12 ms·

Black Market Ride-Sharing Increases in Austin

59 points by ALee 10y ago

keyanp 10y ago
This article is inflammatory and slanted. It seems like the author cares less about reporting than about driving an anti-regulatory agenda.
- Loughla 10y ago
  Slanted is an understatement. The following words are from the article, written by the author, and take the article out of the realm of actual reporting, and into the realm of bullshit --opinion-- >hilariously >The City Of Austin Is Embarrassing Itself >ham-fisted >absurd >un-ironic cluelessness >senior correspondent for The Federalist. That last one was an insult.
  - deftnerd 10y ago
    This link was originally dead but I vouched for it as I was just a few paragraphs into reading it. If I read all the way through, I would have left it dead. The content started just fine but progressively gets worse and worse with the authors opinions and vitriolic anger coloring the work.
  - peterwwillis 10y ago
    Go check out the rest of The Federalist's articles. For example, The Federalist Editors And Friends Discuss Kim Kardashian's Butt, Why Bernie Sanders Supporters Should Vote Trump, How Environmentalists Opened The Door For Zika, and my favorite, America’s War On The Confederacy Is Really A War On The Past.
- wahsd 10y ago
  The newcomer Austinites that have flooded into the city over the last years are immensely butt-hurt about the whole Lyft/Uber ordeal. I suspect the first time someone is robbed or raped we'll get a cry-bully rant pushing blame onto the city.
  - peterwwillis 10y ago
    Forcing people to use illegal transportation does victimize people, and if the city is forcing the transportation to be illegal, said victims are the city's responsibility.
- ncr100 10y ago
  +1 - not an analytical article / bit of authorship. The author labels as "onerous [regulations imposed by Austin City]" (in the linked article he wrote) avoiding providing detail for the regulations he judges as onerous: "It seems there’s no new product or service that meddling liberals won’t figure out a way to regulate out of existence under the pretense of knowing what’s best for you. "Over the weekend in the liberal bastion of Austin, Texas, a handful of pro-regulation voters opted to keep in place a host of petty, irrational, and burdensome regulations the city council imposed on ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft in December." Ironically ending the unanalytical article with: "I know it sounds crazy, but it’s almost like they don’t care about solving these problems." - http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/10/uber-lyft-were-driven-out-of-austin/ http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/10/uber-lyft-were-driven-ou...
  - ncr100 10y ago
    Why is this particular article on HN? Look at the poster image - using a commonly maligned ethnic minority as the "face" of this movement. An attempt at bigotry IMO.
    - blisterpeanuts 10y ago
      A Sikh?
Aelinsaar 10y ago
"The City Of Austin Is Embarrassing Itself." I wouldn't go that far. They're not handling this very well, but this article is a bit of demagoguery in the skin of "news".
- exelius 10y ago
  How so, by requiring background checks for Uber drivers? When I lived there, they required the same livery license for pedicab drivers as well -- which was basically getting fingerprinted and paying a $25 fee. Uber and Lyft were the ones who pulled out. The regulation that Austin passed was in no way overbearing; it just required fingerprints. They claim this "destroys the ridesharing economy" but in my experience, Uber is basically a part-time job for most drivers. Most people will go get fingerprinted for a part-time job. Very few people are ridesharing; but maybe this undercuts the argument that Lyft and Uber use for the drivers not being employees...
  - yarou 10y ago
    > Most people will go get fingerprinted for a part-time job. That's how it starts. Then the government starts mandating transdermal implants at birth that contain a GPS chipset, and a kill switch. We're headed to a level of dystopian control that would make a brutal banana republic dictator shudder.
    - Loughla 10y ago
      I can't tell if you're serious or not. If you are, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. If you're not, congratulations, you got me.
      - ttraub 10y ago
        Actually, we're not that far off from being chipped voluntarily. That's how it will start. "Let us chip you, and you won't need your badge to get through the front entrance anymore; and we'll give you a $50/week bonus." In an era when the government has access to our cell phone data via easily obtained FISA court permission, we're already a good chunk of the way there.
kybernetyk 10y ago
The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. The free market interprets regulation as damage and routes around it. Wanting to control either of both is an exercise in futility.
- tacos 10y ago
  The problem with these platitudes is that they distract from the real issue: all the money is made by the players who control the "routing around." It is not futility at all. It is a vital energy input to the system. Broken to you -- fixed (as in "rigged") to them.
- bdcravens 10y ago
  Gun owners see gun control as damage and routes around it. Business owners see labor laws as damage and route around it.
  - vonklaus 10y ago
    correct. I agree with you as well as parent to some degree. However, chiefly, it shoud be noted that Business Owners and Gun Owners operate in the free market and presumably use the internet. Wherease everyone who is operating within a freemarket or active on the internet may not be a gun owner or business owner. The parent is talking about at a system level. You are talking, at least my charrachterization of it, about a layer of abstraction within a system.
  - SilasX 10y ago
    The Void interprets Existence as damage and
- FordPrefectAO 10y ago
  What about the article today: Chinese censorship can teach the world that it works?
illumen 10y ago
“My sense is we were innovating too quickly for Uber and Lyft. You get to be a big company, you’re less nimble. But these companies have to expect disruption.” Gold. Reminds me of how Slowgle is getting disrupted by Paris.
