
Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads - prostoalex
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-uber-tax-los-angeles-20190226-story.html
======
nickles
> Uber and Lyft “are using public roads, and the profit is going to their
> companies,” Phil Washington, Metro’s chief executive, said at a recent
> meeting.

Public roads are supposed to be paid for through fuel taxes, which every Uber
and Lyft driver pays. California has gasoline taxes of:

* 55.22c per gallon (second only to Pennsylvania)

* 18.4c per gallon (federal)

* 2.25% sales tax

Additionally, taxing only ridesharing companies may increase incidences of
drunk driving. Is another, poorly conceived, tax really a solution?

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_State...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States)

~~~
shereadsthenews
Fuel tax revenue and other direct user fees like annual registration in
California amount to less than 25% of what the state and its cities pay to
maintain the roads and streets. Roads are massively subsidized from general
revenues. If you are proposing a $5/gallon fuel tax then I completely agree.
That would be about equivalent to what other rich countries tax motor fuel and
consistent with the state's greenhouse gas emission goals.

~~~
SilasX
That's misleading -- yes, in the aggregate, gas taxes cover only part of the
expenses, but _that 's not because of personal cars_. Damage on the roads --
and thus maintenance costs -- scales with the 4th power of weight per axle. So
the damage is virtually all from large trucks, with sedans and SUVs as a
rounding error.

If you were to apportion out the maintenance cost due to personal cars, they
are overpaying.

~~~
mc32
Exactly this. Of course, if they tax per axle and tonnage combination, it’ll
just be passed on to consumers anyhow as most of trucks are distributing goods
which directly or indirectly end up in the hands of consumers. However, it
would be quite fair to do, I think.

~~~
jacobolus
In the short term it would get passed on to consumers. In the medium term
supply chains would figure out how to reduce shipping by road. In the longer
term (in conjunction with other changes) we might be able to get larger-scale
urban development on a more sustainable track.

If we could properly price externalities (not just road wear but also ground
water contamination, CO2 emissions etc.) there are many parts of our economy
which could be made dramatically more efficient and less harmful without that
much overall change to human quality of life.

~~~
pfisch
This would devastate the economy.

For example: Exxon mobil profits in 2017 were 19.7 billion. Fukushima cleanup
costs exceed 180 billion.

There is no way to do what you are proposing without massive price increases
in electricity, gasoline and virtually every other good. I wouldn't be
surprised if when you priced all of this in you discovered that people
couldn't really afford electricity anymore.

Also this economy would never be able to have exports because the price of
producing goods would just be insane.

The truth is we can't afford the externalities without an economic implosion
that would realistically end with an extreme political group taking control in
the ensuing chaos and undoing everything you are proposing.

~~~
icebraining
> For example: Exxon mobil profits in 2017 were 19.7 billion. Fukushima
> cleanup costs exceed 180 billion.

So you could cleanup one of the worst "spills" in history with a mere 10 years
of a single company's profits?

That sounds perfectly OK.

~~~
Yetanfou
Even better, it would have been possible to _avoid_ that spill with that money
and you'd probably have enough left over for a healthy profit afterwards.

------
burlesona
This doesn’t fundamentally change the supply and demand problem in LA, which
is a city built entirely for cars and nowhere near the road capacity for
everyone to be able to make all the car trips they would like to.

For cities that want people to be able to get around AND for the roads to be
relatively uncontested, the only reasonable solution is to lower demand by
raising the cost of driving - ie. significant congestion pricing (tolls)
across the metro - and invest the proceeds into a vast increase in more space
efficient transit options. Typically this means express bus and rail service,
although the number of people who can cycle efficiently on a dedicated bike
way is pretty impressive, and with the scooter revolution there are a lot of
other personal mobility choices for people who are less physically able.

Traffic congestion is a problem of geometry and public will - with public will
being the primary impediment to progress.

~~~
dmitrygr

      > public will being the primary
      > impediment to progress.
    

