
Uber Hit with Cap as New York City Takes Lead in Crackdown - tiger3
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/nyregion/uber-vote-city-council-cap.html
======
colinbartlett
If the problem they are trying to solve is "too many vehicles" then we need a
congestion tax. They should certainly not be limiting vehicles that are more
likely to take multiple people with a Pool option.

If the problem they are trying to solve is "drivers aren't making enough" then
they should impose a minimum wage on drivers or force an actual employee
relationship.

If the problem they are trying to solve is a bail out of the failed and
corrupt taxi medallion system, then maybe this will succeed. The real issue
here is the cab drivers who are hurting because they provide an inferior
service to a clientele who now have better options. I avoid cabs for all but
the shortest trips because of the large percentage of bad driving experiences.
Some solutions to improve yellow cabs like having a simple feedback mechanism
for drivers could go a long way to leveling the playing field between Uber and
Taxi.

~~~
jrockway
Yup. I'm no fan of Uber but at least the service is consistent.

I remember on my first trip to NYC many years ago, I wanted to go to the
airport during rush hour. No cab would stop and take me, because I looked like
someone who wanted to go to the airport, which is out of their way. Apparently
this is a known problem, so you're supposed to kind of hide your bag so they
don't notice, then get in the cab, close the door, and THEN declare that you
want to go to the airport, at which point they are legally obligated to take
you. (Having used this option on subsequent trips... it consists of 45 minutes
of whining.)

Meanwhile, with Uber you just press a button and they take you to the airport,
bags and all.

This is why the taxi industry is dying; these little "hustles" add up and
people don't trust yellow cabs anymore. Meanwhile, the app-based cars just
take you where you want to go without the complaining. (I suppose they now
have the ability to just not accept your trip if they don't feel like going
there, which I think is fair. I don't want to listen to an adult whine about
how annoying it is to go a particular place, I just want to go there.)

Right now, NYC faces a big problem. There is no viable method of
transportation. There is too much traffic to drive anywhere quickly. The
subways are overcrowded and broken. You can bike, but there probably won't be
a citibike dock at your destination, and the bike lanes will be blocked with
parked cars on the way there. It's kind of a nightmare that's going to become
a crisis. Does limiting the number of Uber vehicles on the road fix any of
this? Nope! But it's the only thing that's politically feasible, I guess. (We
can't have congestion charging, because people in New Jersey and upstate will
whine about having to pay to get to work. We can't expand the subway, because
the MTA is controlled by the state and it only benefits NYC, so the governor
and the legislature won't fund it. We can't enforce traffic laws to prevent
people from parking in bike lanes because the NYPD is lazy and incompetent. So
we're basically screwed. Eventually it will melt down completely, but we're
doing an OK job of keeping the city on life support right now.)

~~~
CydeWeys
> Meanwhile, with Uber you just press a button and they take you to the
> airport, bags and all.

Not necessarily. Ubers don't want to go to the airport for the same reason
that cabs don't. I've had ride shares cancel on me once the driver's gotten
close enough to see that the destination is an airport. Granted it doesn't
happen as often as with cabs whose meter is conveniently not working once you
mention the airport, but it does still happen.

Illegal parking in bike lanes is a huge problem though. This morning there
were several vehicles parked in the bike lane across two consecutive blocks,
so I had to ride in the travel lane the whole while. Some asshole unsafely
passed me at speed by going into the bike lane, then swerving back into the
travel lane at the next parked vehicle, then we got into a yelling match at
the next light about when cyclists are allowed to depart the bike lane (hint:
you don't have to use it when you're literally unable to because it's
blocked).

Enforcement is an absolute joke, and sometimes it's even cop cars that are
blocking bike lanes. Bike lanes that aren't physically protected from people
parking in them are oftentimes not worth anything, and unfortunately, we don't
have any cross-town bike lanes in Manhattan! (They're on the verge of opening
the first one, but it's well out of the way of my commute.)

~~~
kaishiro
"I've had ride shares cancel on me once the driver's gotten close enough to
see that the destination is an airport."

I'm not understanding this. If you're using the app correctly then the driver
knows the destination before they even accept the ride. If you're setting an
address _near_ an airport in an attempt to be duplicitous I would be equally
discouraged as a driver.

