If you haven’t used the rideshare apps Uber and Lyft, you are probably puzzled by all the noise about an ordinance being considered Thursday by San Antonio City Council to regulate these emerging technologies.
A few months ago, I went to bed early only to have the phone wake me and my wife up at 11 p.m. Our son’s car battery had completely failed and he needed a ride home. Rather than getting up, getting dressed and driving eight miles away to get him, I picked up my phone and opened up the Uber application. I directed an Uber car to his location, saw the picture of the driver and the make and model of his car, where he was at that moment en route to get my son, and texted the driver with special instructions. The driver texted me back immediately. I then texted my son telling him exactly when the car would be there and the driver’s name. Since my credit card was already pre-loaded into the app and it had told me how much the fare would be, I had nothing else to do. So I went back to sleep. My son had no money and didn’t need any. He hopped out of the car at our front door and went to bed.
Calling a telephone dispatcher for a cab is the exact same thing we used to do back when we used black ceramic rotary phones hard-wired in the kitchen. Technology has evolved around a stubborn traditional taxi system. Who would ever go back? Well, no one, of course, which is why in many ways, high-tech, mobile-app ridesharing is here to stay. Anyone who has used it immediately realizes it is transformational. People who might never consider calling a cab are using rideshare services as their personal means of public transit.
As of last night, it appeared that City Council was about to make a terrible mistake by adopting an ordinance regulating Transportation Networking Companies – like Uber and Lyft. But rather than lightly regulating such services for public safety and consumer welfare – like the ordinance Austin just adopted – San Antonio is going its own way and creating a barrier to entry for an emerging technology. Other cities have passed much less onerous regulations that recognize the market power of consumers with technology in a competitive market. Cities like Denver, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, San Diego, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Austin are welcoming this new technology that has become popular with Millennials while San Antonio is on the brink of chasing it away.
The most recent draft of the ordinance available for review would likely run Uber and Lyft out of town due to excessive costs and unnecessary regulations that won’t help consumers. San Antonio got off on the wrong foot by declaring these services illegal from the start. Then the Public Safety Committee ignored the work of a task force they had appointed to draft an ordinance, and accepted language for a new ordinance that requires too many safety inspections, too many background checks, too much insurance, and too many fees – none of which consumers want or will benefit from. Such ordinances are ostensibly written and enforced on behalf of consumers, but will hurt them by raising prices and reducing competition.
Uber and Lyft are part of the emerging wave of technology-driven competition to clunky cab services. They operate under the unforgiving regulation of smart, connected consumers who are asked to rate every ride they take, and review the ratings of every driver before they accept a ride. Companies operating in this real-time, consumer-regulated environment must respond immediately to consumer complaints. If a rider says the air conditioning is broken or hears squeaky brakes, they will share that in their rating as will the next and the next rider. But the San Antonio ordinance requires frequent and expensive inspections along with random surprise inspections which place an additional burden on local police.
The intensity of consumer demands require these services to be an exceptional experience every time. That is why Uber and Lyft cars are clean, later-model cars with higher driver and insurance standards than clunky cabs are required have. The self-regulation incentives of both the Transportation Network Companies (TNC) and the drivers – many of whom are driving in their spare time – far exceed the incentive of the city to regulate safety.
Members of Council have heard a lot about a “level playing field” with legacy cab regulations. But rather than regulate up to the monopoly cab level, why not deregulate cabs so that cab drivers can keep more of the money they earn, drive nicer cars, and provide more options for consumers rather than enriching the owners of the few authorized taxi cab monopolies. San Antonio’s cab and limo regulations are among the worst in the country. See an excellent national comparison of taxi, limo, and TNC regulations by the R Street Institute here. Hopefully city council won’t continue this unenlightened approach with the adoption of a bad ordinance today.
I was a leading opponent of the streetcar, seeing it as a 19th century technology at a 22nd century price. When the streetcar project was pulled down through the wisdom of our current Mayor Ivy Taylor, I suggested ridesharing as an alternative to slow, expensive trains on immovable rails. Ridesharing is the wave of the future, and will make public transit, as we know it today, obsolete. The average energy consumption per passenger is already less in most new cars than it is in buses and trains, and auto fuel efficiency is only getting better. Uber and Lyft technology allow consumers to rent the unused capacity of other people’s time and personal cars. But by 2020, driverless cars will start hitting the market leading to the next transportation revolution. By 2030, some new cars won’t even have the option of being driven by a human.
The future is here. There is no turning back from such incredibly consumer friendly technologies. Hopefully City Council will look forward instead of backward on rideshare regulations.