What an extremely arrogant statement. If the public will does not agree with
your world view, perhaps the latter needs adjustment, and not the former, like
you imply?

~~~
shereadsthenews
The American public is unbelievably misinformed. Public opposition to an idea
indicates only how much cable TV the public has been watching recently and
says little about the merits of the idea. Just as an example of such a thing,
the median survey respondent believes that foreign aid is the largest
component of federal spending, and the overwhelming majority are against
increasing it. However when those same people are informed that foreign aid is
among the smallest parts of federal spending and that the USA is by far last
among rich countries in per-capita and per-GDP aid those same people in the
same survey at the same moment largely change their minds.

~~~
perl4ever
"The American public is unbelievably misinformed."

This may be true without implying any defense of something that is contrary to
the public will.

The public can be totally awful and that doesn't mean people who have contempt
for the public are any good.

~~~
jacobolus
I don’t see how saying that “public will is an impediment to solving traffic
congestion” indicates _contempt_ for the public. It seems like a straight-
forward factual statement, and not a particularly controversial one.

After we acknowledge that “public will” is an impediment, we can then probe
whether the problem is really so bad after all, what “public will” really
means, whether it is self-contradictory, how strongly entrenched those
interests/ideas are, whether there are ways of reframing the conversation to
significantly sway public perception and action, and so on.

It might turn out that everyone loves griping about traffic congestion but
isn’t really too bothered. Or that “public will” is just reflexive opposition
to misunderstood alternatives conditioned by decades of deliberate propaganda.
Or that “public will” is very weakly held and malleable if an alternative
proposal does a charismatic marketing blitz. Or that the disparate powerful
interest groups involved are in direct opposition and political progress
working towards compromise is at a total impasse and impossible. Or ...

~~~
dmitrygr
Op said that "public will is an impediment to progress". That is much more
arrogant statement than the one you claim to defend: "public will is an
impediment to solving traffic congestion"

~~~
jacobolus
The context made it abundantly clear that this meant “... impediment to
progress [with respect to traffic congestion]”.

Not just that the public is generically “anti-progress”.

------
habosa
The congestion caused by Uber and Lyft in SF is _bad_. It's not because of the
number of cars on the road, although that's certainly something, it's because
of how those cars behave.

Ubers and Lyfts pull over at unpredictable spots (wherever the app says to)
and then just throw on their flashers. It doesn't matter if they're blocking a
lane in rush hour they just stop.

I will never for my life understand why an Uber or Lyft driver thinks it's any
better to double park in an active lane of traffic than to temporarily pull
out and block a driveway or a red zone. Both are illegal, but at least one of
those doesn't block traffic and endanger other drivers/bikers.

Almost every day I see an Uber driver double-parked within 50' of somewhere
they could have pulled over safely.

If the cops would give out a few more tickets for this, the behavior would get
better and so would the traffic. And then we wouldn't have to tax the road
use. Taxing the road use is crap, everyone should be able to drive their
vehicle on public roads as much as they want as long as they follow traffic
laws.

~~~
nitwit005
All the delivery services park illegally as well. For a long time I assumed
they had some sort of exemption because it was so common. They just eat the
tickets as cost of doing business.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I suppose tickets should have exponential increase and decay built-in - this
way, collecting a bunch of tickets in a row wouldn't be edible for companies,
but intermittent tickets (corresponding to base rate of traffic violations)
would cost no more than before.

~~~
omouse
Linear is more predictable and easier to manage, mentally, so I don't think
that will change any time soon.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Exponential is linear in log scale, so maybe let's just say that a ticket will
cost you N zeros, where N is equal to number of tickets you had in the past
month.

~~~
bzbz
That’s not a bad way of phrasing it

------
integrate-this
I'm a LA resident. People in this city like to talk about congestion as though
they see it as a problem, but they don't actually see it as a problem.

Only people in the valley see it as a problem because there are limited choke
points into and out of LA proper which keep people from getting to work.

LA's limited transportation infrastructure prevents DTLA's homeless from
getting to Beverly Hills, Long Beach's gang-related activity from getting to
Brentwood, etc.