~~~
timr
Happens all. the. time.

I'm in NYC, and I use taxis 99% of the time because of this phenomenon:
Uber/Lyft drivers rapidly accept your ride, then cancel (or slow-play the
pickup, so that _you_ cancel, to protect their driver rating) as soon as they
see it's a place they don't want to go.

It's so bad here that I just won't deal with Lyft and Uber unless they're
throwing serious discounts my way, and I have time to burn.

~~~
kaishiro
Fair enough. I've been taking Ubers to JFK for years and have never had this
happen - but I guess everyone has their own experiences.

~~~
timr
Airport trips are relatively easy, as long as you're in normal operating
hours. Drivers don't want to go places where it's hard to get a return trip.
JFK has plenty of passengers both ways.

~~~
kaishiro
This does not seem to jive with the parent comment to whom I was originally
replying though:

"Ubers don't want to go to the airport for the same reason that cabs don't."

~~~
timr
Seems consistent to me: Ubers don't want to places where they can't easily
pick up a return trip; same as cabs. That's always been my assumption, anyway.

~~~
jjeaff
This is a result of poor logistics on the part of Uber and Lyft. There are a
large number of Ubers and lyfts that will drop off and have to leave the
airport without a passenger, meanwhile, you can call you car and be told it's
a 10min wait as someone who isn't even on premises accepts the fare.

~~~
euyyn
Are they actually allowed to do that, or is there a regulation preventing it?

------
romwell
Alternative title: "NYC Taxi mafia strikes back, gives Uber 12 months to come
up with a large enough bribe".

Really, the life of nearly everyone (who's not a taxi driver, perhaps)
improved a bit since Uber entered the city.

Even the fabled subway in its theoretical best has been dysfunctional in
Brooklyn since the takedown of streetcars a hundred years ago (see how all the
tracks are running _towards Manhattan_ and very few _across_?).

And need anyone be reminded of the countless problems with the yellow cabs
(good luck hailing one around Kings Highway!), green cabs (too little too
late, same problems), car services (aka taxis you order by phone, which may or
may not come to pick you up and may or may not go where you need to, and can
tell you to, quote, f$#k off when they're late), etc?

Obligatorily, I have a lot of reservations towards whatever Uber is doing
elsewhere - but the NYC situation looked unfixable before Uber came a long
with a stick (or candy) large enough.

~~~
jroblak
There is a lot of ridiculous hyperbole and disingenuousness in this post so
it's a little hard to take seriously.

As someone who has lived in New York for the past ten years, the entrance of
Uber hasn't changed my life at all, other than some VCs subsidizing/coercing
some lower income drivers into taking $10 off my fare when I go to the
airport.

Public transportation, which you deride, usage utterly dwarfs taxis/ubers/etc
(notice all of the large buildings _in Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn_ where
people work?). The MTA definitely has some issues, but calling it
dysfunctional because it takes a little extra time to go from Astoria to
Prospect Park is absurd.

I don't need to be reminded of the standard, clean, regulated experience I
have every time I jump into a yellow or green cab. Boro taxis were introduced
into the city _two years after_ Uber entered NYC. How can you possible hand
wave them away with "too little too late"? And Uber has its fair share of
drivers who have no idea where they're going (actually, definitely more, but I
will say they're better about following GPS, which can be both good and bad).

They're taking about limited the number and providing a minimum wage, hardly
life changing stuff.

~~~
madamelic
>I don't need to be reminded of the standard, clean, regulated experience I
have every time I jump into a yellow or green cab

You and I have had vastly different experiences in cabs.

The cabs are disgusting. I can't understand the driver and he takes the long
way around to squeeze more money out of me.

~~~
jroblak
You're absolutely 100% wrong if you argue Uber X has a higher average car
quality than yellow cabs.

~~~
kaishiro
I understand and respect the fact that this may be your opinion colored by
your own experiences, but as a long time New Yorker I have to admit I giggled
a bit when I read your fairy tale statement re: yellow cabs.