vonklaus 10y ago
I think this is great. However, if you are Austin and you're idea was to strong arm Lyft & Uber into allowing background checks to make ride sharing "safer", one would imagine spawning a comleteley unregulated black market would be "suboptimal" to the desired outcome.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
peterwwillis 10y ago
In Baltimore, the black market cabs are called "hacks". They exist mainly because people don't have enough money to afford cabs and there aren't enough bus routes. "Hacking" involves driving along popular roads looking for people who use their index and middle finger to claw at the air ("hawkin'") to indicate they'd like a ride. Fares are hashed out before the ride begins, usually a flat rate, and well under the price of a cab. These illegal cabs sometimes take advantage of the riders because they can't complain to the police. Though in many cases one might develop a relationship with a particular hack and call them directly for rides.
- 6stringmerc 10y ago
  Can genuinely say that back when I was in Austin for a couple years, partying hard and occasionally linked up with some other go-getters, most of them had business cards for Taxis or Town Cars that would cater to well-to-do individuals, mostly college-aged party scene people. This was about a decade ago and I thought it was quite useful at the time.
  - peterwwillis 10y ago
    That's traditionally called a "black car service", a sort of independent contractor fancy taxi. Different from a limousine or executive car service. http://www.allstarlimo.com/All-Star-Limo-Blog/2013/8/Executive-Car-Service-Vs-Black-Car-Service http://www.allstarlimo.com/All-Star-Limo-Blog/2013/8/Executi...
aero142 10y ago
As an Austinite, the whole think looked more like a childish pissing match rather than some real debate on regulation vs the free market. Austin City Council took up a fight where there wasn't a problem, and Uber paid 9 million to fight something that they are already doing 3 hours down the road. http://www.driveuberhouston.com/fingerprint-background-check/ http://www.driveuberhouston.com/fingerprint-background-check... The whole thing makes no sense to me. The City Council won a fight, but gained nothing, Uber/Lyft lost a market but will happily move on to some other place. Meanwhile, the only real losers are the people living in Austin who are stuck in some of the worst traffic in the nation and now have a worse on demand ride system. What a waste.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  You might consider that the citizens of Austin voted on the measure that passed. This wasn't Austin City Council against Uber and Lyft. It was the citizens of Austin voting for provisions Uber and Lyft needed to comply with (and choose not to).
  - blisterpeanuts 10y ago
    Only 17.3% of the voters turned out. Hardly the will of the people, just the ones who cared enough to vote, or were literate enough to understand what day of the week the vote was, or had a way to get to the voting station. Also, the ballot question itself apparently was worded so confusingly that it wasn't clear what box to check. Here's the actual ballot question (from http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/local/dont-mess-up-your-vote-heres-what-uber-lyft-ballot/nq2rs/ http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/local/dont-mess-up-your...): Shall the City Code be amended to repeal City Ordinance No. 20151217-075 relating to Transportation Network Companies; and replace with an ordinance that would repeal and prohibit required fingerprinting, repeal the requirement to identify the vehicle with a distinctive emblem, repeal the prohibition against loading and unloading passengers in a travel lane, and require other regulations for Transportation Network Companies? Then there are two boxes below that. Next to one it says “For the Ordinance” and on the other, “Against the Ordinance.” The writer points out that it's not clear which ordinance the boxes are referring to, or what the net effect of your vote. Usually, on ballots I've seen over the decades, there's a summary phrase on the ballot like "if you vote YES, you are supporting gay marriage" or something like that, nice and clear. If a clear phrasing had been provided, I wonder whether it still would have gone that way.
clemensley 10y ago
I'd predict some decentralized service will fill that market need. Anything that works better than craigslist and is hard to take down.
- ajford 10y ago
  Problem is, Craigslist is full of spam/scams. It's hard to filter through, and takes time and effort. Not something I want to do via mobile at $arbitrary_time when I may or may not be in a hurry. And decentralizing eliminates one of the best things going for Uber/Lyft, the background checks and tracking.
swang 10y ago
So a tech company is "facilitating" a "BLACK MARKET" for ride-sharing... what? Was Uber a "black market" too? The Federalist view generally only has an inkling of the truth to whatever fits their conservative narrative. So if there is a story here, I doubt it is the full message I find it hard to trust anything on the site when one of its founders, Ben Domenech, plagiarized articles while working at WaPo and had to resign. This was also on top of him lying and saying he had permission from one(?) of the authors. Not that I support the Austin's City Council about the Uber/Lyft situation. But at the sign of anything happening they instantly write an article to reflect how "bad" the city council's decision was. See also: anything about Seattle's increased minimum wage.
beatpanda 10y ago
Uh huh. Listen. I've been around the world doing "black market ride sharing", where the ride is actually shared, for years. There aren't any regulations on it, other than "don't stand in the road asking for a ride". Government regulation isn't preventing anyone from sharing anything. It may give you some extra rules to follow if you're running a business though.
aluhut 10y ago
Since Uber was not allowed here (Black was I guess) in Germany, I wonder how does insurance work on Uber or those black market ride sharers in the US?
- crispy2000 10y ago
