
Quebec passes law to regulate Uber - ArnoldP
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/uber-law-could-pass-today-1.3628992
======
jsmeaton
The problem with regulation isn't Uber. It's the extraordinary costs required
to operate a taxi - mostly the $200k plate. If I can get a background check
and a card certifying me to be allowed to work with children for about $50,
why does it cost nearly $200k to get a taxi license. Require licenses, reduce
the costs to improve competition, and let the various companies compete on
service.

~~~
teej
Isn't $200k the free market cost? The government isn't pocketing that money.
That's the price you would expect from an asset that generates income with a
limited supply.

Edit: why am I down voted to max? The government limits supply but the
medallions are still sold on the market.

~~~
JoshTriplett
No, the supply is artificially limited by the government; there's no free
market involved. That $200k is paid to the government.

(The claimed rationale for limiting the number of taxis is to reduce traffic.
I would suspect the _actual_ rationale is to favor the existing taxi
businesses that already have licenses and don't want competition.)

~~~
stormbrew
Are you talking specifically about Quebec here? This kind of thing varies a
lot by jurisdiction, but in many jurisdictions the high costs for a plate are
not paid to the government, but paid on a grey market to a prior owner, with
the fee for registration being nominal except for the fact that no one gets to
register any more. In many cities (including mine), people own plates as a
retirement investment and are fighting deregulation because their investment
will crater.

Not that this is any better, but people talk as if there's One Way taxi
regulations work all over and there's quite a wide range on these things.

Also, the nominal reason for limiting plates is usually (as far as I've ever
seen) to ensure a living wage for taxi drivers. I don't think it really works
out that way, instead creating a class system where some people extract rent
from other people.

~~~
ende
The payment to the government is irrelevant. The point is that the government
artificially restricts the number of occupational licenses.

~~~
ketzu
That is not true. If they were non transferable, a limited supply would still
stay at the governmental set price.

~~~
aminok
Competition for the limited supply of licenses would manifest itself in other
ways, resulting in $200,000 worth of economic resources being used, on
average, to acquire a license.

More importantly, the high market price of a transferrable license indicates
there is a shortage of taxis relative to demand for taxi service, which has a
cost for the economy.

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nfoz
This prompted my interest in what's the history and regulation behind taxi
laws, particularly for Quebec.

So I searched, and found this document extremely enlightening. Note that it's
from 1995, long before Uber, and gives many pros and cons and reasoning behind
different types of legislation:

[http://www.taxi-library.org/qebc0295.htm](http://www.taxi-
library.org/qebc0295.htm)

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alasano
I don't know if this reflects poorly on Uber or current taxi legislation.

Living in Québec I've never had a bad experience with taxi drivers the way
people seem to have in NYC, etc. Uber was still far better, if anything just
for how proud some drivers were of being part of it. The lower barrier of
entry seemed like a positive thing overall.

A nice woman drove me once, offered me starburst candy and a bottle of water,
both of which were in a basket in the back seat. Made my day extra nice.

~~~
jclulow
As far as I can tell, the drive to pamper riders comes from the fear of being
cut off from driving for receiving too many sub-five star ratings. I would
feel differently about it if Uber were handing out a "water bottle" stipend.

~~~
rdlecler1
Oh, you mean like any regular job? Where you need to exceed everyone's
expectations?

This is what a free market looks like. Don't like that? Take a look at
Venezuela, and tell me you'd prefer to be dumpster diving for your next meal.
Capitalism and Democracy are aweful aweful systems, but everything else is
worse.

~~~
TeMPOraL
The difference is probably the level of expectations. In "any regular job" you
don't get fired for having your ratings fall below 4.3 / 5 because a customer
of yours had a bad day or fat-fingered 1 in a hurry.

The jobs with high turnover rates are usually known as "shitty jobs".

~~~
yummyfajitas
Do you really think that a highly competent organization that's hired hundreds
of data scientists can't estimate/discount the base rate of fat
fingered/random bad ratings?

