NYC Taxi Commission Nixes Cab-Hailing Apps 264
An anonymous reader writes "Uber is a company that creates apps to connect taxi and limo drivers with potential passengers. They've been rapidly expanding their service to cities across the country, but they're now getting pushback from New York City. This week the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission issued a public notice saying, 'A driver must not use any electronic communication device (PDF), including a cell phone or smartphone running a hail or payment app, while operating a taxicab.' The commission says its current contractual obligations forbid the use of such technology."
"while operating a taxicab" (Score:5, Insightful)
radio (Score:3, Insightful)
is the radio considered an electronic communication device? it is one-way communication for sure, but "communication" nonetheless.
TLC (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is there a commission to decide whether I can drive you from A to B for a fee and whether you can call or text me on the phone to arrange it and to whom I have to pay a very substantial annual fee for the privilege of doing so? The answer: its a legalized racket, just like all business licensing.
Lame (Score:5, Insightful)
So if you can't use electronics, how do you dispatch them? Do they return to the depot after every pickup to receive little strips of paper? (-_-)
Another case of capitalism gone full retard -- "We forbid you to use anything that could make your job more efficient and convenient for your customers!"
Re:Lame (Score:4, Insightful)
Another case of government corruption & cronyism gone full retard
FTFY
These regulations have nothing whatsoever to do with capitalism, except that they contribute to distorting, corrupting, abusing, impeding, and destroying capitalism.
Strat
Re:"while operating a taxicab" (Score:5, Insightful)
Somebody has to pay for their call center.
This makes no sense. The call center is a cost sink for the taxi company. They should be glad to be rid of it.
I think the real reason may have something to do with independent taxis competing on an equal footing with bigger fleets.
Re:Lame (Score:5, Insightful)
The medallions are owned by Regular people and very expensive so there are lots of interests in keeping the system as it is
The medallions are owned by Really Rich people and are extremely expensive so there are lots of interests in keeping the system as it is.
In 2012, the lowest winning bid for a medallion was $1.201 million [nyc.gov]
The Regular people who drive cabs have to lease from millionaires who can afford the medallion.
The NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission screwed things up in in the early 80s when it allowed cabbies to be treated as independent contractors, which broke the taxi union and changed the balance of power.
Combine that with the few (if any) new medallions issued and you essentially have a cartel of medallion owners that are screwing the drivers and the public.
Re:TLC (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd say it's more of a cartel. If it was just licensing than anyone could go to city hall fill out a form and become a taxi driver. But they keep a cap on how many taxis there are. Then they have price controls on the fares to prevent competition.
You've got it backwards - the price controls are there to keep fares from rising too high, they prevent gouging. That's a danger whenever you limit competition by restricting who can perform a service. It's like how every country in the world (except the US) which allows drug companies to patent drugs also sets limits on how much the companies can charge for those drugs. It's there to prevent abuse of their monopoly. [azcentral.com]
If they removed the state granted monopoly on taxis, then they could also remove the price controls and the fare price would likely fall. The reason they don't do this is probably mostly because of the company lobbyists, but there's some good reason to believe that this scenario wouldn't work out as well as you'd hope. Just a few years ago pedicabs (bicycle taxis) were completely unregulated in New York. There were tons of them and it was rather difficult to make a living that way, particularly if you weren't a very good salesman: the largest pedicab company in the city was (still is) run by a turkish man who would bring in people from turkey on a three month visa with the promise that they would be able to pay their way, and pay their way back home, as pedicab drivers. Since their English wasn't very good in general they had a lot of trouble getting rides, they would fall deeper and deeper into debt since there was no other way (legal way) for them to make money here and no way to get back home, etc. Just a bad scenario.
Anyway, the point is that they limit the number of cabs in order to keep rates high enough that drivers can make a living wage, and they restrict what the cabs can charge in order to keep the drivers from gouging people. It's not ideal, but a simple solution based on ideals rather than facts is not going to improve the situation.
Re:TLC (Score:5, Insightful)
And then when New York's streets are chocked cabs and congestion sucks
You probably just described New York City for the past two hundred years. While I admire someone who can actually find a problem and recognize it is a problem, who seriously believes that rigging the cab market so that it is deliberately overpriced and uncompetitive is in any way solving congestion?
Re:Uber is awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
Big Government (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why people have trouble trusting the government, their only interest is to sell Medallions for their own profit.