If LA wanted to fix their transportation problem then they could build trains
parallel to the 405 and 110 and solve the problem, but they don't want to fix
the problem because the problem allows them (us?) to keep the city segregated
by income.

~~~
wjossey
And to your point, they absolutely could solve the chokepoint issues with
eminent domain, and adding additional arteries, but they choose not to.

For people who think a congestion tax will improve traffic, it won't.
Congestion taxes work if they can shift behaviors to alternate modes of
transportation. If there aren't any alternatives, it's just a levy.

~~~
floatrock
> and adding additional arteries

Time and time again cities learn this does nothing.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand)

~~~
wjossey
Induced demand doesn’t say that nothing happened. It says that demand just
fills up the new supply.

There are no alternatives to a road system in LA for most residents. If the
roads were choked and there was an underutilized subway that I could use, I’d
totally get the argument of taxing the road system or capping capacity, so as
to push people toward more efficient methods. But, it’s not feesible to build
out a subway system in this city that is expansive, so we need to work with
what we have- Cars.

Make LA the autonomous car capital of the world. Let’s be the best and first
at linking cars together in convoys and shuttling them fast down our massive
freeway network.

Let’s build tunnels under the mountain passes to add more connections into
Hollywood so people have better access than winding canyon roads.

Let’s build expansive subway networks through south central and downtown to
bring cost effective transportation to lower income neighborhoods.

Let’s do a ton. But let’s also build a bunch of roads.

~~~
jedberg
> Let’s build tunnels under the mountain passes to add more connections into
> Hollywood so people have better access than winding canyon roads.

This is an interesting idea. I just measured it out, and assuming you could
build a straight tunnel to bypass the canyon at the 405, it would be 5.3
miles.

To bypass Laurel Canyon would be a 3.0 mile tunnel.

Coldwater bypass would be 4.1 miles.

So the question is, do we the technology to build tunnels that long and deep
(all of those are about 1000 feet). And is it a good idea to build a 1000 foot
deep tunnel in an area known for earthquakes?

~~~
wjossey
I'm not an engineer of that sort, but I'd imagine if we can build subways in
earthquake-prone zones like SF, LA, and Tokyo, we can build safe tunnels under
mountains in an earthquake zone.

------
greeneggs
> Metro’s rough estimates suggest a 20-cent fee on each trip could bring in
> $401 million over a decade, while a $2.75 fee could raise $5.5 billion.

Hmm, $401 million / 20 cents * $2.75 = $5.51 billion.

Is there some "law" that public transportation officials never account for the
fact that increased fares or taxes will reduce demand?

Maybe most people don't care, but I find it hard to take seriously anyone who
doesn't believe in price elasticity of demand. Perhaps they are ignorant of
economics, or perhaps they are so well off that that $2.75 isn't worth
counting. Either way…

~~~
gamblor956
In this case, reduced demand is desirable because Uber and Lyft drivers are a
large part of the renewed traffic problems in LA.

------
emiliobumachar
I expect this to backfire. More people will buy cars if hiring out their
commute becomes more expensive. Once they have bought a car, they'll use it
even for perfectly walkable errands, just like everyone else.

"Metro also is considering a fee on bicycles, electric scooters, and other
devices"

Ditto.

~~~
Tyrannosaur
Your comment actually made me read the article. That is a direct quotation,
and pushes the whole thing over the edge in my opinion from "very poorly
thought-out plan" to "just barely pretending"

------
objektif
NYC is doing this as well and it makes no sense to me. What is congestion? Is
it “people who own cars getting stuck in traffic”? To me it seems like all
this benefits is wealthy people who want to drive comfortably to/around their
neighborhood.