------
pmart123
NYC is closing down the L train next year for a year at the very least. So
far, the city has proposed more water taxis as the primary solution to handle
rerouting the 300k daily riders. Right now, the water taxi ridership is 1370
people per day. Secondarily, the city has indicated it might make some of the
bridges carpool or ride-share only. Either way, all signs point to the
shutdown heading towards a painful if not disastrous scenario. Hopefully,
voters will point to this type of cronyism and corruption next mayoral
election.

~~~
djsumdog
This is sad. NYC is one of the few (like 2, maybe 3) America cities with an
actual usable rail system and it's rotted into disrepair.

I'm all for limiting rid share vehicles and better wages for drivers, but they
need to dump a shit ton of time and money into the rail system, both the
subway and intercity. Fix Penn Station, and get the tracks up to spec! That
should be the #1 priority for city transport infrastructure.

~~~
moorhosj
==NYC is one of the few (like 2, maybe 3) America cities with an actual usable
rail system==

Interested to hear what the other cities are. Chicago? San Fran?

~~~
gamegoblin
Boston's system is pretty good:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBTA_Subway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBTA_Subway)

~~~
dsfyu404ed
It's cleaner than anything in Silicon Valley and less crowded than NYC.
Timeliness and reliability are quite lacking though. It desperately needs
rolling stock that wasn't due to be EoL'd a decade ago and it needs proper
management which the thinly veiled jobs program known as the MBTA doesn't seem
to be able to provide.

edit: apparently SF is not representative of public transit in other cities in
California.

~~~
tomjakubowski
Assuming you mean California, LA's Metro rail is no dirtier than Boston's MBTA
rail. Sometimes it smells a little funky, but so do the streets -- Boston
doesn't have quite the homeless population of Los Angeles.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
LA’s metro rail is definitely dirtier than the MBTA, and while you’re right
that LA faces more challenges with homeless people, there is still a
meaningful presence of homelessness on the MBTA, combined with the fact that
it’s a much larger rail network in terms of track and ridership and that it
has to operate even during horrible winter conditions, I’d say there is a
marked step up from LA metro rail to the MBTA in overall quality.

I’ve lived in both downtown LA and Cambridge, and it’s really difficult to
conduct life in LA relying primarily on local rail options. Whereas in metro
Boston, it’s much easier to live car-free than to own a car. The subway and
commuter rail are just a superior way to get around 99% of the time. I mean,
it’s not the same degree of car-obsolescence as New York, but it’s much closer
to New York in that regard than it is to the situation in LA.

------
pavel_lishin
I wonder what percentage of cars on the streets of Manhattan are Uber/Lyft,
vs. taxi cabs, vs. private vehicles vs. other commercial ones.

Claiming to limit Uber license to alleviate congestion is a bullshit argument
unless you can show that they make up a significant percentage of traffic.

 _Also, to be clear, I 'm not an Uber apologist; they can go fuck themselves
as quickly as they move and break things._

~~~
ddtaylor
What's wrong with a vast majority of the vehicles on the road not being owned
by the people who use them for transportation? It seems that a large amount of
people don't want to purchase and maintain a vehicle they might not always be
using and instead pay on-demand like they do for many other services where
someone specializes to reduce the cost for others?

~~~
Retric
Driving a car from A to B is less miles driven than someone driving from X to
A to pick you up before driving to B to drop you off them Y to wait for next
ride. Thus Uber increases congestion.

~~~
manigandham
Unless you only make 1-way trips, you still need to get from B back to A, so
it's much more efficient to have a car that does these smaller individual legs
of a trip for multiple people without needing parking space at every
destination. Even better if that car can carry multiple people at the same
time.

~~~
Retric
Parking spaces don’t get added at street level so they don’t make congestion
worse. Really A to under ground parking at B back to underground parking at A
is vastly better than Uber for the same trip.

Overall NYC has token street level parking because it’s such a bad use of
limited land.

~~~
manigandham
It's still traffic to get into and out of those spaces. It's more cars on the
road, whether parked or not, which means delays given limited throughput.

Having a shared Uber pool encourages the actual namesake of "ride-sharing" and
gets multiple people using the same cars, hopefully at the same time, or at
least waiting on the street where they take up much less space than a car.
Even a small amount of passenger pooling and avoiding the inefficient parking
movement can make a massive difference in road throughput

~~~
Retric
You can’t defend Uber by reference to Uber pool when most Uber rides are not
shared. If you want more busses that’s cool, they really help but having a few
cars with a couple extra passengers occasionally does little.

That said if you want to limit Uber to always using Uber pool you are going to
get strong objections.

