too many T plate vehicles on the road. Wearing roads down and adding to pollution for just ferrying one person around. Emergency vehicles are frequently stuck because of these T plate vehicles double parking. This has to be regulated even more. Cap them at 50 thousand not the 100 plus on the road right now
Nowhere in this article was the concept of The Tragedy of the Commons, which basically sums this entire Uber thing up.
4
Want to protect taxi drivers? Well, let's look at Germany, where basically UBER is illegal. Silicon Valley types may enjoy the concept of disruption, but unlike the United States, Germany has rules, and a far greater sense about the havoc that American-style capitalism brings to society. The timidity of the city council's vote on UBER is no surprise. Let the marketplace rule, no matter the destruction it brings in tow.
13
The "gig economy" is just a newly opened front in the class war against working people. It requires a certain level of desperation among the workers that both parties have obviously tasked themselves with creating.
14
So you prefer an alternative of not having an opportunity to work? Are you willing to adopt a driver?
1
In many places (not NYC) Uber has made a huge difference by offering reliable on demand ride service where only spotty cab service existed before. If nothing else, Uber is helping take drunk drivers off the road and I'm grateful for that.
14
@George Mitchell in NYC Uber and Lyft go into neighborhoods that yellow taxis used to ignore on the regular. Anyone living in those neighborhoods and anyone of color who tried to get a yellow taxi when they had a monopoly can tell you plenty of war stories. Also, I've seen far more women driving in 2 months of using Uber and Lyft than I did in 15 years of dealing with yellow cabs. I definitely want to see a reduction in traffic congestion and the minimum wage raised across the board but NYC has yet to do anything that (a) isn't reactive vs. thoughtful and (b) addresses its abysmal, nonsensical public transportation system.
1
This makes sense to me in cities like NY and London where there are plenty of taxis to find/take. Not so in SF, where Uber and Lyft were invented. Where, outside of downtown, it is virtually impossible to get a cab, largely because of very poor choices by cab unions and government. I've lived here for over 20yrs and it was absolutely ridiculous how hard it was to get around this city before ride share. Yes, there is now more traffic, but no more getting stranded places because the cabs never come - no more debating whether to drive buzzed because the cab never comes.
The same goes for smaller cities where cab service and public transit are non existent.
There's a reason for the "disruption" - people need/want to get around. I'd be curious to hear whether drunk driving accidents have gone down post ride share.
I'm all for higher prices for rides with the $ going to the drivers. And I'm all for limiting the number of cars IF there are other options for transport. But don't try to take away the ability of citizens of every city to get around. It's not right, and it simply won't work.
I have taken multiple ride share rides a week for years, adding up to hundreds, perhaps thousands of rides. The vast majority of drivers are indeed driving part time in SF. Not all cities are the same.
10
Rather than a year-long study of the share-ride industry, NYC would best be served by an all-hands-on-deck, crisis management approach by city government officials to delivering mass transportation that actually works. For me and many people I know, our use of share ride services is directly tied to the dismal state of subway service. I would prefer not to spend the few dollars extra that a share ride costs in comparison to the subway, but it becomes a price well worth paying to avoid the breakdowns, completely unreliable service and overcrowding on the trains.
9
A gold rustler waits for someone else to find the ore and dig the mine then they steal it from them rather than starting one of their own. Without years of work from others to establish and maintain the taxicab/rider relationship and dependency, there would have been nothing for Uber to exploit and plunder. Maybe Jesse James was once hailed as a visionary as well.
3
In a free market economy the best service at the lowest cost should win -- and that is ride-sharing companies like Uber and not yellow/green cabs. City Council is helping an inefficient , costly, disruptive, unfair and frankly bigoted service survive that mostly favors the rich and privileged in Manhattan to get around town and that is unfair to all NYC residents that do not live below 96 St in Manhattan. If Uber is so awful why is there such a high demand for Uber drivers and customers? Taxi services are evolving into something better and yellow cab drivers need to adapt to a new business model just like everyone else. Also there is conflicts of interest with CC members receiving campaign contributions and graft from the taxi union. Council is not working in the best interest of all New Yorkers.
3
Honorable business owners earn their money the old fashioned way, they work for it and share the profits. Uber is not profitable and survives off venture capital while they're taking down taxis and hobbling public transportation by parking in bus stops. Taxis should develop the apps Uber and Lyft use, so the robber barons running these companies compete on a level playing field.
21
All cities need to look at the unintended consequences of the exploding rideshare businesses and make appropriate adjustments.
We have near-gridlock traffic here in the Bay Area almost all the time - the vast majority of these cars have solo drivers. We have several mature public transit systems already in place, and while far from perfect, they are now losing ridership, primarily due to the ridesharing businesses.
And who can blame consumers? They're paying artificially low fares because Uber's and Lyft's investors are subsidizing 20-50% of the true cost of each ride. And the drivers for these services realize fairly quickly that they're paying a losing game, which is why the turnover is 60-85% annually.
Too much of a good thing can be really, really bad if we don't look at the big picture.
16
Can we please stop calling it "sharing"? Like amazon, Uber is simply a company that is offering a service for less than it costs to deliver, with the end goal of wiping out all competition and becoming a price-fixing monopoly.
As Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism has been pointing out for years, this is an unsustainable business model. Despite strategically underpaying the majority of its drivers, Uber has burned through its start-up capital at a rate of $2.5 billion in 2015, $4 billion in 2016, and $4.5 billion in 2017. Here in Los Angeles, I have friends who, if invited to dinner at 6:30pm, will ask if we can make it 8:30 instead, so they can avoid paying the "surge" price for their Uber. (Simply drinking less at dinner, it appears, is not an option.) How will these cost-conscious ride-"sharing" consumers behave if and when Uber achieves its goal of being the only ride service left standing and has 24-hour price-gouging power?
18
Is it “gouging” or letting drivers earn more money?
The very term, "sharing economy" is a deliberately "false" misleading terms. Nothing is "shared"! Commerce is performed with people making money for their "sharing"--especially the uber-vendors like AirB&B, etc.
Why repeat a terms like "sharing economy" in ther news as if it has some validity?
17
“Perhaps this would give yellow cab drivers a bit of a competitive edge.” Unlikely! Taxis don’t circulate in my part of Brooklyn. And who doesn’t have a story of a taxi driver who refuses to cross a bridge, or pretends not to know directions, who can’t open up Google Maps... And I have the privilege of looking like a white person; it’s harder for people of color. Uber has many problems, but those do not include Uber serving its purpose: transportation.
7
What about the customer protection inherent in a taxi medallion or a hotel license? I'm thinking of a case in Milwaukee where three young women in an Uber vehicle were involved in a serious auto crash (not fault of Uber driver) and there was no clarity about who was to pay the medical bills for the injured parties. Licensed accommodations have to meet health and safety regs - what about Airbnb?
These "sharing" schemes seem to be tailormade for folks like my one wealthy sister who claims in all "sincerity"
she's helping these folks make a dime. Huh?????
12
@Sara
not gettin' too far on a dime ...
1
Uber is part of the mentality that asserts that markets will manage human relations in societies better than humans themselves. It was popularized during the Reagan era by free market advocates like Milton Friedman. The basis of this notion is that material needs and wants require rational choices to be at satisfactory resolved with limited resources and so the act of participation in the markets produces the best results possible. If all did act as rational agents, then markets might produce the presumed results. The trouble is that people do not function as rational agents. They behave according to human psychology which is often not what rational agents would do.
As Rockefeller noted about a lot of competitors in oil in western Pennsylvania, it leaves no significant profits for any of them. Uber will fail because it’s based upon having many drivers and many drivers will end up making too little to survive, so in the end it will morph into just another business like taxis and shuttle services, with a deliberately determined limited number of drivers who can make money doing it.
5
This is a symptom of the broader economy- ‘jobs’ available which won’t pay enough to live in the cities where they are located, and provide no or few benefits.
Even raising the wage to the minimum is insufficient. The underlying structural problems are lack of affordable housing and public transportation. Commercial real estate is also impossibly priced, driving out small businesses and either pushing up prices or lowering salaries.
13
The sweetly-named "sharing economy" has never been anything but a way for capitalists to get around regulations aimed at protecting the public, including workers. The rise of Uber, Lyft, Air B&B, and their ilk does suggest that existing, regulated services are not fully answering the public's needs, and those services and their regulations need to be re-examined in that light; but merely removing regulations, or allowing capitalists to evade them, is no solution.
30
What people haven't realized is that Uber is following the same playbook as companies such as Mary Kay, Amway, and Herbalife. While it's true that Uber isn't a multi-level marketer like these three, the basic underlying math is the same: The companies benefit by flooding the market with sales reps.
I don't understand why people willingly invest time, energy, and money in a field which, by nature, WILL be overcrowded. It reminds me of the pre-2007 real estate boom where everyone suddenly became an agent. Within a year, half were gone.
I've chosen to be a piano technician partly because so few people would want to do it. If everyone could simply hang out a shingle and do the same thing as me, I'd sell my tools in an instant and find something else. And I'm certainly not going to train everyone in my city to become one. We'd all starve.
10
If it wasn't for decades of sub-par service provided by traditional taxis (and not a few experiences of outright fraud) -- exactly what one would expect from a monopoly -- Uber and others wouldn't have grabbed so much market share.
Remember trying to get a cab in the rain? During a shift change (which idiotically took place during rush hour)? Or taxis that would drive up, roll down the window, and then speed off when you told them where you wanted to go? Or how hard it was for people of color or those outside Manhattan to get around? Or the blaring TVs you could not turn off? Or the feeling you were in prison with a one-inch thick plexiglass separating you from the driver? Or the 90% of drivers who spent the entire trip talking on their cell phones through surreptitious ear pieces?
The day Uber arrived, and a smiling driver helped me with my luggage and carried on a real conversation with me and we departed with a handshake was the last day I ever touched a yellow cab.
Sure, let's regulate the industry to ensure a livable wage for full-time drivers. But all forms of transit need to innovate and improve service, otherwise in the long run they will simply disappear.
And as sad as it is to say it, the higher the prices for drivers go, the faster driverless cars will take over. And no one is ready is for that quickly approaching day.
15
Governments are pushing back against Airbnb, Lyft and Uber. Sure, it's about power and who has it, economics, too, but health and safety plus who gets to decide how the country is run, are at the heart of it. Take building codes, for example. Should we just "Uber-ize" the application of those standards? See Mumbai to see how that worked out.
16
@Cherry Pearl Indeed. Same goes for Air BNB. I want to know there's some regulation and that a tree won't fall on my head and kill me (that happened with one of those home sharing services).
4
Nicer cleaner cars, no TV’s blaring in the back, doors, trunks that open and close easily, Ride sharing businesses have improved my NYC experience immensely. As to rents in the city, because of the cell phone com, I’ve noted that most of my drivers reside elsewhere (or at least their phones do.)
There will always be startup issues that need to be smoothed out and it’s way to early to favor the traditional “medallion” model over the new guys based solely on the drivers’ economic circumstances.
1
@William Tennant -- If you're referring to the fact that the phone number that appears on your phone when you are getting a call from your driver comes from a different area code, I think that is because Uber anonymizes their driver (and your) contact information.
@Mike S Thanks for clearing that up, but did you notice thow okay William Tennant apparently was with workers having to driver for hours from outlying areas just to arrive at their place of commerce.
This is the ugly side of "I got mine" neoliberal capitalism.
In reality, it is New York City that gives false hopes to thousands of low skilled immigrants, some of whom are illegal and are given sanctuary in the city. They have no jobs and businesses like Uber provides them with some income. For many drivers, Uber is a source of supplementary income. Now that income is restricted to only some people in New York. If NYC wants to reduce traffic congestion, the obvious thing to do is to introduce congestion pricing so people in low traffic area can use Uber at a lower cost. Now everyone, including low income users, pay more for Uber. If Uber is a bad deal, why so many drivers?
The city council is now in the grip of a new union of drivers and helping it to block others from competing for its jobs. It is more politics than fairness.
@Citizen Undocumented people can't get drivers licenses. So are you saying Uber is giving an income to people that don't have licenses? What?
4
Do you really think illegal immigrants don’t drive cars but have jobs? A lot of illegal immigrants drive without licenses or have fake licenses. And in some states, illegal immigrants can get driver’s licenses and tax ids to pay taxes.
As of May 2017, twelve states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Vermont, and Washington), the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have laws in their books that allow illegal immigrants to obtain a driver's license or some type of driving permit. And you can drive in NYC with a license from another state.
1
I will take UBER over those dirty, smelly yellow taxis who are never available after 4:00
4
@NYC Dweller I've lived in NYC for nearly twenty years, and I've never found a taxi to be dirty or smelly (except from excessive "air-freshener", which one finds in Uber cars, too). I've never failed to get a cab with the "Curb" app. I suspect some other agenda or bias here.
7
@J. D. Crutchfield Where in LIC do you manage to hail a yellow cab?
@Vgg Sometimes it's a green cab, but I've never failed to get a cab with "Curb". They come right to my door. One time the traffic was so heavy at Queens Plaza that the cab I hailed with "Curb" was delayed, soI opted for the subway and a long walk, but that would've happened with a Uber car, too.
Uber is just a cab firm, Amazon just a mail order company with an electronic catalogue, Airbnb just like the agency we rent our holiday cottage from in Devon and Facebook seems like the old fashioned party telephone lines with everyone listening in to everyone else. The difference is the HUGE monopoly power they have gained and that ought to be the concern. Boy do they need regulation.
48
Here's a cap that's long overdue: on the amount a taxi medallion can be sold for. Allowing medallions to become an investment, something only a rich man or a syndicate can afford is a sin and a shame. Scarcity value in a capitalist society sometimes needs to be reined in.
18
@Jim The Medallion business has become a scam run in conjunction with the City of New York. The rider pays for the medallion, it is built into the cab fare. And the cab fare goes to an investor, the old economy of government scammers. Very little of the money going to the cab driver.
In Los Angeles and probably elsewhere in the country, they were running a similar scam, "Become a truck driver and earn equity in a truck by driving for us, for next to nothing." Miss work and the owners took back the semi-truck and your supposed equity. The authorities haven't caught up to that form of slavery.
Why not leave Uber alone and solve the homeless - mentally ill people harassing the users of public transportation and public parks problem, etc.?
57
Leave Uber alone? So far Uber has demonstrated how it will conduct business when unregulated, and it involves scamming customers, state and local governments, the IRS, foreign governments, stealing intellectual property rights, tolerating sexual harassment (indeed promoting it through the tech-bro culture) and more. Guess what? You can work on homelessness AND regulate ride sharing at the same time! I'm not sure what you think regulating homelessness in public parks and ride sharing have in common, unless you think that Taxi and Limo Commission should be involved in regulating Central Park...
@Steve Uber Financing was doing the exact same thing. The interest rates on the loans to pay for a car were over 20 %
There is no SHARING in your sharing economy and never has been. Uber was illegal from day one and the cities have never enforced the initial laws on their books. The same goes for Airbnb. The terrible journalism which has covered the juvenile tech sector of the USA always has gotten excited over every new application which was never new at all, but instead an old idea repackaged and ILLEGAL. The laws in the books need to be enforced as written. In addition the only invention was the GPS system which was done by the US government and US tax payers. Without GPS these SHARING apps are useless. The Sharing economy??? How naive.