~~~
paulgb
Not only that, if you look at plates, a good portion of the cars around
Manhattan besides taxis and hire cars (T-plates) have out-of-state plates. Why
should residents pay hefty city/state taxes AND pay more to use the roads
(through the new Uber/Lyft tax) so that there is less congestion for people
who live out of state and drive in? What behavior is the city trying to
incentivize?

~~~
gamblor956
Congestion pricing is paid at the point of entry, so the non local cars also
pay the fee. In fact, it's easier to collect from them.

~~~
mattnewton
But in the article LA residents pay increased Uber and Lyft fares. If this
policy were in NYC, the gp is suggesting NYC residents get hit with an
additional fine that people who drive from out of state would not.

~~~
megaremote
Well, it doesn't matter where that uber came from.

Reducing congestion isn't just about making it easier to drive, it makes is
safer as well.

------
rajeshp1986
I feel this is a completely misjudged solution. The reason so many people use
Lyft & Uber is because of lack of public transport. This seems like city
finding another way to tax people instead of helping its citizens.

------
blobbers
Pretty sure Los Angeles had bad traffic way before Uber and Lyft arrived.

I distinctly remember staring out of the Hilton at Universal City in 2006, on
my first visit to California, with a group of Canadians marveling that there
could be a traffic jam at 10PM at night.

~~~
ibrault
I don't think they're trying to argue that Uber and Lyft created LA traffic
but I would agree that their arrival put more cars on the roads. There's a
huge market of people who are willing to pay a little extra to avoid the
hassle of LA public transportation and considering that, in general, people
Uber to busy places (LAX, downtown, etc.), it's bringing more cars onto the
already clogged roads that wouldn't be there otherwise.

~~~
amanaplanacanal
But is it really cannibalizing public transportation? Or is it cannibalizing
private car driving? I assume somebody has studied this.

------
jvanderbot
Comparing rideshare to public transit, this tells me there's clearly a need
for easier, faster transit even with higher pricing.

Solution? Try to ruin it.

Instead, maybe we should embrace it and provide incentives for ridesharing vs
driving alone? E.g. give uber a lane on the highway for 2+ passengers and tax
only single rider transits. Give a few lyft ride coupons with every monthly
bus pass. Provide benefits to using busses (which are a terrible experience)
by occasional free lyft rides ...

~~~
shereadsthenews
Can we stop with the "rideshare" junk yet? Uber and Lyft are computer-
dispatched taxi services. The overwhelming majority of their trips involve the
driver going to someplace they have no need of going, with either zero or one
other person in the car.

~~~
perl4ever
I have no idea what you are really trying to say. How do you define need? All
my Lyft trips have either been to/from an auto mechanic or the airport. Is
that "need"? In principle, I could have gotten friends to drive me, given
enough incentive. Or I could have parked at the airport, or ridden the bus, or
gone to a mechanic that made it convenient to wait for work to be done.

~~~
emiliobumachar
Gp is trying to say that nobody is really "sharing a ride" that they would be
driving anyway, as in hitchhiking with compensation. It's virtually all
professional drivers going where the client goes exclusively because the
client goes there. Hence the term "ridesharing" is misleading. A very
successful piece of clever viral marketing, or maybe a fossil of an early
strategy.

It's a semantic point, but a valid one. Words matter.

~~~
scarejunba
We don’t call them taxis in California because in most California cities
they’re different because of:

* no access to red lanes

* only app-based payment

* unique pickup/dropoff locations at airports and other such places

If we called them computer-dispatched taxi we’d confuse that with Flywheel-
style stuff which can use red lanes, take cash, and use taxi locations. We
could call them Taxi Type 2 but that’s super confusing.

“TNCs” is just an awful name so we use something that sounds intuitive
“ridesharing”, since we know that pooling is possible on these services. It’s
just a name. No one has proposed an alternative simple enough.

~~~
johnday
In Transport for London terminology they are called "Private Hire" companies.
Separately regulated, you can't flag them down on the street, and no access to
taxi lanes.

------
asabjorn
It is a tax to increase revenue. LA has almost non-existent public transit, so
anyone riding Uber/Lyft is likely to drive on their own.