(Fun fact: I don't know about Uber, but I know Ola does exactly this. They use
"how would you handle this exact problem" as a warmup question on their
interviews.)

~~~
TeMPOraL
They could, but do they have incentive to?

It's good for them to keep drivers who committed (e.g. those who took Uber's
help in getting a new car) on edge. It's not that they have shortage of
candidates, or that they actually care about them.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Lets think about their incentives.

Uber, Ola and others are desperately in need of more good drivers. They are
growing rapidly, and literally will _pay their competitors_ in order to
attempt to recruit their drivers.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2014/05/30/how-uber-
an...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2014/05/30/how-uber-and-lyft-are-
trying-to-kill-each-other/#246b27cd3ba8)

[http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/26/6067663/this-is-ubers-
play...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/26/6067663/this-is-ubers-playbook-for-
sabotaging-lyft)

"Uber has been aggressively poaching Lyft drivers for months, offering them
huge bonuses just to do a few rides on Uber. This week, Lyft started fighting
back with similar bonuses..."

There are two ways to have an extra driver next week. One is expensive
recruiting methods. The other is _not kicking them off the service_. Remember,
growth = new acquisitions - churn.

Lets think now about the costs. Handling the base rate of bad ratings would
cost a data scientist a month or two of time - approx $20-60k. Assuming those
huge bonuses are $500/driver, you'd need to retain 120 drivers for that python
script to be worthwhile.

So if Uber has no incentive to solve this problem, it's only because it's a
tiny problem (affecting < 0.1% of their workforce).

Are you really claiming that Uber hires hundreds of data scientists, but
doesn't actually have them answer questions like "which drivers should be
fired"? What do you think they do with them?

------
GnarfGnarf
Sometimes developed countries miss out on some good ideas. When I lived in
Lima, Peru and La Paz, Bolivia in the 60's, they had a system called
"colectivos". You stood on a main road, and in a few minutes a random car
would stop, you'd pile in with four other people, and for 10¢ you'd get a ride
downtown.

No permits, no insurance, any driver can participate. Faster and more frequent
service than anything I've experienced back home in North America.

Similar systems exist throughout the Third World. God forbid we ever allow
something like that in our "developed" countries.

~~~
Mattasher
This was one of the most pleasant things about living in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
In addition to those "colectivos", they had busses, micros, and trufis that
covered the entire city. Though regulated (by syndicates as much as anything),
individual drivers and vehicle owners made money based on how many people they
picked up. It was a for profit system that worked quite well and was cheap
even by local standards, if not always fast, though I can't say it was much
slower than the public transport in many Western cities.

In Cochabamba you could also flag a taxi and either trust them to charge you
the normal rate, or negotiate a fare. Stressful to do at first, but once you
got the hang of it no big deal.

Quick story: We never needed a car while living there, but rented one once to
take a road trip. Just outside the city a cholita (Quechua speaking indigenous
woman) with a huge bag flagged us down along the main road, got into the back
seat without a word, then asked to "bajar" a dozen km later. On the way out
she handed us a peso (~15 cents), again without a word.

------
wyck
I talk about Uber all the time when I'm in a taxi in Montreal, to be honest
it's really not fair for them. Why should they have to pay a expensive
regulation licenses, maintenance check-ups on the books, past several tests
including knowing your driving area streets/history/etc, have ATM machine in
the car with paper print out's, regulated machine for travel to cost ratio,
yet an Uber driver can circumvent all this?

The real fear for cab drivers seem to be self driving cars even more than
Uber.

------
koblas
Was talking to a few folks in both Alberta and Quebec and they mentioned that
they felt that the Taxi drivers were really run by organized crime. Since they
(including a few drivers) felt that there was lots of favoritizism and back
room dealings with contracts over who could and couldn't service airports etc.
Does anybody know if there is any basis for this view?

~~~
mgbmtl
Maybe some companies, but there are a lot of different taxi companies in
Montreal, many of which are worked-owned coops or an umbrella of freelancers.

There are also companies going after Uber's model but with strong ethics, such
as Teo, which seems to be widely praised (good app, fully electric cars, good
conditions for drivers, wifi inside the cabs).

My main annoyance against the taxi industry is its lobby, which is always
against any sort of change in the transportation industry, such as new train
lines (airport train or bus line), bike/bixi ride-share, etc. Taxis and Uber-
type systems offer more transport solutions that reduce the requirement of
having a car. I would love to get rid of my car, but it's not viable in
Montreal (I bike to work, use the car mostly on weekends and Communauto
requires me to do too much planning).