38
The sharing economy is a hoax. When the work force becomes independent contractors they are burdened with health insurance, filing taxes while trying to survive on in imbalance in sharing, no unemployment or disability insurance, no retirement's, stock options or 401 Ks.
Uber and Lyft drivers are responsible for car repairs that add up due to mileage, oil changes, car insurance without any of the above benefits. The companies take 32% of the ride while the customer is in the car. In smaller towns they may have to drive 10 miles to pick someone up, drive further from their home base ... all the driver's dime
34
Emergency vehicles can’t get around , the streets are clogged with T plate vehicles wearing our roads down and adding to tremendous pollution. The subways are safe late at night. Uber is NOT a civil rights issue . Frankly ridiculous that any comparison was made and degraded real actual civil rights issues. The City Council did this right , they need to get more of them off the road
7
I liked the old sharing economy better -- the one in which people, including rich people, paid their fair share of taxes --the one in which legislators worked to find common ground (also know as "compromise") on how to spend those tax receipts for the greatest good, with an eye toward the long term -- the one in which public spaces were actually public, not branded "gifts" from corporations -- the one in which my less-fortunate neighbor could buy a sandwich with cash, not be required to having banking privileges -- the one in which public schools and universities were funded to make a good education accessible to as many people as possible -- the one in which it was understood that by pooling some of our resources and working together in a democratic fashion, we could spread the vast riches of this country around a little, increase opportunity a little, make life a little less onerous for everyone, not just the ones who can afford to buy convenience and beauty and comfort.
121
@Patricia Nostalgia won't help. Our present economy is essentially no different from the old economy the writer longs for: a small elite group of property-owners control the means of production, and the majority must sell their hands to that elite in order to live. Two world wars and a depression changed the balance of power slightly and temporarily, but now things are getting back to normal.
Ah yes, pooling resources for the common good. Now, that can all be blocked by labeling it the dreaded..... socialism.
2
Perfectly expressed!
Call me old-fashioned, but I have no interest getting into a car with a stranger who is not regulated in any meaningful way. Regulations are there for good reason: to protect consumers and to protect those providing the service.
Should taxi service be improved and modernized? Absolutely. But we need to find ways to save the house, not burn it down and replace it with a mirage.
34
@cyclist NYC for hire drivers are all regulated - licensed by the TLC just like yellow cab drivers.
Come on. How many times now has this streamlined limo service been grouped into the “Sharing Economy”??
Airbnb is home sharing. Uber is not car sharing. Turo for example is car sharing.
Sharing means getting more use of existing assets, not buying new assets for sole commercial purpose.
10
@Steve Miller
It's a valid point. One could say that a taxi company in which all the drivers share a pool of cars is the true "sharing" model. Not one in which every driver must buy a car (probably the 2nd most expensive non-educational investment one can make after a house...).
3
A gimmick like Uber or Lyft that merely serves to clog the streets with superfluous vehicles...a gimmick like AirBnB that merely serves to put established hotels out of business, thereby removing the only source of income for many people on the margin of our economy...wait till cannabis becomes widely legal and then let's see how much byproduct like hemp-oil everything and hempen clothes and footwear catch on (not)...
5
The issue with Uber is very simple, they could reduce their own profits, 2.5 Billion in the first quarter of 2018, and drivers could make a decent living. Of course they will not voluntarily do this so min.wage standards that are mandated seems to be the answer. Ubers claim it would need to raise prices is true only if they wish to keep making extreme profits. As far as yellow cabs becoming more competitive, again an easy solution, start accepting fares to all the boroughs. They continue to focus on Manhattan so no wonder others services have come in to fill the void.
5
One could also consider some of the work that illegal entrants do is also a form of the 'sharing' economy. Most people like Uber/Lyft because it is inexpensive, available and efficient. The same could be said about low cost maids, cooks, nannies, lawn care and construction workers. But just because they are available and cheap does not always make it right. It'll continue to expand our two-tiered economic society which is currently second world, soon to become a third world one. Low prices and convenience over proper wages and working conditions for those with less than.
24
Don't you wonder why the focus on Uber and Lyft are always on the workers and not on the customers?
The thing for people who want to get around the city is the technology. You can see how long it will be before the ride shows up, and you don't have to have cash on hand. It's more convenient than hailing or waiting for a cab... outside in the rain.
Let the company and its employees work out the details. If drivers want to improve their lot, they should organize and bargain for their rights.
As for local politicians who want to capitalize on the new business model, work with each other and get some uniform system in place. Nobody wants to deal with policy differences between San Francisco and New York.
4
I regularly use Uber in Miami, Chicago, Boston and Washington, DC. Sorry, but the descriptions of the downtrodden, oppressed Uber driver don't square with the many conversations I've shared with my drivers. I have yet to have an Uber experience where the driver wasn't friendly, the car not clean, and where I wasn't delivered to my destination in a timely and direct manner, at anywhere from 1/2 to 2/3 less than the price of a filthy yellow cab.
21
For decades, since Jack Welch at least, corporations view employees as their biggest liability. The "gig" or sharing economy are but their latest attacks on the American worker. The idea is to eliminate the hourly wage and employment benefits and pay "on demand" rates for what amounts to piece work. This change will amount to workers subsidizing employers since the commitment of time to do a task remains will remain the same whether paid by the hour or by the job. The worker in the "gig" or sharing economy will be out of pocket in between tasks.
40
@Mark Yes, but workers have always subsidized employers. Employers get better at class warfare while workers hang on to 19th-Century strategies.
1
@Mark exactly. You put it so well!!! "Workers subsidizing employers": that's what it comes down to.
1
This part of our "kollapse" was evident years ago. I wrote a seven-stallment series articles about it for National Bus Trader magazine in 2015 titled, "Bad Regulations and Worse Reponses." By then, our City had allowed an estimated 15,000 Ubers into town -- without any of them paying for a taxi medallion, which at that time was worth $1.1M. If these leeches had bought medallions, which most would not have, not buying them theoretically deprived the City of $16,500,000,000. Cabbies wondered in what bank the payoffs were (Luxembourg? Zurich? Grand Caymen Islands?), and were placing bets on what month Mayor DeBlasio would be "swimming wit da fishes." In granting a franchise of any type, some sort of balance must be struck between supply and demand. Prior to Uber's entry into the City, it was the TLC's responsibility to strike this balance. This responsibility was usurped by the City's crooked or hapless elected officials. The percentage of every taxi driver's "deadhead" time soared as their passenger densities were thinned. The City has a Department of Transportation. What were these pinheads thinking? Or were their observations overruled?
Most of the then-13,000 taxi drivers' "take" shrunk by about 40%, and with Uber, Lyft, Juno, Sidecar and other Transportation Network Companies' vehicles swarming in, this invasion decimated the income of nearly 100,000 workers. This reflects the genuine dynamics occurring in our country -- dynamics that began more than 40 years ago.
10
@Ned Einstein
OK Einstein, if the city had been willing to sell 15,000 new medallions--guess what would have happened to the price? Additional supply would have driven the price down--indeed, it would have gone down to about the level it's at today (100k). Thus the city would not have made 16.5 billion dollars. Not even in theory.
The city established a taxi racket, like a troll under a bridge who limits how many people can cross. Uber and Lyft built new bridges. Now the troll is angry.
5
The medallion system that put taxi drivers in huge debt is not a problem but Uber is?
2
How can you have a fund for Uber drivers and not all the other low-income people in the city? Fantastical. (But then, it's NYC, home of Donald Trump)
6
For Über to be an enlightened enterprise, it would require philosopher-kings as Plato called them: people who are intelligent, wise, prudent and ethical autocrats.
5
Well. we can first stop calling it the ''sharing economy'' - it is the lawless economy where companies are breaking the laws, while not sharing any of the profits with the companies and people they are directly putting out of business.
Having said that, even when cities put into place laws specifically to address these lawless companies, they continue to break the laws after that.
The bottom line (which is synonymous) to all sectors across the economy, is that no job is safe, if you are making more than minimum wage. (even then). Even if you belong to a union, then you are going to be especially targeted because paying a reasonable (let alone living) wage with any benefits or security directly takes away from the powers that be.
Perhaps, you can ''share'' your thoughts with them.
41
The problem that Airbnb/Uber/Lyft have with doing business in NYC is that they are not contributing to the election campaigns of city council members, as the hotel and taxi owners do.
19
Honestly, New York politicians just create heaps of problems through union-backed regulation (e.g., the number of licensed taxis in NYC remained the same from the 1930s until the mid-1990s!). When another entity attempts to make the broken system more efficient, NYC politicians just pass more regulation, breaking things even further.
Taxi medallions were only worth millions because New York artificially limited their number, and a lot of medallion owners profited handsomely from this arrangement, which meant artificially high cab fares for New Yorkers, disgusting cars and rude drivers, and minorities left stranded on the side of the road. Uber fixed a lot of these issues; so of course, NYC must find ways to break things yet again.
It's always the middle class that suffers from NYC's redistribution and interest-group subservience. People are getting fed up. This is becoming a city of the very rich and the very poor, with a crumbling infrastructure and run by feckless politicians who craft some of the most shortsighted public policies around.
Oh . . . and this morning my train was delayed.
13
Point well made. Bad policies made NYC a city of very wealthy and a lot of poor low skilled workers. The low skilled workers now control NYC politics. Expect higher taxes and flight of the middle class.
1
Watch closely as the gig economy manipulates workers like Uber drivers.
No benefits and calculated false lures such as bonuses to funnel more profit into the few at the top. The convenience of the share economy has consequences we may regret.
10
Your numbers UNDERESTIMATE the minimum wage required to live comfortably in NYC IN THE CHEAPEST PLACE POSSIBLE. The number you gave is AFTER TAX income. So the real minimum is more like $75k.
THAT INCOME LEVEL WOULD PLACE YOU IN THE TOP 30% NATIONWIDE.
5
If you want Uber drivers to make more money, there is an easy solution -- tip them more!
The fact is that Uber can't afford to give the drivers more because the company itself is hemorrhaging cash. It lost some $4.5 billion in 2017 alone.
1
@Roger
No, the way for Uber drivers to make more is to have fewer of them. It's pretty obvious math, isn't it?
When everyone floods into a market, no one makes anything. If I take an Uber, why should I try to overcome very basic market economics by tipping more?
So now the Taxis drivers get to deal with companies and the City who will *own* them via Taxi licenses.
Maybe in NYC this makes sense. But where I live, getting a Taxis was an order of magnitude more difficult and less reliable in terms of being on time.
NYC seems to love crony capitalism above all else.
New York Times, stop calling it the "sharing economy." It is not "sharing" and never was. The term is a marketing gimmick promoted by the corporations that created the model in order to exploit workers. Exploiting workers by making them independent contractors rather than employees does not make "sharing." It's just another capitalist exchange, using a different model of owners exploiting workers and a sugar coated name.
McDonald's restaurants are "independently owned" franchises of the McDonald's corporation, which owns the land that the franchises sit on and earns about one fifth of its revenue from rent. If Uber is "ride sharing" then McDonald's is "hamburger sharing."
Uber's goal is to use this pseudo-"sharing" between drivers and riders as a step to replacing all drivers with automated cars. When Airbnb can replace home owners with wall mounted computer interfaces to welcome "guests" and robots to make breakfast, it will.
33
The traditional taxi is better as its driver needs to undergo training, get a license and follow certain rules and he or she is
responsible for his or her client.
7
Try a green taxi in the Bronx and see how it turns out. Most of the meters are “broken”.
This is a great way to reduce the congestion and traffic the wealthy have to put up with while simultaneously leaving those for whom Uber may have been borderline-affordable can be stuck without reliable transport due to the continued degredation of the NYC subway system.
4
@Stephen K.
"This is a great way to reduce the congestion and traffic the wealthy have to put up "
No, it reduces the traffic and pollution the bus riders (and bicyclists, and pedestrians) have to put up with.
Well over 1 million people live in Manhattan. This more than doubles during the day with commuters and tourists.
They cannot all be chauffeured around in private cars clogging the streets. If you don't like the subway, take the bus. If the bus is too slow, help cut down on people getting in and out of private cars in bus lanes and being chauffeured around blocking the buses.
A hefty congestion price surcharge in midtown for anything other than our taxis, with the income dedicated to improving the subways, which you agree need work, certainly would help.
@Lynn, that's spoken like somebody that isn't a minority outside of the center of the city. The city has neglected outerborough transportation with infrequent service, unreliable service, and poorly planned service. The city has neglected to protect minorities from discrimination by taxi drivers. The city has neglected to maintain current subways, especially for people that work in the service industry on the weekends (the poor). The city has only expanded subway service in the wealthiest parts of the city (Upper East Side/Hudson Yards). Should capping Uber/Lyft really be the priority prior to addressing the aforementioned failures of the city and the state? I think not.
Uber is yet another strong lurch downward in the American race to the bottom for workers incomes and working conditions. It took a generation to break the unions and a half a generation to eliminate defined benefit pensions across the workforce--pensions made normal only by labor organization. Now employers have instilled in a gullible population the notion that every job is temporary in some sense and worse yet, that workplace organization is outdated and 'not for me'.
Sure, let's "share' some (literally) poor guy's Uber ride...
11
The editorial focuses on the drivers, people who do choose to be drivers, and ignores the greater look at why Ride Share Apps have exploded. We wait on hot or freezing platforms for an hour for trains that have broken down. We don't even think of calling a cab in the outer boroughs knowing the chance of it showing up in a timely fashion is slim. We use Uber and Lyft because they are filling a need we all have, to have access to safe, reliable, and efficient transportation to doctors visits, to work, and to dinner. Until this problem is addressed by the very same ineffective group of leaders who think they know what's best for us, our lives in the city become increasingly difficult. Shame on the City leaders. They blame the State Gov for our mass transit woes and now seek to reduce our access to a viable alternative . This will not be forgotten at the ballot box
10
Sorry, but consumers need to be part of this. It’s sad that taxi drivers have been hurt by this, but this is a paradigm shift. Most consumers prefer Uber/Lyft to a standard taxi; lawmakers can try to put the genie in the bottle but it won’t have the desired effect.
5
@Jack Castle
"Most consumers prefer Uber/Lyft to a standard taxi"
Nope, not me, not at all, not in Manhattan.
Uber/Lyft barged in here and jammed up midtown.
I vote with my feet: walking, taking the bus and subway, citibike or, if tired and carrying a lot, a taxi, but I refuse to take Uber/Lyft in Manhattan.
Maybe if I found myself stranded out in the suburbs or transit deserts at the edges of the outer boroughs I would be forced to use them, but extracting $$ from the city and labor of their drivers to make investors billionaires while jamming up the streets is not something I "prefer"
4
@Lynn I didn't use Uber/Lyft even when I did live in a train desert. I walked the fifteen blocks to the closest train and called a cab on the worst days.
When they shut the train down by my new place I bought a scooter and used that and the bus. It really wasn't that hard.