It is disingenuous to describe this as anything that has any remote chance to
even reduce traffic minimally. LA is an extended suburb, and only infill
development of higher density over time can make more public transit
economically viable.

------
orasis
Implement congestion pricing for all drivers.

~~~
l1ambda
This. We have this in Minneapolis / St Paul. It just _works_. We're rolling it
out on most of the highways. I wish we had it on _all_ lanes on all highways
already, because what is the point of having a 60mph road if most of the time
you are barely going 20mph, or trip lengths are otherwise completely
unpredictable?

There is a concept in economics called spontaneous order. Once the cost of
congestion becomes apparent through the price mechanism, then society can
reconfigure itself to adapt to it. But you have to have the price mechanism
first. People will say, what about this, what about that. It doesn't matter.
People will figure it out and adapt, but you need to implement congestion
pricing right now, because practically every medium size or larger city in
America has terrible traffic congestion problems. Importantly, you cannot set
a price ceiling (like Houston did at $8), as it will not work effectively
because it will not allow the price mechanism to work and will cause a
shortage of road capacity and you end up with no material change.

Changes in laws and zoning and public transit will occur. Given a little bit
of time, the emergence of various kinds of social order from a combination of
self-interested individuals will occur.

------
Grue3
What a great plan! Not improving public transportation. Not taxing people who
own private cars. Taxing cars who serve dozens passengers a day! Guess what,
if these people weren't using Uber, each of them would be driving their own
car.

------
stretchwithme
Charging for use of the road is the only way to balance supply and demand for
road. More at peak times and a discount off-peak. Fixed price subscriptions
for your commute.

But I see no reason to treat Uber cars differently, except that having a
driver does not qualify to one to use the carpool lane (which I would
eliminate anyway)!

I'd also allow subscribers and those who buy ahead to sell their prepaid trip
when the price surges. Wait an hour and make $5 when there's an accident.

------
CorvusCrypto
Hmm I often wonder why California doesn't implement a congestion tax. In
Stockholm you need to pay around 4$ if you want to drive on the highway during
certain hours into and out of the city.

I can't say if it works to reduce congestion but it does even the field and it
certainly made me want to not drive there.

------
smallgovt
How do you guys think the trend from public transit to rideshare will look
once self-driving cars begin ramping up?

I imagine that without the cost of labor from the driver, rideshares should
become dirt cheap. Will anybody use public transit in 10 years? If not, the
congestion problem will get many times worse.

~~~
osdiab
It's the classic induced demand phenomenon - when roads are expanded, people
drive a lot more, and congestion remains the same. Same thing with transit -
people ride it up to the point where it's miserably crowded.

Both are signs that our infrastructure in either form is unable to service the
maximal demand society places on it, so people ultimately decide not to go
places because of the cost of doing so (in terms not just of cash, but also
comfort and time).

I think people will use rideshares only to the point that congestion is
precisely miserable enough those who choose to rideshare to tolerate it.

So what might happen is that mass transit remains equally as congested, just
more people are taking trips than they were before because the capacity of the
whole system has increased.

It's also the case that, unlike self-driving car infrastructure, trains are
far more scalable - in places that actually invest in their mass transit
infrastructure, I think mass transit can compete pretty well the more the
municipality invests in train lines and stuff.

But to assume that self-driving cars will save cities that don't have transit
infrastructure—that might be true for very sparsely populated, small cities,
but for all the American cities that lack public transit infrastructure, I
think the situation will only change marginally.

------
nserrino
It's really frustrating that in so many cities, car owners are perceived to
have more of a right to the road than non-car owners (aka those who take only
rideshare). Roads are payed for by public subsidy and there shouldn't be
special handouts for car owners.

------
overgard
Seems like there could be a lot of unintended commercial consequences — people
that would be customers deciding not to bother. I don’t know the situation in
other places, but in Colorado the RTD smartphones apps are just awful. Twice
in the last month I ended up taking an uber home because the ticketing app for
the buses was down and I couldn’t access tickets I bought. Not to mention it
frequently feels unsafe. I’m fortunate to be a 6’4” male, but if I was say a
5’2” woman I would totally want to avoid the harassment.

