22 ms·

Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

172 points by prostoalex 8y ago

burlesona 8y ago
This doesn’t fundamentally change the supply and demand problem in LA, which is a city built entirely for cars and nowhere near the road capacity for everyone to be able to make all the car trips they would like to. For cities that want people to be able to get around AND for the roads to be relatively uncontested, the only reasonable solution is to lower demand by raising the cost of driving - ie. significant congestion pricing (tolls) across the metro - and invest the proceeds into a vast increase in more space efficient transit options. Typically this means express bus and rail service, although the number of people who can cycle efficiently on a dedicated bike way is pretty impressive, and with the scooter revolution there are a lot of other personal mobility choices for people who are less physically able. Traffic congestion is a problem of geometry and public will - with public will being the primary impediment to progress.
- dmitrygr 8y ago
  > public will being the primary > impediment to progress. What an extremely arrogant statement. If the public will does not agree with your world view, perhaps the latter needs adjustment, and not the former, like you imply?
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    It isn't arrogant, just another "tragedy of the commons" that we've experienced many times before. Roads are expensive and we don't have room to build anymore anyways. Without an effective way to increase capacity, something obviously has to give.
  - burlesona 8y ago
    I’m not saying public will is currently “wrong,” I’m saying we shouldn’t kid ourselves about why we’re in the mess we’re in. Most of American city-dwellers want to “have their cake and eat it too,” that is, they want to live in a major metro AND be able to easily drive and park everywhere they want to go. Those two things (major population and easy driving) are mutually exclusive, because car oriented development doesn’t scale beyond rural / suburban size very well. But so far I haven’t seen any public leaders or communities acknowledge that and start working on alternatives. Instead they play games like blaming Uber and Lyft and pretending that an extra tax on them will make any real difference, when in reality it’s political theater.
  - mertd 8y ago
    Public will used to hold some very shocking positions in he past.
  - bsder 8y ago
    Popularity does not imply correctness.
    - dmitrygr 8y ago
      in a democracy, popularity implies policy. literally the definition
      - bsder 8y ago
        Internment camps were popular. That made them no less an abomination.
      - cicero 8y ago
        That's the problem with democracy that ignores the existence of divine authority, or at least natural law.
  - shereadsthenews 8y ago
    The American public is unbelievably misinformed. Public opposition to an idea indicates only how much cable TV the public has been watching recently and says little about the merits of the idea. Just as an example of such a thing, the median survey respondent believes that foreign aid is the largest component of federal spending, and the overwhelming majority are against increasing it. However when those same people are informed that foreign aid is among the smallest parts of federal spending and that the USA is by far last among rich countries in per-capita and per-GDP aid those same people in the same survey at the same moment largely change their minds.
    - perl4ever 8y ago
      "The American public is unbelievably misinformed." This may be true without implying any defense of something that is contrary to the public will. The public can be totally awful and that doesn't mean people who have contempt for the public are any good.
      - jacobolus 8y ago
        I don’t see how saying that “public will is an impediment to solving traffic congestion” indicates contempt for the public. It seems like a straight-forward factual statement, and not a particularly controversial one. After we acknowledge that “public will” is an impediment, we can then probe whether the problem is really so bad after all, what “public will” really means, whether it is self-contradictory, how strongly entrenched those interests/ideas are, whether there are ways of reframing the conversation to significantly sway public perception and action, and so on. It might turn out that everyone loves griping about traffic congestion but isn’t really too bothered. Or that “public will” is just reflexive opposition to misunderstood alternatives conditioned by decades of deliberate propaganda. Or that “public will” is very weakly held and malleable if an alternative proposal does a charismatic marketing blitz. Or that the disparate powerful interest groups involved are in direct opposition and political progress working towards compromise is at a total impasse and impossible. Or ...
        dmitrygr 8y ago
- ars 8y ago
  > is to lower demand by raising the cost of driving - ie. significant congestion pricing (tolls) across the metro All that does is increase the cost of living. Either people need to drive or they don't. People don't drive just for the fun of it anymore. And if you succeed and do manage to reduce travel you also managed to reduce economic activity. If you goal is to get people to switch, then you have to do it on the other end: Make the alternatives better than driving.
  - burlesona 8y ago
    Which is why I included the second part of my statement, which you did not quote: we would need to use the proceeds to dramatically increase the quality and quantity of alternatives to driving so that people had a realistic choice. I totally agree with you that people are driving mostly because they have to, not for fun. However, retrofitting car-oriented development to be viable for non-car users is exceptionally difficult. I can’t imagine any way of accomplishing that, unless we begin by acknowledging that cars won’t scale up any farther and that we have to redirect our efforts into things that will.
    - reading-at-work 8y ago
      > we would need to use the proceeds to dramatically increase the quality and quantity of alternatives to driving so that people had a realistic choice. I agree, but public transit projects take years to complete, so in the interim you'd have very expensive driving and worse congestion than before (due to construction), which sounds like hell on earth. Would it be feasible to invest the costs up front and collect the payout later?
      - stevietopsiders 8y ago
        Sevilla, Spain is the poster-child of rapidly building out a bike network[0], and with the political will, that could be replicated elsewhere (especially somewhere flat and sunny like LA). Another easy way to improve transit is paint dedicated bus lanes for BRT lines. Not as sexy as dropping a few mil on light rail, but quick, cheap, and rapidly scalable. [0]: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/05/07/six-secrets-from-the-planner-of-sevillas-lightning-bike-network/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/05/07/six-secrets-from-the-...
- jayd16 8y ago
  >the only reasonable solution is to lower demand by raising the cost of driving You can also reduce the need to travel by increasing density, which LA is attempting in certain respects.
  - SilasX 8y ago
    How so? There was this reddit comment where someone listed all the ridiculous parking requirements they impose that torpedos apartment projects, regardless of how close to downtown or transit they are. [1] https://np.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/6lvwh4/im_an_architect_in_la_specializing_in_multifamily/ https://np.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/6lvwh4/im_an_arc...
    - jayd16 8y ago
      Every bit of new construction seems to be mixed use commercial, retail, and housing with large underground parking structures. He's right that its "luxury" condos but its still a lot denser than the traditional two story apartment buildings.
      - twblalock 8y ago
        Building luxury condos and apartments is fine. Rich people will live in them instead of outbidding poorer people for the older apartments. People who oppose luxury apartment construction need to explain how they will prevent rich people from competing with poor people over existing housing and causing the prices to go up.
        Faark 8y ago
        - Rich people will probably not lower their standards enough to live in what we plebs do, thus move somewhere else, reducing demand - Doesn't luxury living space pretty much by definition require more space? In other words, you could likely house more poor people there instead, reducing demand for housing. Even if the same rich people move in as well Yes, those kind of policies seem to be on the more reasonable spectrum to me, though I'd prefer having incentives instead of hard requirements. Of cause prices for luxury space would go up, but this doesn't seem like much of a problem for most residents. You seem to see new luxury apartment as only option over currently existing housing. That might be the only realistic option when owners want to maximize profits, but for society it might be better to optimize other metrics, like people living there.
- anth_anm 8y ago
  If you raise the cost of driving without a vastly improved public transit option, you're just putting in more regressive taxes on the middle class.