~~~
manigandham
It was referring to a "pool" of cars. And yes I can defend it because the
official Uber Pool is still a non-zero amount compared to individuals using
their own cars. Remember your first post claimed that parking spaces are not
at street level even though that's not true, and entrances do have to be at
street level, creating bottlenecks. Reduction in total extra cars on the road
and reduced traffic to get to parking can lead to significant changes.

~~~
Retric
> a non-zero amount

An irrelevant non-zero. Over the last 5 years Uber added vastly more miles
driven in congested areas which is the only important measurement in terms of
_increasing_ congestion. NYC traffic's average MPH is down and it's ride
sharing's fault.

Lack of new Taxi medallions means it's not Taxi's fault. Their has been no
increase in street level parking it can't make things worse. Uber on the other
hand adds cars to the road above and beyond the limits of street level parking
or even any parking which limits normal drivers.

PS: As you have not countered my argument I can only assume you countered the
point that Uber _is_ making congestion worse.

------
cm2012
As someone who lives in Eastern Queens, Uber has changed my life. There is no
other kind of reliable taxi out here, and uber lets me live without a car.

I had to take a yellow cab the other day from a dispatcher at JFK. I normally
take Uber all the time. We were going literally 20 min away to Queens.

I tell him we're going to Queens. He literally screams, "Queens?!" and storms
out of the car to the dispatcher. He comes back in 2 minutes and starts
driving, muttering to himself for 10 minutes after I give him the address,
whining like a little bitch that he didn't get to go to Manhattan.

Fuck yellow cabs.

~~~
bgruber
When going from JFK to somewhere else in queens, yellow cabs are supposed to
get a voucher from the dispatcher that allows them to skip to the front of the
line when they get back to the airport. The fact that he was surprised when
you said Queens implies that the dispatcher failed to do this, which explains
both his going back to the dispatcher and his annoyance.

~~~
ctoth
And maybe this is the reason. Not that it should matter... But why then should
I care? Why should I have to deal with the problem? I tell you what, I've
never had this happen in the hundreds of Uber and Lyft rides I've taken this
year or the thousands in the years before. So... Okay there's a reason. But
that reason still demonstrates why one would prefer rideshare over taxi.

~~~
erik_seaberg
If the symptom is "I don't want task X, I'd rather _sit here earning nothing_
waiting for task Y", the root cause is compensation being too low for X and
too high for Y.

------
Agustus
The best note on this was from the Republican running for attorney general in
the state in that he could not believe that the city was returning to the
racist system whereby blacks would be having a reduced mobility option because
of the known, yet not handled, yellow cabs not picking up blacks. A better
system was identified that helped fix an issue and we have a city council so
beholden to the taxi network that they are willing to screw over the populous.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Have the green cabs helped in that regard?

~~~
TuringNYC
Not sure, but green cabs do address the bias against the non-Manhattan crowd.
It is very common for yellow cabs in NYC to refuse rides to Brooklyn/etc.
Destination discrimination "isnt allowed" but there isn't really a way to
enforce the rule.

~~~
simonbarker87
Could you lie when hailing the cab and once inside say they misheard you and
say the genuine destination? Not allowed I imagine but pretty hard to enforce
that rule? (Genuine question, as a UK reaident I’ve little experience of the
US taxi system and have always had excellent service from taxi firms in the UK
- as a result I’ve never really understood the problem Uber is solving in the
UK)

~~~
TuringNYC
Yes, I did that a couple of times. Then once I got in, i changed the
destination. It made for a tense ride because you're already in an adverserial
transaction for something that should be a default right of rider.

Oh, and my mom has bigger problems. Cabs pass her by at Manhattan hospitals.
Of course no one knows drivers' intents for sure, but there is some quick
eyeballing, i'm sure, of whether the potential passenger is B&T (Bridge and
Tunnel -- NYC Yellow cabs hate B&T passengers because they often have to
deadhead back to Manhattan on the return trip -- so they take pains to avoid
B&T passengers, which favors wealthier Manhattan residents and harms residents
of other boroughs.) Uber/Lyft has been a lifesaver for her.

There is also a larger problem Uber solves (one of many) -- once you lose
density (i.e., outside airport/centercity) it is hard to hail a cab, so you
have to dial a cab. You dail, they invariably say "wait outside be there in 5
min" \-- sometimes they show up in 5min, sometimes 10min, sometimes 30min,
sometimes never. Variable pricing and GPS tracking solves this.

A lot of these problems were traditionally not problems at all, but the NYC
transit system has ground to a halt on evenings/nights/weekends in the past
3-5yrs, so people are relying increasingly on Uber/Lyft and pooled rides for
things traditionally accomplished via mass transit.