I refuse to support this model and expect it to implode soon. Also, I am not going to get in
some stranger's car because I grew up in Brooklyn and I know better.
@Tai L
Great!!
It is easier to hail a taxi in NYC than arrange an Uber ride and the fares are very close, in my experience. Thus; I prefer taxis in NYC. However, taxi service in most other cities or towns is often an uncertain proposition, with vehicles that are marginal and often have the check engine warning light illuminated and usually not as clean as Uber vehicles. I get the government support of monopoly taxis that limit competition for the benefit of medallion owners and the recent initiative to essentially raise the cost of Uber rides. I trust that government intervention will not destroy consumer access to efficient, reliable and low cost transportation, but fear that it will with initiatives like the one announced in NYC. How about the assertion by some government officials that Uber is the cause of traffic congestion? Looks like overreach by government to me.
1
@Andrew
All those Uber vehicles are clean and well-maintained. For now. One reason is that many people have used the driving gig as an excuse to run out and "invest " in a new vehicle (often something nicer than they could have justified otherwise). As Uber and Lyft drivers flood the market, and with the inevitable result that each will get fewer customers, look for those shiny new cars to degrade. If not repossessed....
1
If taxi drivers want to improve their situation without government intervention, all they need to do is to bring themselves into the modern world by creating their own online ride-hailing service.
5
@Leonardo But that would be fair competition. We need the government to govern the economy.
2
It's always odd what industries people attack. When you are low skilled, you don't have a good selection of jobs. You can work fast food, retail. There isn't much. Driving an Uber is an option and at least you can set your own schedule. Sure, the pay is low and makes it hard to live in NYC. But how many people in NYC working in other low skilled jobs are bringing in enough for rent? And do people *really* think low wage work is "secure" with any employer? Do you think that if it gets slow at the local WalMart that they still let you work your 40 hours?
Sure, compared to professional jobs. Uber isn't good, but compared to other low wage work, it's comparable and nice if you want control over your schedule.
6
Uber is much appreciated by the populace. Taxis were slow to respond and ridiculously expensive.
Uber is fast and responsive. If people who drive for them find it unappealing or not economically feasible then it might be time to move on. Does McDonalds pay more? Maybe back to school for some training on becoming a welder? Lots of opportunities in this great country.
Government just stifles it.
4
@Ari Government has a lot to say about welders, too. product standards and job safety is a good thing.
3
"Sharing" is the smiley-faced corporate spin that the tech media spewed onto the back of the American zeitgeist--knowing that investors will never say "no" and the exploited will always say "yes".
17
Caps on Uber will stop people who wanted that job from getting one. What are they to do?
3
@Ilya Shlyakhter
Go get some other low-paying job in which they aren't forced to invest in a car?
1
While the author bashes Uber and other ride-hailing companies, has she wondered why these services have become so popular? I travel to NYC regularly, and I have stopped using taxis. Why?
- Comfort. Taxis are extremely uncomfortable for anyone over 5'5" tall with that big metal wall between the front and back seats. My knees constantly hit that wall and I am sore by the time I get to my destination. Uber and Lyft have no such issues.
- Upkeep. Most of the taxis I have ridden either smell, have worn out seats, and/or have weird decorations all over the car. No such issues with Uber and Lyft.
- Payment. There have been numerous times when the card reader in taxis has not worked properly, with me having to swipe my card multiple times before it works. No such issues with ride-hailing apps where payment is made easily via a phone.
For these reasons, I would continue using Uber and Lyft even if their prices go up. I really have no sympathy for taxi drivers who have paid for medallions if they cannot provide a comfortable and pleasant service to their customers.
5
@PK, just imagine the gratitude of someone at getting home worn out each evening after wasting their life shuttling around prima donnas all day. They must certainly dread the sun coming up each morning.
3
@PK"No such issues with ride-hailing apps where payment is made easily via a phone"
there are such apps that work very well in cabs in most cities I have been in recently
For the past two years I have been using Uber and Lyft to and from the airport (I travel a lot for work), because the cost is almost half that of yellow cabs or traditional car services.
But increasingly I would talk to the drivers who shared with me how they take all the risk and make so little of the money. They own the cars, pay the insurance, pay for their own maintenance, and get to "share" a little of the revenue.
This new ride share industry is the poster child for all that is wrong with contemporary capitalism. Some brilliant entrepreneur develops a new business based on a new technology and smart marketing and gets rich while paying those who deliver the product as if they are high school students. Or, in the case of airbnb, allowing people to make extra money at home while eating into the traditional hotel market which actually pays its employees a living wage and benefits.
We need to figure out soon that workers rights to a decent wage, health care, and retirement are the only way to ensure the future success of our society. A very well regulated and taxed economy was the key to America's strength post WWII. We do not need more billionaires, we need a true middle class back.
I have to go hail a taxi to JFK now.
72
Thank you for changing your habits. practice what we preach. Rare.
9
@AA I basically agree with you. However, I do not think this is a problem of "contemporary" capitalism but of capitalism, period. Of course, today's economy is not that of the 19th century but, in the final analysis, with all the changes in technology, etc.,Producing surplus value out of labor is still the basis of capitalism.
6
@AA
I work as a Professional Lyft Driver in Los Angeles, CA. I am able to support myself because of this job. I started working full time last October 2017. The car payments, maintenance, insurance, and my Amazon Music subscription are all tax deductible. Lyft takes 29% of the ride revenue and I get the rest. I am not going to get rich doing this job. But I will finally be able to save and take a proper vacation next year. The last time I had a proper vacation was in 2010.
What I love about this job goes beyond the financial remuneration. I love the fact that I get to go to places in LA that I otherwise would have no reason to go to. I get to pick up people in Malibu, Bel Air, Beverly Hills, etc. I get to meet all kinds of people that I otherwise would not meet. I tell my riders that 99.9% or my riders are nice people. I have given a total of over 2800 rides since October and only three of them turned out to be jerks. I will be 62 years young in October. I hope to keep doing this well into my retirement. For me it has ceased to be a job and more of "being of service". I love it.
5
Is NYC curtailing uber and lyft or giving the broken yellow cab industry a freebie? Seems like the latter, the medallion system has always been ridiculous and yellow cabs continue to offer inferior service compared to ride shares. But the taxi cab owners know alot of people in city hall...
10
A loss for New Yorkers and Americans... Let Freedom Ring! (and let Free Enterprise lead the way) https://pivotpointsolutions.net/2015/12/14/innovation-vs-monopolies-or-u...
2
This is another pathetic example of government. Instead of cracking down on a valuable service, maybe the government should do its job and provide a half-decent subway system. The fools spend $4.5BILLION for 3 new stops on the 2 line.
If the subway actually worked (and wasn't a foul swamp in the summer) almost no one would want to use Uber.
5
Gee, worker exploitation and vulture capitalism through the awesome magic of technology ("oooh....aahh!"). Who'd've thought?
11
Whom would we be helping ? Sounds suspiciously like Reagan & well meaning Liberals, closing the mental hospitals to free the people.
8
As someone in the profession at the time of the “deinstitutionalization” of state hospitals etc. I will acknowledge how some starry eyed, fuzzy headed liberals deserve some blame for the collapse of the mental health system and it’s consequences. However, in fairness they were lied to and betrayed by Republicans and other fiscal conservatives. The deal was supposed to be to close the institutions and then put the money into community based care. Only the former was done.
Our "progressives" love crony capitalism. New York city is such a backward place.
3
Why does the city government seem hell bent on restoring the taxi monopoly? Before Uber and Lyft getting a taxi at 5:30pm on a weekday was impossible. Now you use an app and know when
your ride will be at your doorstep. If the city and Deblasio really cared about efficiency they would smooth the way for these ride-sharing companies. Sure, let's bring up the minimum wage for the drivers but the city created this taxi mess by keeping the number of medallions low. Now they are trying to cover their tracks.
8
Right On !
Intelligent,thinking solves problems.
1
The "sharing economy" should be required to pay their workers as employees. Plain and simple.
11
Uber opened the door for people to make a second income without all the government restrictions that comes with owning a taxi cab. Uber drivers know what they are making, yet they do it anyway, why because it is still cheaper than paying for a million dollar medallion. People do it on the side to earn extra cash in times of need and some do it full time The invention of Uber created JOBS and INCOME where the politicians with their policies failed to do so.
6
Where was the author when the price for a taxi medallion cost 1.3 million dollars?
Under-educated folks are using the gig economy to scratch out a living for the family and the author concludes that is a bad thing? What would they otherwise do - buy a million-dollar medallion and a yellow cab?
Uber has dominated most major cities precisely because the horrible service provided by the incumbents: ratty smelly taxis and horrible public transit. So the author suggests the answer is to bring out more horrible public transit and limit the supply of alternative transport choices?
Folks like the author never seem to realize how Uber has simply demonstrated that their core assumptions about what real people want are so very... very wrong
8
The taxi medallion racket has long been a source of boodle for corrupt politicians, city employees, and venal lawyers. One of the expenses that a cab in New York City has to pass on to the rider is the interest on the $500000 taxi medallion that the driver or his company has to pay. I believe that the attempts to limit Uber are being made to preserve the medallion racket.
6
There is this book called "move Fast and Break Things"
Read it...these companies don't care a bit about anything but making money for the top.
From stealing content to having people work in overheated warehouses (I'm looking at you Jeff)
Any rule that could be broken will.
6
Who the heck needed Uber to earn some PT dollars driving livery in NYC? While writing my dissertation, I drove a NYC fleet yellow cab about 3 nights per week on a weird shift that no one else wanted; to help support myself and my spouse until I could finish grad school and get a FT job. What Uber did, by damaging the medallion taxi industry was to render that scenario less likely. It opens yet another curtain unmasking the "false promises of the sharing economy": the reality that the main benefits of Uber et al. are those accruing to the greedy owners in yet another sphere of economic activity failing to pay workers a living wage.
2
theirs new York trying to legislate itself into solving problems in the free market economy.
Is every free market "problem" a new way for government to interject itself?
People like Lyft and Uber. They are safe , efficient and cheaper then taxi's. Taxi's are like VCR's. Should we legislate our way back to saving VCR's?
1
Whatever you think of Uber and Lyft as individual companies, the City Council is doing exactly what government shouldn't do, i.e., trying to pick winners and losers in the marketplace. The taxicab industry in NYC has been corrupt and misaligned with consumer demand for years. Ride-sharing companies represent new competition, and consumers are clearly expressing a preference. NYC's attempt to protect its entrenched taxicab industry is anti-consumer and shortsighted, and will ultimately be unsuccessful.
6
This boils down to two ridiculous tenets:
“This thing where people work for money looks different from the way it was advertised – people are working more, for more money. So the obvious answer is to regulate until they don’t.”
“As measured by consumer choice, an artificially protected economy (traditional cabs) turns out not to be withstanding competition from a non-artificial alternative. Solution: extend the blanket of artificiality farther, deeper, stricter.”
Control, control, control.
“Fake vs. real” didn’t work out, so by fiat, make everything fake.
1
So the NYC central committee of the proletariat decided once again that capitalism wasn't working to its satisfaction and decided to update the 5-year collectivist plan.
2
I tried using the green taxis in the Bronx. Almost always the driver said the meter is not working ... after he started driving, and quoted me a high price and started haggling. I now use Uber or Lyft and all goes well. Courteous drivers and clean cars. I tip them well. And by the way, people in the Bronx use Uber and Lyft a lot.
If Uber and Lyft are such a bad deal for drivers, then why are so many working for Uber and Lyft? Now we have Uber drivers not allowing others to compete for their jobs. Why is that fair? The real problem is New York attracts a lot of unskilled immigrants legal and illegal. Many can’t speak English. They have no jobs. Low earning for Uber drivers is a symptom, not the cause. Either low wages for all or higher wages for some and nothing for others. The city chose the later option.
New York is slowly devolving into city in a developing country. And middle class is fleeing. City’s population growth is due to births, not migration from other parts of the US.
11
Yellow cabs are still highly competitive with ride share apps. There is nothing to compare with the ability to simply hail a ride immediately on the curb. The problem is that yellow cabs were never sufficiently professionalized/regulated so one is always subject to poor vehicle maintenance and often poor driving and directional incompetence. Not to mention discrimination. Even for the vast majority who must abjure the luxury of personalized transit for hire, yellow cabs are a conspicuous menace on the road with their inexplicable aggressive driving.
1
@Edwin
If you can find a yellow cab. I live in Manhattan and sometimes I would wait for 10-15 minutes to find a yellow cab. Not to mention trying to catch a cab between 4 and 6 pm when they change drivers. No thanks. I much prefer Lyft or Juno.
Let the market forces work out what the drivers make. There is no other profession that limits the number of employees of persons able to enter that market. So why does the city council do that with cab drivers???
2
@Julie
"There is no other profession that limits the number of employees of persons able to enter that market. "
Allowing too many cabs affects quality of life for all people of the city. I am not saying that the city needs to protect one calls of cab drivers, but there needs to be limits and regulations.
Instead of focusing only on the six who monied suicide (may they Rest In Peace) how about finding some of the 100’s who started working for Uber after losing a job, and can now feed their family because of this wonderful innovation with low barriers to entry.
People like them will be going hungry now the mayor has succeeded in “closing the shop” again
5
The "cap" is exactly the way big city politicians (and their lackey newspapers) milk the public by raising prices for basic services.
Essentially those big city politicians buy votes, kills entrepreneur, and provide inferior service to the public.
3
This article has it all wrong, as usual government regulations kowtowing to unions is the genesis of this mess.
Consider my new start up, Dumper. At Dumper we have a fleet of ‘eager’ workers ready, at a moments notice, to pick up your oversized trash, strap it to their vehicles and dispose of as they see fit. Sort of a ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ thing.
The trash collection industry is desperate for disruption, government regulations have pushed up costs and inflated wages. At Dumper we are confident our labour is working for you at rock bottom prices and no arbitrary price inflating trash disposal regulations are followed.
As is self-evident, the market always knows best and the most convenient option is the option the market always likes most. This is why we all need to let disruption happen, never questioning its benefits or real costs.
10
Interesting that no one cared about how medallion owners sweated taxi drivers for decades... Taxis have been rolling sweatshops for decades, but i guess because they were licensed sweatshops, everything was ok. Taxis could refuse to pick up African Americans, and that was OK. Taxi drivers could give you hair-raising rides in smelly cramped cars, and that was okay. They could talk on their cell phones (a known accident-causing distraction) but that was okay. Because the city bureaucrats regulated it, all was good.
But when the market finally blew up the corrupt taxi industry, well now things are intolerable! Wages are too low! Too may cars on the street (the top 1% can't get around town in their black cars!).
Here's a solution that the editors at the NYT should take to: Let's restrict the supply of cars for hire, so prices go up, congestion goes down, and bankers can get around faster in their black cars. For the rest, let them eat cake! (Or wait for the broken subway).
10
This is the straw that broke the camels back. I will start voting republican up and down the ticket. New York Democrats are always kowtowing to unions and now corrupt medallion owners and I’m sick of it.
9
@Nadir
Let me know how those Trump tariffs work out for you.