nickles 8y ago
> Uber and Lyft “are using public roads, and the profit is going to their companies,” Phil Washington, Metro’s chief executive, said at a recent meeting. Public roads are supposed to be paid for through fuel taxes, which every Uber and Lyft driver pays. California has gasoline taxes of: * 55.22c per gallon (second only to Pennsylvania) * 18.4c per gallon (federal) * 2.25% sales tax Additionally, taxing only ridesharing companies may increase incidences of drunk driving. Is another, poorly conceived, tax really a solution? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_State...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  Many Uber/Lyft/taxis cars are fuel sipping Toyota Priuses. Fuel taxes break down as fuel economies reach a certain point. Yes, it is not just Uber drivers using Priuses, but it is a substantial problem that has increased road usage without the same corresponding increases in fuel tax revenues. Of course electric presents even bigger problems that many states now have a surcharge on them during registration. It is obvious that fuel taxes are going to be outdated in 10 years or so as EVs become more popular. Real-time tolling has been suggested as an alternative to this problem in Europe, but that probably wouldn't fly in the states.
  - modeless 8y ago
    If efficient cars are a problem, tax efficient cars, not Uber. But given CA's environmental goals, this would be counterproductive.
    - bsder 8y ago
      Efficient cars aren't the problem. The problem is that Uber/Lyft drivers "cruise" when the demand is slack rather than park. So, for certain areas and times (generally about a hour before when that area is about to go from slack to busy), your street becomes a never-ending stream of ridesharing cars--generally doing stupid traffic maneuvers when they finally get summoned.
greeneggs 8y ago
> Metro’s rough estimates suggest a 20-cent fee on each trip could bring in $401 million over a decade, while a $2.75 fee could raise $5.5 billion. Hmm, $401 million / 20 cents * $2.75 = $5.51 billion. Is there some "law" that public transportation officials never account for the fact that increased fares or taxes will reduce demand? Maybe most people don't care, but I find it hard to take seriously anyone who doesn't believe in price elasticity of demand. Perhaps they are ignorant of economics, or perhaps they are so well off that that $2.75 isn't worth counting. Either way…
- NeonVice 8y ago
  A lot of people's thinking doesn't go beyond stage one. We should all be asking ourselves "then what will happen?" many times before advocating for economic policies, especially tax increases.
- gamblor956 8y ago
  In this case, reduced demand is desirable because Uber and Lyft drivers are a large part of the renewed traffic problems in LA.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
jvanderbot 8y ago
Comparing rideshare to public transit, this tells me there's clearly a need for easier, faster transit even with higher pricing. Solution? Try to ruin it. Instead, maybe we should embrace it and provide incentives for ridesharing vs driving alone? E.g. give uber a lane on the highway for 2+ passengers and tax only single rider transits. Give a few lyft ride coupons with every monthly bus pass. Provide benefits to using busses (which are a terrible experience) by occasional free lyft rides ...
- shereadsthenews 8y ago
  Can we stop with the "rideshare" junk yet? Uber and Lyft are computer-dispatched taxi services. The overwhelming majority of their trips involve the driver going to someplace they have no need of going, with either zero or one other person in the car.
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    I have no idea what you are really trying to say. How do you define need? All my Lyft trips have either been to/from an auto mechanic or the airport. Is that "need"? In principle, I could have gotten friends to drive me, given enough incentive. Or I could have parked at the airport, or ridden the bus, or gone to a mechanic that made it convenient to wait for work to be done.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - emiliobumachar 8y ago
      Gp is trying to say that nobody is really "sharing a ride" that they would be driving anyway, as in hitchhiking with compensation. It's virtually all professional drivers going where the client goes exclusively because the client goes there. Hence the term "ridesharing" is misleading. A very successful piece of clever viral marketing, or maybe a fossil of an early strategy. It's a semantic point, but a valid one. Words matter.
tareqak 8y ago
It'd be nice to be able to at least see the math that is used to calculate and budget road repairs then compare them with value that that particular road brings in. More broadly, some kind of (global?) effort to accurately calculate externalized costs of all kinds. Gotta catch'em all!
- conanbatt 8y ago
  You know who gets 100% of their income from an externality? public officials that propose dumb laws. How are we going to get that money back?
  - tareqak 8y ago
    If you start measure externalities, then you can start predicting their expected value. Proposers of dumb laws will have to spend more effort in showing that their law is effective at whatever thing that they are trying to affect. The feedback loop will become more apparent and hopefully tighter. You won't be able to recoup that money back, but you would be able to demonstrate negligence / malice / incompetence more effectively and deal with them then as appropriate.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > More broadly, some kind of (global?) effort to accurately calculate externalized costs of all kinds. So, to do this, you first need to one: (1) Develop a means to measure individual experienced utility, and (2) Develop the correct mechanism for aggregating utility across time and individuals. Analysis which go beyond purely financial impacts now tend to get around this by only considering a narrow range of non-financial externalities, assigning them dollar values by various means, and just treating them as financial externalities. This provides answers, but as to whether they are “accurate” in any deeper sense other than being exactly what you get when you make the assumptions about value that they do is debatable. (But then, that's true of how we aggregate financial externalities, too, because we treat a $ as having equal utility wherever it is, though we know that not to be the case.)
orasis 8y ago
Implement congestion pricing for all drivers.
- l1ambda 8y ago
  This. We have this in Minneapolis / St Paul. It just _works_. We're rolling it out on most of the highways. I wish we had it on _all_ lanes on all highways already, because what is the point of having a 60mph road if most of the time you are barely going 20mph, or trip lengths are otherwise completely unpredictable? There is a concept in economics called spontaneous order. Once the cost of congestion becomes apparent through the price mechanism, then society can reconfigure itself to adapt to it. But you have to have the price mechanism first. People will say, what about this, what about that. It doesn't matter. People will figure it out and adapt, but you need to implement congestion pricing right now, because practically every medium size or larger city in America has terrible traffic congestion problems. Importantly, you cannot set a price ceiling (like Houston did at $8), as it will not work effectively because it will not allow the price mechanism to work and will cause a shortage of road capacity and you end up with no material change. Changes in laws and zoning and public transit will occur. Given a little bit of time, the emergence of various kinds of social order from a combination of self-interested individuals will occur.
updateYourMind 8y ago
What about public transport?
kbos87 8y ago
Amen. Uber and Lyft are adding congestion to our roads and undermining public transportation, all while profiting off public infrastructure and a class of driver “partners” who incur all of the costs for a razor thin upside. Id like to see the start of a state owned rideshare network with specially zoned drop off, pick up, and lane privileges that Uber and Lyft don’t get access to.
- rowdyc 8y ago
  You just described Bus Rapid Transit
  - themoonbus 8y ago
    Which LA is thankfully building
- mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
  State owned rideshare network will be better how exactly? People taking their car or someone else’s makes no difference.
  - kbos87 8y ago
    I’m not saying they need to deliver a better service. I’m saying they should meet the current status quo, and use their regulatory power to make Uber and Lyft’s services inferior.
    - kmlx 8y ago
      if your purpose is to make people hate politicians and government even more than they do now, then this would be a good way to do it. but this idea that somehow the state/government knows better is very condescending.
      - kbos87 8y ago
        I’m not saying they know better. I’m saying that what Uber and Lyft are doing is extracting a margin at the cost of drivers and taxpayers without having built any real competitive moat. Cities could do the same thing, leverage their control over airports, streets, and other public infrastructure to build a distinct advantage over Uber and Lyft, and reinvest the earnings from this capital light business model back into the capital intensive but ultimately better for society public transit system. Also - why instantly criticize government for “knowing better”? Any entrepreneur starting a business in an existing space is doing the same thing, and they’d likely be celebrated.