Re:Uber is awesome (Score:0, Insightful)
I live in San Francisco and Uber is the reason I don't have a car anymore, and never want to have a car ever again. Yes, it's expensive. And yes, it might be "throwing money down the toilet" compared to owning a car, but I don't care. The convenience is well worth it. No payments, no insurance, no gas, no parking, no maintenance, no traffic stress. Took a trip to LA, used Uber there too. One click and a nice clean car shows up in 10 minutes or less.
Re:Turf Wars ... limo vs cabs (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically a cabbie in new york, according to regulations, HAS to stop for anybody that hails them.
So bascially, this app makes cabbies into a pusedo limo service. They by pass people on the street hailing them, and go pick up the appointment.
but what is boils down to is, once again, government regulations stopping free enterprise. They need to drop this silly non-sense about limo service vs taxi service.
If you don't understand why taxis are legally required to pick up anyone hailing them,
then I guess this doesn't make sense and you can shoehorn this into the traditional
"government regulations are stifling free enterprise" world view.
There's a reason that the police and Taxi & Limosine Commision conducts sting operations to make sure that drivers are following the law.
The main ones being: you can't charge handicapped passengers more, you can't kick someone out for wanting to go to a hospital,
you can't discriminate based on race, and you can't refuse service based on destination.
More often than not, regulations are there because "free enterprise" misbehaved,
not because the big bad government is out to stop free enterprises from making money.
Re:Turf Wars ... limo vs cabs (Score:2, Insightful)
More often than not, regulations are there because "free enterprise" misbehaved,
not because the big bad government is out to stop free enterprises from making money.
More often than not, these well-meaning regulations are twisted to serve special interests once the regulations have outlived their useful purpose. Then the misbehaving party *becomes* the government. The difference is, with free enterprise, you can opt out of a corrupt or discriminatory business or even create your own competing one. There is no such option when government gets involved, which is why you should *always* be wary of government assuming such powers, no matter how trivial.
Re:Turf Wars ... limo vs cabs (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, 'cause the absolute first thing I do when a capital intensive business pisses me off is to start my own competing business. You should see my empire now. I've got my own cell phone company, taxi and limo company, electric power utility, food distribution service, and of course health care system. Oh, wait, I can't just start those things up on my own, so my choices are to have a society with rules or just take whatever corporations and business owners think I deserve. Guess which one serves my interests better?
Libertarian types can be such dumbasses sometimes,
Re:Turf Wars ... limo vs cabs (Score:5, Insightful)
More often than not, these well-meaning regulations are twisted to serve special interests once the regulations have outlived their useful purpose.
Are you claiming that the regulations requiring taxis to pick up all passengers has outlived its useful purpose?
I cannot deny that regulations can end up serving special interests instead of the general public.
My rebuttal is that we should have better regulation, not no regulation.
In this particular case, the regulations governing taxis generally serve the public and the regulations should remain that way.
The difference is, with free enterprise, you can opt out of a corrupt or discriminatory business or even create your own competing one.
The balance of power is not equal between someone who wants a service and someone who provides a service.
This is why we have regulations.
Without regulations, there are monopolies and oligopies, not competition and free markets.
This is what history shows us and ideology frequently strives to ignore or deny.
Defnition of "Electronic Communication Device"? (Score:5, Insightful)
... A driver must not use any electronic communication device ...
I am not from New York, but I had been to New York (and NYC) many times, and have lost count of the times I took NYC cabs
I remember that in the NY cabs that I were in, even during pre-cellphone era, there was already an "electronic communication device" - a CB-radio
And the cabbies were using it to communicate with their HQ and to others, even while they were zig-zagging in and out of the city traffic!!
It's totally ridiculous to place a ban on the use of "electronic communication device" while they were already using "electronic communication devices" !
Unless of course, the CB radio they were using were not electronics - maybe they are still using vacuum tubes in their CeeBees
Re:Lame (Score:2, Insightful)
These regulations are about preventing competition, lower fares, and about protecting the gravy train for, and lining the pockets of, the politically-connected cronies and the politicians while removing/limiting the choices people have, silly.
FTFY.
Strat
Re:Defnition of "Electronic Communication Device"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:TLC (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the people own the street so choose how their property is used, i.e. property rights. If the people want to restrict taxis on the street so not any rapist or conman can respond to a hail, that's up to them.
It takes a particularly stupid sort of libertarian (but I repeat myself) to go around blaming The Government for absolutely everything wrong in the world. So, for your sake, imagine that The Government is actually a private business - let's call it The Corporation. Imagine that The Corporation owns everything "public" and has an contractual interest in everything else in the country, allowing it to collect fees for certain operations.
There. That's the whole country, unchanged, but now libertarian.
Happy?