4
Uber and its ilk are not disrupters as much as they are rapacious capitalists preying on drivers who do not know what their operational costs are nor how to calculate them partnering with a riding public, also clueless about what it costs to transport humans, eager to spend as little as possible.
9
@OrigamiGuy same with these work at home businesses. I am a proud union member and refuse to contribute to any of this.
Sharing is when you let someone use something for free.
The "sharing economy" is a big fat lie, and if global corporate mass media wasn't designed to lie to us using misleading buzzwords, they would have pointed that out right away, instead of hyping buzzwords straight out of corporate press releases.
Uber is underpaying drivers so it can use below cost prices to steal market share from unionized drivers. As usual they are pitting poorly paid workers against unions and small business.
If you think workers should be paid for their productivity, instead of having it siphoned off as profits for the richest .1% of the population,
DON'T USE UBER!
21
Zealous regulation minded socialist policies at its worst.
Creating another monster regulation at the cost of the consumers and livelihoods of the most vulnerable group, in order to protect an earlier monopolistic monster created by regulations.
2
Drivers should set the fares not uber if they are true independent contractors
4
If we did not have to watch our mayor clogging up the roads with his motorcade so he can go to his gym in Brooklyn, his actions might not come off as hypocritical.
1
Why doesn't the TLC institute an app for their taxi drivers?
Seems simple enough.
There is at least one. Curb. Ask your next taxi driver, too.
2
Ride sharing has added greatly to the congestion in the city. The mayor wants congestion pricing when he and the city council created the increased congestion from all the Uber and Lyft cars added to the streets. Driving in NYC is difficult enough and has been made worse by the added cars and their drivers who block the streets picking up passengers or go too slow waiting for a passenger. It is ridiculous that our leaders cry about congestion on one hand and then clog the streets on the other.
1
Just to complete the step backward, we should create a new medallion system for ride-sharing drivers.
4
What is missing here is that Uber and others are developing driverless cars. Then the poor immigrant/student/ poorly educated drivers will get nothing. The law cities need to pass is a ban on driverless cars which is the true goal of this disruptive technology. Wake up to reality
5
It is hard to feel much sympathy for the yellow cab drivers. Their cars are poorly maintained and filthy; trunks so dirty that you can't put luggage in. You have to beg for air conditioning on hot days, and they all seem to vanish between 4 and 6, during evening rush to switch drivers.
7
I am currently "employed" in the gig economy and let me tell you, it's not good. I am required to show up for my "job" five days a week, but yet am offered exactly NO benefits & no job security. I thought that abandoning traditional companies and moving into a more "free" working environment would be better, however it is proving to be much worse.
There needs to be employment protections for the gig economy, it is basically just a cute & catchy term used by companies who value the bottom line more than their workers.
37
Drivers should set the fares not uber.
1
You can't afford the economy you want or the government services you need if all that is on offer in the future is a gig economy. Real prosperity comes from people working good jobs, having security, and paying taxes into an administration that supports the people. What is shaping up is nonsense.
4
I am a Professional Driver for Lyft. I started driving full time last October 2017 in Los Angeles, CA. I had just been laid off after my IT contract ended. I worked in IT making good money for some time. I found myself back in the job market in 2010 at the age of 54. The market for IT jobs had changed. There were very few full time jobs and lost of contract jobs that lasted only a few months. I found myself working contracts and seemingly always looking for a steady job. In job interviews I am asked why I have had lots of employers over the years. I honestly tell them that I would rather work than collect unemployment. Besides unemployment does not pay the bills. For me unemployment benefits are the "False Hopes".
What I found in driving for Lyft is a job where I can't be laid off. I am my own boss and I write my own performance evaluation. I love the freedom. I will be 62 years old in October. I am no longer looking for another IT job. If a good IT job presents itself I have the freedom to take it or leave it. It's a good feeling to be in charge of my own fate.
I hope Los Angeles does not follow NYC. There's plenty of rides out here. I am able to work on my own terms and support myself.
14
@El Guapo: I am sorry to tell you that few if any IT jobs will hire a man of 62 (heck, not even 55, and you must now that). Your skills, talent, maturity and experience count for nothing.
I am in more or less the same boat myself. Just waiting it out until SS age now.
If Uber works for you, that's great. But it cannot pay even 1/3rd of what an ENTRY LEVEL job as a systems analyst paid you -- and no health insurance, 401K plan or paid vacations or sick leave.
So I have a problem with that.
(BTW: if you were 54 in 2010...you'd be 64 today.)
When Henry Ford brought automobiles into the mainstream, the blacksmiths making horseshoes wanted their jobs protected too.
6
While purportedly about Uber, the article is really a critique of how difficult it is to survive in NYC in a low value added job. It says less about Uber than the general conditions of what used to be the lower middle class.
151
@fred This decision will clearly improve the lives of New Yorkers and improve the terrible subways and bus service--clearly a win for the people. Not.
This article doesn't ask the question correctly. The question is not: "Are some Uber drivers, AirBNB hosts, and Task Rabbits working long hours under tough conditions for minimal pay?"
That's of course the case. The interesting question is, "Would we be better off in a regulated world where FEWER gig-sters and drivers make a higher, more livable wage?"
We on the left don't like to admit of the cold fact that regulations of this kind limit job growth, despite their effectiveness at raising wages for those who retain employment. The NYT did a pretty good job reporting on this phenomenon in the California restaurant industry, where a high minimum wage for waitstaff spawned tablet ordering models.
The Uber drivers and taxistas in NYC who already have medallions and ride-share licenses have forgotten what it was like to NEED that license when they didn't have it, and all too soon. We need better infrastructure - roads and subways - to reduce congestion. We need a better education system so that fewer New Yorkers are forced to resort to the gig economy. We don't need wage protection for incumbent drivers at the expense of the next immigrants and low-income workers who will need those (admittedly meager) earnings.
2
Uber and Lyft deployed the most predatory and ethically dubious business models in existence.
They provide a service that people use, but the cost of operation is disproportionately shifted to the provider of that service, while they change the rules and fees at any given moment, yet bearing none of the costs of those changes.
Both initially operated illegally in a city because they knew ahead of time that it is impossible to tell the difference between their car and a passenger car.
Thus, the market became an uneven competition between those who were operating in a regulated state versus those who are operating under the radar.
To create their fleets, they targeted those who already had cars. They first charged low per fare fees (5 or 6% versus the 25% they pay now) and in the beginning, drivers did well, which attracted more.
As demand grew and complaints rose about surge pricing, both companies recruited even more drivers by providing subprime loans and later, direct leases.
Then, once they reached a point of provider saturation, the price wars began, which was, in essence, a race to the bottom for all.
Then they raised their fees and imposed an onerous review system, while both invest into driverless tech.
No one is making any money because there are too many providers relative to demand and they cannot quit because of all the debt they accrued.
Customers cannot have it both ways.
You cannot demand, while those who provide suffer.
2
Complete nonsense, you're like my grandfather, a generation ago, saying "TV wont last, its just a fad". Uber, Twitter, Facebook, these are the tools of generation internet, they aren't going anywhere, no matter if existing institutions might buckle around them.
51
@Reasonable lol. UM, "millenial" here. That's false. AOL? Myspace ? ... anyone?
I'm not sure if you heard the US "president" is playing games with Iran who could mess with the worlds oil.
How could Uber/Lyft exist without gas? You think drivers are dumb enough to walk away with $150/Daily income while paying almost double for gas? Think again.
Once the margins start getting messy things will change. Twitter is building its own coffin with its lack of meaningful operation of its product.
4
I know what you mean. . . tens of thousands of years ago, neanderthals (literally!) said the same thing about the "wheel". "Wheel", who needs that -- that invention won't last! And before that . . . "fire"! : )
Uber and much of the "sharing economy" are schemes to squeeze employees and avoid taxes and regulation. Who pays for the cleanup - us taxpayers. Here's a real Uber story that rings truer than talented artists and musicians kickstarting their careers. My friend was an Uber driver in SF and had to run so many red lights and exceed the speed limit to get the various Uber bonuses he lost his license. He put so much mileage on his car it it became a wreck. He no longer drives for them but is still paying off his debts and is driving without a license. Never Uber/Lyft for me, cabs only and they are fine.
10
People have not changed, they were always and will always remain self interested and sometimes greedy. That is human nature whether you like it or not. Uber cannot force anyone to either drive or ride so it is always just in the middle of a voluntary exchange unlike government which can force one side or the other to do that which they would not willingly do.
If you think Uber drivers are underpaid tip them well but don't blame Uber. You control what you pay so take responsibility for what you can control.
So many here believe that workers are "exploited" by the wealthy when the reality is workers are just as "exploitative" as are the employers. We, as a country, have been "exploited" all the way to having the largest, richest middle class in world history!
It's made to seem that every problem in the City is suddenly caused by Uber, including the lack of decent paying working class jobs, a lack of affordable housing, and the near impossibility of getting around. All of these things are a direct result of deliberately destroying a city where New Yorkers could actually live and transforming it into a playground and tax-haven for the rich. It's why both Bill de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo aren’t fixing anything. Both are beholden to big money, specifically big real estate and the tourist industry. The article states that drivers must provide for an entire family while misstating the insane cost of housing. Not mentioned is that residential housing is unaffordable because real estate is nothing but a tax-laundering scheme for the wealthiest. The also article fails to state that $1,500 gets you a studio or tiny 1 bedroom in an awful neighborhood. How is this housing for a family? You can hate Uber, but it's dishonest to pretend a problem is only about wages when it's primarily about a total lack of affordable housing. Further, as the economist Liya Palagashvili explained last week in the Times, curbing Uber won’t relieve heavy traffic either, as the "real factors for congestion" are things like development related "construction activity" and "tourism." Yes, tourism raises money, but who does it go to? Money from 63 million tourists last year certainly wasn't used to fix the subway system, yet it is also dramatically raised housing costs.
3
A few months ago, I was in a city bus on Lexington Ave that was side swiped by a taxi rapidly moving east to west to capture a fare on the other side of the street. The problem is not the ride hailing apps, it's the taxis whose drivers must constantly scan both sides of the streets to find a customer. The city government is taking precisely the wrong action, they should be phasing out taxis in order to make the streets safer.
1
@RCW What about double-parked Ubers and Lyfts causing traffic congestion and making it unsafer for people to cross the street (by reducing sightlines) and for bicyclists (by causing them and all other traffic to swerve around)?
How about stricting enforcement of double parking?
I propose we allow passersby to snap pictures / license plates of offending vehicles that auto-issue tickets. Or at least add cameras to all buses/city vehicles that do the same.
1
"We are a long way from figuring out how to disrupt disruption."
Because things should always stay as they are.
2
The medallion-based taxi industry should sue NYC for changing the rules and allowing Uber-type services, thereby producing an uncompensated taking/devaluation of their city-required medallions.
If some smart lawyer can make that case, there could be as much as an $800K compensation per medallion holder. And fewer suicides and bankruptcies among drivers.
6
Soon we will be facing many many long haul truckers who were first moved to the passenger seat and then out of a truck entirely by technology. What we are seeing is people enable to adapt to “disruption”, the highest aspiration of the modern capitalist.
Yet just as the capitalist created the socialist in the last century, he does so again.
5
If Uber is such a money losing proposition for drivers, then why are there so many of them?
3
@ David B
Your question is the answer to itself.
1
@David B
Because it's like gambling. You always think the next hand is the one thats going to bring you riches.
1
Times are tough.
1
Ride sharing options have been a blessing for citizens in metro Atlanta, where I live. We have scant options for transit, and our city is sprawling. Our population has boomed in a short period of time. Fifteen or 20 years ago, I could easily drive and park wherever I wanted to go, and now, it's much more difficult. I used to take taxis sometimes, when I wanted to go out for a night of wine drinking, and they'd sometimes take an hour to show up after I called. Or an hour after the call, they'd cancel altogether. "Sorry." Taxi companies here just weren't very reliable at all. None of this is perfect, but many U.S. cities are very different from NYC.
4
I don't see how making some sort of minimum wage or capping the number that can become drivers will really be helpful. The former will just encourage more people to become drivers lowering the number of fares the drivers could get. The later would certainty help the lucky who can become drivers, but hurt outsiders who don't get the chance to become drivers and have no other labor market options.
3
This comment is about San Francisco; my experience hailing traditional cabs in New York is better.
I feel zero sympathy for owners and drivers of traditional cabs in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's a supply and demand issue, and likely a geographic one too. There were never enough taxis to count on them as reliable means of travel. And because they had more work than they needed, they were rude and selective. God help you if you were black or brown or needed to cross a bridge.
My understanding is that Medallion owners in NY and SF run a racket of indentured servitude. Ride share companies are corporate and (relatively) faceless, so they are easier to hate. In the end though, aren't both systems about the rich getting richer?
This is Service Industry 101. I don't have a particular affinity for Uber or Lyft. I choose to use those services over traditional taxis because they treat me better and get me where I need to go faster. If the government wants to step in to ensure quality of life regulations for these drivers, I'm all for it. But they shouldn't turn a blind eye to the way things used to be.
21
@Jeff I couldn't agree more. Yellow cab drivers in NYC were notorious for refusing service before Uber. Nothing was done about it.
8
@Jeff my sentiments, exactly. I am a brown woman in NYC who was ignored, humiliated and simply left stranded by yellow cabs for my entire adult life until Uber and Lyft came along. After a great night out, nicely dressed, needed to ask the nearest white person to hail a cab for me in order to ensure a ride home; drivers regularly zipping right by me to pick up the white couple across the street; or looking me right in the eye while cruising by as I stood in the pouring rain holding four bags of groceries. I am sorry so many drivers are suffering so badly, but my sympathy is muted. Funny how nowadays, suddenly yellow cabs are so willing to stop for little brown me. Imagine that! ...
7
@Hadiza They were worse in Washington DC. Imagine the humiliation of having to walk to a hotel at night to get the doorman to hail a cab for you then offering to pay for the ride in advance to get the driver to agree to take you home.
There are many issues addressed in this article that need debate and creative solutions.
1. I like Uber. Taxi companies need competition. We paid an additional $600 in airfare because a taxi monopoly failed to show up when scheduled.
2. Can you live on minimum wage in high rent areas? No. This isn't an Uber issue. The supply of housing needs to increase in the areas where median rent and wage are wildly out of synch. How to do that well is the question.
3. Gig economy- Without a social democratic safety net it will just be a return to the aristocratic exploitation system of yesteryear.
22
The city needs to refund the money paid for the taxi medallions.
Several years ago, in the last auction, the city pocketed upwards of $1mm per medallion. This was because of the implicit promise that the city would keep limiting the number of taxis on the street.
The city broke that promise by allowing Uber and Lyft to add unlimited drivers. It's not Uber and Lyft who should be paying - it's the city. They are the ones who took the drivers' money.
14
Just like iTunes, Spotify, and others, Uber and Lyft are just another way for the wealthy to exploit the poor. Over promised and under delivered.
15
@Cindy The lower middle class earnings that a driver used to be able to make -- all went to Travis Boober Kalanick and the Uber investors.
Strip out all the value and leave the crumbs for everyone else.