fishtacos 8y ago
LA Times' latest plan to free up congested attention spans is to omit grammar and words. First picture's caption: "Kristine Valenzuela exits a Uber at Union Station in Los Angeles." Second picture's caption: "Elena Markusic lifts her heavy luggage into the trunk of an at Union Station in Los Angeles. Transportation officials are considering a tax on Uber and Lyft rides in Los Angeles County."
kevitivity 8y ago
LA's plan for everything is a tax.
objektif 8y ago
NYC is doing this as well and it makes no sense to me. What is congestion? Is it “people who own cars getting stuck in traffic”? To me it seems like all this benefits is wealthy people who want to drive comfortably to/around their neighborhood.
- paulgb 8y ago
  Not only that, if you look at plates, a good portion of the cars around Manhattan besides taxis and hire cars (T-plates) have out-of-state plates. Why should residents pay hefty city/state taxes AND pay more to use the roads (through the new Uber/Lyft tax) so that there is less congestion for people who live out of state and drive in? What behavior is the city trying to incentivize?
  - objektif 8y ago
    This is fffing absurd. I am a hard core liberal but people on my side are not really smart when it comes to these types of decisions.
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    Congestion pricing is paid at the point of entry, so the non local cars also pay the fee. In fact, it's easier to collect from them.
    - mattnewton 8y ago
      But in the article LA residents pay increased Uber and Lyft fares. If this policy were in NYC, the gp is suggesting NYC residents get hit with an additional fine that people who drive from out of state would not.
      - paulgb 8y ago
        Exactly. In fact, NYC does have a similar policy (but they delayed implementation so I’m not sure if it’s active yet.)
      - 8y ago
integrate-this 8y ago
I'm a LA resident. People in this city like to talk about congestion as though they see it as a problem, but they don't actually see it as a problem. Only people in the valley see it as a problem because there are limited choke points into and out of LA proper which keep people from getting to work. LA's limited transportation infrastructure prevents DTLA's homeless from getting to Beverly Hills, Long Beach's gang-related activity from getting to Brentwood, etc. If LA wanted to fix their transportation problem then they could build trains parallel to the 405 and 110 and solve the problem, but they don't want to fix the problem because the problem allows them (us?) to keep the city segregated by income.
- wjossey 8y ago
  And to your point, they absolutely could solve the chokepoint issues with eminent domain, and adding additional arteries, but they choose not to. For people who think a congestion tax will improve traffic, it won't. Congestion taxes work if they can shift behaviors to alternate modes of transportation. If there aren't any alternatives, it's just a levy.
  - floatrock 8y ago
    > and adding additional arteries Time and time again cities learn this does nothing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
    - wjossey 8y ago
      Induced demand doesn’t say that nothing happened. It says that demand just fills up the new supply. There are no alternatives to a road system in LA for most residents. If the roads were choked and there was an underutilized subway that I could use, I’d totally get the argument of taxing the road system or capping capacity, so as to push people toward more efficient methods. But, it’s not feesible to build out a subway system in this city that is expansive, so we need to work with what we have- Cars. Make LA the autonomous car capital of the world. Let’s be the best and first at linking cars together in convoys and shuttling them fast down our massive freeway network. Let’s build tunnels under the mountain passes to add more connections into Hollywood so people have better access than winding canyon roads. Let’s build expansive subway networks through south central and downtown to bring cost effective transportation to lower income neighborhoods. Let’s do a ton. But let’s also build a bunch of roads.
suddenstutter 8y ago
Complete nonsense.
suddenstutter 8y ago
Utter nonsense.
emiliobumachar 8y ago
I expect this to backfire. More people will buy cars if hiring out their commute becomes more expensive. Once they have bought a car, they'll use it even for perfectly walkable errands, just like everyone else. "Metro also is considering a fee on bicycles, electric scooters, and other devices" Ditto.
- m463 8y ago
  You tax something, you get less of it.
- Tyrannosaur 8y ago
  Your comment actually made me read the article. That is a direct quotation, and pushes the whole thing over the edge in my opinion from "very poorly thought-out plan" to "just barely pretending"
iamwil 8y ago
Why not just tax single riders, if congestion is the issue?
- floatrock 8y ago
  From the article: > [San Francisco Supervisor Aaron] Peskin is drafting a measure for the November election that would levy a 3.25% fee on rides with one passenger, and a 1.5% fee on shared rides.
  - scarejunba 8y ago
    With all the nonsense going on, I’ve actually just got a car in SF. And that’s after 7 years car-free. Cycling is bloody impossible these days, and they got rid of the damned scooters too. Good job, Aaron. You’re a bloody genius. My friends were all car-free too and only a fourth of them are still that way. No kids or anything. It’s just gotten kinda crappy here. I was hoping to hold out for just a little longer but I think I’m done.
    - baby 8y ago
      I'm really upset about the scooters in SF. As I don't have a driver license, I can't even use them (they require a US driver license).
- baroffoos 8y ago
  The space your car uses is a resource. The amount of people in the car doesn't affect the amount of space resource you have used. I think a fee should be applied to the space resource you are using regardless of the amount of people in the car. That way if multiple people need to get to the same place its cheaper for them all to use one car but one person can't just get someone else to sit in the car to make it cheaper.
rajeshp1986 8y ago
I feel this is a completely misjudged solution. The reason so many people use Lyft & Uber is because of lack of public transport. This seems like city finding another way to tax people instead of helping its citizens.
xiaodai 8y ago
It was congested way before Uber of Lyft.
educationdata 8y ago
Based on the comments here, it appears to me that many people don't understand the economy lose from the inefficiency of public transportation. 1 hour of bus transportation usually take only 20 minutes of taxi ride. It means I can save 40 minutes from the taxi ride. This 40 minutes have considerable value.
schwartzworld 8y ago
I wonder if the proposed rule will contain provisions to keep Uber from taking the difference out of the drivers' pockets.
CorvusCrypto 8y ago
Hmm I often wonder why California doesn't implement a congestion tax. In Stockholm you need to pay around 4$ if you want to drive on the highway during certain hours into and out of the city. I can't say if it works to reduce congestion but it does even the field and it certainly made me want to not drive there.
bsimpson 8y ago
Another dumbass Aaron Peskin proposal. :eyeroll: At least we can vote this one down in November. You'd think someone who spends so much time positioning himself as a "progressive" would understand why taxing people who don't own cars is both stupid and unfair.
habosa 8y ago
The congestion caused by Uber and Lyft in SF is bad. It's not because of the number of cars on the road, although that's certainly something, it's because of how those cars behave. Ubers and Lyfts pull over at unpredictable spots (wherever the app says to) and then just throw on their flashers. It doesn't matter if they're blocking a lane in rush hour they just stop. I will never for my life understand why an Uber or Lyft driver thinks it's any better to double park in an active lane of traffic than to temporarily pull out and block a driveway or a red zone. Both are illegal, but at least one of those doesn't block traffic and endanger other drivers/bikers. Almost every day I see an Uber driver double-parked within 50' of somewhere they could have pulled over safely. If the cops would give out a few more tickets for this, the behavior would get better and so would the traffic. And then we wouldn't have to tax the road use. Taxing the road use is crap, everyone should be able to drive their vehicle on public roads as much as they want as long as they follow traffic laws.
- nitwit005 8y ago
  All the delivery services park illegally as well. For a long time I assumed they had some sort of exemption because it was so common. They just eat the tickets as cost of doing business.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    I suppose tickets should have exponential increase and decay built-in - this way, collecting a bunch of tickets in a row wouldn't be edible for companies, but intermittent tickets (corresponding to base rate of traffic violations) would cost no more than before.
