Online Carpooling Service Fined In Canada 541
TechDirt is reporting on a disappointing development out of Canada. An Ontario transportation board has fined PickupPal, a Web-based service for arranging carpools, because a local bus company complained of the competition. (TechCrunch apparently first broke the story.) "[The transportation board has] established a bunch of draconian rules that any user in Ontario must follow if it uses the service — including no crossing of municipal boundaries — meaning the service is only good within any particular city's limits. It's better than being shut down completely, and the service can still operate elsewhere around the world, but this is yet another case where we see regulations, that are supposedly put in place to improve things for consumers, do the exact opposite."
No sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
* You must travel from home to work only â" (Not Home to School, or Home to the Hospital or the Airport) * You cannot cross municipal boundaries â" (Live outside the city and drive in â" sorry you cannot share the ride with your neighbour) * You must ride with the same driver each day â" (Want to mix it up go with one person one day and another person another day â" no sorry cannot do that â" must be same person each day) * You must pay the driver no more frequently than weekly â" (Neighbour drives you to work better not pay her right away just in case she drives you later on in the week)
Personally, I'm confused as to how they came to these regulations. It's built on a faulty foundation that they could define carpooling as a very strict set of conditions- and then disallow any activity that didn't meet those conditions.
It just plainly doesn't make sense. If I want to share a ride with a complete stranger and split the gas, how is that any different from sharing a ride with a family member? According to these restrictions, I can't drive myself and my mom to the airport and split the gas cost?
It's my car and I'd much prefer to do with it what I'd please- I see absolutely no reason the government has any say in this!!
Other Canadian news:
-In a surprising decision by the Ontario Sandwich Authority, You may no longer split the cost of a foot long sub with somebody else and then each eat half, as it doesn't boost profits to our local sub shops...
Walking (Score:1, Insightful)
Everyday I walk 20 minutes to get to work. I could take the bus - wich would take just as long, and would cost me much more.
So, how long until walking is prohibited? It seems pretty unfair to me, looking this way.
Re:No sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Goooo Unions! (Score:3, Insightful)
Because nothing says "Good System!" like using your lobbying clout to get the government to shut down your more efficient competition.
If you can't compete, then you shouldn't be in the game.
Re:No sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Democracy works--in theory.
How do you enforce this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are they going to randomly stop cars with more than one person and question everybody? Or maybe they'll have undercover police. We could even have a new CSI CPU (Carpool Unit).
Re:No sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You're Doing It Wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Depends on your type of government. The more you move toward socialism, the more the government is concerned with creating jobs through this sort of hackery.
Once you start protecting industries purely because they employ people, you're in trouble.
Right now in the US, it's the automakers. The traditional rationale for protecting them is because our national security requires the manufacturing base (in case we have to switch it over to tanks, for example).
But when the government props an industry up, it becomes less efficient. Recessional trimming is necessary to keep businesses from institutional bloat; it forces them to explore alternatives, improve their products, and to trim their workforce. If they never have to do that, then they'll never be competitive with companies that do.
Re:No sense... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's protectionism... same as import duties. These rules support the continued operation of an otherwise unsustainable business model (or enhance the profitability of one).
If this model is taking business from the bus company, then that says clearly that it's providing a service or cost-effectiveness that the bus company can't (or isn't willing to). What's a better model for capitalism than this, for driving change and improvement for the customer?
Further, I doubt that a large percentage of the carpooling service would be bus customers anyways... I'd bet that most of them weigh it against the option of driving their own cars. That's good for the environment - fewer cars on the road, and maybe fewer cars altogether.
The only reason this gets messy is because the drivers are taking money for the service, making them an unlicensed small business operator. There's gotta be a better way to address this than outlawing an otherwise good-for-everyone-but-the-bus-company service.
MadCow.
Re:No sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
As usual the situation is a little less ridiculous than the blogs make it out to be.
The bus company has a valid point that if I wanted to start a bus service but I didn't want to bother with things like safety regulations or hiring drivers with the appropriate license, I could easy just use the carpool site. The carpool site themselves were (they're not anymore) charging a commission.