1
It has been (mathematically) proven that working for Uber is one of the fastest and ''best'' way to bankrupt oneself in the America of this century.
So some ''people'' love'' to do it - nearly as much as following FF von Clownstick?
5
@pieceofcake Speak for yourself. My Lyft income keeps me afloat, prevents me from going bankrupt, precisely the opposite of what you claim. I wouldn't be able to survive without it.
3
As someone who benefited from a long career in leading edge technology, I can’t help but be ashamed of how extreme human greed has so often overwhelmed much of its benefits. Instead of making work easier and more rewarding, corporate leaders instinctively gravitate directly to technology’s ability to squeeze every last ounce of sweat from each employees brow. HR systems are optimized to keep every possible dollar from ever reaching the average worker’s wallet. CEOs always go beyond the need to merely justify paying for any new system. Squeezing labor to the maximum extent possible is at the core of every deployment decision. The legalized servitude Silicon Valley calls the “gig” economy is only the latest catastrophic result of this baked in, Wall Street driven mentality. I have spent years in endless meetings about funding new systems and applications. The primary question from senior executives is always “how much headcount can we cut with this”? A middle manager’s pay and career in corporate America today is almost solely based on that singular “accomplishment”. I have concluded there is only one answer to this suicidal march towards complete socioeconomic destruction. A massive overhaul and enhancement of both national and international labor laws must begin immediately. One thing is certain, these urgently needed employee protections will never come from today’s radically anti-worker GOP.
110
Andy, I share your concern and express nostalgia for when the global economy was not so connected. Unfortunately, we have gone over the precipice from which there's no return. SAD!
@AndyW
Well said and discouraging. The laws won't change b/c they're written by those that benefit from the system as it is. The version of capitalism that we celebrate is (mostly) corrupt and broken.
1
Or we can let the market go where nature takes it, for better or worse and if there is a collapse, view that as a cleansing and start anew. Even in the Great Depression there were people who were liquid who came out ahead.
1
I do not live in a city but I visit them occasionally and used to go their for business in my working career.
Within the last 2 years, I have been in NYC, Washington DC, Miami, Seattle and Charleston.. I have used Uber in each of those cities.
I have found the drivers more pleasant and talkative, cars cleaner, and trip experience more pleasant than using traditional taxis in these venues. Also, the drivers almost always use Toyota Prius or other more fuel efficient and environmentally friendly autos. Seattle even requires such to pick up at airport. I have felt much safer as a passenger in Uber than traditional cabs.This article makes it sound that the customer experience counts for nothing.
The traditional taxi system, especially in NYC, was broken. If the NYC government wants/needs to regulate ride sharing/cabs, its job is to ensure safe, environmentally friendly, and customer friendly service for the public. NYC has failed in all its transportation regulation to do that for its citizens.
I find it curious that uber drivers seem so happy while being so called "exploited". It seems the citizens of NYC are the ones being exploited by medallion cabs and its government. And of course, we visitors, are exploited. Traffic is a problem . It is a testament to failed city planning and the hyped need for people to live in that environment. A better idea would be for people to quit complaining about transportation and live where else where clean air exists naturally.
26
Uber users love the service; I bet those same folks also love Groupon restaurant deals. This is the essence of self-interest.
Neither of these, Uber for drivers, Groupon for restaurants, delivers the benefits promised to the operators. These are basically gussied up unicorns; fantasies of promise, delivering disappointment to the business owner.
7
In the Internet economy today, "disruption" means creating a service that violates the spirit of existing regulation, but is novel enough that it hasn't yet been made specifically illegal. Uber's flaunting of the City's livery regulations and Airbnb's evasion of hotel tax and disrespect of zoning are but two examples. Innovation ahead of regulation is a long-standing strategy on Wall Street (payment for order flow, off balance sheet asset-backed derivatives, mining of dark pool data for high frequency trading). But when regulators catch up, banks generally fall into line before moving on to greener pastures. Not so the Airbnbs and Ubers, who have no other business model, and continue to pound away in a selfish attempt to destroy the customs and laws necessary for sustainable life in a dense city like New York.
29
@Gib Veconi. Generally speaking "disruption" is not considered a positive thing. Far from it.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: none of this would be a problem if yellow taxis didn’t spend decades discriminating against passengers based on destination, or worse, race.
23
I lived in Manhattan from 2015 through 2018, and I can proudly say I never took one Uber ride. I found the exploitation of the drivers and questionable safety as a huge turn-off. I had the benefit of earning a solid income and living close to subways, but I still think New Yorkers in general can do their part to eliminate Uber. Stop feeding the beast and take yellow cabs. It will have a real impact for real people.
12
Your post explains exactly how it is supposed to work. If you don’t like Uber/Lyft/Groupon/AirBinB/etc., don’t patronize them. But do not force your position on others.
The NYC government trying to save the yellow cab driver is akin to subsidizing saddle makers after the invention of the internal combustion engine.
@Bob F I don't agree w the comparison. Both taxis and uber autos use combustion engines. This is not a technology issue. One car is heavily standardized and well maintained. One car is privately owned and subject to minimal safety requirements. One driver must receive a taxi license issued by a regulatory body. One driver can basically "sign up". Neither is perfect, but I think the gov't taking time to ensure safety and sustainability is appropriate.
Before there were ride sharing companies, in order to be allowed to pick up a passenger on the street who raises her arm, the driver needed a medallion. Uber, merely replaced the raised arm with an app (a distinction without much of a difference), and in doing so has circumvented the medallion system. If the Taxi Commission wants to change the system by, for example, allowing non-medallioned cars to pick up passengers in area under-served by yellow cabs, that's great. But until now, the ride-sharing services have been making up their own rules, and that is a problem.
10
Unless we bring back unions, the guys at the top will continue stealing all the money and the rest of us will subsist on crumbs. The wage gap will continue to widen and it has nothing to do with work effort or contribution to the bottom line.
115
Cities sold medallions and then did nothing during the early days of Uber to address the opening of the market to taxi-like services. It’s the government that created the medallion system and then failed to protect it. This cat is out of the bag now, and trying to put it back in hurts citizens and Uber drivers alike.
Further, Uber drivers may not be able to afford rent alone, but that’s a reality for most in NYC. The amount of money that they can make, on their own schedule, allows them to cover their portion of their rent as they split with others.
9
@Alex H
And if big bad government had not allowed these capitalistic ventures to evolve unregulated, social Darwinists would have condemned big bad government back then. When you create a bogeyman like big bad government, it can never do right (until, of course, YOU need it, then it's vital or not enough).
3
I find it laughable that the city who created a monopoly for the execrable taxi system now feels a need to protect this anachronism. The Times own reporting assets that this "cap" will do approximately zero to address congestion. This is a classic from the Liberal playbook. I see people doing well because of innovation, guts, risk-taking, and investment, and I must act immediately to regulate and tax it in the name of "protecting" my newly vulnerable constituents to did squat to innovate. Add it to the list of reasons why people despise government.
24
No, it's laughable that companies like uber and lyft, yet to turn a profit, financed by greedy venture capitalists are allowed to destroy the taxi business worldwide. These "regulations" are ridiculous when there are already 100k scab drivers working for deficit spenders like uber and lyft. Disgusting.
3
@RJ Oh please. The Uber drivers earn an effective hourly rate of $3.30 while Travis Buber Kalanick walked away with tens of millions.
What value did he create for anyone but Travis?
5
@RJ and when your social Darwinism leaves the majority without basic means to support themselves, it's their fault! They're not smart/innovative/fill in the blank enough and thus deserve their poverty. Remove ALL regulations (except the "real" ones that protect money, property, exploitation, warfare and other incestuous means of profit from the lesser breeds) and you have paradise!
4
How about a NYC-managed fund for cab drivers, FUNDED by Lyft & Uber activity? Unfair to have it funded by taxpayers (like so many ideas proposed in NYT articles) when they're not the ones deriving disproportionate benefit from this disruption.
2
> From the beginning, Uber appealed to drivers on the premise that partnering with the company would allow them to do what they really wanted to do, which was not [driving].
answer: universal basic income, not gig economy. if you wish people to be free of the shackles of <insert problem of low income>, UBI is the most sensible solution.
13
When I was a child - quite a while ago - I learned that "to share" meant letting someone use your things without you profiting from it. If I say that I am driving to Vienna on Thursday, and take you along - and even if you say "let me get the next tank of gas" - that is "sharing" if I am not earning anything. I don't need a commercial license, I do not need extra liability insurance, etc. Uber is not sharing, it is just an unlicensed taxi service.
I am the president of a public daycare center. We have strict licensing requirements, are subject to government inspection, our employees have to have the right education, we need the proper insurance. Parents know, however, that their children are in safe hands. "Wonderschool", with its "edupreneurs" probably does not have to fulfill any of these requirements. Yes it is probably cheaper, but I question if it is better.
29
Anyone remember Urban Fetch? Every bike messenger I knew that switched to doing that went broke. It was like pedaling nowhere literally.
3
Can you name any of the more than 1,000 auto and truck manufacturers who were in business circa 1908? Is that a reason to shut down the auto industry?
I'll put my well-maintained 11-year-old Hyundai up against a new Camry any day of the week. Uber should be concerned about the quality of the vehicle and not its age.
And as I don't go to NYC as much as I used to, I thought I was just unlucky when my cab from Manhattan to JFK had a broken credit card reader. (BTW, like an Uber, apparently, it had an immigrant driver. Unlike an Uber, it was not nearly as nice as my 11-year-old Hyundai.)
Living in the country, I don't have a Uber or Lyft to call, but if I traveled to the city more often, I'd join up.
@Observor
If the driver tries to tell you his credit card reader is broken, call and report to 311. It will remarkably be back in service right quick.
2
I would wager that a voter referendum on this subject would result in overwhelming rejection of what the council just approved. On demand car service is a hugely valuable consumer benefit and net economically expansionary. Clearly proper supply is rising to meet needs that are being efficiently met. Net benefit in aggregate.
Government regulation does play a role, in my opinion it needs to be biased towards consumer protection and not preserving industries particularly those that lack innovation primarily due to archaic rules/regulations.
26
Mr. Mayor, fix your own house before you go after a budding industry that is preferred by many customers! This is a problem of the city's own making. Two observations from someone who lived more than half his adult life in NY.
1. If the mayor and city council were so concerned about the welfare of the cabbies, then do something to end the absurd bidding war for a taxi medallion. Independent cabbies are paying more for a medallion than they are for their house. When they default on their medallion loans, the end result is often tragic. Fix a reasonable price for a medallion and eliminate the bidder war that is the root cause of financial strain for independent cabbies.
2. If the taxi system in NYC was so wonderful, there would be no demand for Uber and Lyft services. Supply and demand 101. Build a better product and the public will buy it.
43
@Frank
Agreed. This article's perspective is very anti-progress. A more customer friendly service isn't the problem, cities artificially inflating the cost of driving a car for a living is.
5
When automobiles first begin in New York City, I'm sure there were a lot of horse and buggy drivers that were not pleased. But NYC didn't limit autos to protect horse and buggy drivers. The city needs to move in the direction of what works nest for the city as a whole. That is the future. And options like Uber and Lyft are clearly a part of that future, no matter how much DeBlasio and the City Council won't believe it. This is not, as they say, to clear the streets of excess traffic (limit trucks then, if that was really the issue). This is a thinly-veiled attempt by the administration to protect a specific class of voters, and not do what's right for all.
17
Actually, the medallion system was created to address unqualified livery drivers clogging the streets a century ago.
3
this is an experiment that i conducted last month here in san jose. i had to activate my Social Security and Medicare last month due to my age. Going downtown to SS i used an uber. well my neighbor did it for me. the fare was 14 dollars. when i returned home i called the local taxi service. their number was all 7's. their fare came to just over 28 dollars to return home. i believe that uber will be my desired carrier going forward.
14
That’s a fundamental part of the basic liberal argument against ride sharing services. The regulated taxi likely had a meter or zones fare scheme they are required to follow. Uber sets it own rates, and adds the ability to make them fluid.
1
The city got itself into this mess and was happy selling Medallions for $100k’s and taking the money for their pet projects.
Instead of coming up with a sensible way to unwind the stone-age medallion system, they are regulating away innovation as socialists tend to do to protect their favorites.
There’s a reason the West Coast has a huge lead in the industry of the 21st Century.
25
In many of these responses, people extol the convenience—for them—of Uber. Yes, Uber is more convenient than buses and taxis because the consumer is not really paying the true cost of the transportation he or she is getting. If letting “market forces” work is the solution to all our ills, why doesn’t an Uber ride include the cost to society of the air pollution being created by more private cars clogging the road? The cost of carbon omissions is incalculably high, but its consequences are not immediate enough to get people’s attention. And why should commuters be able to ride in comfort when the Uber driver is not making enough to pay basic expenses? This is akin to our being able to buy well-made clothes for a fraction of our disposable income—but at the expense of the garment workers in other countries who toil for pennies. They are subsidizing our lifestyle, just as the part time faculty members at universities are subsidizing our educational system. This is exploitation, people! If we all accept the principle that hiring a person to work full-time means paying them enough for food, housing, and other basic necessities, we may give up some of the convenience and opulence of our life style, but some of the social problems that plague us will be addressed. All full time workers deserve a living wage in a society where many, many people can afford the lifestyle of the rich and famous.
243
Sensible to make cars pay for pollution, but isn’t it more efficient to add this as a tax to the price of gas at Federal or State level.
4
@Martha L. Miller
I got rid of my car and use Public transportation, Lyft, Juno and (rarely) Uber for transportation. I can attest that my rides do not generate more pollution than when I had my own car.
2
@Martha L. Miller
The world has become very greedy, and many people would rather save money buying foreign made American brand named clothing. Take the industry, for example. All of the major US manufacturers outsourced the manufacturing of their clothing to make more profit,and not to save American jobs. In this day and age, it's all about the big bucks.
I think you're dreaming when you write about paying people good salaries to make ends meet and live a nice lifestyle. It's the 21st century, and all over the world, the bottom line has reached its' apex with "it's each man for himself"!
Only in the workers paradise of a city that would elect DiBlasio and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez does the nanny state believe it is a function of government to benefit a narrow slice of the population at the expense of all the rest, while turning a blind eye to reality.
28
So Medicare for All and free college education would only benefit a few Americans?
4
@From Where I Sit
A narrow slice that got what it deserved after decades of lousy service and failing to improve to address competition. Dirty, un-airconditioned clunker vehicles, rude drivers who frequently didn't want to go certain places or pick up certain people, long-hauling fares, etc. They have only themselves to blame.
@Zejee: actually yes....people with really good employer-paid health care would lose out big. People in public unions with Cadillac health care will lost out really big.
Free college? every loser would sign up, and the schools would be hopeless overcrowded and turning students away -- "free" does not equal "accessible".
You would not be able to send YOUR KID to "free college" because some DACA Dreamer was in their 6th year of remedial English, studying "Feminist Theory".
Who knew that back when I drove a cab in Denver, in the 90s, instead of paying for background checks, permits and licensing, I could have just driven my own car and picked people up without any bonding.