    - omouse 8y ago
      Linear is more predictable and easier to manage, mentally, so I don't think that will change any time soon.
      - TeMPOraL 8y ago
markbnj 8y ago
This has to be just a money grab right? How can they possibly contend that people using ride sharing services exacerbates road congestion? Neither of their arguments makes any sense.
smallgovt 8y ago
How do you guys think the trend from public transit to rideshare will look once self-driving cars begin ramping up? I imagine that without the cost of labor from the driver, rideshares should become dirt cheap. Will anybody use public transit in 10 years? If not, the congestion problem will get many times worse.
- osdiab 8y ago
  It's the classic induced demand phenomenon - when roads are expanded, people drive a lot more, and congestion remains the same. Same thing with transit - people ride it up to the point where it's miserably crowded. Both are signs that our infrastructure in either form is unable to service the maximal demand society places on it, so people ultimately decide not to go places because of the cost of doing so (in terms not just of cash, but also comfort and time). I think people will use rideshares only to the point that congestion is precisely miserable enough those who choose to rideshare to tolerate it. So what might happen is that mass transit remains equally as congested, just more people are taking trips than they were before because the capacity of the whole system has increased. It's also the case that, unlike self-driving car infrastructure, trains are far more scalable - in places that actually invest in their mass transit infrastructure, I think mass transit can compete pretty well the more the municipality invests in train lines and stuff. But to assume that self-driving cars will save cities that don't have transit infrastructure—that might be true for very sparsely populated, small cities, but for all the American cities that lack public transit infrastructure, I think the situation will only change marginally.
overgard 8y ago
Seems like there could be a lot of unintended commercial consequences — people that would be customers deciding not to bother. I don’t know the situation in other places, but in Colorado the RTD smartphones apps are just awful. Twice in the last month I ended up taking an uber home because the ticketing app for the buses was down and I couldn’t access tickets I bought. Not to mention it frequently feels unsafe. I’m fortunate to be a 6’4” male, but if I was say a 5’2” woman I would totally want to avoid the harassment. Maybe the focus should be in providing better public transportation instead of encouraging people to stay home.
blobbers 8y ago
Pretty sure Los Angeles had bad traffic way before Uber and Lyft arrived. I distinctly remember staring out of the Hilton at Universal City in 2006, on my first visit to California, with a group of Canadians marveling that there could be a traffic jam at 10PM at night.
- blobbers 8y ago
  Also of note... don't most people use Uber Pool to save a few $? Just a guess but if the route planning models are good then an uberpool with 2 passengers + driver qualifies for 3+ carpools and will be much faster than a car that doesn't qualify for carpool with a single passenger and driver.
- ibrault 8y ago
  I don't think they're trying to argue that Uber and Lyft created LA traffic but I would agree that their arrival put more cars on the roads. There's a huge market of people who are willing to pay a little extra to avoid the hassle of LA public transportation and considering that, in general, people Uber to busy places (LAX, downtown, etc.), it's bringing more cars onto the already clogged roads that wouldn't be there otherwise.
  - amanaplanacanal 8y ago
    But is it really cannibalizing public transportation? Or is it cannibalizing private car driving? I assume somebody has studied this.
- xenihn 8y ago
  I got stuck in a traffic jam on the 405 near LAX at around 1:00 AM on my second-to-last day in LA last month. I'd stayed late at work to sober up after my farewell happy hour. I don't know if it was an accident or construction or what that caused it, since I didn't see anything.
liability 8y ago
.Bring back street cars! Forget hyperloops and similar gadgetbahn bullshit. The solution isn't exotic, it's mundane. Street cars work damn well if you treat them as legitimate transit, not a tourist attraction. You can even bury them using cut-and-cover if the situation really calls for it. Forget microtunnel bullshit, that have ultra-expensive stations never mentioned by the advocates
- itslennysfault 8y ago
  Honest question. How are street cars better than busses? They put one in near me recently, and all I could think is that compared to a bus it cost a ton more money, took forever to build, and can't be rerouted in case of an issue. Additionally, it doesn't even bypass traffic so it's not any faster. Why not just buy a few busses to run the exact route they built the street car on instead ?
  - liability 8y ago
    Better rolling resistance and electric powered without battery nonsense. However they are in close competition with trolley-buses (rubber wheeled electric vehicles powered from overhead lines, as seen in Seattle.) (And unlike buses they don't have a "low class" reputation that prevents middle class snobs from using them!)
asabjorn 8y ago
It is a tax to increase revenue. LA has almost non-existent public transit, so anyone riding Uber/Lyft is likely to drive on their own. It is disingenuous to describe this as anything that has any remote chance to even reduce traffic minimally. LA is an extended suburb, and only infill development of higher density over time can make more public transit economically viable.
dotcoma 8y ago
If it were parking space that they wanted to free up, that could make sense. But congested roads? Don't Uber and Lyft occupy road space like everybody else?
nserrino 8y ago
It's really frustrating that in so many cities, car owners are perceived to have more of a right to the road than non-car owners (aka those who take only rideshare). Roads are payed for by public subsidy and there shouldn't be special handouts for car owners.
stretchwithme 8y ago
Charging for use of the road is the only way to balance supply and demand for road. More at peak times and a discount off-peak. Fixed price subscriptions for your commute. But I see no reason to treat Uber cars differently, except that having a driver does not qualify to one to use the carpool lane (which I would eliminate anyway)! I'd also allow subscribers and those who buy ahead to sell their prepaid trip when the price surges. Wait an hour and make $5 when there's an accident.
rdlecler1 8y ago
The alternatives are not taxis, it’s people having their own cars which are probably on average larger than the typical Prius my Uber driver has. Moreover, I often take pool so it could further increase number of cars on the road.
Calashle0202 8y ago
Yet again the "achilles heal" of mass transit it exposed. Uber and Lyft work because they go where I want to go and when I want to go at a reasonable price. Busses are not full of people who want to ride the bus, they are full of people who must ride the bus. No amount of taxation will ever change that.
jypepin 8y ago
> Ridership is now at its lowest level in more than a decade, driven by a shift to driving instead of using Metro’s sprawling bus network. Maybe if they realised that the reason nobody takes public transit is because LA's is one of the worst of developed countries, they'd be a bit more incentivised into building a better system instead of trying to blame external things and create more taxes. I barely use Uber/Lyft when I'm travelling in Amsterdam, Paris, London or NYC, but find myself having no choice but be in a car when I'm in SF or LA.
akerro 8y ago
Uber and Lyft are fighting their what they created https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/10/16/uber-lyft-responsible-for-half-of-increased-traffic-in-sf-study-says/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/10/16/uber-lyft-responsible...
Grue3 8y ago
What a great plan! Not improving public transportation. Not taxing people who own private cars. Taxing cars who serve dozens passengers a day! Guess what, if these people weren't using Uber, each of them would be driving their own car.
Golfkid2Gadfly 8y ago
The headline is a lie. This is all about raising money to pad their pensions.
StreamBright 8y ago
Using cars is embedded into the DNA of American people so deeply that I am not sure it can be changed. I remember the first time I was in LA for a longer period and somebody did not believe me that I do not own a car. She literally though I am a liar and I do not want to share with her what sort of car I drive instead of believing me that I do not have one.
telaport 8y ago
If anything they should be giving tax rebates to Uber and Lyft drivers since this is called f'ing car pooling, and it's saving additional cars from getting on LA roads.
Amendeson530 8y ago
Yet again the "achilles heal" of mass transit it exposed. Uber and Lyft work because they go where I want to go and when I want to go at a reasonable price. Busses are not full of people who want to ride the bus, they are full of people who must ride the bus. No amount of taxation will ever change that.

