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Uber and Lyft's Rise Tanked Wheelchair Access To Taxis (sfexaminer.com) 125

Posted by msmash from the unintended-repurcussions dept.
A new San Francisco city report details the devastating drop in on-demand rides for the disability community after the rise of Uber and Lyft. From a report: The financial blow to the taxi industry, the report alleges, was also a blow to the availability of on-demand trips for anyone who uses a wheelchair. The report also points a way forward for the multi-billion dollar ride-hail industry to roll out wheelchair accessible vehicles and inclusive transportation for people with disabilities more broadly. It's a bit of an uncharacteristic kumbaya moment between old-school taxicab regulators and the tech transportation darlings, but one San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Director of Taxi and Accessible Services Kate Toran said is necessary to provide people with disabilities the service they need.

"We take a positive view because we're trying to increase service on the street," Toran told the San Francisco Examiner. "Really, the end goal is to make sure the rider gets the service, that's what we stay focused on." The report also comes on the heels of recent workshops to implement Senate Bill 1376, authored by State Senator Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo), which implemented a 5-cent per-ride surcharge on ride-hails to set up a fund so Uber and Lyft could finally provide wheelchair accessible vehicles. The bill set up a process for the California Public Utilities Commission, to establish rules requiring ride-hails to provide rides to all Californians regardless of disabilities.
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Uber and Lyft's Rise Tanked Wheelchair Access To Taxis More

Uber and Lyft's Rise Tanked Wheelchair Access To Taxis

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  • The ADA lawsuit over this is going to be huge. Freakin' YUUUUGE!

    Maybe somebody in some corner of government wanted to help them to comply, but that's not going to save them from the giant hammer that other parts of government are going to smack them with over this. The laws were already passed a long time ago.

    • The ADA lawsuit over this is going to be huge. Freakin' YUUUUGE!

      Plaintiffs have been trying to get an ADA claim to stick on Uber since at least 2015. There's at least one in progress right now. One of the threshold questions is whether Uber is a "place of public accommodation" under Title III of the ADA and thus subject to it at all. As far as I know, none of these cases have gone far enough for a court to conclusively rule on that. Until then, most law firms may view a big class action case as too risky to bankroll.

  • Externalization (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Shotgun ( 30919 ) on Friday May 24, 2019 @01:51PM (#58649306)

    In other words, they want to externalize someone's problems to everyone else. You can stop the hate right there. Whether I have enough feelz for the disabled is beside the point. This is a plain logic argument leading to a simple question.

    If I'm going to be taxed for someone's taxi ride, why should I not have a say in where they live to insure that they rarely need a taxi ride?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by lgw ( 121541 )

      In other words, they want to externalize someone's problems to everyone else. You can stop the hate right there. Whether I have enough feelz for the disabled is beside the point. This is a plain logic argument leading to a simple question.

      If I'm going to be taxed for someone's taxi ride, why should I not have a say in where they live to insure that they rarely need a taxi ride?

      Meh, I don't see it. Uber and Lyft just need to ensure they have a few drivers with vans appropriate to act as wheelchair taxis. Sure, they might have to subsidize that a little from other rides, but I doubt it amounts to much. If there are only a few requests for wheelchair vans, then the subsidy cost will be low. If there are lots of requests, that's just its own business, and will take care of itself.

      • fair enough, but many UK towns that have Uber see a disturbing lack of lifts given to disabled people with guide dogs. Including times when the driver arrives to pick up their far, sees the dog and just drives off.

        https://www.theguardian.com/co... [theguardian.com]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by lgw ( 121541 )

          Yeah, those "emotional support dogs". Wouldn't want one shitting on my carpet either. Actual blind people with actual guide dogs must be pissed at how that was exploited.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Cyberax ( 705495 )
            Thing is, you can't tell is a dog is a service dog just by looking. I work with a colleague who has a seizure dog, she's trained to trigger a medical alarm and protect her master in case of a seizure. There are other cases of true service dogs, apart from seeing eye dogs.