The bus company says it's unfair competition because anyone with a car can set themselves up as a mini bus company without the expense of adhering to safety regulations. The transportation board's worry is that there will be a bunch of amateur, unregulated bus/cab drivers running around.
Re:No sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You're Doing It Wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought the government was only supposed to provide services that the private sector can't or won't provide with reasonable cost and quality.
Which is exactly what's happening here - I'm sure if there was a private sector company that provided services to the bus companies like imposing draconian regulations onto carpoolers, the bus companies would never have needed to turn to the government to provide these services!
Re:No sense... (Score:4, Insightful)
Deregulation has worked great for the US banking industry.
Re:This was on NPR a while back (Score:5, Insightful)
As soon as the bus company is merely directing people to buses and not operating said buses, they have a valid complaint.
In the mean time, there is no equivalence.
Re:No sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are plenty of cases where government gets it right, plenty of cases where businesses get it wrong.
The difference is that I have a choice of which private enterprises I do business with. Short of armed revolt or emigration I don't have that same choice when it comes to Government.
Re:Article Biased... (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess I'd be a lot more interested in the facts from which you derive your conclusions rather than the conclusions themselves. It sounds to me like PickupPal is simply an electronic "ride board", and little more.
Re:Article Biased... (Score:5, Insightful)
Specifically, it allows drivers and passengers to arrange compensation for trips.
Does this remind you of anything else? Oh, yes, a taxi company (or bus company, take your pick)...
The difference being that the taxicab/bus company itself makes money on each ride. PickupPal does not receive any money from the passenger or driver. Are they going to fine the phone company when I call my friend up and we arrange a road trip where he agrees to pay for half the gas? What about the message boards at colleges where drivers and passengers arrange for long trips back home? Sue the college?
Specifically, it allows drivers and passengers to arrange compensation for trips.
Between the driver and passenger, which is a private transaction that has nothing to do with PickupPal. It is not a transaction between the driver, passenger, and 'arranging' entity (taxicab company). Now, if you want to go after a driver because he is accepting money for a ride without having a taxi license, then go ahead. But going after PickupPal is just absurd.
Re:No sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
There are plenty of cases where government gets it right, plenty of cases where businesses get it wrong.
Amazingly enough, no one seems to be able to come up with examples of when the 'government gets it right', just plenty of cases where they get it wrong.
Re:No sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
>If I want to share a ride with a complete stranger and split the gas, how is that any different from sharing a ride with a family
>member?
It's not different until you operate a service that allows drivers to share rides with complete strangers for a fare.
Then you become a taxicab company, even if it's a non-profit one. You suddenly have the problems of personal versus public transportation insurance, accommodation for handicapped users, and tax liabilities. If you can somehow make an argument that YOUR service is DIFFERENT, the taxi and private bus companies are going to use those SAME arguments, and then *every* taxi becomes "a carpool rideshare service", and they use your loophole to avoid things like insurance, tax, licensing, and safety regulations.
You can still privately arrange carpools however you want, and you can even negotiate compensation for gas and wear-and-tear on the vehicle and stuff. You just can't setup a taxicab company and call it a duck.
Re:Article Biased... (Score:1, Insightful)
If the car you rode in said "Pickup Pal" on the side, I'd see the logic in regulating them. As it stands, they're just connecting two individuals – one of whom is willing to provide a service for cost, and one who is willing to pay for the service.
Re:No sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention lack of knowledge or care. I posted in another story how my parents pay land tax for local schools, yet someone in town who doesn't pay land tax (because they rent, etc.) will vote for a levy to gain school funds because it sounds like a good thing to them. It's not coming out of their pocket.
Re:No sense... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
It would have worked if the feds didn't bail out the idiots. They'd be out of business by now.
Re:No sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Talking about more or less regulation (as the word "deregulation" does), is useless. A regulated market needs two things: Policy that makes sense, and exactly that minimum set of regulations necessary to reasonably implement that policy.
People who are for "deregulation" generally assume that we started with neither of those things, and so removing some regulation will make things less screwed up. Those against "deregulation" assume we started with a situation reasonably close to those things and removing some regulations will break everything. And you know what they say about assumptions...
Re:No sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the US, you can change government officials and policy.