  Not sure about Germany, but in Austin, Uber wanted their drivers to carry auto insurance, although the company also has its own policy to cover drivers--many personal auto insurance policies explicitly do not cover accidents while the insured party is driving for hire.
- joezydeco 10y ago
  About as well as you think, which is zero. If an insurance company finds out your injured/killed passenger was for-hire under the table, most standard policies don't cover this especially in the age of Uber. You're screwed.
Yhippa 10y ago
> Arcade City, the “Uber killer” ride-sharing company, as it’s known, says it’s developing a peer-to-peer ride-sharing app that will connect people who need a ride with people who have a car, and eliminate “concern about red tape or corporate BS—just people providing people a needed service.” I like water, meat, and medical services, but prefer some amount of regulation on them. I'm sure there's a fine line between reasonable regulation and protectionism or irrationality when it comes to these things. > Here’s the big idea: We can cut out the corporate middlemen — and make government regulations obsolete — by transparently providing rider and driver with clear information about the other party to each transaction, including a strong reputation and ratings system where riders and drivers ‘level up’ after community-vetted good behavior on the platform. Who's going to take a chance on the drivers and riders with no reputation?
- forrestthewoods 10y ago
  Regulation is necessary for health and safety reasons. Need for regulation beyond health and safety is quite small. Not zero, but on a relative scale quite small. Uber and Lyft's track record for safety in the US is quite strong. As is the willingness of riders and drivers to participate in the system from no reputation. The need for regulation has not been justified. Regulations shouldn't be passed unless there is a clear reason to do so and measurable way to declare that regulation a success or failure.
- xyience 10y ago
  > Who's going to take a chance on the drivers and riders with no reputation? Fake users.
6stringmerc 10y ago
Pardon my amusement at the observation this conflagration is eerily like the City of Austin imported more California culture than it wanted - oh sure, everybody likes tech start ups, but the whole wasteful socially progressive government style that appartently tagged along isn't so loved. Hm, funny that.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Startup culture is more libertarian than socially progressive. Socially progressive would be Austin providing a robust public transportation system, thereby removing the need for ridesharing. Wouldn't it be more efficient for public transportation to be provided via taxes and user fees versus Uber and Lyft siphoning off of the flow of transportation payments for their shareholders? That seems inefficient to me.
  - crispy2000 10y ago
    More efficient? By what measurement? Certainly not the consumer's time nor the taxpayers' money! Billion dollar light rail trains that roll empty are not a terribly efficient use of money. Buses are more flexible, but waiting for a bus then having to walk from the bus stop home is apparently an unsatisfactory use of time to many passengers. A system that connects a passenger with the nearest available driver and doesn't take too much for their part in the transaction would seem to be efficient in time and money for both the passenger and driver. In addition, it provides a source of employment for people who are looking for work and meet the criteria. Not saying that Uber, Lyft, and other "ride sharing" services are all on the side of the angels, but their success points to a need which they are meeting.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      You're post makes a whole lot of assumptions about ridesharing. 1. Uber drivers are compensated sufficiently for their time and expenses (research has shown this isn't true, Uber drivers scrape by just like cabbies) 2. That a consumer's time is more valuable than having public transportation available to everyone (Ridesharing > Buses/bike shares/etc) 3. That expensive rail is one of the only options. The solution is a mix of buses, bicycle sharing, and electric self-driving cars. How we get there is the tricky part.
tzs 10y ago
The author can't seem to keep his story straight. In paragraph 3 he makes this claim: > When a ballot proposal that would have replaced the city ordinance failed, Uber and Lyft left town as promised. Since May 9, there have been no ride-sharing services available in this city of almost a million people. and then a few paragraphs later makes this claim, directly contradicting the above claim: > The city’s response is only making things worse. Last week it held a job fair for out-of-work Uber and Lyft drivers, at which it encouraged drivers to get fingerprinted and sign up for the only remaining ridesharing company in town, a local app called Get Me.
vannevar 10y ago
The decision by Uber and Lyft to temporarily abandon Austin (game theory suggests that both will be back, I suspect within months) may backfire on them, as the drivers discover that they really don't need them. All the drivers need is a dispatch service to coordinate the data from their phones. What makes an Uber driver? A sticker and an app on your phone? That's precious little value to deliver for the large bite Uber takes out of the driver's earnings. My prediction is that dispatch services like Uber and Lyft will become commodities, and the events in Austin will only accelerate that process.
hackbinary 10y ago
Didn't Austin get rid of Uber and Lyft because of the entrenched/encumband 'taxi' industry and the big finance industry owning and financing taxi 'licenses'? http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/cab-medallion-owners-sue-nyc-blame-uber-for-ruining-business/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/cab-medallion-own... http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2014/09/08/wish-you-could-invest-in-uber-and-lyft-heres-a-clever-way-to-get-rich-off-rides/#146ff825772a http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2014/09/08/wish-yo...