            But yeah, the untrained "emotional support" dogs ruin it for everyone.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dryeo ( 100693 )

            The other year, my truck broke down and I had my dog with me. I simply phoned the taxi company, told them I had a large dog and they said fine, they have a cab for that, half an hour later taxi picked us up, including the dog and drove us home. If Uber was legal here, I probably would have been fucked.

      • It could wind up being quite challenging in marginal markets.

        I usually have no problem getting an uberX at my house, but most of the time I'm not able to get an UberXL or UberSelect. So reasonably you'd need to have more ADA compliant vehicles than you have XLs. I hear that their is such a thing as UberAccess, but I can't even see a price for one or even find out if it's available. I imagine it wouldn't look good for Uber if they showed it taking many times longer than a non-wheelchair accessible vehicle.

        I'

    • Re:Externalization (Score:5, Insightful)

      by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Friday May 24, 2019 @02:29PM (#58649548) Journal

      If I'm going to be taxed for someone's taxi ride, why should I not have a say in where they live to insure that they rarely need a taxi ride?

      Do you also think that you shouldn't have to pay slightly-higher prices for goods and services because businesses have to provide wheelchair access?

      This is one of the cases where it makes sense for society as a whole to bear a very slight additional cost in order to ensure access for all members of society. Yes, it's an imposition on everyone else... but such a tiny one, with such enormous benefits to a non-trivial segment of society that on balance it makes sense. These things are judgment calls that we must make collectively, there aren't any hard, fast rules that we can use to decide when the cost is low enough and the benefit is high enough. So we employ political processes to make the decisions. In this case, those processes decided that it made sense to mandate a certain level of wheelchair access in taxi fleets. That decision was inadvertently undermined by the rise of ride-hailing. So now either the ride-hailing services will voluntarily step up to address the issue, or we'll use the political process to impose it on them, just as we did taxis. I suspect they'll do it voluntarily, now that the issue has been pointed out.

      Really, this is just the normal functioning of democratic processes in action. Nothing to get worked up about.

      • This is one of the cases where it makes sense for society as a whole to bear a very slight additional cost in order to ensure access for all members of society.

        No. The cost should be borne by the company offering the service. In this case, the Uber and Lyft taxi services.

        That decision was inadvertently undermined by the rise of ride-hailing.

        They're not hailing anything, nor are they sharing. Uber and Lyft are taxi services, plain and simple. They can use all the buzzwords they want, but in

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ichijo ( 607641 )

        If I'm going to be taxed for someone's taxi ride, why should I not have a say in where they live to insure that they rarely need a taxi ride?

        This is one of the cases where it makes sense for society as a whole to bear a very slight additional cost in order to ensure access for all members of society

        When you say "very slight additional cost", are you including the costs of air pollution (up to $1,600 per person per year [fullerton.edu]) and climate change caused by the additional driving, deforestation to make room for ho

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          Are you suggesting that we should fight climate change by putting everyone in concentration camps?

          • Based on the actions of other socialistic govt (Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics), that answer is "yes". Well, more live concrete cubicles, I mean apartments, that don't stand up well to earthquakes...but concentration camps are a good description.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dryeo ( 100693 )

              Well, do you have any left over from when you stuck the Americans of Japanese descent in them? Perhaps you can ask the inventors for advice, I'd guess you'd call 1900's UK socialist, just like 1940's America. Just declare war on climate change and pick whichever group to put in them, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has lots of practice, socialist too as they used government power to steal property and give it to others

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Ichijo ( 607641 )

            Are you suggesting that anything that isn't a single family detached home is a concentration camp?

      • This is one of the cases where it makes sense for society as a whole to bear a very slight additional cost in order to ensure access for all members of society. Yes, it's an imposition on everyone else... but such a tiny one, with such enormous benefits to a non-trivial segment of society that on balance it makes sense.