~~~
vkou
> There is also a larger problem Uber solves (one of many) -- once you lose
> density (i.e., outside airport/centercity) it is hard to hail a cab, so you
> have to dial a cab. You dail, they invariably say "wait outside be there in
> 5 min" \-- sometimes they show up in 5min, sometimes 10min, sometimes 30min,
> sometimes never. Variable pricing and GPS tracking solves this.

Variable pricing solves this for people with the ability to pay. Rationing
scarce goods by wealth is not necessarily a better overall outcome then
distributing scarce goods by lottery.

Also, if full-time night-shift cabbies are driven out of business by part-time
rideshares, you may end up in a situation where the only night-time service
available - ever - is at surge pricing. This is less of an issue in NYC, then
it is in smaller towns.

~~~
TuringNYC
I agree with almost everything you say. However, I do want to note that you
can pay with dollars or pay with time. The old way was that you paid with
time/uncertainty. You'd wait, and wait, and wait. Now you can get what you
want right away, you just need to auction/bid on it to get it immediately.
Totally agreed this solves the problem for those who can bear higher prices,
so it disfavors the poor.

That said, people have voted quite a bit with their wallets and accepted surge
pricing to solve the old problem of uncertainty. When I used to be a
consultant and go to the airport every Monday morning, i'd have to leave
40+minutes earlier just in case the dial-a-cab randomly decided not to show up
for 30min. That problem has mostly gone away.

Same thing for rainy weather -- cabs would disappear. That was legitimate
because the cost of driving is indeed higher in rain (fewer rides per hour)
and thus deserves more compensation. Instead...the old way was...dial-a-cabs
would just stop answering their phone during storms, etc.

Sometimes people did nasty things like call 2 separate cab companies, go with
the first arrival, and leave the other one hanging (another problem solved by
ride-hailing services, who have the concept of identity and reputation
scores.)

~~~
ThrustVectoring
>I do want to note that you can pay with dollars or pay with time.

And it's generally far better overall to pay with money. If you pay with
money, then someone gets that money - Uber drivers earn more through surge
pricing, in this instance.

If you pay with time, then that time is simply gone forever.

~~~
vkou
It's not raining. There's one cab. The fare costs 5 dollars. There's one
rider. Everything works great.

It's raining. There's one cab. The fare costs 5 dollars. There's two riders.
The driver flips a coin. One rider pays $5, and gets a ride. The other has to
wait, and then gets a ride.

It's raining. There's one cab. There's surge pricing, so the fare costs $15.
There's two riders. One rider can afford to pay $15, and gets a ride. The
other has to wait, until the surge dies down, and then pays $5 for a ride.

When there's a shortage of cabs, someone will have to pay with money. Under
the lottery system, it's a random rider. Under the price surge system, it's
the poorest rider. You haven't actually produced any more value in the third
case. The same amount of time is wasted.

~~~
perl4ever
It's not the "poorest" rider though who pays with time. It's the person who
values the ride the least relative to time. That isn't totally uncorrelated,
but it's significantly not the same, which is what produces more value.

------
Itaxpica
It’s ironic that this was passed this morning, because this morning a power
issue at Canal managed to knock out all service on the A/C/E line for hours...
leaving me to have to get a Lyft to work. For the second time in a week. I’m
all for greater regulation for ridesharing companies, but making it even
harder to get around at a time the subway is in full crisis is a terrible
idea.

------
mkolodny
It looks like the city snuck in a ride-sharing vehicles cap by pairing it with
a pay floor for for-hire vehicle drivers.

"[Caption] Drivers of for-hire vehicles on Wednesday demonstrated in support
of a cap on ride-hail vehicles outside City Hall."

Then the signs in the picture above the caption are all focused on the pay
floor...