Tell that to all the people who voted for John McCain. Remember that Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner.... not a bad deal if you are one of the wolves but kind of a tough break if you happen to be the sheep.
Re:No sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
Democracy generally only requires plurality and not majority. (Though, I suppose, if there are only two choices, those are the same.)
It strikes me that in representative democracy, the difficulty of not electing idiots increases as the democratic pool increases. Your ability to influence federal elections (even if they didn't favor whoever is pseudo-arbitrarily chosen by the Democratic and Republican parties) is enormously smaller than your ability to influence local elections. It seems this is the big benefit of small federal government -- in order to have a system that more strongly reflects your desires, you want more power in the hands of the part of government you're more capable of influencing.
Re:Outdated laws are being changed (Score:3, Insightful)
A misguided bill.
There should be no law banning phones/TVs.
Just a reckless driving law. Does it matter why they were driving recklessly? What next, a specific bill to ban putting on makeup? shaving? reading a news paper? eating?
Getting that specific is needs, wasteful, leave loop holes, and harms any potential valid need to do thjose things.
Re:No sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
In the US, you can change government officials and policy.
Only in the majority.
Increasingly, minorities and individuals have absolutely no recourse. In a free country, a person in the minority would be free. But freedom is ending in the US. Majorities can take what they want, force people to do what they want, and prevent anyone from escaping their control.
Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
"[The transportation board has] established a bunch of draconian rules that any user in Ontario must follow if it uses the service â" including no crossing of municipal boundaries â" meaning the service is only good within any particular city's limits. It's better than being shut down completely, and the service can still operate elsewhere around the world, but this is yet another case where we see regulations, that are supposedly put in place to improve things for consumers, do the exact opposite."
Regulations ultimately act to benefit the regulated; not the public. The raise barriers to entry and protect incumbents. A Nobel Prize laureate in Economics pointed that out years ago.
In general, regulated industries can sustain higher prices and have less competition than unregulated ones. That's not o say regulation does not have a place; but to think it results in lower prices to consumers is wrong.
Re:No sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously? Off the top of my head things that the Canadian gov't "gets right" (and I won't quibble over what the hell that means):
1) post office
2) fire department
3) law enforcement
4) military
5) liquor distribution
That's just a handful, and for the sake of discussion I'm leaving off a few high profile, controversial services that we'll just end up arguing about.
Here in Alberta, Canada, a couple that private corporations are busy screwing up:
1) electricity. This was de-regulated here a few years back, and prices sky rocketed nearly overnight.
2) liquor distribution. We handed it over to private enterprise and prices dropped. For a year. I just visited our neighbour, BC, where it is still government run, and they have as good availability (I was shocked to walk into a corner store at midnight and find that they had a fully stocked gov't liquor store open), and most items are a good 10% cheaper.
I don't actually have a problem with liquor distribution being privately run. It's not an essential service; but if the benchmark is "serving the consumer better", it failed.
I don't think having the government run everything would work out so well, but this canard that it's inherently inefficient and private enterprise always does it better has got to be put to bed.
Re:No sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
As a slashdot signature I've seen recently said:
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding who to eat for dinner. Liberty is the sheep having a gun."
Re:No sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
Until the Government takes the gun away from the sheep for it's "protection"......
Re:No sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
It is indeed protectionism, absolutely, but not necessarily in the way you think it is.
The rules absolutely are draconian and absurd the way they're written, but I understand the intent. If there were no rules whatsoever, then we'd have a situation where someone could run an unlicenced taxi company or even a bus company. While I can't see that anybody is being harmed by ride sharing as intended by the carpooling website (and in fact there are considerable environmental and economic benefits) it might not be too much of a stretch for someone to use a site like that to pick up some extra money driving people around on the weekends, or people doing it full time even... And at that point, you have what could become a huge problem. In Toronto we have a highly regulated taxi system, and some of the vehicles and drivers they have working them sometimes scare me. I don't even want to think of what could happen if anybody could pay $1500 from the used car lot and legally start picking up passengers for a fee. Or, for that matter, arrange for rides every day from Hamilton to Toronto in a thirty year old school bus... (They seem to run around a thousand bucks on ebay)
Now, of course, my examples are to a certain extent ridiculous... However, these are the kinds of things that are absolutely something the government must guard against and they are something that the current regulations guard against. The regulations, however, also guard against other things (intentionally or not) that they shouldn't.