        It does not make financial sense. The economic cost outweighs the economic benefit. But we as a society have decided that in the interest of fairness to people who are afflicted by a disa

      • This is one of the cases where it makes sense for society as a whole to bear a very slight additional cost in order to ensure access for all members of society.

        You make this claim, but you didn't really give a good supporting reason as to why it makes sense. Because it's a small imposition and the political process? We don't support everything that is a small imposition, being small is more of a reason to not rule it out, rather than a reason to do it.

        In other words, you can either think this out more, or explain it more clearly.

    • Re:Externalization (Score:5, Insightful)

      by The Grim Reefer ( 1162755 ) on Friday May 24, 2019 @02:39PM (#58649608)

      In other words, they want to externalize someone's problems to everyone else. You can stop the hate right there. Whether I have enough feelz for the disabled is beside the point. This is a plain logic argument leading to a simple question.

      What do you think taxes are for? Are we over taxed and is there a shit ton of fraud in government? Yes. But if you want to live in society, then you pay taxes. If you don't, then go move to a shack with no running water, electricity, etc.

      Everyone pays taxes for schools, but not everyone has kids. Those that do, have one, two, or a dozen, but the amount of taxes paid by those families is the same. Actually you pay less taxes the more kids you have, even though the amount of money needed to educate them increases with more children. Obviously we all benefit from having educated generations that follow us.

      How about welfare, medicaid, & medicare? Do you want to stop paying that because you don't need it? Unemployment? I guess everyone is just SOL if they get sick or lose their job.

      If I'm going to be taxed for someone's taxi ride, why should I not have a say in where they live to insure that they rarely need a taxi ride?

      Yes, great idea. But why stop there? Do you also want to decide where sick people live? Old people? What about single people? They waste a ton of resources maintaining an entire dwelling for just themselves. Or maybe we should keep all of the stupid people together. Or have tiered housing based on intelligence. I suppose anyone with children should be forced to live within walking distance of a school since they get tax breaks. (/s)

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Ichijo ( 607641 )

        But if you want to live in society, then you pay taxes. If you don't, then go move to a shack with no running water, electricity, etc.

        Where do you live where your taxes pay the electric and water bills?

        Do you also want to decide where sick people live? Old people? What about single people?

        If I'm being taxed to subsidized their lifestyles, then not allowing me to make such decisions creates a situation of taxation without representation. Doesn't it?

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by The Grim Reefer ( 1162755 )

          But if you want to live in society, then you pay taxes. If you don't, then go move to a shack with no running water, electricity, etc.

          Where do you live where your taxes pay the electric and water bills?

          USA. If you want to live in a society and accept the benefits of it, then you pay taxes for stuff that you use, and for stuff that you don't. How do you think all of that infrastructure was paid for?

          Do you also want to decide where sick people live? Old people? What about single people?

          If I'm being taxed to subsidized their lifestyles, then not allowing me to make such decisions creates a situation of taxation without representation. Doesn't it?

          No.

        • Lol I was waiting for the asshole American that thinks the less fortunate should just suck it up and make up for their own misfortune in life. There is is!

      • What do you think taxes are for?

        I doubt if many disabled people in SF are poor, or even below the national median in income.

        It is not obvious that they should be getting subsidies from taxpayers.

    • I'm confused here, are you advocating a socialist, central-planning type system? Because if you are arguing that it is better for a group of central planners to get down in the weeds and make decisions on every possible question that involves resource allocation, there are some good examples why this doesn't work out. They mostly center around how people working within the system in question, say a person using a wheelchair deciding where to live, is likely to have a more comprehensive views of the situati

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • If I'm going to be taxed for someone's taxi ride, why should I not have a say in where they live to insure that they rarely need a taxi ride?

      If I am going to be taxed to build the road you travel on, why don't I have a say in where you live to minimise the amount of road you need to use?