59 points by ALee 10y ago

This article is inflammatory and slanted. It seems like the author cares less about reporting than about driving an anti-regulatory agenda.

Loughla 10y ago
Slanted is an understatement. The following words are from the article, written by the author, and take the article out of the realm of actual reporting, and into the realm of bullshit --opinion-- >hilariously >The City Of Austin Is Embarrassing Itself >ham-fisted >absurd >un-ironic cluelessness >senior correspondent for The Federalist. That last one was an insult.
- deftnerd 10y ago
  This link was originally dead but I vouched for it as I was just a few paragraphs into reading it. If I read all the way through, I would have left it dead. The content started just fine but progressively gets worse and worse with the authors opinions and vitriolic anger coloring the work.
- peterwwillis 10y ago
  Go check out the rest of The Federalist's articles. For example, The Federalist Editors And Friends Discuss Kim Kardashian's Butt, Why Bernie Sanders Supporters Should Vote Trump, How Environmentalists Opened The Door For Zika, and my favorite, America’s War On The Confederacy Is Really A War On The Past.
wahsd 10y ago
The newcomer Austinites that have flooded into the city over the last years are immensely butt-hurt about the whole Lyft/Uber ordeal. I suspect the first time someone is robbed or raped we'll get a cry-bully rant pushing blame onto the city.
- peterwwillis 10y ago
  Forcing people to use illegal transportation does victimize people, and if the city is forcing the transportation to be illegal, said victims are the city's responsibility.
ncr100 10y ago
+1 - not an analytical article / bit of authorship. The author labels as "onerous [regulations imposed by Austin City]" (in the linked article he wrote) avoiding providing detail for the regulations he judges as onerous: "It seems there’s no new product or service that meddling liberals won’t figure out a way to regulate out of existence under the pretense of knowing what’s best for you. "Over the weekend in the liberal bastion of Austin, Texas, a handful of pro-regulation voters opted to keep in place a host of petty, irrational, and burdensome regulations the city council imposed on ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft in December." Ironically ending the unanalytical article with: "I know it sounds crazy, but it’s almost like they don’t care about solving these problems." - http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/10/uber-lyft-were-driven-out-of-austin/ http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/10/uber-lyft-were-driven-ou...
- ncr100 10y ago
  Why is this particular article on HN? Look at the poster image - using a commonly maligned ethnic minority as the "face" of this movement. An attempt at bigotry IMO.
  - blisterpeanuts 10y ago
    A Sikh?

