10 ms·

Quebec passes law to regulate Uber

92 points by ArnoldP 10y ago

slashcom 10y ago
Will be interesting to see if they pull out like they've done in Austin. It's definitely been less convenient to go to a bar since they left.
- Elv13 10y ago
  They plan to stay http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/uber-quebec-deal-1.3620558 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/uber-quebec-deal-1.36... In my opinion, the government and the ride hailing companies should have bought back a share of the taxi permit pool value, then cancelled them. It would have been costly, but by taxing the ride themselves (at a fixed rate) then letting competition drive the ride price down while increasing the ride volume. The government could have had their money back, eventually. Uber technically owe "theoretical tax money" since they operated without permit in a regulated industry. They had said at some point they didn't care about paying that back, so it would have been a better solution. After that, the regulations could have been lifted/relaxed. The current deal isn't very good, but at least there is one. Technically, with self driving and automation (including apps), a lot of people will lose their job, so obviously they will resist changes, any changes. We can complain all we want as developers, but from the taxi driver point of view, change suck. Then again, in my opinion, so does regulation. One positive point, at least, is that this saga allowed time for discussions and consideration. A abrupt disruption would maybe have destabilized the industry too fast, while the time it took for this law to be passed allowed for the creation of a "middle market" where new taxis companies managed to enter the industry with hybrid solutions (including one Tesla/Leaf + app company) and the "dinosaurs" had time to [try to] adapt [and fail]. In the end, this did create more competition instead of players being pushed out and replaced by less players. There will be a market consolidation eventually anyway, but until that, the users will be the real winners. Time will tell. I am still not convinced this law was the right call, but appreciated the debate.
  - SFJulie 10y ago
    Automation will work if and only if car operator can make themselves non liable for any accident resulting from bugs. Accident are stuffs that cannot be predicted. A bug is something that can be avoided. As far as I am concerned, 99% of the software industry is not able to write critical software that is able to handle with a correct costs the case of failures and/or "abnormal" behaviors. Software will fail. It will eventually fail dramatically. And with software it can fail in a reproducible way. Nowadays all experiments are made far from worst case (congestion, interferences, extreme conditions....) Who is gonna pay for the predictable accidents? And will self driving cars will be better at avoiding accidents than humman given a same operating cost on the long term? My guess, is : hell no.
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      Accident are stuffs that cannot be predicted. Car insurance companies do this on a daily basis and make consistent and reliable profits betting on the outcomes.
      - SFJulie 10y ago
        Well, they have been involved in quite a few regulation tricks to not pay their due or cheat on customers (especially on forgetting to give life insurance prime). I would not take insurance company as an example of mathematical honest success in predicting the future. And, also, I would point out that their prediction are based on opacity and it is hard to audit their reasoning. I talked with some of them, and their mathematical reasoning are flawed towards using linear equations to predict non linear phenomenon. And when I ask them how it can work, they had no explanations, just "recipies everyone use". So well, I do not trust them. What you cannot explain simply you do not understand.
jsmeaton 10y ago
The problem with regulation isn't Uber. It's the extraordinary costs required to operate a taxi - mostly the $200k plate. If I can get a background check and a card certifying me to be allowed to work with children for about $50, why does it cost nearly $200k to get a taxi license. Require licenses, reduce the costs to improve competition, and let the various companies compete on service.
- teej 10y ago
  Isn't $200k the free market cost? The government isn't pocketing that money. That's the price you would expect from an asset that generates income with a limited supply. Edit: why am I down voted to max? The government limits supply but the medallions are still sold on the market.
