What’s the Right Number of Taxis (or Uber or Lyft Cars) in a City?
Zero! And yes, that is the only most-logical correct answer.
As the economic and employment future of humankind will thank you.
You are all very welcome to choose your own fascistic poison, well-knowingly.
Best,
A.E.
Projectheureka LLC;
The "Uber Problem" is a perfect example of why private sector solutions to many problems go off the rails. Most problems have many dimensions but the profit motive often results in cartoonish simplistic solutions that only address one dimension.
I believe much of the unhappiness that exists in America today is a direct result of this failure. For those in think tanks who have spent an entire career pushing for a certain way to do things, I am sorry you have wasted your life.
1
I am sorry but I cannot take your reporting seriously, especially concerning New York City - no mention of the "Black car/limousine" component of the transportation mix. Uber/Lyft are doing to the black car/limousine companies what those companies did to the taxi industry starting decades ago - cherry picking the most profitable services (air port trips and contracts with large companies) and leaving the mandated requirements that go with owning a taxi and/or being a taxi driver to be provided by the taxi industry. Many of the Uber drivers now only work the peak hours - the rush hours, Friday and Saturday nights because they cannot make enough to be in service full time The taxi industry could never fully service those times no matter how many were licensed). Let's also not talk about the financial structure of the taxi industry which for a long time proved to be very profitable to medallion owners and financiers even with the extra burden of special insurance and vehicle requirements, burdens paid by drivers "leasing" their taxi and/or medallions or buying them from speculators (see, Cohen, Michael). All of the overhead for providing individual transportation is now carried solely by the Uber and Lyft drivers, engaged in a race to the bottom too see how many drivers, working at falling rates with not enough work are just enough to forestall collapse. A magical algorithm that will make all transportation interests whole and happy serving happy customers doesn't exist.
1
As a service model, Uber and Lyft have worked well for me, and traditional yellow taxis have not. I find yellow taxi type models to have lower quality service, lower quality of drivers, poorer quality of vehicles,and far less timely ( which of course is the key).
Legislation, if designed to protect a poorer quality model, would be a step backwards.
Down the road in a couple of decades, I am guessing there will just be automated car services without drivers, and that will be that.
In Boston, the water taxi system reminds me of the old taxi system. You call dispatch, request a pickup, and wait. The one time I tried, I called and was told someone would be right over. I waited 30 minutes and no one showed up. So I called an Uber to get where I was going.
The old taxi system is atrocious. I remember looking for a ride home after being out on the town, and there were no taxis available. Every taxi that passed was full. I had no way of getting transportation, at any price. So I walked home, about 5 miles. Not terribly far, but a long walk at 1 am.
Even today, I take taxis for work occasionally. I’ve had taxis stop mid trip, meter running, to get gas. I’ve had taxi drivers not know where they’re going and not have GPS. There’s no way to “shop” for a taxi driver, you’re just stuck with whoever might be in the taxi. I would gladly pay MORE than I do for a taxi to take an Uber instead. At least I have confirmation someone is coming, I know when I’m going to get there, I don’t have to give directions, and I can talk to people or work en route.
Old taxi is dead.
1
If the concern is congestion, charge taxis an amount per empty mile and leave the number uncapped.
1
Zero - unless they are regulated as the taxicabs they are.
To reduce congestion and pollution the city government should take the following steps:
1. Put tolls on the east river bridges
2. Prohibit unlicenced car services like Uber and Lyft
3. Require all licensed cabs to use technology to allow people to call a cab using their cell phone
4. Raise the number of licensed cabs moderately
5. Make the subways run on time!
1
It is interesting that NY times posed the right economic question, but suggested the absolutely wrong economic levers (basically capping or determining the number of cars on the road). The "magic" of Uber/Lyft is not simply in their better routing, powerful as those are. It is also the recognition that prices are ultimately the best way to regulate supply and demand for something that fluctuates as much as ridership. People hate it, but surge pricing basically encourages that day-time doctor/lawyer/student (yes, I have had rides from all types) who might otherwise be watching Netflix at home to go out and pick up a few rides during peak periods. Most Uber/Lyft cars do not even count as a single taxi because they operate on a part-time basis and are otherwise no different from passenger vehicles.
Having a fixed number of taxis is a bad approach because it means that you either have insufficient taxis for peak periods, or idle taxis during non-peak.
3
Yes. And the very idea that the government needs to pick a question to solve and then solve it is wrong-headed. Drivers and passengers have unique constraints and demands on them, unique abilities and resources, and other options to Uber that are specific to their needs (some can walk, bike, carpool, bus, train, etc) . You can’t find the right number of drivers without accounting for that. It’s hubris; but really, it’s seizing control of a market.
I could happily never ride in a city taxi again.
In San Francisco it was literally impossible to rely on taxis for transportation. Leaving a place late at night? As a woman? Possibly after a couple of drinks? Terrifying. I could easily be on hold for 20 minutes with the dispatcher to be told to wait another 20 minutes for a cab that might never show up. God forbid I didn’t have cash on me and wanted to use a credit card – 10 years ago, mind, not in the 80s.
I have no love for Uber, but ride shares changed my life. I know that no matter where I am, as long as I have my phone I can get home. I can wait for my ride in the safety of a building or restaurant rather than standing on the street getting harassed by passersby. I can take public transit to East Bay or the Peninsula and know I will get a “last mile” ride to where I need to go rather than having to drive the whole way.
Until taxis and cities figure out this use case, they can rot and I’m firmly in the camp of Uber and Lyft.
4
Yeah, it might be in Uber's interest to "flood the streets with as many cars as possible" but at some point, no new drivers will join in and older ones might cut their hours. If the nth driver can't make any money, he or she will drop out so there is a natural limit. Can't say if that will still be too high. But the numbers of drivers won't go up without limit.
2
All new industries create some kind of pollution. In the case of Lyft and Uber it is not air or water pollution but quality of life pollution for those of us who do not need nor want their services.
In our case we see cars that double park and clog up streets, even if there is a driveway for them to pull into to pick people up. We see them use the driveways of people as their personal "taxi zones" to sit and wait for a ride. All the while their engines idling and stereo's blaring. In the morning one see's bottles of urine that they leave behind.
If you happen to live in a building that has your bedroom on the street side, as my "corner four flats" do here in San Francisco, then you have to put of with them dropping people who are loud at 3 AM getting in and out of cars.
How about talking about the behavior of these drivers and ways to deal with their pollution as opposed to just talking about the transit benefit costs of them?
3
The problem is that there are too many people. All our cities are becoming congested due to overpopulation. Once very livable cities -- like Charlotte, NC, for example -- are becoming crowded.
All of our overpopulation since 1965 has been caused by immigration and the offspring of immigrants. It's time that we drastically reduced our immigration levels.
@Mark Mallarde And how are you going to pay your bills? How are you going to keep Social Security solvent?
Who will give you a job?
1
I am very disappointed with folks who praised for-hire vehicles and blamed the yellow taxi for discomfort.
Please, remember that Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Cuomo regulated taxi industry. Mayor Bloomberg chose Nissan model for yellow taxi cabs and Governor Cuomo required 2,500 yellow cabs to become wheel chair accessible cabs. The problem is that a lot of folks do not understand that adding too many for-hire vehicles like Uber and Lyft on NY streets decrease the traffic in the city. What is the point to have a 5 minutes waiting time in getting a for-hire vehicle but spending longer trip time because of slower speed in traffic which is also created by Uber and Lyft. Also, yellow cabs in New York could also be called by apps on phone like Curb or Arro and people do not need for-hire vehicles to call. Without the cap on Uber and Lyft, New Yorkers are impacted by traffic congestion which costs New York City $20 billion dollars for slower speed in traffic. This is a lot of money that NY city loses on traffic congestion because Uber and Lyft vehicles drive empty on NY streets.