Aelinsaar 10y ago

"The City Of Austin Is Embarrassing Itself." I wouldn't go that far. They're not handling this very well, but this article is a bit of demagoguery in the skin of "news".

exelius 10y ago
How so, by requiring background checks for Uber drivers? When I lived there, they required the same livery license for pedicab drivers as well -- which was basically getting fingerprinted and paying a $25 fee. Uber and Lyft were the ones who pulled out. The regulation that Austin passed was in no way overbearing; it just required fingerprints. They claim this "destroys the ridesharing economy" but in my experience, Uber is basically a part-time job for most drivers. Most people will go get fingerprinted for a part-time job. Very few people are ridesharing; but maybe this undercuts the argument that Lyft and Uber use for the drivers not being employees...
- yarou 10y ago
  > Most people will go get fingerprinted for a part-time job. That's how it starts. Then the government starts mandating transdermal implants at birth that contain a GPS chipset, and a kill switch. We're headed to a level of dystopian control that would make a brutal banana republic dictator shudder.
  - Loughla 10y ago
    I can't tell if you're serious or not. If you are, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. If you're not, congratulations, you got me.
    - ttraub 10y ago
      Actually, we're not that far off from being chipped voluntarily. That's how it will start. "Let us chip you, and you won't need your badge to get through the front entrance anymore; and we'll give you a $50/week bonus." In an era when the government has access to our cell phone data via easily obtained FISA court permission, we're already a good chunk of the way there.

kybernetyk 10y ago

The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. The free market interprets regulation as damage and routes around it. Wanting to control either of both is an exercise in futility.

tacos 10y ago
The problem with these platitudes is that they distract from the real issue: all the money is made by the players who control the "routing around." It is not futility at all. It is a vital energy input to the system. Broken to you -- fixed (as in "rigged") to them.
bdcravens 10y ago
Gun owners see gun control as damage and routes around it. Business owners see labor laws as damage and route around it.
- vonklaus 10y ago
  correct. I agree with you as well as parent to some degree. However, chiefly, it shoud be noted that Business Owners and Gun Owners operate in the free market and presumably use the internet. Wherease everyone who is operating within a freemarket or active on the internet may not be a gun owner or business owner. The parent is talking about at a system level. You are talking, at least my charrachterization of it, about a layer of abstraction within a system.
- SilasX 10y ago
  The Void interprets Existence as damage and
FordPrefectAO 10y ago
What about the article today: Chinese censorship can teach the world that it works?

illumen 10y ago

“My sense is we were innovating too quickly for Uber and Lyft. You get to be a big company, you’re less nimble. But these companies have to expect disruption.” Gold. Reminds me of how Slowgle is getting disrupted by Paris.

vonklaus 10y ago

I think this is great. However, if you are Austin and you're idea was to strong arm Lyft & Uber into allowing background checks to make ride sharing "safer", one would imagine spawning a comleteley unregulated black market would be "suboptimal" to the desired outcome.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

peterwwillis 10y ago

In Baltimore, the black market cabs are called "hacks". They exist mainly because people don't have enough money to afford cabs and there aren't enough bus routes. "Hacking" involves driving along popular roads looking for people who use their index and middle finger to claw at the air ("hawkin'") to indicate they'd like a ride. Fares are hashed out before the ride begins, usually a flat rate, and well under the price of a cab. These illegal cabs sometimes take advantage of the riders because they can't complain to the police. Though in many cases one might develop a relationship with a particular hack and call them directly for rides.