172 points by prostoalex 8y ago

This doesn’t fundamentally change the supply and demand problem in LA, which is a city built entirely for cars and nowhere near the road capacity for everyone to be able to make all the car trips they would like to. For cities that want people to be able to get around AND for the roads to be relatively uncontested, the only reasonable solution is to lower demand by raising the cost of driving - ie. significant congestion pricing (tolls) across the metro - and invest the proceeds into a vast increase in more space efficient transit options. Typically this means express bus and rail service, although the number of people who can cycle efficiently on a dedicated bike way is pretty impressive, and with the scooter revolution there are a lot of other personal mobility choices for people who are less physically able. Traffic congestion is a problem of geometry and public will - with public will being the primary impediment to progress.

dmitrygr 8y ago
> public will being the primary > impediment to progress. What an extremely arrogant statement. If the public will does not agree with your world view, perhaps the latter needs adjustment, and not the former, like you imply?
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  It isn't arrogant, just another "tragedy of the commons" that we've experienced many times before. Roads are expensive and we don't have room to build anymore anyways. Without an effective way to increase capacity, something obviously has to give.
- burlesona 8y ago
  I’m not saying public will is currently “wrong,” I’m saying we shouldn’t kid ourselves about why we’re in the mess we’re in. Most of American city-dwellers want to “have their cake and eat it too,” that is, they want to live in a major metro AND be able to easily drive and park everywhere they want to go. Those two things (major population and easy driving) are mutually exclusive, because car oriented development doesn’t scale beyond rural / suburban size very well. But so far I haven’t seen any public leaders or communities acknowledge that and start working on alternatives. Instead they play games like blaming Uber and Lyft and pretending that an extra tax on them will make any real difference, when in reality it’s political theater.
- mertd 8y ago
  Public will used to hold some very shocking positions in he past.
- bsder 8y ago
  Popularity does not imply correctness.
  - dmitrygr 8y ago
    in a democracy, popularity implies policy. literally the definition
    - bsder 8y ago
      Internment camps were popular. That made them no less an abomination.
    - cicero 8y ago
      That's the problem with democracy that ignores the existence of divine authority, or at least natural law.
- shereadsthenews 8y ago
  The American public is unbelievably misinformed. Public opposition to an idea indicates only how much cable TV the public has been watching recently and says little about the merits of the idea. Just as an example of such a thing, the median survey respondent believes that foreign aid is the largest component of federal spending, and the overwhelming majority are against increasing it. However when those same people are informed that foreign aid is among the smallest parts of federal spending and that the USA is by far last among rich countries in per-capita and per-GDP aid those same people in the same survey at the same moment largely change their minds.
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    "The American public is unbelievably misinformed." This may be true without implying any defense of something that is contrary to the public will. The public can be totally awful and that doesn't mean people who have contempt for the public are any good.
    - jacobolus 8y ago
      I don’t see how saying that “public will is an impediment to solving traffic congestion” indicates contempt for the public. It seems like a straight-forward factual statement, and not a particularly controversial one. After we acknowledge that “public will” is an impediment, we can then probe whether the problem is really so bad after all, what “public will” really means, whether it is self-contradictory, how strongly entrenched those interests/ideas are, whether there are ways of reframing the conversation to significantly sway public perception and action, and so on. It might turn out that everyone loves griping about traffic congestion but isn’t really too bothered. Or that “public will” is just reflexive opposition to misunderstood alternatives conditioned by decades of deliberate propaganda. Or that “public will” is very weakly held and malleable if an alternative proposal does a charismatic marketing blitz. Or that the disparate powerful interest groups involved are in direct opposition and political progress working towards compromise is at a total impasse and impossible. Or ...
      - dmitrygr 8y ago
ars 8y ago
> is to lower demand by raising the cost of driving - ie. significant congestion pricing (tolls) across the metro All that does is increase the cost of living. Either people need to drive or they don't. People don't drive just for the fun of it anymore. And if you succeed and do manage to reduce travel you also managed to reduce economic activity. If you goal is to get people to switch, then you have to do it on the other end: Make the alternatives better than driving.
- burlesona 8y ago
  Which is why I included the second part of my statement, which you did not quote: we would need to use the proceeds to dramatically increase the quality and quantity of alternatives to driving so that people had a realistic choice. I totally agree with you that people are driving mostly because they have to, not for fun. However, retrofitting car-oriented development to be viable for non-car users is exceptionally difficult. I can’t imagine any way of accomplishing that, unless we begin by acknowledging that cars won’t scale up any farther and that we have to redirect our efforts into things that will.
  - reading-at-work 8y ago
    > we would need to use the proceeds to dramatically increase the quality and quantity of alternatives to driving so that people had a realistic choice. I agree, but public transit projects take years to complete, so in the interim you'd have very expensive driving and worse congestion than before (due to construction), which sounds like hell on earth. Would it be feasible to invest the costs up front and collect the payout later?
    - stevietopsiders 8y ago
      Sevilla, Spain is the poster-child of rapidly building out a bike network[0], and with the political will, that could be replicated elsewhere (especially somewhere flat and sunny like LA). Another easy way to improve transit is paint dedicated bus lanes for BRT lines. Not as sexy as dropping a few mil on light rail, but quick, cheap, and rapidly scalable. [0]: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/05/07/six-secrets-from-the-planner-of-sevillas-lightning-bike-network/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/05/07/six-secrets-from-the-...
jayd16 8y ago
>the only reasonable solution is to lower demand by raising the cost of driving You can also reduce the need to travel by increasing density, which LA is attempting in certain respects.
- SilasX 8y ago
  How so? There was this reddit comment where someone listed all the ridiculous parking requirements they impose that torpedos apartment projects, regardless of how close to downtown or transit they are. [1] https://np.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/6lvwh4/im_an_architect_in_la_specializing_in_multifamily/ https://np.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/6lvwh4/im_an_arc...
  - jayd16 8y ago
    Every bit of new construction seems to be mixed use commercial, retail, and housing with large underground parking structures. He's right that its "luxury" condos but its still a lot denser than the traditional two story apartment buildings.
    - twblalock 8y ago
      Building luxury condos and apartments is fine. Rich people will live in them instead of outbidding poorer people for the older apartments. People who oppose luxury apartment construction need to explain how they will prevent rich people from competing with poor people over existing housing and causing the prices to go up.
      - Faark 8y ago
        - Rich people will probably not lower their standards enough to live in what we plebs do, thus move somewhere else, reducing demand - Doesn't luxury living space pretty much by definition require more space? In other words, you could likely house more poor people there instead, reducing demand for housing. Even if the same rich people move in as well Yes, those kind of policies seem to be on the more reasonable spectrum to me, though I'd prefer having incentives instead of hard requirements. Of cause prices for luxury space would go up, but this doesn't seem like much of a problem for most residents. You seem to see new luxury apartment as only option over currently existing housing. That might be the only realistic option when owners want to maximize profits, but for society it might be better to optimize other metrics, like people living there.
anth_anm 8y ago
If you raise the cost of driving without a vastly improved public transit option, you're just putting in more regressive taxes on the middle class.