2
The author talks about "what to optimize for" when discussing laws and regulations.
We all know that politicians will always optimize for the interests of a small cadre of politically connected donors. Nothing else.
In the case of NYC, they have for 100 years, and are trying again now, to optimize for the benefit of the medallion owners and the TLC bureaucracy.
Uber and Lyft were the solution. The politicians are trying to imply they are a problem.
The "market" has already optimized the number of ride sharing drivers. Too many and wages fall making drivers quit. Too few causes wait times and rates (congestion pricing) to go up attracting more drivers. Too many in Manhattan increases traffic, decreases revenue/hour causing drivers to go to the other boroughs.
There is nothing else to optimize for, except that the politicians need to get in to get their cut. And so they are doing it, cheered on by the NYT.
7
Maintaining the value of taxi medallions is not, in my view, a legitimate objective. The medallions only have substantial value because they were used to maintain an artificial shortage of for-hire vehicles.
9
Ride hailing services are popular because taxi service is historically terrible in most cities. Taxis are frustrating to hail, often impossible to get at all outside of major urban centers, dirty, sometimes scary (e.g. no seat belts, unsafe drivers), often annoying (driver won't shut up about his dumb opinions, etc.) Uber and Lyft have outcompeted taxis on all of these points. They provide service that is faster, more efficient and more pleasant for the customer. Last time I was in NYC and took a cab, it had a TV in thr back seat blasting me with ads. I don't appreciate that.
3
this is such a ridiculous topic. If we would just fine double Parker's $1,000 each for every incident all our congestion would go away.
1
I am very disappointed with New Yorkers who say that taking Uber/Lyft is less expensive than yellow taxis. I would like to remind to them that yellow taxi collected 50 cents on each fare that goes to MTA taxes which goes to public transportation such as subways and buses. So far yellow taxis collected $1 billion dollars for public transportation. Uber an Lyft totally ignore public transportation and did not collect any money for it. Also yellow taxis collect 30 cents from each fare that spend on buying wheel chair accessible yellow cabs. So, people with disabilities can take them in New York. Uber and Lyft tried not to be involved with this social justice system and just have 447 such vehicles compare with 2500 yellow wheel chair accessible vehicles. NY City sold thousand medallions ( which are license for driving yellow cab) to drivers and collected more than $15 billion dollars which the NY City used for hiring police, firefighters, teachers. Uber and Lyft did not buy any medallions from New York City. Uber and Lyft by lobbing politician in NY City and NY State play unfair game and New Yorkers should feel shame by saying that yellow taxi industry must gone because there is not enough room for legs in cabs. So far just yellow cab industry help with NY City jobs, with subways and buses, and by letting people with disabilities to take wheel chair accessible cabs.
4
@Sam I might have some sympathy for your arguments if yellow taxis in NYC didn't provide such awful service. Taxis with minimal rear seat leg room, dirty interiors and drivers who can barely speak English, don't know how to find anything but the most obvious destinations and avoid any part of the City outside of Manhattan below 96th Street, are not deserving of regulatory protection from competition.
3
No doubt that this decision will be challenged in court. One question is: Does the city even have the authority to limit the number of for hire vehicles in the city? Think about it for a minute. Imagine if the city tried to limit the number of nail salons or barber shops. That's ridiculous and is anti-capitalist. Yet that is exactly what the city has done. I have a feeling that this decision will not last long because the courts will overturn it. A city government cannot just tell an entire industry that it has to limit the number of stores or in this case cars that it can have.
1
Hedge funds are buying medallions, with one hand... and with the other, I'll bet they're donating to de Blasio. Perhaps the NYT should look into this?? Reporters, start your investigation here:
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20170918/TRANSPORTATION/170919875/h...
2
Dear Upshot - you miss the crucial point entirely. It is the same for all transport planning - public transportation, bridges, road construction, number of taxis, and so on. These "short term" decisions impact how citizens allocate and spread their housing. Ever wondered why we have urban sprawl in the US much more than in Europe. Because we fund the roads that enable it.
A city must set policies by asking themselves how they want the city to look like 30 years from now. If Uber has more or less drivers in that context is totally irrelevant. What is relevant is how they prepare the city for driver less services. Where are these vehicles parked? What role does mass transportation have? etc?
2
The number at which drivers continue to drive and consumers continue to ride. In other words, a number arrived at naturally via market forces, an economic reality with which increasingly few Times columnists and commenters are familiar.
3
If drivers don't make money, they leave. That would imply that there's a "natural" level for the number of drivers.
However, the cap in NYC is more about protecting medallion owners, not helping the public. This isn't public policy, it's protecting campaign contributors.
5
I tried driving for uber and lyft as a second job and at first I was pretty consistently busy. I wonder if they give first time drivers an artificial boost though, because by the second month I was sitting and waiting for rides for a half an hour on a regular basis. This would bring my hourly rate down below minimum wage. I started looking at the rider app and realized that there were - literally - about three or four available drivers on every single block in my area. I realized that it's a race to the bottom for drivers and quit driving. In a way there's no big cost to me, on the other hand, these companies now have ALL of my important information and we know they're not secure.
4
The article "What's the Right Number of Taxis (or Uber or Lyft Cars) in a City?" caught my attention for multiple reasons. In my opinion, putting caps on the number of Uber and Lyft drivers in New York City is a good idea. This will majorly help in decreasing the traffic in the city, which is a big problem because it just seems to be getting worse and worse. I personally prefer to take a yellow taxi based on my past experiences. I have had a few problems when have attempted to use Uber...not to mention that the wait tends to be longer, and they are more expensive than yellow taxis. I do see though how this could cause a problem as well. There are a lot of people in NYC, and decreasing the number of cars is going to cause a problem with transportation. Putting a cap on the amount of drivers will increase waiting times, but from the way I look at it is instead of sitting in tons of traffic you will now have a longer wait for the car, but less traffic once it arrives.
2
If the City of New York is so adept at fixing transportation issues, why not have it start its own ride sharing service to compete with Uber and Lyft? With no profit motive should make it plausible to pay the drivers a higher wage. And as government employees they would get a nice benefits package. Just keep the administration of the service away from Cuomo and his broken MTA.
Mandating a minimum hourly wage for drivers will solve the problem of oversupply.
2
what I got from this is we should get rid of yellow cabs or require them to have a central dispatch like Uber.
1
The 2nd paragraph seemed so off point. For decades the yellow cabs did NOT serve 4 of the 5 boroughs. The TLC Taxi & Limosine Commission was a joke, political hacks using it as a revenue scheme. We all know about the prices of taxi medalions and now have found a out so much more about the sleaze that controlled the loans, Russian Roulette, anyone?
Its really unfortunately similar to the the dsimal shape of our airports because of its mismanagement by the politiacl hacks at the Port Authority and the Transit Authority.
This is another disruptive econimic tsunami caused by modern technology where a rotten system gets exposed.
That might be a more accurate and more interesting story, one that recognizes a new solution.
5
The article misses several points. The medallion system makes cabs scarce - but scarce cabs reduce demand for cabs, a downward spiral. And automated services don't let drivers discriminate on riders appearance or destination - which makes them more popular to customers and keeps the cars in service. Unfortunately neither system does a good job at getting me a good ride - drivers always seem to be rushing and taking chances even though studies show rushing increases accidents and doesn't actually get you there faster.
Unfortunately Uber and Lyft allow drivers to discriminate against customers who give typical drivers the low rating they deserve. Which is why in the long run self-driving cars will take over - no stupid drivers, no passenger discrimination, no monopoly pricing, and market driven service.