I think it's funny that they've taken one industry, Taxis, and simply changed the name to "Ride Sharing" and circumvented a half-centuries worth of regulation... that I might add was put in place to protect citizens from riding in unsafe vehicles with who-knows behind the wheel.
What's next? Can I simply buy a bus and start picking up people along the main drag in my city?
148
@J
Uber and Lyft drivers are much safer then taxis. The entire concept creates a safety net that doesn't exist with taxis.
You have the drivers picture and car before they even arrive. The driver's company has your credit card and history being driven.
sounds better to me.
19
You are missing the point. It isn't about you. It is about the business model and the harm done to people and the environment. I hope one day Americans will start thinking about each other not just themselves.
11
@J I've ridden in both. Never once did i feel like my life was in danger in the lyft cars as i did when i rode in a taxi in san francisco, and thought we were going to get air on every intersection.
3
You have Uber and other ridesharing, who have moved in and have been able to operate without regulation, without paying anything to the city. You have taxis where operators must buy a medallion from the city in order to operate. A medallion that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. You have one heavily regulated side, and one with nothing. Either NYC needs to refund the monies they essentially bilked from the medallion drivers or they need to place a similar 'license to operate' to all Uber and Lyft drivers.
48
I agree wholeheartedly with this. But what to do with all the hundreds of thousands of Uber’s that are already on the streets? Should they be mandated to either pay a license-to-operate fee or have their license revoked?
3
@Alex
Get rid of them. They are a menace. The system that lets drivers spend all their time staring into a device while they look for their passenger and then swerve halfway out of traffic once they find them, is ridiculous. No wonder they're underpaid slaves--that keeps them unprofessionalized.
Modernize the taxi system that's been exploiting drivers in its own way for decades. Make it competitive. Pay people a living wage. Disrupt the disrupters. A cap ain't enough.
I bet that many who do this sort of work have few if any other options. Educated people with experience understand that this is a business that the organizers make money on, and the providers don't. Now as a part time gig where you don't have anything to do for pocket change this is fine, otherwise use the Trump economy and some training to get an actual job.
2
"The cap does absolutely nothing to address the crisis at the heart of professional driving in the city — the devolution into poverty of so many conventional yellow-cab drivers whose livelihoods have been devastated by ride-sharing."
Why should it? That's capitalism: be competitive or you're out of business. Yellow-cabs had a government-granted monopoly for a long time and they behaved accordingly with a lousy service that most people didn't like but had no choice.
43
@Pat- No, that is predatory capitalism. Capitalism does not have to be so vicious so that the biggest bullies win and everyone else loses. After the taxis are driven out of business, then Uber would increase their fees greatly and thus take more of everyone's resources that use it.
It is in our interest as a community to have existing drivers continue to make a living, not go into poverty, suffer and need public assistance. We are all interconnected, there are social needs and costs that impact us all. We do not have to let the predators run wild, without any consideration of the social or environmental consequences.
2
Regulations = Higher prices=Less uber and lyft rides=Uber and Lyft drivers who bought fancy cars (you can't use an old one) not being able to pay for them = Waiting for an overpriced cab in the rain that is not coming.
6
"The Sharing Economy" never existed except in the minds of the business owners who set out to exploit the under-employed and the unemployed and a compliant media - including and especially the New York Times - that bought into the hype and used the phrase at every opportunity.
What "The Sharing Economy" actually is is a way to create a legion of freelancers to whom companies don't have to pay benefits, or offer vacations, sick time, family leave, etc.
Like most tech companies, Uber made big, phoney-baloney promises that were bound to fall short. It's distressing that people were taken in by the hype but it was utterly predictable.
209
@Fenchurch
totally on point!
1
@Fenchurch
I don't think Uber may not have been totally honest with their employees, but then again, when's the last time you ran into an honest politician,lawyer or pharmaceutical company for that matter. Oh, why you even have that "special" president Trump who promises, then re-negs on those promises, or changes his mind in mid-stream!
I was a full-time Uber drivers for two and a half years. I completed over 6000 rides. It's very difficult to make good money with Uber because their business model is broken. In short, drivers need to know the destination of the ride, so that they can make a simple business decision: will I make money on this ride, or not? As independent contractors we're entitled to that information. Think of any other job where people work as independent contractors. They are always told in advance what the work is and how much they'll be paid. Not so if you're an Uber driver.
Uber also needs to stop lying about driver income. It's very difficult to make even $20-an-hour before paying your expenses. Also, Uber should tell potential drivers that they're going to drive their car into the ground for a pittance. I've been picked up by drivers in brand new SUV's that cost over $40,000. Why are they driving for Uber? To pay for the car! But that's a Catch-22. The average Uber driver isn't sophisticated enough to understand basic accounting principles. You will put an enormous amount of miles on your car if you drive for Uber. The only way that has a chance of working out for you is if you use an old, inexpensive car.
152
@Aurora
Drivers knowing the destination of the ride and refusing passengers accordingly is exactly what broke the taxi industry around here. Taxis had turned themselves into airport shuttle services and refused local passengers, no matter how desperately they needed a ride. If you lived in the avenues, you could wait quite literally for hours and make multiple calls. Uber and Lyft ended that, thankfully.
1
If you want a traditional taxi alternative that includes ride sharing, just transform the existing taxi system to the Sherut. It's worked as a win/win in Israel for decades.
3
Uber is awesome because you don't have to stand in the rain at 4 pm looking for a cab and watching them none of them stop because they are all occupied our out of service. Uber has been successful because consumers found a service they could rely on and want to use. Uber is not the problem, the old system was the problem.
115
@Daisy Agree wholeheartedly with your assessment. Let me add: No nasty Uber/Lyft drivers. No Uber/Lyft cars with faulty AC in the summer. No fighting with another commuter as to whose Uber/Lyft this is. No TLC to whitewash UBER/Lyft driver transgressions.
It's a shame that the politicians succumbed to the taxi lobby's $$.
1
How do you define success? Is it by the convenience you receive? Is it by the founders of Urber, Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, making millions while the workers make scraps? It is a sham and it is shrouded in the consumer delight. Americans freak out when factory workers are mistreated overseas, but turn a blind eye when it happens under our own nose.
7
@KAL Success is defined by people voting with their feet for a superior service. Taxis and taxi drivers provided a sub-optimal service. That opened up the market to Uber and Lyft. The founders were rewarded for providing a service benefiting all commuters.
Many of these comments miss the point about ride-sharing Uber and Lyft in small and mid-sized cities - or even in most cities other than New York or Chicago. The advantage that ride-sharing services have is that they have solved the cab-hailing problem. Try finding a traditional taxi in most cities. It is difficult unless you are in a downtown hotel. But almost everybody has a cell phone with a GPS. An Uber/Lyft driver knows where you are and where you want to go. You know when the driver to arrive and what the fare will be. Ride hailing efficiency, not a slightly lower fare is why Uber and Lyft are thriving.
98
@Professor M
No, it's not difficult to find a traditional cab in most cities. Just pull out your phone, google "taxi" and the city name, and dial the number for any one of the services that appear.
Spoken like someone who's never needed a ride home from a bar in Austin at midnight.
Our taxi companies should long ago have implemented these systems. Our vaunted free enterprise system should have facilitated that evolution long ago. It shouldn't have required the DESTRUCTION wrought by disruptive business models like Uber.
2
So the real lives of the Uber driver don't match the commercial... So what?
Folks choose how they want to try to earn a living. And IF they see Uber/Lyft as the best choice, who are we to question their choice? Because if it doesn't work out, they can..... leave. So maybe that's their plan- a revolving churn of temps. Kinda like a per ride cabbie typing pool.
I have no sympathy for medallion owners, that city slush fund has ended and they are left holding the bag. The culprit is not Uber/Lyft, but the City.
87
@profwilliams This is capitalism, in fact conservative capitalism, where employers and the job market determine the jobs of the vast majority of people. The idea that people get to choose is an ideologic illusion. Do you really think Uber drivers (or taxi drivers) choose driving and the low pay and long hours and expenses that go with it because they want to?
4
Profwilliams says they chose to drive, so who are we to question. And child workers "chose" to work in mines and factories and Chinese laborers lost their lives choosing to build America's 19th Century railroads and uranium miners chose to risk cancer and. . . . . No one chooses low paying or dangerous jobs--bad life circumstance does the choosing.
5
If folks could really "choose how they make a living" I doubt if Uber would exist. Those drivers' job opportunities are typically very limited in our "modern" economy.
3
Nothing is ever entirely positive nor negative, and every disruption eventually settles into its niche. I see pros and cons to both 'sides' of this issue, and I suspect in the end it'll all come out in the wash with neither side being fully vindicated. That would be because neither is fully correct, but I know better than to argue with the true believers, so I'll leave it at that.
What I find more illuminating here, is the tendency for internal divisiveness among liberals (or at least liberal-leaning) over such issues. Who needs enemies when there is so much animosity to spread around? In the end, those who most need extra income, over whom both sides are ostensibly arguing, will be the losers: once again, conservative corporate interests will triumph, and liberals will wonder how things got so bad. When we look in the mirror, we should be sure to notice the bigger picture receding in the distance behind us. Sigh.
12
It is such a mixed bag. Being able to take an Uber anywhere at any time in NYC is convenient. However, the traffic has gotten to the point where there is grid lock all the time. I don't see why they don't limit the taxi medallions and try to balance out the traffic. It's no fun to be standing in the rain or cold and have the taxis pass you by. I was one of the early users of Uber and it's far superior to trying to hail a taxi. I love having the photo of the car and driver and being able to call them and tell them exactly where you are. It's also great having the map and receipt emailed to you. Lyft is also good for the same reasons. I've used both Uber & Lyft in other cities as well. I've started using Curb in the taxis and that's a start for the taxis to catch up. Something does have to be done about the grid lock though.
9
@Kathleen They do limit the taxi medallions. There are fewer than 14k medallions currently on cabs.
3
@Kathleen Any smart cab organization would already have an app just like say Uber, it can't be that difficult and would eliminate the variation except for price.
2
@vulcanalex They do- it's called Curb.com
Not all "new economy" or "sharing economy" models are created equal.
Some, such as Uber, have a deserved reputation as exploitative scofflaws and others, like Upwork and Freelance Clinician https://freelanceclinician.com/ have very clear contracts and roles- the service providers are independent contractors and set their rates and control their work.
With models like these, the workers are truly entrepreneurs and benefit from the flexibility and choice these platforms offer.
5
@Samuel S. Sprague The difference is that those groups actually have skills that are valuable, not just a car and some free time.
1
@vulcanalex this is true.
The workers' skills, negotiating power, control over the work and a written contract are all factors that determine if one is an independent contractor.
With Freelance Clinician and Upwork, those criteria are met.
With Uber and Lyft, not so much.
Driving in the city is a skill.
1
WaHI to LGA ---- $42 plus a tip (the old way)
$28 no tip required (the new way)
That's why
10
Uber is not about "Sharing Economy", Uber is just another parasite using existing infrastructure without paying for it and by breaking rules on a global scale.
Which is why Uber has been banned in quite a few places.
186
Classic liberal drivel. Lots of statistics to back up socialist goals. So, using your statistics. 9 of 10 immigrants? Some probably leaving failed “democratic socialist” states like Venezuela. >30% using Uber to finance furthering themselves? That’s awesome. Rather than shut down opportunity for the other 70%, why not think about increasing educational opportunities in a way that doesn’t cause colleges and university’s to jack up tuition? Face it, free enterprise is flawed, but find me something that works better. And don’t talk about legislation. As Einstein said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting a different result. Have a nice day.
5
Something that works better - social democracy as in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and other countries in Europe where quality of life for the majority is superior to the USA and those countries that follow its version of capitalism.
17
Care to discuss the immigration policies of these countries?
@My Aim Is True, who gives a damn about their immigration policies? The point is is that people get a lot of services for their tax dollars and have a good standard of living. But conservatives hate that, because that would require the rich to pay their fair share.
My biggest concern with this article's argument is the 'crisis' of medallion drivers in the wake of Uber. I am sorry for those medallion drivers but they made a decisions based on a calculated risk and they lost. How is it the city's responsibility to make them whole again or even temper the loss? That's akin to saying that I bought a stock that went way down and it's the city's responsibility to bail me out? Not!
29
@Mike L Since the city is the beneficiary of selling medallions and limiting choice they have an interest in the process. A somewhat corrupt interests. The medallion system is basically corrupt and should never been allowed.
4
@Mike L I wonder if you’d be repeating this line of argument if you were seriously sick or injured or unemployed and were in desperate straights because of some decisions you made along the way. The notion that we are free to make our own decisions and thus to control their consequences is an ideologic illusion of capitalism.
2
The sharing economy is just another way to say cheap labor. It is the antithesis of the effective collectivization of power through unionization. Crush it where ever it pops up.
73
@greg Good point originally but why is it government's responsibility to protect extortionist unions? The market will eventually even these things out, I am all for educating people to be able to evaluate opportunities, but if you are ignorant you probably will be taken advantage of somehow.
3
So cabbies shouldn’t be able to make a living? Cab drivers are not living in luxury.
1
I use Uber in Mumbai and frequently chat to drivers during rides. This bit of anecdotal evidence suggests that Uber and other of its ilk have provided a well paying alternative in a city where jobs are hard to come by.
Also seen from the perspective of passengers, Uber is a real relief from an earlier time when the licensed cabbies would refuse rides, rig their meters and use longer routes than necessary.
In a country where state regulation is weak and implementation of regulation even weaker, private companies such as Uber are far more rigorous at implementing basic norms that make commuting safe and dependable.
Local governments worldwide should be wary of over-reaching and allow more leeway to markets to solve complex problems.
8
@Ravi Khemka Great points, but NYC is in the US, not India.
2
@Ravi Khemka Having cabbies rig meters in foreign countries is very frustrating. It has happened to me many times. There is basically no protection against it in many places. If using Uber in a foreign country prevents some price gouging I am all for it.
In places like NYC I don't see how managing the number of cars on the road is a bad thing though. The availability of rides and the effect on traffic need to be weighed against each other.
1
Well! I am shocked -- shocked! -- that perhaps there was very sound reasons NYC established a medallion system!
This is a classic "tragedy of the commons" situation, as addressed in Garret Hardin's seminal 1968 essay by that same name.
A common space or resource, can be ruined, exhausted, or even destroyed if it is overused or oversaturated with users. This is why there are hunting seasons, and limited numbers of licenses for certain types of game, catch limits, and so forth.
We Americans need to get it through our thick heads, sometimes regulation simply means, we are attempting to wisely set rules for the use (or supply) of a resource. If the so-called "gig economy" is just a fancy name for a free-for-all, we might need to realize, that is a bad idea long proven unwise.
124
@pjc There was a reason for medallions. However, once in place, the medallion owners rejected any further expansion, resulting in terrible service for customers, while medallion owners made money from their monopoly. Also, many medallion owners were not drivers, but investors who bought numerous medallions, and essentially rented their cabs to drivers -- those drivers were not treated particularly well. In short, the medallion owners abused the system, and it is not surprising that customers left in droves for better cheaper service from Uber.
However, Uber clearly takes advantage of the drivers, and its low fares are unsustainable in the long run.