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    No, the supply is artificially limited by the government; there's no free market involved. That $200k is paid to the government. (The claimed rationale for limiting the number of taxis is to reduce traffic. I would suspect the actual rationale is to favor the existing taxi businesses that already have licenses and don't want competition.)
    - jessriedel 10y ago
      It's plainly obvious that the amount charged can't be related to the cost of the marginal traffic caused by the taxi. Even if you discount for the fact that a taxi is driving more often, it would mean that normal private car owners are inducing tens of thousands of dollars in negative externalities each year.
    - stormbrew 10y ago
      Are you talking specifically about Quebec here? This kind of thing varies a lot by jurisdiction, but in many jurisdictions the high costs for a plate are not paid to the government, but paid on a grey market to a prior owner, with the fee for registration being nominal except for the fact that no one gets to register any more. In many cities (including mine), people own plates as a retirement investment and are fighting deregulation because their investment will crater. Not that this is any better, but people talk as if there's One Way taxi regulations work all over and there's quite a wide range on these things. Also, the nominal reason for limiting plates is usually (as far as I've ever seen) to ensure a living wage for taxi drivers. I don't think it really works out that way, instead creating a class system where some people extract rent from other people.
nfoz 10y ago
This prompted my interest in what's the history and regulation behind taxi laws, particularly for Quebec. So I searched, and found this document extremely enlightening. Note that it's from 1995, long before Uber, and gives many pros and cons and reasoning behind different types of legislation: http://www.taxi-library.org/qebc0295.htm http://www.taxi-library.org/qebc0295.htm
alasano 10y ago
I don't know if this reflects poorly on Uber or current taxi legislation. Living in Québec I've never had a bad experience with taxi drivers the way people seem to have in NYC, etc. Uber was still far better, if anything just for how proud some drivers were of being part of it. The lower barrier of entry seemed like a positive thing overall. A nice woman drove me once, offered me starburst candy and a bottle of water, both of which were in a basket in the back seat. Made my day extra nice.
- jclulow 10y ago
  As far as I can tell, the drive to pamper riders comes from the fear of being cut off from driving for receiving too many sub-five star ratings. I would feel differently about it if Uber were handing out a "water bottle" stipend.
  - rdlecler1 10y ago
    Oh, you mean like any regular job? Where you need to exceed everyone's expectations? This is what a free market looks like. Don't like that? Take a look at Venezuela, and tell me you'd prefer to be dumpster diving for your next meal. Capitalism and Democracy are aweful aweful systems, but everything else is worse.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      The difference is probably the level of expectations. In "any regular job" you don't get fired for having your ratings fall below 4.3 / 5 because a customer of yours had a bad day or fat-fingered 1 in a hurry. The jobs with high turnover rates are usually known as "shitty jobs".
      - yummyfajitas 10y ago
        Do you really think that a highly competent organization that's hired hundreds of data scientists can't estimate/discount the base rate of fat fingered/random bad ratings? (Fun fact: I don't know about Uber, but I know Ola does exactly this. They use "how would you handle this exact problem" as a warmup question on their interviews.)
moribondus 10y ago
They are threatening violence ("stiff fines"). There must be a way to organize something in order to call their bluff. Make them prove that they are willing to risk their lives and die for what they believe in.
GnarfGnarf 10y ago
Sometimes developed countries miss out on some good ideas. When I lived in Lima, Peru and La Paz, Bolivia in the 60's, they had a system called "colectivos". You stood on a main road, and in a few minutes a random car would stop, you'd pile in with four other people, and for 10¢ you'd get a ride downtown. No permits, no insurance, any driver can participate. Faster and more frequent service than anything I've experienced back home in North America. Similar systems exist throughout the Third World. God forbid we ever allow something like that in our "developed" countries.
- blisterpeanuts 10y ago
  When I was a foreign student in Taiwan in the early 80s, the taxis were numerous and cheap, and were a reasonable substitute for the (numerous) buses. Pile in a cab with 2-3 friends and go anywhere in Taipei for a dollar or so. You did get ripped off from time to time, but overall a very convenient system. The system in the U.S. is expensive and limited by comparison, cronyism and monopolistic.