1
This is a smart cities AI/IoT problem if ever there was one. First, not enought variables are given in the story. The right digital transformation model would look at factors including air pollution and smog, and their attendant health costs, climate change, the desirabiltiy of sharply reducing the volume of privately-owned vehicles from the streets, the increased conversion of gas and diesel to EVs. The converstion to ride-sharing. etc. A whole eco-system approach. This is being examined much too narrowly. As much of New York City will likely be force seek higher ground in the next few decades, now would be the time to say to ourselves, what would we do if we weren't stuck with these unworkable legacy systems.
1
Although Uber, like other task services, can provide benefits to consumers, it is making wage and debt peons out of its drivers, harming our air and environment by flooding the streets with cars, and acting illegally by skirting local labor and licensing laws.
Granted, the NYC taxi system is flawed, but a real solution would ideally provide better service to consumers as well as pay taxes in sufficient amounts to compensate for its harm to our roads, work within a set fo fair rules that adequately protect the rights of workers, and reduce its impact on the environment. Uber doesn't do that. We could envision a better system, something ideal, but giving Uber free reign will not help us arrive at that solution meanwhile it inflicts significant damage on portions of our city.
1
I always like the Upshot, but this article is particularly interesting.
The solution - based on the economic model - would suggest the following:
A license fee that applies to raid hailing services (and perhaps also to Taxis) that adapts to the utilization ratio of all cars. If cars are not utilized, the charge goes up - for all drivers. That would encourage some drivers to drop out when utilization is low.
In effect this already exists, but drivers don't see the cost. I read an article a few years ago that drivers tended to drive longer hours on slow days to make money, and cut their days short on busy days. If they would see that there is a direct cost associated to driving during low use times, they might be persuaded to leave the circus.
Just a thought.
1
The only problem with Uber and Lyft would be that drivers do not make enough money. This is solved by a sort of minimum wage, not by limiting the number of drivers. After setting a minimum wage, the companies can decide what to do.
@Simon A. You obviously have not seen the extremely congested streets in Manhattan.
1
I starting using Uber and Lyft because taxi drivers did not want my business. You can’t refuse my fare and then cry foul when I decide to take my business elsewhere.
4
The article fails to mention the degradation of the NYC subway system . Mass transit in NYC has become unreliable and frustrating—qualities that are anathema to a popoulation whose employers evaluate on their ability to compete and overcome obstacles successfully. You gotta show up on time and get the job done. Period.
It’s no wonder then, that the promised solution Uber/Lyft provides is one that is immediate and empowering (as are all Apps on your IPhone).
That the resulting traffic paralysis and congestion that occurs when tens of thousands of individual consumers and drivers compete with one another for a limited quantity of street space and cars becomes a self-defeating feedback loop of even greater unreliability and frustration should surprise no one.
Until the subways are made reliable through a massive, and very expensive fix that will require the pain of congestion-pricing, higher taxes and increased fares—and oh, by the way, will take , say, 10 years—NYC will do the inherently failing job of trying to manage its traffic problems on an ad hoc, “band-aid” basis.
I grew up in NYC and witnessed 5 decades of ups and downs that were determined by two things: safety and reliable commuting.
With an ego-driven Governor and Mayor —the two slices of bread with a a corrupt State Legislature as filling in this indigestible sandwich, there is only agida ahead.
2
I pay $45 for a taxi and $11 for Lyft, and the cars cleaner and driver nicer. Where's the problem?
3
Uber and Lyft benefit riders/consumers. Of course the taxi monopoly and its beholden politicians would oppose these two innovative companies.
I’m sure the government knows best. They always do. Of course, if you depended on the government, there would be no Lyft or Uber.
3
As a one time resident of NYC and a frequent visitor, I have never enjoyed the taxi services available. London has done a much better job. NYC taxis have too little leg room, are uncomfortable, and often dirty. Plus, standing on the curb trying to hail one is not fun or efficient. Enter Uber/Lyft; the only service I used on my last visit. This is the future. Like the horse&buggy industry, the taxi industry needs to go away.
4
Just finished reading the Times article on "ride desert" areas in outer boroughs and parts of Manhattan, and how Uber improved the quality of life for these residents in time saved.
1) If you want to decrease congestion you IMPROVE THE SUBWAYS, which is a story of mismanagement and political haggling of epic proportions.
2) What evidence of actual Urban Planning, other than helping private real estate developers has the city undertaken in the last ten years?
3) The five boroughs are not monolithic in terms of transport issues, so it is ludicrous to have a blanket policy.
4) Income created by the taxi system and MTA appear to be their underlying concern.
Visiting NYC for the last 10 years, watching the transport issues my resident kids face there, has been eye-opening. Like all else in the nation, it appears to be money versus citizen services at its worse. Uber's success is for a reason. The city needs to deal with the issue in its hot spot Manhattan areas, such as around Penn Station. Once again I see nothing but the Can't Do attitude, despite all that income flowing in. I wonder where that city hotel occupancy tax on my hotel room goes?
3
What's the right number of taxis or Ubers? Let the market decide, dummies. The market always knows best. Just ask the former USSR about centralized rule.
3
@Oxford96
The argument doesn't quite work. Uber (and Taxis) are creating costs that are socialized. When cars drive empty, me, the walking person, am impacted by congestions, higher risk of injury, and pollution. How does this cost get factored in with a pure market approach?
3
@TT
Well addressing that particular issue is the proper role of government - and easily achieved with a tax on fuel and a congestion charge for driving in the city. Proven remedies elsewhere around in the world.
And of course those "socialized costs" are not limited to Uber and taxis - so neither should the remedies be so limited.
Good data, questionable logic.
The author writes, "With too many (cars), drivers struggle to earn enough, giving them an incentive to cherry-pick only the most profitable trips, like airport rides."
That's upside down. When there are few drivers, they'll cherry-pick because they can. When there are too many drivers, they'll have to scramble for every customer they can find.
Saying that a greater supply of drivers leads to fewer rides is contrary to every supply/demand curve ever drawn.
8
The irony here is that if they just let free market economics flourish, a natural balance would occur between supply and demand. But for some reason politicians feel they must set the limit on the number of taxis and therein lies the problem. Pretty soon they will be limiting the number of people allowed in their cities. Where does it stop?
3
The article fails to address the elephant in the room. If public transportation was more reliable and accountable there would be far less need for ride hailing services.
5
The root question that Ms. Badger and many commentators glosses over is not the "right" number of vehicles or drivers, but whether the city should manage this number. To me, this reflects the bias of the pro-state progressive and the hubris of the technocrat, especially in the digital systems age. No doubt this could produce a number, and other constraints, that works in some way, but would only reflect the biases of those in charge.
I would ask the pro-manager people, what's next? The right number of theaters and actors in NYC? The right number of hot dog carts? How about the right number of bureaucrats?
7
@Bob Krantz
Best comment of all. Markets work best. Yes, there are negative externalities, but any policy which deviates from pure supply and demand considerations must meet a very high burden of proof, and we don't see that burden being met here.
3
Optimization should not consider ride hailing services in isolation, without considering the congestion and revenue impacts on other more efficient, equitable and sustainable transportation modes. In particular, busses with dedicated lanes move people far more efficiently per unit of street space, energy used and greenhouse gas emissions.
4
@Skippy
Right, and then they sit empty at the end of each route for 10 minutes, moving no one, while riders wait mere feet away, because they have a union contract that mandates such idleness. Perhaps when busses are managed in a fashion that optimizes the service for riders instead of the TWU, there might be more sympathy for your idea.
4
How was the proposed optimal 3.4 trip requests per hour calculated? (No source given.)
1
@Sharon Hessney
Seems to be the inflection point on the graph of driver requests per hour versus miles cruising. Providing an explanation of the math would likely be far beyond the comprehension of the average NYT reader. The number was probably arrived at with computers using regression analysis. Comes from calculus but the applications are more what one would encounter in engineering school or applied mathematics versus the pure mathematics most are exposed to in Calculus 101.
1
@Sharon Hessney By looking at the point in the graph where (looking from right to left), the curve starts to go up - I believe.