Conclusion: The regulations AS THEY ARE WRITTEN go too far and should be adjusted in some way that makes it possible for private citizens to take someone else with them when they go from city to city and get some help with gas money but absolutely does not allow for someone to operate an unregulated taxi, limo, or bus service. I don't know what the wording should be, but anyone on here (and I've read a few things like this) who suggest that stupid regulations like this should be simply abolished should just compare the health of Canada's tightly regulated banking system to the health of the United States' loosely regulated banking system and have a ponder on the possible similarities.
Re:No sense... (Score:4, Insightful)
The cold war is over, I don't think anyone would object if you used Soviet Russia itself as an example of what goes wrong with communism. It was a little more complicated than the animal farm's failure, for example, largely failing because it's not a good economic system, not because Gorbachev started walking on two feet instead of four.
Re:No sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
Deregulation has worked great for the US banking industry.
Actually, it was over-regulation that broke the US banking industry. When you force banks to give loans to people without any means of paying them back, the banks are going to fail. If you just leave the banks to decide who they loan money to, they tend to make sure that their customer is able to pay it back before giving out this year's Christmas bonuses.
Re:No sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
We don't have a true democracy. We don't get to choose who we vote for, we get to choose from a short list of candidates approved by those with economic power. We don't get to vote on issues, but have to vote for a representative we wouldn't have picked for ourselves if we'd been able to choose anyone we wanted. And finally, we don't get to revoke our vote when it no longer reflects our views, but are forced to hand our political power off to someone for years at a time with no recourse should they abuse it.
This democracy was designed to fail, by those who would lose power if it succeeded, and has been in the custody of those whose motives are contrary to true democracy ever since. Doesn't really matter what country you live it, this statement still holds true.
Modern democracy is like a carrot in front of a donkey who will never get to eat it, but keeps chasing it anyways.
Re:This was on NPR a while back (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlicensed van drives? As in they didn't have a drivers license? Or they didn't have some arbitrary piece of paper that said they couldn't drive around a bunch of strangers?
Re:No sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
"2) liquor distribution. We handed it over to private enterprise and prices dropped. For a year. I just visited our neighbour, BC, where it is still government run, and they have as good availability (I was shocked to walk into a corner store at midnight and find that they had a fully stocked gov't liquor store open), and most items are a good 10% cheaper."
This is breathtakingly naive. *You are paying* for the availability and the relative "cheapness" of the government-subsidized liquor store ... and so is everyone else, *even those who don't drink*. The funds you pay are called "taxes." Furthermore, you are almost *certainly* paying *more* than you would if it were not a government operation ... as has been shown thousands of times, governments simply do not have the same incentives to achieve the same high levels of efficiency that businesses competing against each other do.
- Alaska Jack
Re:No sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now actually I don't mind paying that tax , that is infrastructure, but I DO have a problem with targeted tax breaks to people with kids! If they get a tax break for fucking and having a kid and I don't, then I am effectively subsidizing their choice to have kids. That is not fair! If anything parents should be charged more since they use more resources.
Re:This was on NPR a while back (Score:4, Insightful)
Unlicensed van drives? As in they didn't have a drivers license? Or they didn't have some arbitrary piece of paper that said they couldn't drive around a bunch of strangers?
Every jurisdiction that I know of requires special licensing for the driver and has restrictions on the vehicle (usually in the form of increased insurance coverage) for people or companies that conduct passengers in cars for money. They are called taxis|limosenes|buses.
Are you implying that taxies shouldn't be regulated?
It makes sense to limit carpooling so that operators are not calling themselves carpoolers to avoid regulations. That presumes that the taxi|bus regulations are rational in the first place.
However, the restrictions that the Ontario Transportation Board (or whatever it calls itself) has put in place are idiotic.
Way more going on here... (Score:4, Insightful)
TFA is a little one-sided.