- Mattasher 10y ago
  This was one of the most pleasant things about living in Cochabamba, Bolivia. In addition to those "colectivos", they had busses, micros, and trufis that covered the entire city. Though regulated (by syndicates as much as anything), individual drivers and vehicle owners made money based on how many people they picked up. It was a for profit system that worked quite well and was cheap even by local standards, if not always fast, though I can't say it was much slower than the public transport in many Western cities. In Cochabamba you could also flag a taxi and either trust them to charge you the normal rate, or negotiate a fare. Stressful to do at first, but once you got the hang of it no big deal. Quick story: We never needed a car while living there, but rented one once to take a road trip. Just outside the city a cholita (Quechua speaking indigenous woman) with a huge bag flagged us down along the main road, got into the back seat without a word, then asked to "bajar" a dozen km later. On the way out she handed us a peso (~15 cents), again without a word.
koblas 10y ago
Was talking to a few folks in both Alberta and Quebec and they mentioned that they felt that the Taxi drivers were really run by organized crime. Since they (including a few drivers) felt that there was lots of favoritizism and back room dealings with contracts over who could and couldn't service airports etc. Does anybody know if there is any basis for this view?
- wyck 10y ago
  I don't think there is a basis for this. Taxi's are very regulated in Quebec, the taxi drivers themselves do the intimidating via their union and on the streets. The reality is that they have to pay large licenses, regular inspection fees, past several tests , have ATM machines in the car, etc, while the uber drivers don't. If you want to see mob involvement related to cars you want to look at the towing industry, but generally they stick to the money, which is construction.
- refurb 10y ago
  There was a great article about the corruption in snow removal in Quebec. People getting beat up for bidding on the wrong contracts. Wouldn't surprise me if that extended to the taxi business! Not quite organized crime, but not far from it! https://www.vice.com/read/of-course-there-is-a-snow-removal-cartel-in-montreal-vgtrn https://www.vice.com/read/of-course-there-is-a-snow-removal-...
  - apricot 10y ago
    > Not quite organized crime, but not far from it! It's Montreal. They couldn't organize crime if they tried.
- mgbmtl 10y ago
  Maybe some companies, but there are a lot of different taxi companies in Montreal, many of which are worked-owned coops or an umbrella of freelancers. There are also companies going after Uber's model but with strong ethics, such as Teo, which seems to be widely praised (good app, fully electric cars, good conditions for drivers, wifi inside the cabs). My main annoyance against the taxi industry is its lobby, which is always against any sort of change in the transportation industry, such as new train lines (airport train or bus line), bike/bixi ride-share, etc. Taxis and Uber-type systems offer more transport solutions that reduce the requirement of having a car. I would love to get rid of my car, but it's not viable in Montreal (I bike to work, use the car mostly on weekends and Communauto requires me to do too much planning).
wyck 10y ago
I talk about Uber all the time when I'm in a taxi in Montreal, to be honest it's really not fair for them. Why should they have to pay a expensive regulation licenses, maintenance check-ups on the books, past several tests including knowing your driving area streets/history/etc, have ATM machine in the car with paper print out's, regulated machine for travel to cost ratio, yet an Uber driver can circumvent all this? The real fear for cab drivers seem to be self driving cars even more than Uber.
chrstphrhrt 10y ago
Living in Montreal, I'd like to know what the company's response will be. I'll be sad if the service is discontinued, and am still rooting for Uber Eats to come to town.
deodorel 10y ago
Ok, let me tell you my experience: Fyi I am left wing guy, like european left wing guy :), currently living in Bucharest, Romania. Here the taxis are regulated so the supply is limited but you can't really buy a licence, there is some kind of queue in place. Anyway we have a few dozen of taxi companies, however the experience is abysmal comparing with uber. What I can't understand is why there is no competition between the taxis to provide a better service, even in this restricted market: If some company would try to provide better service for a slightly higher price I would be the first to give up uber and use them ... But they don't care I think they are colluding to keep the costs down and that's it. Very sad.