1
The Uber/Lyft phenomena, and hence the data, is in early phase. If left alone, the number of cars would likely overshoot then stabilize at some number that includes the variables of; consumer cost, driver revenues, congestion measured in ride duration, the acceptance of ride sharing, geographical coverage, and dynamic supply. That multivariable dynamic has been cut short prior to reaching a level where learned decisions could be made. The government intervention is a canard motivated by the distorted effects of a regulated industry where the customer became the taxi owners, then the drivers, and lastly the passengers. Upside down. Further it’s ossified bureaucracy, medallion honeypot of speculators, and compliant immigrant drivers assured taxi innovation would be slow-to-none at all. That and smartphones is why Uber/Lyft got an opportunity to change the business. The entrenched interest groups have concocted a way to stem the Uber/Lyft wave, with arbitrary usage assumptions driving conceptual models, appeals to higher wages, and suicides from the displaced. Predictably rides will soon become scarcer, more expensive, less convenient. Especially so in the outer boros. This is less about congestion and more about government serving it’s own interests, not understanding the technology, denying creative destruction, denying supply/demand as determined by the true customers, the riders.
14
@Byron Walker
1) Uber and Lyft WERE "left alone" since their invasion of NYC in 2014 and the result was massive street congestion in Manhattan and drivers sitting in their cars for 15 hours earning less than minimum wage.
2) At the same time these companies, unlike the medallion cabs, have refused to release the data from which "learned decisions" could be made.
Kind of like Trump not releasing his tax returns.
2
Tolls on bridges assessed using high tech instruments so as not to impede the flow of traffic. More pedestrian malls to make manifest the oft-proclaimed doctrine that there is no free lunch. Build and maintain a subway system as it was set forth in the Regional Plan Association's 1924 Plan for Greater New York and subsequently sabotaged by Robert Moses. Mandate significant surcharges for vehicles engaged for single rides only between the Battery and 125th Street in Manhattan between 6:30 A.M. and 8:30 P.M. on weekdays, excluding holidays.
4
why is the concept of tragedy of the commons never mentioned? streets are a common asset and are essentially free. thus for ride providers more drivers means more revenue, assuming the cost of a driver is nominal. That is why you need to cap taxis and other ride providers.
2
@Brassrat
No, that's why you need congestion pricing. If you did that, there would be no need to micromanage the number of TNC cars. This is a weakly disguised bailout for the taxi industry, not something that is going to make a material difference in congestion.
4
Come on, that’s the point of a free market. The Uber and Lyft market already optimized the number of vehicles. If there were too few, the price would go up and more drivers would enter the market and if there were too many, the price would go down and more drivers would exit the market.
Just let the market work! Stop giving taxi drivers the power to be a cartel at the expense of the rest of the city. De Blasio works for the taxi lobby. Vote him and his cronies out of office.
27
Sigh. I wish I had the magic words that would convince progressives how inept politicians and technocrats are at solving problems such as this. Do you really believe officials are incentivized/educated/unbiased/nimble enough to effectively manage dynamic market forces such as these? The author is absolutely correct: there are multiple objectives here that are difficult to reconcile in order to achieve an optimal outcome. So let’s ask our “leaders” to solve a problem that could easily be resolved via unconstrained prices. Because emergent order isn’t possible without the help of folks like Rudy, right?
8
@Scott right, but the resolution which comes from a totally unregulated market for ride share companies like Lyft and Uber leads to taxi-driver suicides. If it were really as simple as just letting the "free market" find the equilibrium point, that would be great. Unfortunately it isn't that simple. Supply and demand here are not merely numbers on a graph, they are peoples lives, and politicians are responsible to those people. I don't think NYC has found the right solution (I actually think Seattle's fix, allowing Uber drivers to form a union, has more potential), but I also think you are describing the problem in simplified terms.
4
I don't care what the "Right number" is. And while I do hope for better wages for the Uber and Lyft drivers, the simple fact of the matter is that ride sharing has to a great extent gone a long way to end a racist exploitative system that was the old taxi cab monopoly.
Nobody should have to shell out a million dollars to drive for a living just as nobody should not be able to flag down a ride simply because of the color of their skin.
Those two fixes make Uber and Lyft such an improvement on the old system that I could probably forgive other growing pains.
57
Please just enact congestion pricing below the park. Quieter neighborhoods, better air, faster transit.
7
"These numbers weren’t entirely arbitrary."
No, actually, they were. Someone did some "math" which amounted to what, exactly? Number of linear miles? Number of people? You could have found out the answer, but you didn't. "Keep drivers satisfied" - what equation is there for that? Ditto "Keep passengers satisfied" and "Keep streets safe".
Uber and Lyft have actually made it easier to figure out how many drivers are desired, and when, because as long as there's no limit to the number of drivers, spikes can be alleviated - unlike taxi cabs.
Under the medallion system, consumers have to wait a year or more to find out whether the number of taxis will increase and make their lives easier. Of course, another equation determining the "correct" number of taxi medallions is: The wishes of the Taxi Drivers Union.
With Uber and Lyft - and most importantly, Freedom - the demands of consumers are met far quicker. And there is no "third party" to the transaction, such as a Union whose only goal is to curtail the number of drivers.
What's the right number of vehicles? You don't know. The NYC City Council cannot know. The Taxi Union doesn't know and cannot be trusted to know.
7
@KarlosTJ - you are merely waving the market-magic wand and ignoring the key points in the article that show this is one instance in which the market works poorly. Just what market forces could be used by the non-ridesharing citizens whose streets are getting clogged and dangerous?
3
@uxf
Fact check: There is no taxi drivers' union in NYC. That is why 90% of the yellow cabbies are from 3rd world countries who work 12-hour shifts with no benefits. What there is is an advocacy group called the Taxi Workers Alliance which voices the concerns of all drivers, whether they be yellow, app, or car service. But this is far from a union. It has no clout. It doesn't have money to throw around at politicians. It cannot call for nor enforce a strike. It can only hope the mayor and City Council are fair-minded people who will be responsive to their concerns.
Which in this case they are.
Ultimately, the solution to this mess will be to drastically reduce, potentially almost eliminate, personal ownership of vehicles within the city limits.
You clear hundreds of miles of parking spaces, and you get larger sidewalks, more trees, extensive bikelanes, and larger streets for more taxis.
You have bikes everywhere for short routes - pick up and drop off with your phone app, traced to your credit card so they can fine you $100 or more if you're an idiot and ditch the bike in the lake or in the middle of a street (GPS).
You have automated cars for medium routes (or to the nearest subway) that can pick up and drop off in minutes for a few dollars, which drastically helps out the outer boroughs, and makes trips to Ikea or out of town easy.
And you overhaul the entire MTA so that our metro looks like a modern european or asian city - with fast, clean trains, free wifi and power outlets everywhere, and minimal delays.
Only dedicated deliveries can be made by private, registered vehicles within the city limits, and if you want to go all Singapore about it, make it so they can only take place at night.
We used to think big in America. Enough with the small thinking.
44
@andrew this would be great, but I can't imagine any American city going so big on this sort of central planning initiative.
2
This will never happen in any American city
Personal cars are seen as a right of passage
The ultimate freedom of going anywhere and everywhere
Congestion pricing is just a tax on the poor and bike sharing is nice but when it comes winter months ridership will decrease
3
no. try moving a family or cargo around the city can you quickly see why this is a bad idea.
Perfect timing, the L Line goes down and the city caps Uber et.al.
3
The only part of what the City did that I agree with is the requirement that livery drivers earn at least the minimum wage. Why have livery drivers been exempt from this thus far?
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
3
@MIKEinNYC The problem is that higher fares don't necessarily go to the driver. They go to the politically connected medallion owner who may or may not share a portion of the money.