6stringmerc 10y ago
Can genuinely say that back when I was in Austin for a couple years, partying hard and occasionally linked up with some other go-getters, most of them had business cards for Taxis or Town Cars that would cater to well-to-do individuals, mostly college-aged party scene people. This was about a decade ago and I thought it was quite useful at the time.
- peterwwillis 10y ago
  That's traditionally called a "black car service", a sort of independent contractor fancy taxi. Different from a limousine or executive car service. http://www.allstarlimo.com/All-Star-Limo-Blog/2013/8/Executive-Car-Service-Vs-Black-Car-Service http://www.allstarlimo.com/All-Star-Limo-Blog/2013/8/Executi...

aero142 10y ago

As an Austinite, the whole think looked more like a childish pissing match rather than some real debate on regulation vs the free market. Austin City Council took up a fight where there wasn't a problem, and Uber paid 9 million to fight something that they are already doing 3 hours down the road. http://www.driveuberhouston.com/fingerprint-background-check/ http://www.driveuberhouston.com/fingerprint-background-check... The whole thing makes no sense to me. The City Council won a fight, but gained nothing, Uber/Lyft lost a market but will happily move on to some other place. Meanwhile, the only real losers are the people living in Austin who are stuck in some of the worst traffic in the nation and now have a worse on demand ride system. What a waste.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
You might consider that the citizens of Austin voted on the measure that passed. This wasn't Austin City Council against Uber and Lyft. It was the citizens of Austin voting for provisions Uber and Lyft needed to comply with (and choose not to).
- blisterpeanuts 10y ago
  Only 17.3% of the voters turned out. Hardly the will of the people, just the ones who cared enough to vote, or were literate enough to understand what day of the week the vote was, or had a way to get to the voting station. Also, the ballot question itself apparently was worded so confusingly that it wasn't clear what box to check. Here's the actual ballot question (from http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/local/dont-mess-up-your-vote-heres-what-uber-lyft-ballot/nq2rs/ http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/local/dont-mess-up-your...): Shall the City Code be amended to repeal City Ordinance No. 20151217-075 relating to Transportation Network Companies; and replace with an ordinance that would repeal and prohibit required fingerprinting, repeal the requirement to identify the vehicle with a distinctive emblem, repeal the prohibition against loading and unloading passengers in a travel lane, and require other regulations for Transportation Network Companies? Then there are two boxes below that. Next to one it says “For the Ordinance” and on the other, “Against the Ordinance.” The writer points out that it's not clear which ordinance the boxes are referring to, or what the net effect of your vote. Usually, on ballots I've seen over the decades, there's a summary phrase on the ballot like "if you vote YES, you are supporting gay marriage" or something like that, nice and clear. If a clear phrasing had been provided, I wonder whether it still would have gone that way.

clemensley 10y ago

I'd predict some decentralized service will fill that market need. Anything that works better than craigslist and is hard to take down.

ajford 10y ago
Problem is, Craigslist is full of spam/scams. It's hard to filter through, and takes time and effort. Not something I want to do via mobile at $arbitrary_time when I may or may not be in a hurry. And decentralizing eliminates one of the best things going for Uber/Lyft, the background checks and tracking.

swang 10y ago

So a tech company is "facilitating" a "BLACK MARKET" for ride-sharing... what? Was Uber a "black market" too? The Federalist view generally only has an inkling of the truth to whatever fits their conservative narrative. So if there is a story here, I doubt it is the full message I find it hard to trust anything on the site when one of its founders, Ben Domenech, plagiarized articles while working at WaPo and had to resign. This was also on top of him lying and saying he had permission from one(?) of the authors. Not that I support the Austin's City Council about the Uber/Lyft situation. But at the sign of anything happening they instantly write an article to reflect how "bad" the city council's decision was. See also: anything about Seattle's increased minimum wage.

beatpanda 10y ago

Uh huh. Listen. I've been around the world doing "black market ride sharing", where the ride is actually shared, for years. There aren't any regulations on it, other than "don't stand in the road asking for a ride". Government regulation isn't preventing anyone from sharing anything. It may give you some extra rules to follow if you're running a business though.

aluhut 10y ago

Since Uber was not allowed here (Black was I guess) in Germany, I wonder how does insurance work on Uber or those black market ride sharers in the US?

crispy2000 10y ago
Not sure about Germany, but in Austin, Uber wanted their drivers to carry auto insurance, although the company also has its own policy to cover drivers--many personal auto insurance policies explicitly do not cover accidents while the insured party is driving for hire.
joezydeco 10y ago
About as well as you think, which is zero. If an insurance company finds out your injured/killed passenger was for-hire under the table, most standard policies don't cover this especially in the age of Uber. You're screwed.