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“a new ordinance that requires too many safety inspections, too many background checks, too much insurance,”
Oh yes those things are always a bad thing.
It blows my mind that so many people think its ok for someone to come in to San Antonio and blatantly violate our rules. The rideshare companies have been giving us all the big FU since the beginning. You are lucky your kid wasn’t in an accident while in the uber car. You would of been hit with a nice medical bill .
http://blog.uber.com/ridesharinginsurance
$1000 deducatable and the passenger is not covered
https://www.lyft.com/drive/help/article/1229170
$2500 deducatable and the passenger is not covered
Andrew, you’ve posted two different, contradictory numbers. What do they refer to, please?
I don’t follow, you are aware lyft and uber are 2 different companies correct?
They each have different deductibles
Next time educate yourself on the facts about a company before you post.
Here is some help
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2014/dec/10/california-sues-uber-startups-latest-legal-woe/
Nice to see you guys delete comments that you disagree with.
Something to consider that Robert Reich wrote the other day on Uber —
Robert Reich: “Uber, the car-share service company, announced yesterday it got more money from venture capitalists this year than any other company, putting its value at around $40 billion — higher than American Airlines. Yet Uber employs only 1,500 people directly. The rest of its ’employees’ – the drivers who use their own cars — take on almost all the cost and risk. In fact (as the New York Times revealed yesterday), Uber demands drivers handle any and all damage claims themselves through their own personal car insurance, even though those insurance companies don’t cover commercial activity. Which means Uber drivers aren’t insured to drive others for money. Which means Uber riders won’t collect if there’s an accident.
So is Uber a $40 billion success story or a dangerous scam?”
You shouldn’t share anything from the Heartland Institute, they have a known reputation for lying about climate change
Given the bio for the writer of this one-sided opinion, it’s obvious that his being for “lightly regulating” Uber and Lyft is reason enough to oppose it. He’s ideologically opposed to regulation and to government; no wonder he’s all for these “disruptive technologies.”
Nice commentary, and I agree except for the last paragraph. Merits or demerits of rail aside, connecting this to a streetcar debate in this way does not make sense to me. Ride share is a practical solution but in no way a replacement for mass transportation solutions, they are completely different and one solution can never address the other need in practical terms. Instead, it is all part of a much-needed, larger transportation strategy and citywide plan.
We need ridesharing in San Antonio!
This one sentence says it all: “People who might never consider calling a cab are using rideshare services as their personal means of public transit.” That’s me. Taxi cabs have been the transportation mode of absolutely last resort for me for a long time. Too many bad experiences.
Since we moved from San Antonio to Seattle last month we’ve mostly been walking around downtown to get where we need to go, but weather conditions and distances over a couple of miles have also caused us to summon Uber many times. Every single time has been a five-star experience.
(Yes, passengers get to rate the drivers on their performance. How great is that? What if taxi drivers could also be reviewed? BTW, drivers also rate passengers. Both parties are presented with the ratings before they accept the ride or passenger. Everyone is incented to play nicely.)
Even calling the dispatcher for a cab can be a painful experience. Long waits on hold. Inaccurate information about how long the wait will be. Calling back when you’ve waited twice as long as you’d been told it would take. Stress as your flight time draws nearer with no sign of a cab.
Uber couldn’t be simpler: Pop up the app on the phone, confirm your location (preset by GPS). Wait 3 or 4 minutes while watching the driver approaching on a map on your phone. Get into a clean, comfortable car, often with bottles of water and sometimes even with phone charger cables hanging in the back seat for passenger use. No blaring radios, no hair-raising hellish mad dash through the streets that puts pedestrians and other drivers in danger, no hassles over fare, no tipping. One very reasonable price includes the driver’s compensation. Hop out of the car at your destination and take a second to rate the driver. It’s likely you’ll hit 5 stars.
Bottom line: Uber is not taking my business away from the taxicab industry; they lost my business a long time ago. San Antonio, with its 13-billion-dollar a year tourism industry should be embracing technologies that make visitors and residents alike more comfortable exploring the city. Perhaps the competition will inspire the taxicab industry to up its game.
Love the story about his kid needing a ride. This issue has been fascinating for me to watch play out across the different generations (in my circle of family and friends). It seems that the younger generations are more comfortable with it. Older generations seem to be wary about the “lawsuits waiting to happen.” I’ve also read about the problems in other cities with insurance coverage for accidents.
In this article I wonder about the “too many safety inspections, too many background checks, too much insurance, and too many fees” which seemed to be contradicted later in the article by “Uber and Lyft cars are clean, later-model cars with higher driver and insurance standards than clunky cabs are required have.”
I also wonder about this: “consumers who are asked to rate every ride they take, and review the ratings of every driver before they accept a ride” because to think that’s going to happen is unrealistic and puts a safety burden on the consumer.
I don’t agree that it will make public transit obsolete, but in a city that lacks real efficient public transit options, ridesharing is definitely needed. I use Lyft and Uber every weekend if I know I’m going to have a drink or two. So far, it’s been enjoyable, efficient, and reliable; even at 3am. Calling a random cab is sketchy at any time during the day and via stops at 12m. To add, via is not my idea of efficient or fast.
Although I found it unusual that an active council member of Olmos Park was engaged in a policy debate for the City of San Antonio during the streetcar debate, I also find it remarkable that the same individual would tout the wonders of an industry facing significant legal challenges across the globe (California, Ohio, North Carolina, Spain, India) because of insurance, of all things. I’d be curious for Jeff Judson to put his USAA insurance hat back on and inform us how USAA would handle claims from Uber or Lyft drivers with non-commercial vehicle insurance who had accidents while performing Uber or Lyft duties.
I have looked at Lyft’s website. They claim to provide primary insurance for their drivers, but the Lyft drivers’ forum suggests even the drivers are convinced they are covered while operating for Lyft. I’m not an insurance expert, but I do think it would be negligent for the city to endorse those companies without the confidence that their drivers and passengers are properly covered by insurance. That does not seem like an onerous requirement, but one of due diligence and due care.
Since he brings up transit and rail, rather than perpetuating the myth that every trip taken by care makes for a great society, I’d much rather see a long and deliberate effort to make private automobile trips the last transportation choice within the city of San Antonio. Part of that solution should be rail. Another part would be a city-wide 25 mph speed limit for San Antonio, in the same fashion that Olmos Park has implemented a 25 mph speed limit in their own community. And, to make it all work, a revision of land-use policies to make the 20th century auto-dependent city a thing of the past.
In another article written by Judson, he takes great pride in the quietness and street safety of Olmos Park. That’s great, but I don’t have that same luxury on my street. The 25 mph speed limit no doubt does a lot to create that wonderful environment. Every street in San Antonio should have the same wonderful environment, not just the few wealthy bedroom communities.
I agree that San Antonio has a dire need for programs like Lyft and Uber—especially because of our city layout and lack of other available options.
I do not agree that rideshare programs entirely replace mass transportation. First, while amazing and convenient, they are still *prohibitively expensive* for most of the population; few San Antonians could realistically use Uber or Lyft as daily transportation.
Secondly, if you compare tech of current generation single-passenger transportation to current generation mass transportation, it will always be more energy and cost efficient to move larger quantities of passengers per trip.
Finally, as transportation automates, I think there will be a spectrum of options on a price scale that moves between “completely private car” to “shared transportation”. You are already seeing Lyft and Uber diversify into carpool options, don’t be surprised to see larger capacity vehicles join their fleet.
I don’t really need more people telling me how awesome Lyft and Uber are or how they are going to revolutionize transportation in this city. That’s not really what is at issue here. I would like to see exactly how Lyft and Uber are being regulated in comparison to how the taxis are being regulated.
And I really don’t care for the obfuscation involved in using the term “ride sharing”. Ride sharing is when two people split the cost of transport. Lyft and Uber are basically Towncar/Limo services. If the new regulations require drivers to get the same insurance and inspection that my local Towncar driver has to deal with than I see no problem with this. It’s a taxi service after all, and calling it ride sharing doesn’t change that fact. All it does is change perception in the hopes that this new provider of a very old service can avoid the regulations that all the established providers already have to deal with.
I’m all for deregulation, but if I was a Towncar driver, I’d be pretty pissed if I had to compete for the same customers with a guy who has next to none of the regulatory challenges I have.
That being said. If they are being regulated like a checker cab, then I think the council has overstepped.
Readers should be aware that the author of that piece has an agenda; that’s why he includes badmouthing public transit. Look at his bio; the Public Policy Foundation is a very right wing “think tank” that is hostile to anything publicly funded or for a public purpose. That’s where this writer begins on every issue.
this Judson dude is nothing good for san Antonio and his opinions are so much based on ‘conservative thinking’ and manipulation of facts like global warming and public transit issues..its sadly delusional as he likes everything unregulated, you know…” government bad”….still this uber service is hip and cool but its an unregulated new comer into a regulated taxi industry making it an unlevel playing field….what other industries would allow this? insurance, restaurants? contractors? freight carriers, banking and fracking……what uber is experiencing is the cost of business with public safety in mind