92 points by ArnoldP 10y ago

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

Elv13 10y ago
They plan to stay http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/uber-quebec-deal-1.3620558 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/uber-quebec-deal-1.36... In my opinion, the government and the ride hailing companies should have bought back a share of the taxi permit pool value, then cancelled them. It would have been costly, but by taxing the ride themselves (at a fixed rate) then letting competition drive the ride price down while increasing the ride volume. The government could have had their money back, eventually. Uber technically owe "theoretical tax money" since they operated without permit in a regulated industry. They had said at some point they didn't care about paying that back, so it would have been a better solution. After that, the regulations could have been lifted/relaxed. The current deal isn't very good, but at least there is one. Technically, with self driving and automation (including apps), a lot of people will lose their job, so obviously they will resist changes, any changes. We can complain all we want as developers, but from the taxi driver point of view, change suck. Then again, in my opinion, so does regulation. One positive point, at least, is that this saga allowed time for discussions and consideration. A abrupt disruption would maybe have destabilized the industry too fast, while the time it took for this law to be passed allowed for the creation of a "middle market" where new taxis companies managed to enter the industry with hybrid solutions (including one Tesla/Leaf + app company) and the "dinosaurs" had time to [try to] adapt [and fail]. In the end, this did create more competition instead of players being pushed out and replaced by less players. There will be a market consolidation eventually anyway, but until that, the users will be the real winners. Time will tell. I am still not convinced this law was the right call, but appreciated the debate.
- SFJulie 10y ago
  Automation will work if and only if car operator can make themselves non liable for any accident resulting from bugs. Accident are stuffs that cannot be predicted. A bug is something that can be avoided. As far as I am concerned, 99% of the software industry is not able to write critical software that is able to handle with a correct costs the case of failures and/or "abnormal" behaviors. Software will fail. It will eventually fail dramatically. And with software it can fail in a reproducible way. Nowadays all experiments are made far from worst case (congestion, interferences, extreme conditions....) Who is gonna pay for the predictable accidents? And will self driving cars will be better at avoiding accidents than humman given a same operating cost on the long term? My guess, is : hell no.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    Accident are stuffs that cannot be predicted. Car insurance companies do this on a daily basis and make consistent and reliable profits betting on the outcomes.
    - SFJulie 10y ago
      Well, they have been involved in quite a few regulation tricks to not pay their due or cheat on customers (especially on forgetting to give life insurance prime). I would not take insurance company as an example of mathematical honest success in predicting the future. And, also, I would point out that their prediction are based on opacity and it is hard to audit their reasoning. I talked with some of them, and their mathematical reasoning are flawed towards using linear equations to predict non linear phenomenon. And when I ask them how it can work, they had no explanations, just "recipies everyone use". So well, I do not trust them. What you cannot explain simply you do not understand.

jsmeaton 10y ago

The problem with regulation isn't Uber. It's the extraordinary costs required to operate a taxi - mostly the $200k plate. If I can get a background check and a card certifying me to be allowed to work with children for about $50, why does it cost nearly $200k to get a taxi license. Require licenses, reduce the costs to improve competition, and let the various companies compete on service.

teej 10y ago
Isn't $200k the free market cost? The government isn't pocketing that money. That's the price you would expect from an asset that generates income with a limited supply. Edit: why am I down voted to max? The government limits supply but the medallions are still sold on the market.
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  No, the supply is artificially limited by the government; there's no free market involved. That $200k is paid to the government. (The claimed rationale for limiting the number of taxis is to reduce traffic. I would suspect the actual rationale is to favor the existing taxi businesses that already have licenses and don't want competition.)
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    It's plainly obvious that the amount charged can't be related to the cost of the marginal traffic caused by the taxi. Even if you discount for the fact that a taxi is driving more often, it would mean that normal private car owners are inducing tens of thousands of dollars in negative externalities each year.
  - stormbrew 10y ago
    Are you talking specifically about Quebec here? This kind of thing varies a lot by jurisdiction, but in many jurisdictions the high costs for a plate are not paid to the government, but paid on a grey market to a prior owner, with the fee for registration being nominal except for the fact that no one gets to register any more. In many cities (including mine), people own plates as a retirement investment and are fighting deregulation because their investment will crater. Not that this is any better, but people talk as if there's One Way taxi regulations work all over and there's quite a wide range on these things. Also, the nominal reason for limiting plates is usually (as far as I've ever seen) to ensure a living wage for taxi drivers. I don't think it really works out that way, instead creating a class system where some people extract rent from other people.

nfoz 10y ago

This prompted my interest in what's the history and regulation behind taxi laws, particularly for Quebec. So I searched, and found this document extremely enlightening. Note that it's from 1995, long before Uber, and gives many pros and cons and reasoning behind different types of legislation: http://www.taxi-library.org/qebc0295.htm http://www.taxi-library.org/qebc0295.htm

alasano 10y ago

I don't know if this reflects poorly on Uber or current taxi legislation. Living in Québec I've never had a bad experience with taxi drivers the way people seem to have in NYC, etc. Uber was still far better, if anything just for how proud some drivers were of being part of it. The lower barrier of entry seemed like a positive thing overall. A nice woman drove me once, offered me starburst candy and a bottle of water, both of which were in a basket in the back seat. Made my day extra nice.