Maybe the focus should be in providing better public transportation instead of
encouraging people to stay home.

------
jypepin
> Ridership is now at its lowest level in more than a decade, driven by a
> shift to driving instead of using Metro’s sprawling bus network.

Maybe if they realised that the reason nobody takes public transit is because
LA's is one of the worst of developed countries, they'd be a bit more
incentivised into building a better system instead of trying to blame external
things and create more taxes.

I barely use Uber/Lyft when I'm travelling in Amsterdam, Paris, London or NYC,
but find myself having no choice but be in a car when I'm in SF or LA.

------
markbnj
This has to be just a money grab right? How can they possibly contend that
people using ride sharing services exacerbates road congestion? Neither of
their arguments makes any sense.

------
iamwil
Why not just tax single riders, if congestion is the issue?

~~~
floatrock
From the article:

> [San Francisco Supervisor Aaron] Peskin is drafting a measure for the
> November election that would levy a 3.25% fee on rides with one passenger,
> and a 1.5% fee on shared rides.

~~~
scarejunba
With all the nonsense going on, I’ve actually just got a car in SF. And that’s
after 7 years car-free. Cycling is bloody impossible these days, and they got
rid of the damned scooters too. Good job, Aaron. You’re a bloody genius.

My friends were all car-free too and only a fourth of them are still that way.
No kids or anything. It’s just gotten kinda crappy here. I was hoping to hold
out for just a little longer but I think I’m done.

~~~
baby
I'm really upset about the scooters in SF. As I don't have a driver license, I
can't even use them (they require a US driver license).

------
liability
.Bring back street cars!

Forget hyperloops and similar gadgetbahn bullshit. The solution isn't exotic,
it's mundane. Street cars work damn well if you treat them as legitimate
transit, not a tourist attraction. You can even bury them using cut-and-cover
if the situation really calls for it. Forget microtunnel bullshit, that have
ultra-expensive stations never mentioned by the advocates

~~~
itslennysfault
Honest question. How are street cars better than busses?

They put one in near me recently, and all I could think is that compared to a
bus it cost a ton more money, took forever to build, and can't be rerouted in
case of an issue. Additionally, it doesn't even bypass traffic so it's not any
faster.

Why not just buy a few busses to run the exact route they built the street car
on instead ?

~~~
liability
Better rolling resistance and electric powered without battery nonsense.
However they are in close competition with trolley-buses (rubber wheeled
electric vehicles powered from overhead lines, as seen in Seattle.)

(And unlike buses they don't have a "low class" reputation that prevents
middle class snobs from using them!)

------
StreamBright
Using cars is embedded into the DNA of American people so deeply that I am not
sure it can be changed. I remember the first time I was in LA for a longer
period and somebody did not believe me that I do not own a car. She literally
though I am a liar and I do not want to share with her what sort of car I
drive instead of believing me that I do not have one.

------
kbos87
Amen. Uber and Lyft are adding congestion to our roads and undermining public
transportation, all while profiting off public infrastructure and a class of
driver “partners” who incur all of the costs for a razor thin upside.

Id like to see the start of a state owned rideshare network with specially
zoned drop off, pick up, and lane privileges that Uber and Lyft don’t get
access to.

~~~
twblalock
> Id like to see the start of a state owned rideshare network with specially
> zoned drop off, pick up, and lane privileges that Uber and Lyft don’t get
> access to.

Uber and Lyft exist because the state didn't build one of those. In fact the
state has built a completely inadequate public transit system in LA. Uber and
Lyft are widely used because people in LA don't have an alternative.

~~~
kbos87
Fine, but the concept is out in the world now. The cities should be able to
replicate the concept, compete and leverage their strengths the same way any
for profit entity could.