"VOTE yes to create a pay floor for FHV drivers"

The pay floor and the ride-sharing cap are very separate issues, but it seems
like the city pulled a fast one by pairing their legislation.

With the L train shutting down for a year+, this could be disastrous for
getting from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

~~~
Eridrus
I don't think these issues are actually that separate; both of them seek to
limit Uber trips; one does it on the demand side by increasing the price, the
other does it on the supply side, by directly constraining supply.

The exact mechanisms are different, but the direction they are pushing is
basically the same so that if one doesn't work the other should.

------
cwkoss
Article notes he is eyeing AirBnb regs next.

De Blasio seems to really like adding regulations to industries that were
largely responses to NYC (and similar large cities') regulation that strangled
the previous version of that industry, leaving competition excessively
expensive, inefficient and unpleasant.

Maybe there are some things he could do to make taxi's more competitive with
Uber?

\- Develop a cross-service hailing app including taxis?

\- Regulate to prevent annoying TV screen ads

\- Streamline payment process

I feel like this is a step towards Uber being regulated into becoming a clone
of the poor taxi services it was rebelling against: unmaintained interiors, no
customer service, unreliable hailing.

The only regulation I want to see on Uber is statutory penalties if "time to
arrival" wait times consistently exceed the provided estimates. I use Uber
much less now because I several times I've gotten an estimate of "3 minutes"
and waited over 15. This is false advertisement.

------
jeffreyrogers
This benefits the drivers at the expense of consumers. Maybe that's worth
doing, maybe not. I don't think there is a right answer to that since it
depends on your perspective. In either case, it seems like the problem they're
trying to address is congestion, which could be better addressed by taxing
drivers more highly. Then only the more productive rideshare and taxi drivers
would be on the streets, plus you'd get rid of a lot of the other drivers who
don't value their ability to drive that highly. I used to drive into NYC
fairly regularly, since I liked being able to park near where I was going, but
if it cost more I would have just taken the train and the subway.

~~~
test6554
The number of drivers finds equilibrium on its own. Too many drivers = too low
wages, so people stop driving. Too few drivers = high wages/wait times, so
more people become drivers.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
It doesn't solve the congestion problem though since lots of drivers are on
the road for other reasons.

~~~
techsin101
Congestion problem stems from broken Subway system. Uber is just responding to
pain. Uber is like pain medicine for broken bone that subway system is.

------
sytelus
I'd expected better from NYC. They are again trying to put back "Medallion"
culture back in so that only powerful few can operate taxi business and
essentially are licenced to exploit drivers from 3rd world. The city should
have seen its taxi system as shameful arrangement where rich people created
laws to get license for what was a slave market for all purpose and intent.
People like Michael Cohen had exploited this system to make 10s of millions of
dollars from the sweat of taxi drivers for practically zero effort. There are
no reason to artificially limit the number of taxis. The demand and supply are
far more efficient and desirable than politicians.

------
tonysdg
Given the problem, this seems like a reasonable action on the part of the NYC
City Council. But I'm confused by section on congestion pricing:

> Many experts believe congestion pricing is the best way for New York City to
> fix congestion and secure the funds needed to fix the subway. Mr. Johnson
> supports the idea, but Mr. de Blasio has opposed it. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo,
> who controls the subway, has said he will push for congestion pricing...

Why does de Blasio oppose it? It seems like another reasonable approach to
tackling congestion -- heck, it's the public version of building private toll
roads -- with the added bonus of providing funds to improve public
transportation.

~~~
CPLX
Because it's regressive. It takes money away from people who drive, who are
often people who are blue collar, spread out in the outer boroughs, or who
need to bring tools to do their jobs, those who are forced to cross the city
to get anywhere west of town, etc.

Sure, that's not the only effect it will have, it will also cost money for
bankers that drive in from Westchester and park underneath their midtown
offices. But, as you can imagine, it won't change their behavior much -- by
definition the only people that it will affect are people who can't easily
afford it.

If you look at it in a different way, congestion pricing takes a public good
that everyone paid to create, the roads and streets of the central business
district, and reserves them so they can only be used by drivers with lots of
money. There are problems with that approach.