      I hope you think my comment is dumb and I hope you reflect on your own as a result.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      In that case I want a say in what car you drive, and the location and type of dwelling you have. No more externalising your pollution costs to me without representation.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Shotgun ( 30919 )

        You don't have a say in where I live, but you do have a say in how much I pay to live there. How much I pay to use the roads is reflected in how much tax I pay through the amount of fuel I use. If I choose to live 50 miles out in the country and drive to work, I'll be paying to maintain the roads I use. If I want to live even further out, I may be navigating a dirt road maintained by my neighbor and his tractor (like it is done at the airport I base my plane at).

        IOW, I'm not externalizing to you. Where

    • Civilization works by continuously improving the quality of life of all citizens. Anything less just devolves into finger pointing and infighting while a ruling elite takes everything for themselves. You're post is a fine example of the latter at work. You're very busy worrying about where your tax dollars go without questioning why the tax dollars of a /. poster (which, let's face it, none of us is a Warren Buffet) matter so much.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Shotgun ( 30919 )

        In that case, my life would be improved by the people asking me to pay for their transportation living in a place that does not require me to pay as much for their transportation. How is that not just as much civilization as your claim? How is your claim on my resources not finger pointing and infighting, while my demand that you take action to reduce your claim on my resource is? Why do you consider the public coffer to be an endless resource which must always be available at the whim of "deserving" ind

  • Wheelchair accessible taxis? (Score:3)

    by mobby_6kl ( 668092 ) on Friday May 24, 2019 @01:52PM (#58649322)

    I don't think I've ever seen a wheelchair accessible mainstream taxi, like just waiting somewhere or driving around. They're almost always just regular sedans or minivans. You could probably call one but then there's no reason there couldn't be an Uber-Handicapped like there's -X or -Black or something. Just have a slightly higher rate (or subsidize with VC money, who cares) to offset the more expensive specialized vehicle.

    • I have seen them, but only in Vegas. Where I come from (Santa Cruz) they have a "Lift Line" feature of the public transportation system where you schedule a wheelchair lift-equipped van to come and get you from in front of your house. It's free for poor people.

      • Most cities, even my town of 15,000, have dial-a-ride public service vans with all the handicapped accommodations. Imposing the costs of adapting to multiple kinds of disability is just as much a burden on medallion cab companies, and fully-equipped taxis corresponding rare.

    • there's no reason there couldn't be an Uber-Handicapped like there's -X or -Black or something.

      There is. It's currently called UberWAV [uber.com] (for Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle). It seems the primary gripes are that they're not available in 100% of the markets where Uber operates (shocking), and that where they do operate they're not always 2 minutes away like a typical car.

  • ..at least for a BIG city where you'd have a lot of wheelchair and other cripple folks around.

    If you could get a handicapped access vehicle to do some uber/lyft carries with, you could corner the market for awhile and make some decent $$'s I'd think.

    If Uber/Lyft added a handicapped requirement for the vehicle being summoned, likely as not these folks would start getting 'surge' pricing too, since there would not be quite as many of them out there.

  • There is already a service, it's called Uber Health. They have accessible vehicles. https://www.uberhealth.com/ [uberhealth.com]

  • Sounds like ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Friday May 24, 2019 @02:01PM (#58649400)

    ... cities are trying to weasel out of their publicly funded handicapped transportation systems. Our county transit system has wheelchair accessible vans that can be called and provide handicapped people door-to-door service. For free. If I was handicapped and local transit tried to pawn me off to the Uber/cab business, I'd tell them to go fuck themselves.

    • ... cities are trying to weasel out of their publicly funded handicapped transportation systems. Our county transit system has wheelchair accessible vans that can be called and provide handicapped people door-to-door service. For free. If I was handicapped and local transit tried to pawn me off to the Uber/cab business, I'd tell them to go fuck themselves.

      Same with our city (which SF would probably look down on as flyover country and not nearly as enlightened as them).