nickles 8y ago

> Uber and Lyft “are using public roads, and the profit is going to their companies,” Phil Washington, Metro’s chief executive, said at a recent meeting. Public roads are supposed to be paid for through fuel taxes, which every Uber and Lyft driver pays. California has gasoline taxes of: * 55.22c per gallon (second only to Pennsylvania) * 18.4c per gallon (federal) * 2.25% sales tax Additionally, taxing only ridesharing companies may increase incidences of drunk driving. Is another, poorly conceived, tax really a solution? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_State...

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
Many Uber/Lyft/taxis cars are fuel sipping Toyota Priuses. Fuel taxes break down as fuel economies reach a certain point. Yes, it is not just Uber drivers using Priuses, but it is a substantial problem that has increased road usage without the same corresponding increases in fuel tax revenues. Of course electric presents even bigger problems that many states now have a surcharge on them during registration. It is obvious that fuel taxes are going to be outdated in 10 years or so as EVs become more popular. Real-time tolling has been suggested as an alternative to this problem in Europe, but that probably wouldn't fly in the states.
- modeless 8y ago
  If efficient cars are a problem, tax efficient cars, not Uber. But given CA's environmental goals, this would be counterproductive.
  - bsder 8y ago
    Efficient cars aren't the problem. The problem is that Uber/Lyft drivers "cruise" when the demand is slack rather than park. So, for certain areas and times (generally about a hour before when that area is about to go from slack to busy), your street becomes a never-ending stream of ridesharing cars--generally doing stupid traffic maneuvers when they finally get summoned.

greeneggs 8y ago

> Metro’s rough estimates suggest a 20-cent fee on each trip could bring in $401 million over a decade, while a $2.75 fee could raise $5.5 billion. Hmm, $401 million / 20 cents * $2.75 = $5.51 billion. Is there some "law" that public transportation officials never account for the fact that increased fares or taxes will reduce demand? Maybe most people don't care, but I find it hard to take seriously anyone who doesn't believe in price elasticity of demand. Perhaps they are ignorant of economics, or perhaps they are so well off that that $2.75 isn't worth counting. Either way…

NeonVice 8y ago
A lot of people's thinking doesn't go beyond stage one. We should all be asking ourselves "then what will happen?" many times before advocating for economic policies, especially tax increases.
gamblor956 8y ago
In this case, reduced demand is desirable because Uber and Lyft drivers are a large part of the renewed traffic problems in LA.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

jvanderbot 8y ago

Comparing rideshare to public transit, this tells me there's clearly a need for easier, faster transit even with higher pricing. Solution? Try to ruin it. Instead, maybe we should embrace it and provide incentives for ridesharing vs driving alone? E.g. give uber a lane on the highway for 2+ passengers and tax only single rider transits. Give a few lyft ride coupons with every monthly bus pass. Provide benefits to using busses (which are a terrible experience) by occasional free lyft rides ...

shereadsthenews 8y ago
Can we stop with the "rideshare" junk yet? Uber and Lyft are computer-dispatched taxi services. The overwhelming majority of their trips involve the driver going to someplace they have no need of going, with either zero or one other person in the car.
- perl4ever 8y ago
  I have no idea what you are really trying to say. How do you define need? All my Lyft trips have either been to/from an auto mechanic or the airport. Is that "need"? In principle, I could have gotten friends to drive me, given enough incentive. Or I could have parked at the airport, or ridden the bus, or gone to a mechanic that made it convenient to wait for work to be done.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - emiliobumachar 8y ago
    Gp is trying to say that nobody is really "sharing a ride" that they would be driving anyway, as in hitchhiking with compensation. It's virtually all professional drivers going where the client goes exclusively because the client goes there. Hence the term "ridesharing" is misleading. A very successful piece of clever viral marketing, or maybe a fossil of an early strategy. It's a semantic point, but a valid one. Words matter.

tareqak 8y ago

It'd be nice to be able to at least see the math that is used to calculate and budget road repairs then compare them with value that that particular road brings in. More broadly, some kind of (global?) effort to accurately calculate externalized costs of all kinds. Gotta catch'em all!

conanbatt 8y ago
You know who gets 100% of their income from an externality? public officials that propose dumb laws. How are we going to get that money back?
- tareqak 8y ago
  If you start measure externalities, then you can start predicting their expected value. Proposers of dumb laws will have to spend more effort in showing that their law is effective at whatever thing that they are trying to affect. The feedback loop will become more apparent and hopefully tighter. You won't be able to recoup that money back, but you would be able to demonstrate negligence / malice / incompetence more effectively and deal with them then as appropriate.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> More broadly, some kind of (global?) effort to accurately calculate externalized costs of all kinds. So, to do this, you first need to one: (1) Develop a means to measure individual experienced utility, and (2) Develop the correct mechanism for aggregating utility across time and individuals. Analysis which go beyond purely financial impacts now tend to get around this by only considering a narrow range of non-financial externalities, assigning them dollar values by various means, and just treating them as financial externalities. This provides answers, but as to whether they are “accurate” in any deeper sense other than being exactly what you get when you make the assumptions about value that they do is debatable. (But then, that's true of how we aggregate financial externalities, too, because we treat a $ as having equal utility wherever it is, though we know that not to be the case.)

orasis 8y ago

Implement congestion pricing for all drivers.

l1ambda 8y ago
This. We have this in Minneapolis / St Paul. It just _works_. We're rolling it out on most of the highways. I wish we had it on _all_ lanes on all highways already, because what is the point of having a 60mph road if most of the time you are barely going 20mph, or trip lengths are otherwise completely unpredictable? There is a concept in economics called spontaneous order. Once the cost of congestion becomes apparent through the price mechanism, then society can reconfigure itself to adapt to it. But you have to have the price mechanism first. People will say, what about this, what about that. It doesn't matter. People will figure it out and adapt, but you need to implement congestion pricing right now, because practically every medium size or larger city in America has terrible traffic congestion problems. Importantly, you cannot set a price ceiling (like Houston did at $8), as it will not work effectively because it will not allow the price mechanism to work and will cause a shortage of road capacity and you end up with no material change. Changes in laws and zoning and public transit will occur. Given a little bit of time, the emergence of various kinds of social order from a combination of self-interested individuals will occur.

updateYourMind 8y ago

What about public transport?

kbos87 8y ago

Amen. Uber and Lyft are adding congestion to our roads and undermining public transportation, all while profiting off public infrastructure and a class of driver “partners” who incur all of the costs for a razor thin upside. Id like to see the start of a state owned rideshare network with specially zoned drop off, pick up, and lane privileges that Uber and Lyft don’t get access to.