Of course there's another side to the argument, obviously. But I feel like
many people don't realize this issue cuts in two directions, rather than just
being an obvious "good idea".

~~~
dionidium
This is the most common objection, but it's not a very strong one, for at
least two reasons:

1\. There's no reason we couldn't provide exceptions for the kinds of vans and
trucks that blue-collar workers need to drive into the city to make their
livings.

2\. There's no reason we couldn't offer income-based exceptions to people who
absolutely cannot ride transit for this or that reason.

As in _all_ proposals to ration some scarce resource, it's important to
understand that we _already ration_ it, even if it's not explicit. Today, we
do it by literally clogging the streets so much that nobody else can get
through. (And now we've added this new way, too.) Surely nobody thinks that's
the smartest way to ration.

~~~
chlvsl
If we start to allow those who can't afford the congestion pricing to get a
discount on congestion pricing, do we really have congestion pricing? Or just
a new proportional-to-income "driving tax" in addition to state, county, and
city taxes?

~~~
dionidium
A "driving tax" is just another way to say "congestion pricing." Driving
introduces _massive_ negative externalities and should cost _a lot_ more than
it does today.

Automobiles are one of the absolute worst quality-of-life-impacting things
about living in Manhattan. They're loud, dangerous, and smelly.

I'm not trying to hide my cards; if it were up to me, I'd ban private cars (at
the very least) entirely in Midtown (at the very least).

------
bumholio
> The price of a taxi medallion, which is required to operate a taxi in New
> York, has plunged from more than $1 million to less than $200,000.

Clearly, a cap on ride hailing licenses can only mean that the already
licensed drivers stand to gain a similar amount by pimping their license to
various competing services until they get the best deal. It's simple
economics, assuming taxis and Ubers are comparable to the average consumer.

------
sebleon
My suspicion is that Uber could out-bribe the taxi lobby by 10x, without
moving the needle on profitability. This cap signifies that Uber either a)
doesn't bribe politicians, or b) bribed the wrong politicians.

~~~
dilap
Losing their edge w/o Travis.

------
techsin101
This is plain bribery. I live in Brooklyn. Now I'm less late because of Uber.
Before I've gotten fired because of situations where I can do nothing but just
let fate run it course as I'm stuck in B train. Or wait for a bus that hasn't
even left the station.

I know cab drivers are behind this.

Uber pool has saved me so much money.

When is next election for NYC mayor

------
fatjokes
Uber and Lyft actually offered to support a $100M bribe-er, I mean, "hardship"
fund to support underwater individual (i.e., not those taxi business that own
multiple medallions) medallion owners, but the city refused. Which makes sense
since how are the politicians suppose to get money from that?

------
blondie9x
Ride sharing in general is worsening traffic and causing less utilization of
mass transit.

[https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2018/02/ride-sharing-
actua...](https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2018/02/ride-sharing-actually-
congests/)

We have to find a way to have better more effective cities built for people
that utilize walking, biking, and transit. The less cars the better:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-11/fight-
cli...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-11/fight-climate-
change-one-bus-ride-at-a-time)

We have to find a way to stop the laziness/traffic/transit abandonment that
spreads with ride sharing. [http://devonzuegel.com/post/we-should-be-building-
cities-for...](http://devonzuegel.com/post/we-should-be-building-cities-for-
people-not-cars)

------
Dowwie
Congestion is only part of the story. The MTA is competing for customers and
has gotten help.

------
sbuttgereit
Is this title really fair?

"The City Council approved a package of bills that will halt new licenses for
Uber and other ride-hail vehicles for a year while the city studies the
booming industry."

While yes, this does impact Uber, it also impacts Lyft, etc.

~~~
romwell
Other comments in the thread quote numbers indicating that Uber has 8X
ridership of Lyft. I'd say the title is fair.

------
8bitsrule
_We are pausing the issuance of new licenses in an industry that has been
allowed to proliferate without any appropriate check or regulation..._

or graft...

------
TheSpiceIsLife
Are ride-hailing licenses transferable?

How much would a ride-hailing license cost to buy from an existing operator
right now in NYC.

------
drawersheet
You know, it would be one thing if this ruling was motivated by serious labor
concerns but it really has to do with a bunch of crybabies that bought
medallions as financial instrument and are upset that customers are choosing a
service that's cheaper, better, and more hip.