      Well, there is a nominal, very reasonable per trip fee. It's surely heavily subsidized.

      So what's SF's deal? If it's a public good, then the public can darn well pay for it, instead of ordering businesses to.

  • DISRUPTION VIA INNOVATION VS HIJACKING (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    IMHO, there is a huge difference between, disrupting an industry via innovation vs disrupting an industry via unfair competition!

    IMHO, Uber & Lyft & AirBnB are great examples of disrupting an industry via unfair competition!

    IMHO, Uber & Lyft are nothing but illegitimate taxi companies, regardless of whatever they claim/pretend to be!
    Are they in direct competition w/ taxi companies? Yes! Then they are taxi companies!

    IMHO, AirBnB is nothing but illegitimate hotel company, regardless of whatever th

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday May 24, 2019 @02:20PM (#58649500)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • How does it impact wheelchair accessible taxis? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Friday May 24, 2019 @02:21PM (#58649512)

    I'm assuming there were accessible taxis before Uber, those taxis still exist. What does Uber have to do with a taxi company not providing what they had before? If anything more taxis would be available as regular customers use less taxis.

    • What does Uber have to do with a taxi company not providing what they had before?

      The taxi companies subsidized the wheelchair accessible vans by charging a little more to everyone else.

      As demand for taxis dries up, there are no surcharges to subsidize the WAVs.

      If anything more taxis would be available as regular customers use less taxis.

      This is an astoundingly ignorant statement. Are you really this clueless about how economies work?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by guruevi ( 827432 )

        Surcharges to offset subsidies is not how a good economy works, as this case demonstrates but has happened over and over again as technology has advanced. If the government wants to fund x for special group y, then it should do so, making another industry more expensive just causes faster cannibalization of old industry by new technology.

        • Surcharges to offset subsidies is not how a good economy works

          Indeed. Cross-subsidies are almost always stupid and misguided.

          It is questionable if we should be subsidizing disabled people at all, especially if it is done independent of income or need. Why should a working class taxi driver earn less so a rich disabled hedge fund manager in SF can keep more?

          If we are going to subsidize them, it makes far more sense to give them a general subsidy that they can spend as needed, rather than a specific subsidy for transportation.

          If we are going to subsidize their transpo

    • wheelchair accessible taxis are subsidized by regular taxis. This is acceptable because a) the value of allowing wheelchair bound people to take part in society outpaces the cost and b) any one of us may at a later time become wheelchair bound and c) basic human empathy indicates we should allow this.

      Uber is breaking that system. Eventually the taxis become borderline medical transportation. Cost rises. Excuses will be made that the government will fund a separate taxis system. We've already seen +5 com
  • By allowing them to come to their city, they cause chaos with taxis, public service, etc.
    A minimal amount of regulation really should be required. In particular, they should require that ALL of their vehicles be EVs.
    Likewise, that a certain number of their vehicles handle disabilities.
    Issue solved.
  • But cities should be regulating them so that everyone has access. This includes the disabled and underage. If Lyft and Uber can't deliver rides for everyone, then they should face steep fines per day as far as I'm concerned.
    • And when you're finished piling as many regulations on Uber and Lyft as you did on regular taxicabs, you'll find Uber and Lyft suck as much as regular taxicabs. And you'll be posting here, wondering why they suck so much when they were so much better when they were newer.
      • The only regulation that I am proposing for companies that sell rides is they need to actually sell rides, to everyone. How is that so disastrous? Remind me what year the ADA was passed?

        • Obviously you're being disingenuous, but the requirement to sell rides to those who can't accept rides in an ordinary car actually is a significant burden.

          As for the ADA, it's been enormously expensive and along with the National Environmental Protection Act, is a major reason we can't build anything in this country any more.

  • Our flyover city has little buses you can reserve wheelchair rides on ahead of time. And we aren't nearly as "progressive" as CA.

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