rowdyc 8y ago
You just described Bus Rapid Transit
- themoonbus 8y ago
  Which LA is thankfully building
mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
State owned rideshare network will be better how exactly? People taking their car or someone else’s makes no difference.
- kbos87 8y ago
  I’m not saying they need to deliver a better service. I’m saying they should meet the current status quo, and use their regulatory power to make Uber and Lyft’s services inferior.
  - kmlx 8y ago
    if your purpose is to make people hate politicians and government even more than they do now, then this would be a good way to do it. but this idea that somehow the state/government knows better is very condescending.
    - kbos87 8y ago
      I’m not saying they know better. I’m saying that what Uber and Lyft are doing is extracting a margin at the cost of drivers and taxpayers without having built any real competitive moat. Cities could do the same thing, leverage their control over airports, streets, and other public infrastructure to build a distinct advantage over Uber and Lyft, and reinvest the earnings from this capital light business model back into the capital intensive but ultimately better for society public transit system. Also - why instantly criticize government for “knowing better”? Any entrepreneur starting a business in an existing space is doing the same thing, and they’d likely be celebrated.

fishtacos 8y ago

LA Times' latest plan to free up congested attention spans is to omit grammar and words. First picture's caption: "Kristine Valenzuela exits a Uber at Union Station in Los Angeles." Second picture's caption: "Elena Markusic lifts her heavy luggage into the trunk of an at Union Station in Los Angeles. Transportation officials are considering a tax on Uber and Lyft rides in Los Angeles County."

kevitivity 8y ago

LA's plan for everything is a tax.

objektif 8y ago

NYC is doing this as well and it makes no sense to me. What is congestion? Is it “people who own cars getting stuck in traffic”? To me it seems like all this benefits is wealthy people who want to drive comfortably to/around their neighborhood.

paulgb 8y ago
Not only that, if you look at plates, a good portion of the cars around Manhattan besides taxis and hire cars (T-plates) have out-of-state plates. Why should residents pay hefty city/state taxes AND pay more to use the roads (through the new Uber/Lyft tax) so that there is less congestion for people who live out of state and drive in? What behavior is the city trying to incentivize?
- objektif 8y ago
  This is fffing absurd. I am a hard core liberal but people on my side are not really smart when it comes to these types of decisions.
- gamblor956 8y ago
  Congestion pricing is paid at the point of entry, so the non local cars also pay the fee. In fact, it's easier to collect from them.
  - mattnewton 8y ago
    But in the article LA residents pay increased Uber and Lyft fares. If this policy were in NYC, the gp is suggesting NYC residents get hit with an additional fine that people who drive from out of state would not.
    - paulgb 8y ago
      Exactly. In fact, NYC does have a similar policy (but they delayed implementation so I’m not sure if it’s active yet.)
    - 8y ago

integrate-this 8y ago

I'm a LA resident. People in this city like to talk about congestion as though they see it as a problem, but they don't actually see it as a problem. Only people in the valley see it as a problem because there are limited choke points into and out of LA proper which keep people from getting to work. LA's limited transportation infrastructure prevents DTLA's homeless from getting to Beverly Hills, Long Beach's gang-related activity from getting to Brentwood, etc. If LA wanted to fix their transportation problem then they could build trains parallel to the 405 and 110 and solve the problem, but they don't want to fix the problem because the problem allows them (us?) to keep the city segregated by income.

wjossey 8y ago
And to your point, they absolutely could solve the chokepoint issues with eminent domain, and adding additional arteries, but they choose not to. For people who think a congestion tax will improve traffic, it won't. Congestion taxes work if they can shift behaviors to alternate modes of transportation. If there aren't any alternatives, it's just a levy.
- floatrock 8y ago
  > and adding additional arteries Time and time again cities learn this does nothing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
  - wjossey 8y ago
    Induced demand doesn’t say that nothing happened. It says that demand just fills up the new supply. There are no alternatives to a road system in LA for most residents. If the roads were choked and there was an underutilized subway that I could use, I’d totally get the argument of taxing the road system or capping capacity, so as to push people toward more efficient methods. But, it’s not feesible to build out a subway system in this city that is expansive, so we need to work with what we have- Cars. Make LA the autonomous car capital of the world. Let’s be the best and first at linking cars together in convoys and shuttling them fast down our massive freeway network. Let’s build tunnels under the mountain passes to add more connections into Hollywood so people have better access than winding canyon roads. Let’s build expansive subway networks through south central and downtown to bring cost effective transportation to lower income neighborhoods. Let’s do a ton. But let’s also build a bunch of roads.

suddenstutter 8y ago

Complete nonsense.

suddenstutter 8y ago

Utter nonsense.

emiliobumachar 8y ago

I expect this to backfire. More people will buy cars if hiring out their commute becomes more expensive. Once they have bought a car, they'll use it even for perfectly walkable errands, just like everyone else. "Metro also is considering a fee on bicycles, electric scooters, and other devices" Ditto.

m463 8y ago
You tax something, you get less of it.
Tyrannosaur 8y ago
Your comment actually made me read the article. That is a direct quotation, and pushes the whole thing over the edge in my opinion from "very poorly thought-out plan" to "just barely pretending"

iamwil 8y ago

Why not just tax single riders, if congestion is the issue?

floatrock 8y ago
From the article: > [San Francisco Supervisor Aaron] Peskin is drafting a measure for the November election that would levy a 3.25% fee on rides with one passenger, and a 1.5% fee on shared rides.
- scarejunba 8y ago
  With all the nonsense going on, I’ve actually just got a car in SF. And that’s after 7 years car-free. Cycling is bloody impossible these days, and they got rid of the damned scooters too. Good job, Aaron. You’re a bloody genius. My friends were all car-free too and only a fourth of them are still that way. No kids or anything. It’s just gotten kinda crappy here. I was hoping to hold out for just a little longer but I think I’m done.
  - baby 8y ago
    I'm really upset about the scooters in SF. As I don't have a driver license, I can't even use them (they require a US driver license).
baroffoos 8y ago
The space your car uses is a resource. The amount of people in the car doesn't affect the amount of space resource you have used. I think a fee should be applied to the space resource you are using regardless of the amount of people in the car. That way if multiple people need to get to the same place its cheaper for them all to use one car but one person can't just get someone else to sit in the car to make it cheaper.

rajeshp1986 8y ago

I feel this is a completely misjudged solution. The reason so many people use Lyft & Uber is because of lack of public transport. This seems like city finding another way to tax people instead of helping its citizens.

xiaodai 8y ago

It was congested way before Uber of Lyft.

educationdata 8y ago

Based on the comments here, it appears to me that many people don't understand the economy lose from the inefficiency of public transportation. 1 hour of bus transportation usually take only 20 minutes of taxi ride. It means I can save 40 minutes from the taxi ride. This 40 minutes have considerable value.

schwartzworld 8y ago

I wonder if the proposed rule will contain provisions to keep Uber from taking the difference out of the drivers' pockets.