~~~
psb217
I've been living in Montreal for ~7 years without a car. It's not difficult.
Yes, it's anecdotal, but I would find a car burdensome.

------
deodorel
Ok, let me tell you my experience: Fyi I am left wing guy, like european left
wing guy :), currently living in Bucharest, Romania. Here the taxis are
regulated so the supply is limited but you can't really buy a licence, there
is some kind of queue in place. Anyway we have a few dozen of taxi companies,
however the experience is abysmal comparing with uber. What I can't understand
is why there is no competition between the taxis to provide a better service,
even in this restricted market: If some company would try to provide better
service for a slightly higher price I would be the first to give up uber and
use them ... But they don't care I think they are colluding to keep the costs
down and that's it. Very sad.

------
slashcom
Will be interesting to see if they pull out like they've done in Austin. It's
definitely been less convenient to go to a bar since they left.

~~~
Elv13
They plan to stay

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/uber-quebec-
deal-1.36...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/uber-quebec-
deal-1.3620558)

In my opinion, the government and the ride hailing companies should have
bought back a share of the taxi permit pool value, then cancelled them. It
would have been costly, but by taxing the ride themselves (at a fixed rate)
then letting competition drive the ride price down while increasing the ride
volume. The government could have had their money back, eventually. Uber
technically owe "theoretical tax money" since they operated without permit in
a regulated industry. They had said at some point they didn't care about
paying that back, so it would have been a better solution. After that, the
regulations could have been lifted/relaxed.

The current deal isn't very good, but at least there is one. Technically, with
self driving and automation (including apps), a lot of people will lose their
job, so obviously they will resist changes, any changes. We can complain all
we want as developers, but from the taxi driver point of view, change suck.
Then again, in my opinion, so does regulation. One positive point, at least,
is that this saga allowed time for discussions and consideration. A abrupt
disruption would maybe have destabilized the industry too fast, while the time
it took for this law to be passed allowed for the creation of a "middle
market" where new taxis companies managed to enter the industry with hybrid
solutions (including one Tesla/Leaf + app company) and the "dinosaurs" had
time to [try to] adapt [and fail]. In the end, this did create _more_
competition instead of players being pushed out and replaced by less players.
There will be a market consolidation eventually anyway, but until that, the
users will be the real winners.

Time will tell. I am still not convinced this law was the right call, but
appreciated the debate.

~~~
SFJulie
Automation will work if and only if car operator can make themselves non
liable for any accident resulting from bugs.

Accident are stuffs that cannot be predicted. A bug is something that can be
avoided.

As far as I am concerned, 99% of the software industry is not able to write
critical software that is able to handle with a correct costs the case of
failures and/or "abnormal" behaviors.

Software will fail. It will eventually fail dramatically. And with software it
can fail in a reproducible way. Nowadays all experiments are made far from
worst case (congestion, interferences, extreme conditions....)

Who is gonna pay for the predictable accidents? And will self driving cars
will be better at avoiding accidents than humman given a same operating cost
on the long term?

My guess, is : hell no.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Accident are stuffs that cannot be predicted._

Car insurance companies do this on a daily basis and make consistent and
reliable profits betting on the outcomes.

~~~
SFJulie
Well, they have been involved in quite a few regulation tricks to not pay
their due or cheat on customers (especially on forgetting to give life
insurance prime). I would not take insurance company as an example of
mathematical honest success in predicting the future.

And, also, I would point out that their prediction are based on opacity and it
is hard to audit their reasoning. I talked with some of them, and their
mathematical reasoning are flawed towards using linear equations to predict
non linear phenomenon. And when I ask them how it can work, they had no
explanations, just "recipies everyone use". So well, I do not trust them.

What you cannot explain simply you do not understand.

------
chrstphrhrt
Living in Montreal, I'd like to know what the company's response will be. I'll
be sad if the service is discontinued, and am still rooting for Uber Eats to
come to town.