Yhippa 10y ago

> Arcade City, the “Uber killer” ride-sharing company, as it’s known, says it’s developing a peer-to-peer ride-sharing app that will connect people who need a ride with people who have a car, and eliminate “concern about red tape or corporate BS—just people providing people a needed service.” I like water, meat, and medical services, but prefer some amount of regulation on them. I'm sure there's a fine line between reasonable regulation and protectionism or irrationality when it comes to these things. > Here’s the big idea: We can cut out the corporate middlemen — and make government regulations obsolete — by transparently providing rider and driver with clear information about the other party to each transaction, including a strong reputation and ratings system where riders and drivers ‘level up’ after community-vetted good behavior on the platform. Who's going to take a chance on the drivers and riders with no reputation?

forrestthewoods 10y ago
Regulation is necessary for health and safety reasons. Need for regulation beyond health and safety is quite small. Not zero, but on a relative scale quite small. Uber and Lyft's track record for safety in the US is quite strong. As is the willingness of riders and drivers to participate in the system from no reputation. The need for regulation has not been justified. Regulations shouldn't be passed unless there is a clear reason to do so and measurable way to declare that regulation a success or failure.
xyience 10y ago
> Who's going to take a chance on the drivers and riders with no reputation? Fake users.

6stringmerc 10y ago

Pardon my amusement at the observation this conflagration is eerily like the City of Austin imported more California culture than it wanted - oh sure, everybody likes tech start ups, but the whole wasteful socially progressive government style that appartently tagged along isn't so loved. Hm, funny that.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
Startup culture is more libertarian than socially progressive. Socially progressive would be Austin providing a robust public transportation system, thereby removing the need for ridesharing. Wouldn't it be more efficient for public transportation to be provided via taxes and user fees versus Uber and Lyft siphoning off of the flow of transportation payments for their shareholders? That seems inefficient to me.
- crispy2000 10y ago
  More efficient? By what measurement? Certainly not the consumer's time nor the taxpayers' money! Billion dollar light rail trains that roll empty are not a terribly efficient use of money. Buses are more flexible, but waiting for a bus then having to walk from the bus stop home is apparently an unsatisfactory use of time to many passengers. A system that connects a passenger with the nearest available driver and doesn't take too much for their part in the transaction would seem to be efficient in time and money for both the passenger and driver. In addition, it provides a source of employment for people who are looking for work and meet the criteria. Not saying that Uber, Lyft, and other "ride sharing" services are all on the side of the angels, but their success points to a need which they are meeting.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    You're post makes a whole lot of assumptions about ridesharing. 1. Uber drivers are compensated sufficiently for their time and expenses (research has shown this isn't true, Uber drivers scrape by just like cabbies) 2. That a consumer's time is more valuable than having public transportation available to everyone (Ridesharing > Buses/bike shares/etc) 3. That expensive rail is one of the only options. The solution is a mix of buses, bicycle sharing, and electric self-driving cars. How we get there is the tricky part.

tzs 10y ago

The author can't seem to keep his story straight. In paragraph 3 he makes this claim: > When a ballot proposal that would have replaced the city ordinance failed, Uber and Lyft left town as promised. Since May 9, there have been no ride-sharing services available in this city of almost a million people. and then a few paragraphs later makes this claim, directly contradicting the above claim: > The city’s response is only making things worse. Last week it held a job fair for out-of-work Uber and Lyft drivers, at which it encouraged drivers to get fingerprinted and sign up for the only remaining ridesharing company in town, a local app called Get Me.

vannevar 10y ago

The decision by Uber and Lyft to temporarily abandon Austin (game theory suggests that both will be back, I suspect within months) may backfire on them, as the drivers discover that they really don't need them. All the drivers need is a dispatch service to coordinate the data from their phones. What makes an Uber driver? A sticker and an app on your phone? That's precious little value to deliver for the large bite Uber takes out of the driver's earnings. My prediction is that dispatch services like Uber and Lyft will become commodities, and the events in Austin will only accelerate that process.

hackbinary 10y ago

Didn't Austin get rid of Uber and Lyft because of the entrenched/encumband 'taxi' industry and the big finance industry owning and financing taxi 'licenses'? http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/cab-medallion-owners-sue-nyc-blame-uber-for-ruining-business/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/cab-medallion-own... http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2014/09/08/wish-you-could-invest-in-uber-and-lyft-heres-a-clever-way-to-get-rich-off-rides/#146ff825772a http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2014/09/08/wish-yo...