~~~
twblalock
If the private market provides a service at a fair price, and consumers like
it, why should the city try to duplicate it? It would be a waste of taxpayer
money for the city government to try to clone a business that is doing just
fine already.

~~~
kbos87
Why draw an artificial line between cities and private markets? Innovation
isn’t the exclusive domain of for profit companies. Part of the reason why we
end up in these situations where public utilities are in such an embarrassing
state is that we don’t expect or allow them to innovate, even down what is now
a well proven pathway.

~~~
twblalock
It's not an artificial line because of stuff like this, which you mentioned:

> specially zoned drop off, pick up, and lane privileges that Uber and Lyft
> don’t get access to

There are clear differences between the state and private businesses. The
state can make laws to prevent private businesses from competing with it, can
grant monopolies, etc.

The state is not operated for profit, and the profit motive is the only reason
things like Uber and Lyft exist -- the state never would have thought to
create something like that.

------
updateYourMind
What about public transport?

------
akerro
Uber and Lyft are fighting their what they created
[https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/10/16/uber-lyft-
responsible...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/10/16/uber-lyft-responsible-
for-half-of-increased-traffic-in-sf-study-says/)

------
educationdata
Based on the comments here, it appears to me that many people don't understand
the economy lose from the inefficiency of public transportation. 1 hour of bus
transportation usually take only 20 minutes of taxi ride. It means I can save
40 minutes from the taxi ride. This 40 minutes have considerable value.

------
xiaodai
It was congested way before Uber of Lyft.

------
tareqak
It'd be nice to be able to at least see the math that is used to calculate and
budget road repairs then compare them with value that that particular road
brings in. More broadly, some kind of (global?) effort to accurately calculate
externalized costs of all kinds. Gotta catch'em all!

~~~
conanbatt
You know who gets 100% of their income from an externality? public officials
that propose dumb laws. How are we going to get that money back?

~~~
tareqak
If you start measure externalities, then you can start predicting their
expected value. Proposers of dumb laws will have to spend more effort in
showing that their law is effective at whatever thing that they are trying to
affect. The feedback loop will become more apparent and hopefully tighter. You
won't be able to recoup that money back, but you would be able to demonstrate
negligence / malice / incompetence more effectively and deal with them then as
appropriate.

------
bsimpson
Another dumbass Aaron Peskin proposal. :eyeroll: At least we can vote this one
down in November.

You'd think someone who spends so much time positioning himself as a
"progressive" would understand why taxing people who don't own cars is both
stupid and unfair.

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rdlecler1
The alternatives are not taxis, it’s people having their own cars which are
probably on average larger than the typical Prius my Uber driver has.
Moreover, I often take pool so it could further increase number of cars on the
road.

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Golfkid2Gadfly
The headline is a lie. This is all about raising money to pad their pensions.

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telaport
If anything they should be giving tax rebates to Uber and Lyft drivers since
this is called f'ing car pooling, and it's saving additional cars from getting
on LA roads.

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dotcoma
If it were parking space that they wanted to free up, that could make sense.

But congested roads? Don't Uber and Lyft occupy road space like everybody
else?

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kevitivity
LA's plan for everything is a tax.

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Amendeson530
Yet again the "achilles heal" of mass transit it exposed. Uber and Lyft work
because they go where I want to go and when I want to go at a reasonable
price.

Busses are not full of people who want to ride the bus, they are full of
people who must ride the bus.

No amount of taxation will ever change that.

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Calashle0202
Yet again the "achilles heal" of mass transit it exposed. Uber and Lyft work
because they go where I want to go and when I want to go at a reasonable
price.

Busses are not full of people who want to ride the bus, they are full of
people who must ride the bus.

No amount of taxation will ever change that.

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fishtacos
LA Times' latest plan to free up congested attention spans is to omit grammar
and words.

First picture's caption: "Kristine Valenzuela exits a Uber at Union Station in
Los Angeles."

Second picture's caption: "Elena Markusic lifts her heavy luggage into the
trunk of an at Union Station in Los Angeles. Transportation officials are
considering a tax on Uber and Lyft rides in Los Angeles County."