3
Emily: From an insider who has written about this issue many times, and done professional work in the exclusive-ride taxi and paratransit industries for 40 years, this is the first article from the NYTimes on this issue I've seen that made any sense at all, and the best article from a mainstream newspaper I have ever seen on it. Thanks for your dedication to learning the subject matter, and for expressing your explanations about these dynamics so well and so clearly.
12
What strikes me about this that no one seems to care about is that the vast majority of Uber drivers are NOT professional drivers; it could be your next-door neighbor who's decided to pick up some extra money by driving for Uber.
Now, maybe your next-door neighbor is a good & safe driver - or maybe not. Maybe your next-door neighbor is really good at navigating and reads maps in his/her spare time. Or maybe not, in which case they may well take longer to find their way around, and quite likely hold up other traffic in the process.
The bottom line is this: Uber drivers are amateurs, but driving in NYC (esp. Manhattan) is not amateur-hour.
The streets of Manhattan especially are no place for non-professional drivers of highly varying abilities to be chauffeuring paying customers around. I think everyone who drives for Uber, Lyft, etc. needs to have a valid NYC hack license. Does that raise the "bar" to entry? Yes it does, and for an excellent reason!
6
“Professional”? Give me a break. My next door neighbor is a much better driver than 95% of the yellow taxicab drivers I had experiences with when I lived in Manhattan. With some of them, I truly feared for my life.
15
@L I have experienced more poor driving in medallion taxis than I have in ride shares in NYC. I suspect the ride share drivers are much more closely monitored than the cabbies. I evaluate each driver using the app when I take Uber/Lyft. Do we have any hard numbers for accident rates per passenger mile?
9
To me there are two legitimate concerns at the heart of this discussion, neither of which is best addressed by a cap on Uber/Lyft. First is congestion. If there's too much traffic, everybody suffers. But the answer to this is to create a congestion charge that applies in the parts of the city where it's a problem (the lower half of Manhattan) and that applies to ALL vehicles (Uber/Lyft/taxi/John Cassidy's jaguar/etc). The second legitimate concern is driver wages. The answer there is to make Uber drivers who are on duty more than 40 hours a week subject to the minimum wage. Why not address the problems we're trying to solve head-on, instead of imposing an arbitrary cap that looks a lot like a boon to people who happen to own taxi medallions?
15
This is exactly the right answer.
This is a brilliant article ... and points up the fact that the current City administration - Mayor and Council - are totally unlikely to do anything beyond kicking the can down the road and/or looking for a "political" solution. Sadly, this is politics of the graftiest sort - with maximizing campaign contributions the "driver." (All of Ms. Badger's SUPERIOR objectives will barely move the needle.)
But I'm more than just cynical. HERE IS an idea that grows out of the article and certainly has going for it SIMPLICITY, more often than not a make-it-or-break it element in good ideas:
Suppose the Uber/Lyft/etc. vehicles did NOT cruise. That seems more appropriate to the yellow cab era. SURELY, these VERY data-centric companies and apps could say that "Chelsea" generates 1000 calls between 6 & 7 on an average Wednesday. Make a depot - OK, that's not the easiest thing in the world, I admit - and have the cars dispatched in sequence. The advantage is obvious - no longer would streets be clogged with "cruisers." Moreover, the environmental and road-ware aspects would be vastly improved.
Think of it in "fishing" terms - Do boats move all around a lake figuring that they'll surely get to a place where fish are? NO. They are often stationary for long periods of time, and some combo of intuition and science means they usually catch fish.
Of course, Ms. Badger's "complexities" WOULD come into play. How many cars SHOULD serve this or that nabe? And as with Citibikes, how to rebalance?
@edtownes
I am sure you realize that these ideas are not news to Uber or Lyft - they are one of the largest consumers of AI and AI grads - unlike Yellow Cabs.
Their system uses something called Recurrent Neural Networks and predicts where fares will originate in real time.
4
"What’s the Right Number of Taxis (or Uber or Lyft Cars) in a City?"
I know one thing for certain: Bill de blasio is the last person that knows.
10
Ultimately, all of this is moot. If drivers (both taxi and Uber) think they have problems now, wait until self driving cars hit the road. An electric, driver-less vehicle? Now that's competition and it's coming, it's coming!
3
@Jimmy Good point. In fact, it's already here. But you're right: it will become widespread in the very near future.
All this time and energy and hand-wringing about striking the right balance to protect taxi drivers is for naught. They will all soon need to find other work. The city should begin preparing to help them transition to a different job.
2
@Jimmy The arrival of an autonomous fleet is going to raise the poltical and financial stakes. Who gets the franchise(s) once the labor component is drastically reduced?
@Jimmy
I'm not so sure. You know, a self-driving car is a different thing than a self-driving taxi. It would be one thing if it were your own car and you could take control of it whenever you wanted. But to get into a machine with no human in it and trust that it won't malfunction... that's a different psychology.
Remember the Segway? If you go to its Wikipedia page you will find there predictions that were made in the year 2000 from such luminaries as Steve Jobs that it was going to revolutionize transportation. They spent 100 million dollars developing and perfecting this technological marvel. Yet it couldn't replace the bicycle.
1
The "right" number of cars in any given market is the number that can be reasonably supported by it, a figure most logically defined by basic supply-and-demand economics -- which has successfully been the case for Uber & Lyft in nearly every market *other* than NYC.
Rationally speaking, someone driving for a ride-hail company will exit it if he or she isn't generating enough business to cover operating costs and yield a reasonable net profit -- particularly given the still-record-low unemployment rates in most U.S. cities.
Further, a topic left largely undiscussed vis-a-vis NYC's Uber cap is the reality that the vast majority of ride-hail drivers nationwide (over 80%) work fewer than 20 hours per week, and over half work fewer than 15 weekly hours. (In contrast, nearly all taxi drivers work at least 40 hours per week, and typically much more than that.) Defining the right number of cars becomes exponentially more complex after accounting for the fact that demand varies so greatly depending on the day and/or time.
Finally, the RideAustin study has a number of flaws that call into question the accuracy of its findings. The service started from scratch at the beginning of the survey period, and optimizing its network to minimize the amount of time a given driver spends waiting for fares is an endeavor requiring an exceptionally heavy amount of data-crunching well beyond a nonprofit's financial resources (and btw RideAustin received roughly $7 million in seed funding).
10
Why bother reading this, the answer is the number the market decides over a reasonable period of time.
10
This is a badly flawed analysis. Not every TLC plated vehicle in Manhattan is an uber or lyft vehicle. Too many of them are limousine services driving a particular executive in from their abode to a work office, then waiting for work day to be done and to take said master of the universe back home. Those vehicles should not be allowed to clog the streets by parking, or double parking, or sitting in No Standing/Stopping/Parking zones, but that happens. Those cars should be off the streets, not waiting idly on them.
A New Yorker for my entire 60 years, I have long resisted the idea of congestion pricing, but I no longer think there is any alternative. But 60th Street is a conveniently artificial boundary. Why not 110th Street?
Let uber and lyft rides south of that pay a surcharge going directly toward improving mass transit. No surcharge north of 110th St, or in the boroughs. This would incentivize drivers to, as the adds laughably insist, provide service where mass transit doesn’t go. This guy was born and raised on Staten Island, commuted on public transit for four years to high school, when it was a three fare zone.
There should be less street parking, almost no double parking for deliveries, to make increasingly congested Manhattan streets passable.
5
@Paul: Oh, sure! Let's crack down on deliveries by truck, b/c trucks clog up the roads and double park!
Did you notice that Manhattan is an ISLAND and everything that's here gets brought in BY TRUCK?
That includes UPS trucks, FedEx, DHL, Amazon, Fresh Direct, Peapod, moving vans, plus all the private trucks that deliver supplies to the Big Box stores (Kmart, Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, The Container Store, Duane Reade, CVS, etc.), as well as trucks supplying supermarkets, bodegas, florists, plumbers, bakeries, etc.