1
Sounds like the taxis are the ones that aren’t paying enough, not Uber. The medallion scam is finally over.
Also, if 54% of the Uber drivers are providing more than half their family income, it sounds like that is a very important income stream.
The article is written to make Uber sound bad, but the facts within seem to support that it can be a good way to make significant income. Better than driving a taxi, in fact. And that truth is supported by Uber’s quick growth of number of drivers.
25
Once again missing the point. If what was supposed to be “part-time, flexible, extra money” is now primary income for 54% of the drivers, it shows the larger economy is failing to provide adequately paid alternative full time jobs with livable wages and benefits. How many people would choose to be rickshaw drivers if they had viable alternatives? I am a psychologist. At a previous job I saw a number of Uber drivers who were extremely stressed, incurring debt and finding that the Uber gig was not what they had been told. However, many had few decent options.
2
Uber/Lyft serve the outer boroughs better than yellow cabs ever will. Many of my neighbors use Uber to travel to the upper east and west sides for doctor and hospital visits. It's not cheap but it beats taking the express bus to Manhattan, then the subway or bus for the rest of the trip. Uber send out a nice clean Camry. Have you seen what most NYC taxi cabs look like.
19
The Sharing Economy" - now, isn't that a clever term, so warm and fuzzy sounding. The first paragraph of this piece gives the game away, with Wonderschool and equivalent schemes having "significant capital" behind them.
In theory, capitalists put their capital at risk by, among other things, investing in equipment, real estate, raw materials and intellectual power to produce a good or service, in the hope of returning a profit. In the "sharing" economy, the "entrepreneur" takes all the risk but "shares" the cream with the capitalist. At least in the days of serfdom, the land that the seigneur put to work was his own (even if it had been stolen by some long-gone ancestor).
29
@mancuroc You apparently miss the point. The company develops the system and process, gets approval, does the advertising. Yes the worker does all the actual work, but without the system and process he has nothing. Now it is not a good idea for many people but if you do it part time and with no other better use of your time it can produce incremental income. It is not a job, but as they say a "side hustle"
It’s a job for many.
@vulcanalex, raising the question: Why do people need side hustles? My father (GED earner) raised a family of 7 children on one solid corporate job. I'll bet your father -- or maybe you -- did something similar. But those days are gone for a vast swath of the population. People need side hustles because their "regular" job doesn't provide enough income to pay the bills.
114
When the government gets involved the results will almost always be bad. One thing the Leftists don’t understand is the law of unintended consequences. UBER rides will cost more so fewer people will use it so drivers will make less, also by capping available cars, fewer potential drivers will have work. Please just let the market handle this.
16
@JP Ronald Reagan's ghost lives! But he was wrong, and so are you. I won't get into your general statement about government results in our economy, however, where Uber is concerned you are dead wrong. Uber riders already pay higher prices when they are in a surge. If you're a smart Uber driver - as I was - you aim for those surges. In over 6000 rides I never heard a complaint about the higher cost. More importantly, Uber's business model has to work for everyone: the riders, Uber corporate, Uber drivers and the municipalities they serve.
Oh, and by the way, Uber works primarily because the government got involved and built roads, regulated driving by requiring drivers' licences, placing signage on the roads, implementing speed limits and requiring insurance. So you see JP, the government's involvement was paramount to Uber's business model.
23
"When the government gets involved the results will almost always be bad."
Such polemic statements and the attitude which supports such is exactly why we are in the dismal political situation that we find ourselves in this country. Unfettered capitalism will destroy the planet. Capitalism does not provide clean air and water. We need government to set boundaries and enforce responsibility upon capatalists. Without government moderating and enforcing rules upon capitalists greed and lawlessness would overwhelm. We either work together for the common good or all will perish. Unchecked, capitalism will ultimately destroy the planet. Individual freedom does not give an individual, group, or corporation the right to endander the common good. It's the roll of government to protect the commons and the sooner all accept this basic fact the better.
11
@JP "When the government gets involved the results will almost always be bad." I assume you're referring to the government that is gutting environmental protections, interfering in women's health care choices, imprisoning children in cages, waging a 17-year war for no purpose and to no end, supporting voter restriction efforts, walking away from commitments to allies, consorting with criminals foreign and domestic, recklessly increasing the national debt with tax giveaways, seeking to limit access to affordable health care and education, and so much more. Right?
6
While I support all efforts to compensate these drivers fairly, the appeal of Uber is the ease with which I am able to catch a ride and pay for that ride. Taking a taxi is most cities is a nightmare---from 1) trying to hail a cab and 2) pay for the cab---no taxi driver ever has change and their credit card machine is always broken---offering to take me to an ATM machine is not optimizing 21st century technology . The other huge benefit is reducing drinking and driving. Young adults, like my children and friends, always use Uber when eating out and just visiting with friends--never use their own vehicles if alcohol is involved.
56
@ACJ Only the market can determine what is fair, not the government.
2
@vulcanalex - I'm not sure you know the meaning of fair. Currently the market has middle class tax payers footing the bill for the underpaid employees of billionaires. I don't consider it fair for me to subsidize billionaires with my hard earned money.
1
Let’s not forget about how broken the medallion system was and is. Rent seeking medallion owners get a nice return on investment and passive income while the actual yellow cab drivers who can’t afford a million dollar medallion work long hours and are not well compensated even though they work in an industry where govt restricts the supply of a commodity.
62
Exactly...the medallion system has been since its inception legalized serfdom yet the city did NOTHING to address the exploitation of mostly immigrant workers by medallion owners as the taxi commission/city both profited from medallion sales. Now all of a sudden city politicians and bureaucrats care about the welfare of drivers? I'm not buying it. The system is indeed rigged.
15
@Cory
Let's not forget that cab drivers use company-owned vehicles, have some modicum of job security, and worked for employers who paid wage taxes, SSI and insurance.
The market solution would is to issue more medallions to drive their price down (increase supply), heavily regulate the industry for the benefit of workers while significantly improving public transportation for those who can't afford the luxury of a single occupant private cab chauffeur.
Perhaps technology will someday solve our transportation crisis but don't hold your breath.
1
So what happened to capitalism? May the best driver win. Why is the city trying to pick winners and losers ?
8
Another question why should the city sit back and allow so many Uber and Lytle vehicles on the streets that they create gridlock? More vehicles on the streets is not the answer to transportation problems in major cities.
3
In large and medium sized cities, companies such as Uber and Lyft should not even exist. We continually underfund public transportation to the extent that many former passengers now look for other transport resulting in clogged streets, pollution and drivers at the poverty level, while the companies' owners gloat all the way to the bank. Why are we so backward-looking? Why did NYC even allow Uber and Lyft to exist in the first place? Why are the subways and buses so awful???????
48
@JG The answer to your last question is a combination of corrupt politicians, unions, and entitled people. Who wants to ride mass transit if they don't have to? And they were allowed to exist because in the US people are free, at least a little.
4
@vulcanalex, when mass transit is funded and administered properly, it works fine. Where would the US be now if railroads and highways had not been subsidized? Conservatives love to forget what made this country prosperous.
American culture is not well known for "sharing". In terms of economy it's about winner take all and losers get scraps to "share".
Nothing new in that respect.
13
If you don't like Uber don't ride Uber. If you don't make enough money driving for Uber stop driving for Uber.
These things self regulate on their own without all the busybodies getting involved.
Interesting that once maligned cabbies are now to be known as "professional drivers" and commiserated with rather than cursed at as was previously the case!
16
@Steve W
If you don't have money, don't need money! It's simple!
3
@Steve W
Sometimes you can’t just stop driving for Uber /Lyft.
It is not legal to start picking up fares in your own car with non TLC plates. Nor can you use your ordinary insurance to cover your Uber gig. All ordinary insurance contains a specific prohibition against using that insurance for any commercial purpose.
Not far from Uber NYC headquarters on Queens Plaza are car lots trumpeting leasing “deals” for Uber/Lyft cars. Those leases, which include requisite license, registration and insurance can come with severely onerous terms.
Calling Tennessee Ernie Ford: “Peter don’t you call me cause I can’t go. I owe my life to the company store.”
2
If you were to take a vote. The vast majority of NYT readers would allow ride share apps to continue unabated. Because it works.
12
Wage controls might be a useful stop gap, but as Progressives we need to anticipate our enemies’ next step.
My guess is that our enemies - the people who want the quickest, fastest, cheapest solution to whatever problem they’re facing, in this case commuters, and the people who creatively design and implement solutions for them - already have a Plan B. My guess is that Plan B involves fully automated vehicles, with NO DRIVERS at all!!!
We need to start lobbying our governments to use their power to jail to stop this technology in its tracks! It may be safer, cheaper, nicer, and even more efficient and environmentally friendly than human driven cars, but just imagine how much value such a move would shift! Taxi drivers would get less, and commuters and ride service firms would get more. Not Fair! It must be stopped!!! Send the devil innovators to jail!
4
@Trans Cat Mom I hope your comment is humor. Sure self driving cars are coming, and I want one as soon as they are reliable and legal. I might settle for access to a fleet of them. No criminal drivers to say assault you, drive around to increase their fare, or do anything else. I guess back in the day progressives would oppose self service in gas stations, elevators, or phones without operators.
2
@vulcanalex
I have no idea what a 'progressive' is, but yes I would love to still have gas station attendants, elevator operators and phone operators. I lived in a country for twenty years that still employs gas station attendants and this offered an opportunity for many people who desperately needed employment to be gainfully employed and prevented me from having to pump my own gas. And many years ago, one of my neighbors who was obviously intellectually impaired worked his entire life as an elevator operator for a major department store. He was able to buy a nice home and led a solid middle-class existence.
@vulcanalex, hell, I wish companies and government offices would go back to operators. Since when is it more efficient to spend a good fifteen minutes or more wading through automated phone systems and being on hold to get an answer an operator could give in a minute?
Once again, this story only underscores two points:
ONE. No sympathy for the Yellow Cab industry. Waiting 20 minutes in the rain on a randomly picked street corner hoping to God a cab will pick you up is a clear sign of a thoroughly broken system. And they STILL turned their nose up at people of color.
TWO. We don't need more legislation, or better ride-sharing, or better entrepreneurs, or anything like that. WE NEED BETTER AND MORE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION. LOTS MORE!!!
251
@John Agree about public transport, but in New York there is now a ride-hailing app for yellow & green cabs, called "Curb". (A second one, "Arrow", didn't work as well, last time I tried it, but it may have improved.)
I’m very disappointed by this policy. The council is very focused on the “rights” of certain people (I.e. taxi drivers and medallion holders) and totally ignored others (new immigrants relying on the “lifeline” of driving for Uber, people who can’t afford a yellow cab, etc.) If traffic is really the problem, how about just having more tolls? There are just so many better solutions
10
We give these companies power when we don't have the backbone to hold ourselves accountable. For example, people always seem to be blaming Uber drivers for Manhattan's congestion, yet anyone can drive the streets of NYC for free and even park for free if they happen upon a street space!
How many people lament Uber drivers stoping I'm bus lanes or bike lanes, but say nothing when the Uber they are riding in does it?
Public transit no good? Too bad we can't adequately fund it or dedicate the street space it needs to be faster and more reliable.
What NYC is doing now under the guise of helping the drivers is really trying to address some of the problems above without making citizens do their part.
4
Taxis and Uber are not the same. Whetaxis tell me the total fare BEFORE I get in, put their phones down, clean their cabs of cigarette smoke, and in general treat
me like a human, I’ll go back to taking them. The last taxi ride I took was disgusting. I think the driver lived in the cab.
I’m happy to wait a bit longer for an Uber.
The one thing absent from this article was the rider - Uber and Lyft filled a huge void. In typical democrat fashion, the state has moved to quash innovation to maintain the status quo the best they can, As for the actual consumer? Let'em walk.
11
The only part of what the City did that I agree with is the requirement that livery drivers earn at least the minimum wage.
In order for the drivers in NYC to earn the minimum wage fares will have to go up. If fares go up more people will opt for the subways and buses. If that happens the number of livery cars on the street will necessarily decline and traffic will improve. Problem solved.
What the City did today by instituting a cap on livery vehicles was hysterical over-reaching.
8
The Mayor should have gotten involved in this long ago and before it became a crisis. The streets in Manhattan are more congested than ever because of these ride services. Instead his first order of business was to try to shut down the horse carriages. That aside, while it is sad there are people who are failing after deciding to buy a new car in an effort to make a full time run at being a Uber or Lyft driver, they are no different than the many thousands of others who started a small business that failed, or got a mortgage or student loans they couldn't afford. Are we to have bail out funds through higher taxes for everyone who falls on hard times?
7
I became an Uber rider when I decided to try Uber to go to Red Lobster. I usually went there about once a week but took a taxi which cost me $14 one way, not including the tip. That is $28 round trip. Then I tried Uber, just for fun, to see what it was like. The car was clean. The driver was friendly, and did not smoke in the car. He didn't take the "long" way, trying to make some extra bucks from milage and time. He just took me straight there. And the fare? $4 one way. $8 round trip. I saved $20 using Uber. Why would I ever take another taxi after that experience?
330
Harold - Mazel Tov on saving a few shekels.
But obviously, the money you paid hardly provided the Uber driver a 'living wage'.
A small raise in Uber rates and Uber driver wages is long overdue and is the humane (and environmental) solution to this quandary.
12
@Harold
Why? Because the business model on which your $8 round trip is based require impoverishing the driver providing the service.
11
It's nice for the customer but these fares are not sustainable and are propped up by private equity money. Uber still doesn't even turn a profit. This leads to the driver's making non liveable wages. How is a driver supposed to make money when the ride now costs less money AND they have to give a nice slice to the big corporation they "work" for. I only say "work" cause you know if it was just work they would have to provide health care, benefits, etc...
11
The gig economy is just another example of the downward pressures placed on society because of stagnant wages and failing infrastructure
I have friends and family members who both rely on Uber as a source of employment and as a source of transportation.
Those who rely on Uber are persons who need to get to work, but because they live in areas where public transportation is unreliable. They are forced to use Uber because it is faster than the bus but cheaper than the cabs. They are going in debt using uber because their jobs don't pay enough to afford Uber, rent and other living expenses. But they must get to their jobs.
I also have friends who are in debt because they leveraged practically everything to pay for their kids college education and are now using uber to help pay off their kids college loan debt and their second mortgages. They don't make enough money driving for Uber/Lyft but every bit helps in the short-term. Unfortunately the few pennies earned now will ultimately lead to many dollars required to repair their worn out cars.
The sharing economy is not a good thing....it is sign of a failing economy and the desperation of the working and shrinking middle classes.
297
@Confused democrat So bottom line you have a lot of foolish, ignorant, friends. They make a variety of bad decisions and they whine for someone to assist them. Typical of what I see progressives always doing.
2
@vulcanalex My friends are all foolish, ignorant coal miners. They whined and whined about losing their outmoded, dangerous, polluting jobs because the alternative -- education and economic opportunity - meant they might have to move out of their holler and into the modern world. Personally, I think they made some really bad decisions in their choice of employment, but hey. The whining worked! In fact, Whiner in Chief has given them all sorts of preferential treatment. This is what you're talking about, right?