jclulow 10y ago
As far as I can tell, the drive to pamper riders comes from the fear of being cut off from driving for receiving too many sub-five star ratings. I would feel differently about it if Uber were handing out a "water bottle" stipend.
- rdlecler1 10y ago
  Oh, you mean like any regular job? Where you need to exceed everyone's expectations? This is what a free market looks like. Don't like that? Take a look at Venezuela, and tell me you'd prefer to be dumpster diving for your next meal. Capitalism and Democracy are aweful aweful systems, but everything else is worse.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    The difference is probably the level of expectations. In "any regular job" you don't get fired for having your ratings fall below 4.3 / 5 because a customer of yours had a bad day or fat-fingered 1 in a hurry. The jobs with high turnover rates are usually known as "shitty jobs".
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      Do you really think that a highly competent organization that's hired hundreds of data scientists can't estimate/discount the base rate of fat fingered/random bad ratings? (Fun fact: I don't know about Uber, but I know Ola does exactly this. They use "how would you handle this exact problem" as a warmup question on their interviews.)

moribondus 10y ago

They are threatening violence ("stiff fines"). There must be a way to organize something in order to call their bluff. Make them prove that they are willing to risk their lives and die for what they believe in.

GnarfGnarf 10y ago

Sometimes developed countries miss out on some good ideas. When I lived in Lima, Peru and La Paz, Bolivia in the 60's, they had a system called "colectivos". You stood on a main road, and in a few minutes a random car would stop, you'd pile in with four other people, and for 10¢ you'd get a ride downtown. No permits, no insurance, any driver can participate. Faster and more frequent service than anything I've experienced back home in North America. Similar systems exist throughout the Third World. God forbid we ever allow something like that in our "developed" countries.

blisterpeanuts 10y ago
When I was a foreign student in Taiwan in the early 80s, the taxis were numerous and cheap, and were a reasonable substitute for the (numerous) buses. Pile in a cab with 2-3 friends and go anywhere in Taipei for a dollar or so. You did get ripped off from time to time, but overall a very convenient system. The system in the U.S. is expensive and limited by comparison, cronyism and monopolistic.
Mattasher 10y ago
This was one of the most pleasant things about living in Cochabamba, Bolivia. In addition to those "colectivos", they had busses, micros, and trufis that covered the entire city. Though regulated (by syndicates as much as anything), individual drivers and vehicle owners made money based on how many people they picked up. It was a for profit system that worked quite well and was cheap even by local standards, if not always fast, though I can't say it was much slower than the public transport in many Western cities. In Cochabamba you could also flag a taxi and either trust them to charge you the normal rate, or negotiate a fare. Stressful to do at first, but once you got the hang of it no big deal. Quick story: We never needed a car while living there, but rented one once to take a road trip. Just outside the city a cholita (Quechua speaking indigenous woman) with a huge bag flagged us down along the main road, got into the back seat without a word, then asked to "bajar" a dozen km later. On the way out she handed us a peso (~15 cents), again without a word.

koblas 10y ago

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

wyck 10y ago
I don't think there is a basis for this. Taxi's are very regulated in Quebec, the taxi drivers themselves do the intimidating via their union and on the streets. The reality is that they have to pay large licenses, regular inspection fees, past several tests , have ATM machines in the car, etc, while the uber drivers don't. If you want to see mob involvement related to cars you want to look at the towing industry, but generally they stick to the money, which is construction.
refurb 10y ago
There was a great article about the corruption in snow removal in Quebec. People getting beat up for bidding on the wrong contracts. Wouldn't surprise me if that extended to the taxi business! Not quite organized crime, but not far from it! https://www.vice.com/read/of-course-there-is-a-snow-removal-cartel-in-montreal-vgtrn https://www.vice.com/read/of-course-there-is-a-snow-removal-...
- apricot 10y ago
  > Not quite organized crime, but not far from it! It's Montreal. They couldn't organize crime if they tried.
mgbmtl 10y ago
Maybe some companies, but there are a lot of different taxi companies in Montreal, many of which are worked-owned coops or an umbrella of freelancers. There are also companies going after Uber's model but with strong ethics, such as Teo, which seems to be widely praised (good app, fully electric cars, good conditions for drivers, wifi inside the cabs). My main annoyance against the taxi industry is its lobby, which is always against any sort of change in the transportation industry, such as new train lines (airport train or bus line), bike/bixi ride-share, etc. Taxis and Uber-type systems offer more transport solutions that reduce the requirement of having a car. I would love to get rid of my car, but it's not viable in Montreal (I bike to work, use the car mostly on weekends and Communauto requires me to do too much planning).

wyck 10y ago

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

chrstphrhrt 10y ago

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

deodorel 10y ago

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