Manhattan cannot do without trucks, and truck deliveries, by and large, are more important and more necessary than 100,000 Ubers.
3
@L
You know what I see, A LOT, that really bugs me? Trucks that double park even when there are spots at the curb. UPS notorious for that.
My solution is to reduce street parking spots, other than for commercial so trucks CAN deliver without the persistent double parking. Also, all those construction high rises should have increased garage capacity, some of which is designated as municipal parking, in return for zoning abatements.
Uber/Lyft drivers already know where you want to go and will take you there. Taxicab drivers can decide they don’t go uptown—or not with you—and pull away from the curb while your fingers are still clutching the door handle.
29
@Ed Truth. I have zero love and zero pity for cab drivers after decades of being mistreated by them.
4
From the perspective of a commercial driver in a metropolitan area, a big problem from rider share activity is drivers with amateur skills trying to operate like taxis driven by stunt drivers in film and TV.
Their antics block traffic flow while endangering passengers.
2
Optimize wait time ? Get real , you will always wait in Manhattan . Go ahead and flood the streets with more cars , get picked up by Uber or Lyft immediately and sit and wait in traffic for an hour . Everybody is missing the elephant in the room ; overcrowding . Uber and Lyft work well in cities like Austin or Boston, they don't have limited space for traffic .
7
@sm You think any city has unlimited space?
1
@vulcanalex In case you missed it , NYC and outer boroughs are all on islands , all connected by bridges , yes you probably have more space to grow and add more roads , highways , in Nashville or Memphis than NYC . That is why we live in high rises .
I lived in Washington Heights from 1977 - 2004
Back then - you would be more likely to see a Wooly Mammoth standing at the corner of 175th St and Broadway than seeing a yellow-medallion taxi cab
And -- if you did happen to see a yellow cab - it most likely had reluctantly dropped off a fare - and now - with doors securely locked - was racing to get out of there and back down below 96th Street --
My experiences riding in Gypsy Cabs -- oh, excuse me - "Car Services" - were all very pleasant and efficient - and the fare was an agreed-upon flat-rate, which worked for both driver and passenger -
The Gypsy cars were often roomy and comfortable -
And -- you could order a car to come and pick you up right at your front door - or just about anywhere else -- especially in those neighborhoods where the Wooly Mammoths could be seen...
26
Right number of licensed, regulated taxi's ? I don't have the numbers to do the math. right number of unlicensed, unregulated, tax avoiding Uber and Lyft cars? Easy -- Zero
2
Ok let’s understand something. taxis had to work in tight areas like manhattan because it really couldn’t function in the boros where there are so many streets , a cab driver cannot go up and down all the streets of houses without a fare , just hoping that someone comes out of their house, that’s an impossible job for a human being , so the cab went to Manhattan when that was possible .
With the addition of GPS and picking up passengers unseen , that is no longer unfeaseabe and taxis can cruise the boros if there is demand
1
I took Uber from point A to point B for $15 in a clean new car and a friendly driver.
Then I took a non-Uber taxi to the same point A to point B for $33 with a crazy rude driver. Who would you use?? Thank you Uber!
40
@KM: How nice for you! But a good friend of mine was persuaded to take Uber from Point A to Point B - she was quoted a fare in advance; then when the trip took longer than expected (due to traffic congestion!) she was upcharged for that, even though she had no control over the traffic.
She arrived at her destination paying $40 MORE than Uber quoted her originally. Who would she use in future? As she told me: "Uber? NEVER AGAIN!" She's sticking to medallion taxis in NYC b/c they don't pull stunts like that. Thank you, TLC and Yellow Medallion Taxis!
4
Answer: not nearly as many when you have a convenient, functional, modern public transportation system that moves large numbers of people quickly and affordably.
10
@Pat
Did you read that NYT article about the MTA's gross money mismanagement and all the ghost employees getting pay checks who hadn't shown up to work in years?
I think the MTA stands in the way of that dream - the modern public transportation system.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-subway-system-failu...
As the article implies, getting to the sweet spot is probably unrealistic. Thus, phrased differently, the question is: how do we want to err? Do we want to err on the side of a greater supply of cabs (so that riders will not have to wait too long to receive a ride) at the expense of driver's wages and possible traffic congestion? Or would we rather have somewhat higher driver wages and less traffic congestion but require passengers to wait longer to obtain their rides? I favor the former of the two if only because the primary purpose of providing a business or service is to cater to the needs and wants of the consumer. And if drivers find that they cannot make a living driving because of an oversupply of cabs, they will have to find the next best alternative employment. I do agree that there are externalities to an oversupply of cabs such as pollution and traffic and I am interested in what the study says about these two issues.
1
NYC has a unique set of circumstances. There is an extensive 24-hr subway and bus system, it has problems but you can definitely depend on it to get around. There have always been taxis (and green cabs for the boroughs) not to mention car services.
While some argue that Uber fills the gap for areas not well served by public transit, they neglect to take into consideration that most of those far-flung neighborhoods have poor residents who cannot afford Uber anyway. Furthermore most Uber trips are in Manhattan, which has an extensive array of subways and city bus service.
The best solution in NYC is to beef up mass transit. We do not have street capacity for more cars and never will.
15
@Karen
The MTA, is not a reliable way to get around. Last night I was forced off a #1 train at 96th Street and given the crowded condition of the hot station, I decided the best solution was to walk to 110th Street as I figured the busses will be way over crowded and might not pick up passengers due to overcrowding.
Also about half the cars have little or no air conditioning, posing a major risk for the elderly. We used to have good air conditioning on the #1.
Como must go.
Whatever it is , the number now is too high. NYC is a victim of its own success. It’s culture , restaurants and roads are overcrowded to the point of not being able to enjoy the city and what it has to offer. I have seen fire trucks blocked by Tplate Uber cars double parked. Not only does Uber have to be capped but the overbuilding also
6
A thoughtful article. Uber and Lyft saying that
They care about what their drivers make is kind of disingenuous. The average tenure of an Uber driver is a little more than six months. Uber and Lyft resistance to full backround checks
Is due to the fact they realize that fact. Turnover is high and you need as many bodies as possible.
18
@Peter Greenberg Uber and Lyft's resistance to "full" background checks is based on the fact that the fingerprint-based ones to which you're referring are vastly *less* accurate than electronic ones. At least 25% of all arrests made in the U.S. never make into the FBI's fingerprint database, period, given that it's wholly reliant upon voluntary uploads from local law enforcement.
Nearly as bad is its inexcusably high error rates for false positives *and* false negatives. This problem occurs because many law enforcement agencies upload an arrestee's prints shortly after his or her arrest is process, but fail to go back and delete the records if the arrestee is either released without being charged -- or even fully exonerated.
While I realize this issue was grossly distorted in Austin a couple of years ago -- shortly before it became one of the only cities in America to pass a fingerprint mandate for ride-hail drivers, resulting in Uber and Lyft's exit from the market -- there is nevertheless a reason why Austin and Houston are the ONLY cities in America that opted to mandate them. And no, the answer isn't "Houston and Austin were right and the 250+ other cities that use electronic background checks are wrong": fingerprint-based checks are inferior to electronic ones in nearly every way, a fact their city officials opted to ignore.
Finally, the reason "turnover is high" is because Uber/Lyft driving is *designed* to be a short-term gig, not a permanent vocation.
@Jeff: "the reason "turnover is high" is because Uber/Lyft driving is *designed* to be a short-term gig, not a permanent vocation."
You have just articulated precisely why I would not get into an Uber or Lyft. I don't want to be driven around by someone who can't wait to quit driving people around. No thanks!
If left alone, the free market will determine fairly and precisely the correct number of Uber/Lyft cars.
Someone needs to take Econ 1001.