CorvusCrypto 8y ago

Hmm I often wonder why California doesn't implement a congestion tax. In Stockholm you need to pay around 4$ if you want to drive on the highway during certain hours into and out of the city. I can't say if it works to reduce congestion but it does even the field and it certainly made me want to not drive there.

bsimpson 8y ago

Another dumbass Aaron Peskin proposal. :eyeroll: At least we can vote this one down in November. You'd think someone who spends so much time positioning himself as a "progressive" would understand why taxing people who don't own cars is both stupid and unfair.

habosa 8y ago

The congestion caused by Uber and Lyft in SF is bad. It's not because of the number of cars on the road, although that's certainly something, it's because of how those cars behave. Ubers and Lyfts pull over at unpredictable spots (wherever the app says to) and then just throw on their flashers. It doesn't matter if they're blocking a lane in rush hour they just stop. I will never for my life understand why an Uber or Lyft driver thinks it's any better to double park in an active lane of traffic than to temporarily pull out and block a driveway or a red zone. Both are illegal, but at least one of those doesn't block traffic and endanger other drivers/bikers. Almost every day I see an Uber driver double-parked within 50' of somewhere they could have pulled over safely. If the cops would give out a few more tickets for this, the behavior would get better and so would the traffic. And then we wouldn't have to tax the road use. Taxing the road use is crap, everyone should be able to drive their vehicle on public roads as much as they want as long as they follow traffic laws.

nitwit005 8y ago
All the delivery services park illegally as well. For a long time I assumed they had some sort of exemption because it was so common. They just eat the tickets as cost of doing business.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  I suppose tickets should have exponential increase and decay built-in - this way, collecting a bunch of tickets in a row wouldn't be edible for companies, but intermittent tickets (corresponding to base rate of traffic violations) would cost no more than before.
  - omouse 8y ago
    Linear is more predictable and easier to manage, mentally, so I don't think that will change any time soon.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago

markbnj 8y ago

This has to be just a money grab right? How can they possibly contend that people using ride sharing services exacerbates road congestion? Neither of their arguments makes any sense.

smallgovt 8y ago

How do you guys think the trend from public transit to rideshare will look once self-driving cars begin ramping up? I imagine that without the cost of labor from the driver, rideshares should become dirt cheap. Will anybody use public transit in 10 years? If not, the congestion problem will get many times worse.

osdiab 8y ago
It's the classic induced demand phenomenon - when roads are expanded, people drive a lot more, and congestion remains the same. Same thing with transit - people ride it up to the point where it's miserably crowded. Both are signs that our infrastructure in either form is unable to service the maximal demand society places on it, so people ultimately decide not to go places because of the cost of doing so (in terms not just of cash, but also comfort and time). I think people will use rideshares only to the point that congestion is precisely miserable enough those who choose to rideshare to tolerate it. So what might happen is that mass transit remains equally as congested, just more people are taking trips than they were before because the capacity of the whole system has increased. It's also the case that, unlike self-driving car infrastructure, trains are far more scalable - in places that actually invest in their mass transit infrastructure, I think mass transit can compete pretty well the more the municipality invests in train lines and stuff. But to assume that self-driving cars will save cities that don't have transit infrastructure—that might be true for very sparsely populated, small cities, but for all the American cities that lack public transit infrastructure, I think the situation will only change marginally.

overgard 8y ago

Seems like there could be a lot of unintended commercial consequences — people that would be customers deciding not to bother. I don’t know the situation in other places, but in Colorado the RTD smartphones apps are just awful. Twice in the last month I ended up taking an uber home because the ticketing app for the buses was down and I couldn’t access tickets I bought. Not to mention it frequently feels unsafe. I’m fortunate to be a 6’4” male, but if I was say a 5’2” woman I would totally want to avoid the harassment. Maybe the focus should be in providing better public transportation instead of encouraging people to stay home.

blobbers 8y ago

Pretty sure Los Angeles had bad traffic way before Uber and Lyft arrived. I distinctly remember staring out of the Hilton at Universal City in 2006, on my first visit to California, with a group of Canadians marveling that there could be a traffic jam at 10PM at night.

blobbers 8y ago
Also of note... don't most people use Uber Pool to save a few $? Just a guess but if the route planning models are good then an uberpool with 2 passengers + driver qualifies for 3+ carpools and will be much faster than a car that doesn't qualify for carpool with a single passenger and driver.
ibrault 8y ago
I don't think they're trying to argue that Uber and Lyft created LA traffic but I would agree that their arrival put more cars on the roads. There's a huge market of people who are willing to pay a little extra to avoid the hassle of LA public transportation and considering that, in general, people Uber to busy places (LAX, downtown, etc.), it's bringing more cars onto the already clogged roads that wouldn't be there otherwise.
- amanaplanacanal 8y ago
  But is it really cannibalizing public transportation? Or is it cannibalizing private car driving? I assume somebody has studied this.
xenihn 8y ago
I got stuck in a traffic jam on the 405 near LAX at around 1:00 AM on my second-to-last day in LA last month. I'd stayed late at work to sober up after my farewell happy hour. I don't know if it was an accident or construction or what that caused it, since I didn't see anything.

liability 8y ago

.Bring back street cars! Forget hyperloops and similar gadgetbahn bullshit. The solution isn't exotic, it's mundane. Street cars work damn well if you treat them as legitimate transit, not a tourist attraction. You can even bury them using cut-and-cover if the situation really calls for it. Forget microtunnel bullshit, that have ultra-expensive stations never mentioned by the advocates

itslennysfault 8y ago
Honest question. How are street cars better than busses? They put one in near me recently, and all I could think is that compared to a bus it cost a ton more money, took forever to build, and can't be rerouted in case of an issue. Additionally, it doesn't even bypass traffic so it's not any faster. Why not just buy a few busses to run the exact route they built the street car on instead ?
- liability 8y ago
  Better rolling resistance and electric powered without battery nonsense. However they are in close competition with trolley-buses (rubber wheeled electric vehicles powered from overhead lines, as seen in Seattle.) (And unlike buses they don't have a "low class" reputation that prevents middle class snobs from using them!)

asabjorn 8y ago

It is a tax to increase revenue. LA has almost non-existent public transit, so anyone riding Uber/Lyft is likely to drive on their own. It is disingenuous to describe this as anything that has any remote chance to even reduce traffic minimally. LA is an extended suburb, and only infill development of higher density over time can make more public transit economically viable.

dotcoma 8y ago

If it were parking space that they wanted to free up, that could make sense. But congested roads? Don't Uber and Lyft occupy road space like everybody else?

nserrino 8y ago

It's really frustrating that in so many cities, car owners are perceived to have more of a right to the road than non-car owners (aka those who take only rideshare). Roads are payed for by public subsidy and there shouldn't be special handouts for car owners.

stretchwithme 8y ago

Charging for use of the road is the only way to balance supply and demand for road. More at peak times and a discount off-peak. Fixed price subscriptions for your commute. But I see no reason to treat Uber cars differently, except that having a driver does not qualify to one to use the carpool lane (which I would eliminate anyway)! I'd also allow subscribers and those who buy ahead to sell their prepaid trip when the price surges. Wait an hour and make $5 when there's an accident.

rdlecler1 8y ago

The alternatives are not taxis, it’s people having their own cars which are probably on average larger than the typical Prius my Uber driver has. Moreover, I often take pool so it could further increase number of cars on the road.

Calashle0202 8y ago

Yet again the "achilles heal" of mass transit it exposed. