City Council moves to stop Uber, Lyft car services

[jaxjaguar]

If City Council doesn't find a way to allow these companies to stay it will be yet another reason for me to vote every last one of them out. Killing these services does nothing to promote competition and makes people more likely to drive impaired. Many people I know only use these services over driving intoxicated because their apps are so easy to use and services are cheap compared to traditional cabs.

I don't know what cab services the posters above are using, but those prices are lower than any traditional cab I've used in Jacksonville... I tried taking a cab from The Rogue to Metro Lofts over the weekend and the first cab driver said "no." The second driver reluctantly accepted and the fare was $22.... with tip $27. I've done this same ride several times with Uber and the total fare was $7.... You don't even have to tip.

[Lunican]

How risky is your Uber ride?

The fine print of Uber's terms and conditions clearly says that passengers accept a risk by using the service.

"You understand, therefore, that by using the application and the service, you may be exposed to transportation that is potentially dangerous, offensive, harmful to minors, unsafe or otherwise objectionable," Uber's terms and conditions read, "and that you use the application and the service at your own risk."

A look at Lyft's terms of service shows it operates nearly the same way. "Lyft has no responsibility whatsoever for the actions or conduct of drivers or riders," the terms of service reads. "Responsibility for the decisions you make regarding providing or accepting transportation rest solely with You... Drivers and riders use the services at their own risk."

Legal analyst and ex-prosecutor Steve Clark said that Uber and Lyft are basically trying to show through these terms of use that they are ride-matching services, rather than transportation companies. (He is not representing any passengers in lawsuits with Uber or Lyft, and he hasn't advised either company). If they can prove they are merely tech platforms, he said, they may be able to protect themselves from some lawsuits. Yet, Clark said, "it remains to be seen if their terms of use would be enough to shield them from liability."

A parallel could be drawn with online dating services, which faced their own liability challenges early on. In one high-profile incident in 2011, Match.com was sued by a woman who claimed she was sexually assaulted by a date she met through the service. That lawsuit concluded after Match.com began screening its members for sexual predators.

http://www.cnet.com/news/how-risky-is-your-uber-ride-maybe-more-than-you-think/

[urbanlibertarian]

Rather than regulate Uber and Lyft, why not deregulate taxis?

[Rob68]

Is it now going to be illegal to pick up a hitchhiker?

[mtraininjax]

The issue at hand with the City Council, to be fair to them, is that Uber said it was only going to bring UberBlack (the black towncars) into Jacksonville to offer an alternative, Joost was the one to head and bring this in, with others in the community. Then, this summer, Uber started recruiting drivers, of their vehicles to drive under Uberx, which is the real point of contention here. (never used Lynx or other service, but have used cabs in Jax).

So their point, and I have had discussions with Jack Shad on this, and we don't agree, but he is paid by the City, I am not, so he represents their line. Uberx is a great alternative to local cabs. Many of the local Uberx drivers are local, live in the community, pick up rides as people need them. The fact that a cab ride can cost $9 from Avondale to the Stadium, has something to do with Uber being here, as it used to cost far more. Cabs in Jax are disgusting. For all I know most of the people driving in them, probably live in them too, they smell, they are trashy and the cab drivers have all the power, and in power, they can drive you in circles if they want to, and you end up with the $30 cab ride.

Just a thought - if taxi drivers are so unhappy about the competition, why don't they become Uber/Lyft drivers with their own cars?

Search the net for the great article about how Uber has changed San Francisco. Many of the taxi drivers there, pay for a medallion (license for hire to drive a vehicle) and the medallion is something that drives city coffers (same as here in Jax), so if you have fewer taxi cab drivers, you have fewer medallions, and then less CITY revenue. So the city sees this as a threat to their medallion......monopoly. Most taxi drivers are heavily invested in the medallion and cannot afford to just jump ship to Uber/Lynx.

How risky is your Uber ride?

Well, how risky is it for you to drive your own car? If a standard DUI costs $10,000 in legal fees and years of headache, what are the costs associated with a cabbie, if he/she gets into an accident?

I think Uber is great, i plan to use them this weekend to go down to the Octoberfest party at the Shipyards. Its a great service and the locals who drive their cars are appreciated. I hope that the Uber idea leads to others giving boat transportation across the river too. I'd love to see an Uber from Avondale to the FYC or Stockton Park, boat/Uber across to the Hooters docks at University and Uber to a job on the southside, bypass the Overland nightmare and Buckman, and have a great direct route. Now that would be cool, and there is really nothing the City can do to stop it, which is even cooler!

[strider]

I hope that the Uber idea leads to others giving boat transportation across the river too.