43
@George Orwell
Yes, supply and demand might meet at their equilibrium point but it ignores the externalities of pollution and additional traffic. Plus, for some, drivers' wages are an issue and that in some way correlates with the supply of cabs.
That is not entirely accurate. If you had indeed taken Econ 101 you would have learned about the concept of an externality (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality). The point is that drivers take advantage of public roads, parking spaces, and the right to pollute the air by burning fuel, which are public resources whose cost is borne collectively by the public rather than the individual driver. Thus, it‘s very possible that a completely free market for rides can lead to a tragedy of the commons-type situation (another useful Econ 101 concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons) where the rational choices made by individual agents collectively lead to an inefficient outcome.
I support a free market generally (and to a large extent even in this particular context of rides), but we should remember that the free market only achieves an efficient outcome when externalities can be taken into account and their prices factored into the decision-making of each agent. Even then, usually the ideal outcome is only achieved in economics textbooks, and in real life there are often other factors that make government regulation a sensible idea.
11
Uh, maybe you were out sick when externalities and tragedy of the commons was covered in your econ 101 class. The streets are publicly owned and at present used with no direct charge to users.
Uber is failing as a model. Good riddance.
6
Yeah, this shows exactly why you want to make the market figure this out. The government doesn't regulate how many fast food workers or maids there should be, it lets that get decided by the market. Why is this form of low-wage employment any different? Because there is a long history of regulation here, and so people in this business have an expectation that the government will create an artificial shortage and thereby prop up their wages.
This has nothing to do with traffic congestion, that is a canard. If you want to cut congestion in NYC, increase the cost of going over a bridge or into a tunnel in a private car to $150. That would, of course, inconvenience wealthy people in the suburbs who can't drive themselves into the city every day. So instead, less wealthy people in the city who need a ride get to pay more for it, and a special interest group is protected. That special interest group then kicks back campaign contributions to the politicians that protected them. The actual public interest has nothing to do with any of this, it is all just petty corruption, sticking it to the people without power to benefit those that already have it.
8
As someone who has to drive to Jersey City from the Bronx everyday, I am not a rich spoiled person. It takes 2 hours to go there by mass transit. I don't want to spend 4 hours a day commuting. Driving to work is expensive as is parking. The two hours a day I spend driving are wasted. If there were better mass transit options, I go back to them in a flash.
7
Actually, less-wealthy people in NYC cannot afford Uber, they use the subway or bus. And the even-less-wealthy walk or bike. I see poor people here in flip flops drudging through the snow, I see families on balancing on bicycles with groceries every day.
Uber is far better suited for wealthy and middle income suburbanites than poor city dwellers.
Not to mention that most Uber drivers are poor themselves. We need to focus on more efficient ways to get around than driving!
6
@W:: The canard here is that Uber is here to "help." They're here to help themselves!
Further, the government DOES regulate fast food workers because anyone who's a food handler has to successfully complete a food-handling safety course - that's an NYC regulation.
Perhaps you'd like to be driven by driver without a license, and have your food handled by people who have no training in food-handling safety?
So, yes, it DOES come down to "actual public interest"!
About Uber, they only care about making their investors rich; if you think they care one iota about their drivers or passengers, I have a bridge to sell you.
3
Or, you know, you could quit, year after year, passing regulations based on hunches and/or backed by powerful entrenched interests and, like, let the market work as markets do?
But sadly, that will never happen in New York.
8
So the City may want to optimize medallion value to Taxi Drivers? Or at least the author seems to think it should. This is not a good idea. Medallions have always been an "investment" that was expected to rise in value over time. That is an unreasonable expectation. Just like thinking that the Stock Market will rise forever. If their value goes down due to zero innovation in Taxi Services over the past 100 years, tough.
Services thrive when they optimize to the people they are designed to serve. Got it NYC?
8
The ideal number of Ubers has to be FAR lower than it currently is. I don't believe for one moment Uber's self-serving statement that they're worried about people in under-served areas. Uber worries about exactly one thing: its own bottom line.
If Uber agrees to be in full compliance with all NYC laws - on the same basis as medallion taxis have to be - and makes sure all their drivers have a TLC hack license, then maybe we'd be getting somewhere.
"Flood the streets" is simply a hostile take-over of this city's public infrastructure. Our tax dollars are paying to maintain those roadways for everyone, not just to make Uber's life easier.
And while Uber says its cars are only available if called by app, I have personally observed dozens of Uber-logo cars cruising for street hails in Manhattan, primarily at bus stops in the evenings - this is blatantly illegal, and tells me that the drivers are NOT making enough money just driving for the app.
The trade-offs discussed always seem to center on who's making money (bottom line) - but NOT on passengers who need to have service available when & where it's needed. Would Uber agree that some percentage of its fleet will only operate in those under-served areas they keep talking about? I doubt it.
12
@L, all Uber drivers are required to have the same TLC driver license as taxi drivers. They are fingerprinted and drug tested annually, and go through the same rigorous background check process as taxi drivers.
2
@12866: I just looked this up - and you are WRONG. Uber drivers do NOT have TLC hack licenses. Go look it up yourself if you don't believe me. I looked at Uber's own website stating what the requirements to be a driver for them are.
As someone who just started driving rideshare in my city I am following this story closely. I drive on my to and on my way from my 9-5 job for extra money. My pickups are a teacher headed to work, a family headed to the dentist, an overnight worker who can't drive because she hurt her back. I serve the neighborhoods well off the Las Vegas Strip where few taxis can be found. I'm ok with an extra $300-$400 per mos., the average for a rideshare driver. I would be curious to learn how a cap would impact the high driver turnover for rideshare and vice versa, and if that is being considered in the calculation. In the 80s and 90s I commuted to NYC for school and work. I drove or used mass transit - the river crossing was $4 back then and I could park near the Hudson for about $6 a day. When I took NJ Transit to the train and the C train was down (when wasn't it?) I walked. I rarely took a cab because they were dirty, expensive, hard to find, and sometimes terrifying. As this article explains, rideshare was born and exists due to demand. Whatever the solution, I hope the compromise doesn't punish those who want it and need it most.
10
@AnthonyDA: If you haven't taken a cab in NYC since the 90's, then you're wrong to slate medallion cabs for how they *were* 20+ years ago. 42nd Street was really different back in the 90's too!
Medallion holders are required to replace every taxi with a brand new vehicle every 5 years. I take medallion cabs often enough, and they are clean, generally well-maintained, and the drivers know where they're going. I specifically contrast that last point with Uber drivers, who appear to be dependent on their GPS screens - I see it all the time: Uber vehicle slows down (and holds up traffic) b/c the driver is "consulting" their map on the phone mounted to the dashboard.
6
Not sure what cab you were in. Last I checked (yesterday), the guy had the windows down. Had to ask him to switch on AC.
3
@L I've had Yellow cab drivers get lost downtown, take the craziest - longest routes to get somewhere in Manhattan, accidentally drive into Manhattan instead of staying in Queens (on two separates occasions).
Good article that leaves out a few key aspects of this mess: (1) the need for governments to manage transportation systems to minimize greenhouse gases and how for-hire cars help, or hurt, that imperative; and (2) why for-hire cars just drive around instead of being stationary when there aren't passengers on board - in this day and age of cell phone connectivity to riders. Do the drive around because there isn't parking for them, or at least cost-effective parking? Regarding GHGs, for-hire vehicles should be required to be maximally efficient (e.g. 50 MPG or more and engines shutting off automatically when not moving); studies of Priuses being used as cabs 10 yrs ago found they were vastly more cost-effective to operate both from fuel efficiency and less brake wear. In addition, the article fails to mention (3) that Uber has been subsidizing its drivers to gain market share over cabs and public transit - which is a sneaky (sadly, legal if done domestically but internationally would be cited as "dumping") strategy that's unsustainable in the long run, leading to (4) less use of public transportation infrastructure, which makes that mode less available to everyone. The decision=makers need to take a whole system view of the services we need: moving people and freight around at maximum cost-effectiveness and minimum greenhouse gas emissions, and get out ahead of promising technologies such as electric bikes, advanced transit (e.g. personal rapid transit).