First, the regulations that exist are not there to stop carpooling, they're there to ensure bus and taxi services are safe. This isn't some theoretical problem, either, as a number of people were killed in an unlicensed and uninsured van in southern Ontario a few years back. (Would they have been alive if the service vehicle had been through a safety check, or if the operator of the vehicle was properly licensed? I don't have those details, and I can't find the article I was reading about it this morning). The problem is that the regulations are very broadly defined, and a lot of car pooling falls under them.
The Ontario government has been actively working to fix the laws for a while now, so they don't apply to car pool services (http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/09/02/ot-carpool-080902.html). But, how to write a law which covers a taxi, and doesn't cover car pooling? Tough to get right, but they are working on it.
Second, the site in question, PickupPal, was being used by a couple of companies in southern Ontario who were selling rides from Ottawa to Toronto, and the reverse direction (a 6 hour drive), putting multiple people into vans. So, essentially, running a bus service. This is a far cry from car pooling, and obviously these companies should fall under the bus regulations. Should the government be fining PickupPal, or fining these unlicensed bus services directly? Hard to say without knowing all the details involved.
PickupPal, though, called the ruling a victory, so they're obviously happy with it.
Re:No sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
So liberty means that the majority either starves or gets shot for the benefit of the minority. Not a bad analogy, actually...
Re:No sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's been a while since I was actively flying, but as a private pilot, I was not allowed to carry passengers for hire or compensation (that required a commercial certificate at least). However, I was allowed to share the cost of a flight. That seems like an exactly analogous situation. If I recall correctly, one of the main factors in determining whether a passenger was paying for the ride or sharing the cost was whether the pilot would have made the flight without the passenger. If so, that's pretty good evidence that he's not a taxi. I think the same logic should apply here.
Re:No sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
So they should have been fined based on breaking existing traffic laws.
Re:No sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't work. Guns don't prevent any oppression until the oppression becomes so bad you'd sacrifice (or at least gravely risk) your life to end it.
The oppressors know this, so they make sure to try to oppress just a little short of this threshold.
Re:No sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
So our hypothetical renter is ignorant of the tax obligations of his landlord?
Yes, along with all of the other expenses involved in owning and maintaining a property. Some renters do understand, but many more believe the landlord is taking the rent check and slipping it into their pocket every month and living like royalty while sitting around watching TV all day.
When I was renting, I knew that wasn't true, but it wasn't until I bought a condo and, later, a house, that I really understood how expensive it is to own and maintain a piece of property.
Re:No sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, here we go:
This isn't like an American company where it's turning a profit but only because of government bailouts and subsidies. They aren't a private entity at all. It's a branch of the government. There is no subsidy. If it turns a profit, that money isn't kept by the CEO. It goes into government coffers. If they turn a profit, it is a revenue source for the government. Therefore, the government can spend more and tax exactly the same. Thus, ALCB lowered taxes, or rather, allowed more government spending without raising taxes. There are cases of government run corporations that don't turn a profit. Back to BC again, BC ferries eats a loss. People want it privatized since it is using up tax dollars. The counter argument is that if it is privatized, the new corporate owners will terminate unprofitable runs. Therefore, the smaller BC islands will suddenly have no ferry service. This argument is not so cut and dry, as it's a pretty essential service to be able to get food in your grocery store! Remote towns need more roads to reach them, but the taxes they pay for those roads are the same as mine, even though my city needed less roads built to it to keep it connected.
Anyway, the previous poster is wrong. LCBO in Ontario, and BC Liquor in BC are actually slightly more expensive than the private providers in Ontario and BC. And they sure aren't open later! BC Liquor in particular is a very governmental type business. I think it's what, 10AM-4PM most days. Open till 8PM on Friday nights only. In BC if you wanted wine with dinner and it wasn't Friday, you had to go to a private store, at least if you worked a 9-5. The LCBO in Ontario is a bit better, they all seem to be open later, but have a lot less selection than say, The Beer Store.
In summary, you did pretend to have special knowledge by assuming that the province run stores were eating a loss and thus requiring government bailouts.
Re:No sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
This could, of course, be a result of people tending to vote for someone they can identify with.
There is an unfortunate trend of people seeing cleverness as arrogance, which they detest.
Re:This was on NPR a while back (Score:3, Insightful)
No, just prostitution. Oh, wait. That one was the U.S. Our turn to be stupid, I guess.