Boat transportation is a different animal with Federal Coast Guard regulations kicking in.  I would think that if the boat Captain had the correct licence and the boat met the correct safety standards, the city would be hard pressed to stop him.

From what I have read, when it comes to the safety and liability issues between taxis and the other services, there is no real difference. That only leaves the dollars and how much has gone to the various political campaigns as to why this is an issue at all.

[marty904]

Personally I don't see how the city can go after another transportation entity for operating "questionably" when they (COJ) have not been held accountable for their own "illegal" activity in the transportation realm.  I mean, is the whole water taxi debacle being swept under the rug? The city's own attorney publicly stated "this was an illegal purchase". Is the city free from consequences of illegal acts just because they found someone to quickly buy the boats from them? Sounds like a lot of "glass house rock throwing" to me!

The city never bought the boats...the sale was stopped...Harry Frisch bought them and then leased them to the City....they are now operated by the new private provider.

If the city never purchased the boats and the sale was stopped, why did we see so much in the TU and BJ about the city asking for their money back and threatening the marine where they purchased them from, and the city's own council calling it "an illegal purchase"? Everything we read says that the purchase DID go through and that Harry Frisch bought them from the city and then leased them back to the city.

[Noone]

I hope that the Uber idea leads to others giving boat transportation across the river too.

Boat transportation is a different animal with Federal Coast Guard regulations kicking in.  I would think that if the boat Captain had the correct licence and the boat met the correct safety standards, the city would be hard pressed to stop him.

From what I have read, when it comes to the safety and liability issues between taxis and the other services, there is no real difference. That only leaves the dollars and how much has gone to the various political campaigns as to why this is an issue at all.

+1

[urbanlibertarian]

http://reason.com/archives/2014/10/28/smartphones-vs-taxi-drivers/

Smartphones vs. Taxi Drivers
Brian Doherty

Barry Korengold, president of the San Francisco Cab Drivers Association, has been driving for hire around the Bay Area for 35 years. These days, he's none too happy.

Korengold owns a coveted city-issued medallion; it's the only way to legally drive a metered taxi around Baghdad by the Bay. If you don't have your own, you need to work for someone who does. This license to cab is currently available at the jaw-dropping price of $250,000. For years, that barrier to entry produced enough scarcity to make Korengold and his grizzled brethren a solid middle-class living.

But over the past year or so, revenues have plunged a Lombard Street-like 50 percent, Korengold and other local drivers tell me. Press reports suggest the cabbies are exaggerating, but only a bit. What happened?

New, unmedallioned drivers dominate the streets of San Francisco, Korengold complains, "competing with us for the same customers, providing the same service but allowed to play under different rules-or no rules. They undercut us because they have hundreds of millions in venture capital behind them."

In other words: It's all Danetta's fault.

Danetta (who wished only to use her first name, in order to speak more freely without offending potential customers), is a 32-year-old bookkeeper who for the last year and a half has been driving passengers around the Bay Area and later San Diego for both UberX and Sidecar, two entrants in the hot new business model of e-hailing, or providing rides via smartphone. (See page 23 for how these companies work.) Danetta also drove a while last year for a third market leader, Lyft, a self-consciously wacky brand whose drivers frequently strap whimsical giant pink moustaches to the front of their cars. "We had candy and we had water and every ride we treated like our friends," she says.

It's pretty easy to meet the basic requirements for being an e-hail driver: You must have a post-2004 model car for UberX (post-2000 for Lyft) and be able to pass a background check on both your driving and criminal records. And the pay is good-Danetta takes home 80 percent of her Sidecar fares, and when I interviewed her in March she was getting 95 percent from UberX, though the latter goes through periods of being extra generous to lure more drivers. And the work is pleasant: After more than 4,000 rides, she remembers only five even slightly negative experiences.

To read this long but very interesting article on the current state of ride sharing services go here:http://reason.com/archives/2014/10/28/smartphones-vs-taxi-drivers/

[finehoe]

Another perspective:

This downside of the sharing needs to be taken seriously, but that doesn't mean the current tax and regulatory structure is perfect. Many existing regulations should be changed, as they were originally designed to serve narrow interests and/or have outlived their usefulness. But it doesn't make sense to essentially exempt entire classes of business from safety regulations or taxes just because they provide their services over the Internet.

Going forward, we need to ensure that the regulatory structure allows for real innovation, but doesn't make scam-facilitators into billionaires. For example, rooms rented under Airbnb should be subject to the same taxes as hotels and motels pay. Uber drivers and cars should have to meet the same standards and carry the same level of insurance as commercial taxi fleets.

If these services are still viable when operating on a level playing field they will be providing real value to the economy. As it stands, they are hugely rewarding a small number of people for finding a creative way to cheat the system.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/27/airbnb-uber-taxes-regulation