5
The really great thing about the people that use ride sharing and taxi's is that they are paying the full cost of their transportation.
They aren't free loading on people that have no access to public transportation that the politicians use to buy votes by overpaying workers and undercharging the riders.
1
The yellow cab model is UTTERLY obsolete. There is an argument for the computerized dispatch of cars to be controlled, or regulated in some manner by cities. There is no argument whatsoever for maintaining a hundred year old business model that has utterly flunked the test of market competition. The medallion system needs to go away, if the economic pain that inflicts on the current medallion holders deemed immoral, or politically unbearable, appropriate the money and buy them out.
40
@Dan: Wow, not just "obsolete" but "UTTERLY obsolete"! Hey, thanks for your opinion from Seattle. Now is it my turn to tell YOU what's wrong with Seattle?
3
@L So people who live in Seattle can't think for themselves or have an informed opinion?
1
@Vgg: If they aren't here stuck in traffic, the Seattle residents can have any opinion they want - but their opinion has ZERO validity to me as a resident New Yorker! (How about if I tell you what should be done about traffic issues in Seattle? I haven't been there in 20 years, but I still have an opinion.)
Blazin's point is absolutely spot on. The idea that the optimal number of taxis (or anything else people buy) can be set by an all-powerful and all-knowing state indicates a serious deficiency in one's education/knowledge. In the same edition of the Times 0nline there was an article on the despair that government control created in Zimbabwe. Does intellectual dissonance have any meaning here?
12
@qazmun
Just because the government cannot reach an optimal equilibrium does not mean it should not try to do so. As I and others have noted, part of the problem here is that there are externalities involved - such as more pollution and traffic - which neither Uber nor its passengers can account for in their attempt to align supply with demand. Thus, government has to step in to calculate these externalities and make them part of the mix.
5
In most of the articles that have been written recently about the decision to temporarily limit the number of Uber and other app-hired taxis in New York, little to no mention has been made of the issue of pollution. The articles mention the pace of traffic, congestion, the wait times for passengers to get a car, the daily earnings of drivers, the loss in value of medallions, the dysfunctional subway leading riders to flee. But the astonishing rise in the number of for-hire cars roaming New York's streets in the past few years has also led to a discernible increase in pollution levels. For-hire cars may seem like a solution when the subway is falling apart, but they are a misguided one. I work in east midtown and the pollution and noise from all the for-hire cars, including enormous numbers of black mega-SUVs, most of them empty much of the time, clog the streets, get stuck regularly in crosswalks, with nary a traffic law enforcer in sight to give tickets, make an unbearable amount of noise, and above all, make the air unbreathable. When I pass the many elementary and preschools in the neighborhood and see parents and nannies pushing their charges down Second Avenue, I cringe to think of what is going into the children's lungs. Pollution from combustible engines, including the greenhouse gases, should be a primary, if not THE primary, issue when discussing how to regulate Uber and the other for-hire car services. New York's air used to be cleaner. And yes, fix the subway!!!!!
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I enjoyed this well-reasoned article, but it had two glaring omissions.
First, passengers have an enormous preference for Uber and Lyft over cabs. Any analysis should also take into account consumer preference. In large measure, capping Uber was a bone to the politically-connected taxi lobby to force people to take cabs by making Uber less available and more expensive.
The second is giving private cars a free pass. Why do we agree to additional surcharges on Uber and cabs, but refuse to implement congestion pricing? Again, the answer is politics, but private cars that take a trip and then need to be parked on city streets and moved during street cleaning are an enormous factor in congestion. They need to be included in the equation.
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@Sparky: Well, yeah, there's an "enormous preference" for the Uber & Lyft given that they outnumber medallion cabs 100,000 to 13,000! That's not a sane measurement of anything. If medallion cabs were free, what do you think would happen to "preference"?
Secondly, you say "private cars" are getting a free pass - consider this: every single Uber or Lyft IS A PRIVATE CAR!
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@L Uber and Lyft are TLC registered cars - they're just not painted yellow and tied to a medallion. Their drivers go through the same licensing requirements as Yellow cab drivers. Stop spreading the canard that Uber and Lyft are private cars - if they are so are the yellow cabs!
Don't forget that the yellow cab drivers in NYC had a legally sanctioned monopoly for 100 years. (with the partial exception of car services). That monopoly made them feel so high-and-mighty that they had no incentive optimize routing, go to technology, or do anything but drive shabby vehicles.
A lot of the congestion issues - and Uber and Lyft aren't the culprits here - come from the taxi industry's short-sightedness and hubris.
I'm not sympathetic to the 'keep taxi drivers wages high' argument. Their job is to transport me quickly and safely. It isn't my job to perpetuate an antique business model.
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@Deep South- Two wrongs don't make a right.
Too much protection and regulation hurt the yellow cab business yes, but little or no regulation re Uber, Lyft can hurt the general public ie corporate big wigs at these companies catering to the richest of fare riders and forgetting both the driver and the fare.
Uber and Lyft may look good now but deregulation can result in the same problems yellow cabs got into albeit from a different direction.
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@DS
No, your job as a citizen, is to affect change through voting in people that will implement that change by legal means.
- not by lawlessness.
Regards,
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@Deep South: You're not even in NYC - you're not here to see the actual congestion caused, nor are you in any position to decide who the "culprits" are.
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Traffic is a large problem for many residents living in large cities, like NYC. Limiting the number of Uber and Lyft cars may not actually do anything since most of the Uber and Lyft drivers are in fact from NYC and already commonly use their cars in the city. Taxis are in a slightly different position as they mainly crowd around airports. Although the number of taxi, Uber, and Lyft drivers may increase, the distribution of intensity of traffic would still follow the same random curve: the bell curve. I think there are better strategies to ease the traffic in cities; saying this, I completely agree that limiting numbers could be a temporary solution. I enjoyed this article because it showed both sides of the argument.
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The right number of cars is (and will always be) the number that have licences from the city and are lawfully doing business in said city.
They also must be paying the appropriate taxes to the local economy and city so that they contribute to the infrastructure that they are using just like anyone else.
THAT is the right number of cars. All else is secondary.
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One key thing they did not prioritize for is SHARED car services - which at least drive some efficiency into the overabundance of congestion. By making shared (e.g. uber pool or via or ?) services significantly more financially appealing (to drivers, the companies that own these services and the end consumers), we can reduce the congestion.
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@celestelee
Unfortunately a number of users of shared rides are actually people who would have taken the subway or possibly a bus.
So having cheap cost shared ride results in more vehicles on the road.
No, Trying getting from UES to Tribeca, then we can talk.
The need to solve complex resource allocation problems is why we have the Market. Even quantum computers need someone to value conflicting goals and hard constraints. My guess is eventually the Market would have found some optimum number (e,g., drivers are not going to work long for low wages, congestion would have eventually made trips ineffective.). The city’s solution as is typical of government action as it optimizes for a small, politically connected group, while relying on inability to capture widespread, at a low level, dissatisfaction with an option being removed.
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@Michael Blazin: You do know that drivers who leased medallions are are committing suicide due to not being able to find fares? Is that part of the "market correction" you're referring to?
@Michael Blazin
Yes, but how do you value the externalities on pedestrians (exhaust) and other city traffic (congestion, loss of productivity)? Do you only value the effects on the Uber and Taxi drivers themselves? They exists as part of a larger system and those interactions need to be taken into account as well.
It's why factory pollution isn't limited by "when the factory owner decides the air is too dirty to manufacture today". By that point much potential damage is done to others.
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