@Confused democrat
I very much agree w/ your comment. My addition is that, as well as stagnant wages, income disparity/concentration may well have another direct causal relationship w/ the gig economy, i.e. the richer the already rich get, the more likely they are to invest in/create, what (for them) look like possibly lucrative disruptive new ventures that, per another commenter, are much more about the income of the business itself than any individual "contractor"...
4
“While Uber promotes itself as a way for drivers to earn extra money to fund their dreams, in truth, most drivers in New York City work full time.”
New York City is an anomaly when it comes to the cost of living, and therefore, hardly the best test case to determine if Uber/Lyft can deliver on the promise of flexibility and cash to fund another endeavor.
When I ask drivers in other parts of the country what they enjoy most about driving for Lyft/ Uber, the responses I hear most often include “flexibility” and “EXTRA money.” It’s rarely their full-time gig.
Without the complexities of NYC, and drivers are more likely to find what they’re looking for.
20
In other parts of the country, the driver’s experience varies. When it truly is “extra” money, drivers can do ok. However, where few alternative jobs exist, the picture is much bleaker.
2
Yes, Uber has serious problems. Also, the medallion-based system had problems. City governments prey on immigrants with extreme rent-seeking medallion schemes, which are just as crushing, if not more so than Uber's model.
13
Uber didn't pull a bait and switch here like the article suggests. Drivers referenced in this article made a poor decision committing to full time work in a profession that didn't pay.
You can easily google expected wages. You can easily estimate cost per mile operating and maintenance expenses.
On the flip side, drivers were able to get hired easily and could work flexible hours. Many people do work Uber and Lyft as a second job or as a temporary position between professional jobs for this reason.
You should have the freedom to make poor financial decisions. The government response to that freedom should be to improve the existing social safety net so that all workers who get caught up in a failing business are protected. Not just taxi drivers who didn't see change coming or Uber drivers who didn't compare expected earnings vs. car ownership cost.
If the Uber drivers want to strike or unionize, that is fine. I believe in the right to collectively bargain. But don't add more regulation. If anything deregulate the taxis and let people decide what services should exist with their wallets.
56
@Ben Great points but the "safety net" is already way to expensive. How about we have an economy and education that allows for opportunity, so when one does not work out another is there.
"You should have the freedom to make poor financial decisions". Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly the logic that got the human race through the Ice Age.
4
@Ben
Citibank , JPMorgan Chase, AIG and others had the freedom to make poor financial decisions - and escape the moral hazards of same. We the People stole their freedom to fail and bailed them - and many other corporations - out. Kinda obviates your argument.
Nobody ever promised disruptions will be painless. Uber creates tremendous opportunities as a supplemental (or major) income source for drivers, and much improved convenience for travelers in big cities. Overall, it's clearly a net plus.
This is how the market works. I find the whining in this article puzzling.
16
@Avi A growing share of the population is becoming tired of the common good being left up to "the market." The so-called "sharing economy" is only one example of the libertarian, predatory brand of capitalism whose presence and defensibility seem increasingly confined to the United States.
25
@Avi Not puzzling progressives hate the risks in change, they thing government should eliminate all the risk and charge those who actually work to get the reward to do so. Sounds like slavery to me.
1
@vulcanalex, you have it backward. Progressives are the ones working for change -- conservatives, by definition, resist it, whether it's social, political or economic. Conservatives today believe government should reduce all risk - for business. That's why every Republican-led "business friendly" piece of legislation passes the risks onto consumers. And if you define slavery as the enforced labor of a group of people, with all the financial and economic benefits going to "owners," then the slaves in question are not the mega-owners of Uber and Lyft and so on (whose "work" involves raising money from venture capitalists), but all the rest of us putting in our time and getting nowhere.
I take Uber and I notice the drivers are recent immigrants. I’m an immigrant, though not a recent one, so I’m curious about their experience. I ask about how the fare system works, what neighborhood they live in, how long they’ve been driving for Uber, etc. I’m sure there are disappointed drivers out there too, but from the drivers I’ve asked I’ve only heard positive responses. They may not want to do it forever but at the moment it seems to be working for them. Is the Progressive cause in politics simply in perennial search of someone to play the role of the oppressed? “An arcane law against gifts”? As in, laws against bribery and kickbacks? Maybe the Times needs to run opinion pieces about the role of the savior complex in progressive politics?
31
@Chuffy - Fascinating. So you think we should make decisions based on a handful of conversations you have had rather than on economic data?
4
@DR Economic data is only one tool to understand the issue. Anecdotal/personal testimony is another. One does not require the exclusion of the other.
@DR as they say, don’t believe the hype. The study referrenced in the article is apparently underwriten by the T&L industry(!?). Seriously. And I have data provided by Philip Morris about tobacco related illnesses. What makes you think you know better what a newly arrived 25yr old from Tajikistan should or shouldn’t do for a job? That they can’t be trusted to know what works and what doesn’t for her or him? The patronizing and superior tone of the “educated” liberals commenting here... very interesting.
If you look at it from the customer view, the most efficient model is to have everyone drive for Uber. From Uber's point of view, that is ideal, too, but they would add to the ideal that the labor be free. Driving the number of rides up, the price down, and the amount collected by Uber up, effectively began to approach that limit.
Uber can effectively control the supply, because it doesn't have to pay to license its drivers - it wins not just because of efficiency, but because a large portion of that efficiency comes from avoiding regulation. If Uber had to pay to license each driver, regardless of that driver's income contribution, and had to pay to insure the driver, the cost of "ride-sharing" - unlicensed on-demand taxis - would go up. And the number of participants might fall.
Uber is not a bad idea, but it is a bad economic model. And any city that sold the right to market should protect taxi investment through some sort of reimbursement. They can generate the money by taxing independent ride shares, or limiting the bandwidth. Either way would force traditional cabs to improve or die.
No one can argue that the taxi medallion system - a reasonable idea when begun as a way to reduce gypsy cab violence - was anything other than protectionist and likely corrupt. But, the hardship falls most on the least powerful people - for both Uber and cabs - and that is a bad economic model.
8
A few things about cabs in NYC. There is money for private transportation and it goes somewhere, rarely to the worker. With the cab economy it went into the medallions which sold, at their peak, for 1.3 million. Leasing companies sold what were basically mortgages and the cabbies slowly earned their medallions. The winner in that case was the leasing company. Cabbies made some money, but not big money.
Cabbies fought every innovation. They were against credit cards in cabs. If you wanted to hail a cab on a weekend, in a rainstorm, during the "shift change," or to go far uptown you were out of luck. Let alone being a minority...I had a dozen cabs go by me once until I realized I wore a big hood up in the cold and they were worried.
With Uber you have Uber winning big. It is easier to understand who is getting the short end. The reason for its popularity is you can get an Uber in the rain, etc, etc.
You can't start offering solutions until you realize that the medallion system helped create it.
244
@Raymond
The capital value of Uber is $72 billion, overwhelmingly not held by Uber drivers. Yes, there are obvious problems with cabs but Uber is an inferior and very (socially) costly solution.
7
The rise of Uber is an example of what happens when a monopoly is so focused on maintaining itself that it fails to notice that the world is changing. The taxi industry viewed medallions as investment vehicles rather than public transportation licenses and assured medallion's continuous increase in value by severely limiting supply. This legislation will backfire: just as the taxi monopoly was oblivious to technology so too is the city council. Technological work-arounds will be devised to bypass the legislation and ride sharing will continue to grow.
86
Yes, the taxi industry should have evolved to provide better service and new techologies would have helped. I think that would have been a better solution than Uber.
The city governments now acting on Uber should have long ago acted to get the taxi industry to modernize and provide the effective and efficient service cities need and deserve.
2
It seems, especially with the devaluation of the taxi medallions, that the "sharing economy" is a race to the bottom. Taxi medallions were once considered a guarantee of a good income, but have become millstones around the necks of the people who have them and are unable to make enough money driving to pay for them. The congestion on the roads and the added pollution from ride sharing services are subtractions from the quality of life in large cities.
Airbnb is another aspect of the sharing economy that affects the quality of life for the neighbors of units when there is no supervision on site and the units are used as party houses. I use hotels because I want the people who work there to continue to have jobs with some benefits.
The "sharing economy" seems to be helping to speed the race to the bottom.
316
You think the people cleaning your hotel room are paid well or receive benefits?
1
@LAM
I did have a job as a maid cleaning hotel rooms when I was in college. It was hard work and being part time as a college student, I did not have benefits although I had a regular paycheck.
While I suspect that benefits are unlikely for the maids, a hotel still employs desk clerks and others who may get them. Since most hotels have a check-in time of 3 p.m. to 4 p.m., they may be full time and entitled to benefits.
People who use Airbnb may have little recourse when arriving for their stay late at night if there is a problem. As a consumer, I like the safeguards that staying in a hotel provides.
I and my family use UBER all the time in Toronto where the kids live. Toronto taxis were "ok" but often dirty, late when pre-arranged and would drive right past many times. I even had some ask me where I was going and then refuse the ride because it was too short. Well, that was all before UBER. Now, when I hail a cab, it stops and they never refuse a fare. Cabs are cleaner now too. And I have always chatted to my UBER driver and they talk about UBER as an income supplement and a great way to earn money. I believe that was what it is supposed to do - maybe in NYC there is too much UBER competition and everyone is unhappy, but I am one happy UBER user who has seen my whole car hiring experience improve. And yes, I tip cabs AND Uber drivers.
28
The taxi industry is historically regulated because nobody makes money in it when it isn't.
23
Uber in Mexico City, for example, is an extremely reliable and safe way to get around. But every trip I take costs less than the gas I calculate was used on the trip. I understand Uber has to subsidize to get up and running, but this model has been in place for a few years and makes no sense at all.
11
@Coleman: that's my take on it -- I just don't get it.
Yet another example of billionaires exploiting workers for personal gain.
28
Uber exploits pits drivers. I rode Uber once, in Detroit, with a colleague who has the app. I was surprised at how low the fair was and when we got to the my hotel I checked the route on Google. The fare she had paid was less than the federal government would have reimbursed her if she had used her car. The federal rate for reimbursing employees who drive for work is meant to cover the cost of gasoline and basic maintenance. It is not a rate that will create any significant extra income.
141
@Thector...As an Uber driver I appreciate your concern, however the reality is different from what you believe it to be. I have a professional job in government but the income from that only pays the mortgage, and nothing else. I drive Uber on the side and the income from that pays all the other bills, clothes me and puts food on my table. I do not feel that I am being exploited.
9
@Thector
I recently started using Uber occasionally. Each time I got a courteous driver, clean car, and a fixed price. All the drivers said they enjoyed it.
3
I agree. However I use Lyft and I give the driver a substantial cash tip.
As is true of any vocation, a person works for Uber because it is the best job for him or her compared to the available alternatives. This policy will serve to remove Uber as an occupational choice for those who would choose it against their other work options. Yet again, government paternalism ultimately hurts the so-called disadvantaged individuals whom these policies are supposedly trying to protect.
21
Let's understand what the "share" means in a sharing economy. ONe shares her home or automobile, the immediate customer pays less, an extremely wealthy corporation makes a profit, and the person who shares their belongings assumes all the risk. Bottom line is that what is shared is our bank accounts with greedy individuals who place nothing at risk and devastate local businesses.
447
Perhaps we are the greedy individuals? Folks don't like to think that but in general consumers want to squeeze out every cent they can from out of pocket expenses.
7
What? Shares 'her' home or automobile? Are there no men working in this economy?
If defaulting to the masculine pronoun was wrong then so is defaulting to the feminine pronoun. If you want to be fair then figure out another way to write that sentence. If you just want to be divisive go ahead and use 'her' every time.
1
@SDG and of course the alternative is all wonderful where common folks have to pay an exorbitant price for a hotel room (owned by wealthy corporations) or for a cab (owned by wealthy corporations) whose driver will laugh as someone in wheel chair tries to get into the cab from an airport. I have been there. Never again I will use a cab or a hotel where I can get Uber or Lyft or G taxi (in some countries) and of course Airbnb.
I personally find the idea of setting up a fund for failing cabbies ludicrous. What’s next? A fund for delivery people? Fast food workers? Bank tellers? There are plenty of established social support systems already. Let’s fix those rather than singling out the people who scream the loudest for preferential treatment. And let’s not forget, these were / are the folks who have, for the most part (and based on my personal experience), been treating their customers with little respect or courtesy while delivering a decidedly sub-par service.
251
And so the voice of the limousine liberal was heard in the land.
1
@Elizabeth you are right, people don't deserve a living wage if they don't treat you with respect.
@Elizabeth O
There probably are just too many cabbies in NYCity. One idea would be to cull the fleets of taxicab companies and cabs, so that there would be fewer cabs, and have the cabbies make a better living. Of course,the cost of a license to cab would probably escalate.
We got to the point because Uber and Lyft were so incredibly convenient and filled a gaping hole in the overall transportation web in most metropolitan areas. Over regulation of the livery Industry led to that mess, we should be mindful of that as we move forward.
163
@Michael: and ignoring those regulations has put the livery industry where it is now: two large companies taking a loss on every ride, and drivers unable to earn a living. What happens when the conventional cab companies go under, and Lyft and Uber raise their rates to whatever the resulting market will bear?
18
Well another capitalist will fill the void right, invisible hand and all...
2
@John M How are they taking a loss on every ride? And the drivers are as I see it not to earn a living, but rather some incremental cash.
Cabs and ride sharing are reaching a level of commoditization that makes working in those areas unsupportable. That means they’re done, over, and what replaces them ought to be two things. Much better public transit including above ground electric busses or trolleys and a cap on cars entering the city supported by a fee. Current options either public or semi-private are terrible suggesting strongly that an ew city transportation model needs to be invoked. Lots of people will be hurt, like parking lot owners, but they will develop new opportunities. Politically, Albany will be inundated with special pleading. But the time has come. It only gets worse from here.
25
The study Ms. Bellafante cites "draws mainly upon administrative data collected from all the companies by the TLC", so it may be biased.
The gig economy certainly poses challenges, to workers and regulators alike. One almost-never-discussed area is cash. The only way to estimate what people make is through their tax returns, yet it stands to reason that a large part of the gig economy is cash-based. I wish someone would do a comprehensive study of this.
9
mijosc..... most Uber and gig economy transactions are credit ( or debit) card-based.
Cash is a dinosaur.
8
@mijosc - there might be areas of the gig economy that are cash-based, but it is my understanding that Uber is not one; it is by design cash-free.
5
The gig economy may be cash based but ride sharing via Uber and Lyft are not. All official transactions are paid via credit card or PayPal or stored value cards thru the app.
All of the transactions are captured and stored. The data hungry developers use this data to build their business and calculate earnings, ratings and surge pricing.
Research at The Institute for the Future in 2016 (before in app tipping was made easy to use and effected passenger ratings) showed that most drivers made less than minimum wage when expenses were calculated into the mix (gas, insurance, depreciation and wear and tear on the car). However when given this data most drivers shrugged it off and continued to drive. They were certain that they were the high earning exception even when their bank account did not bear it out.
11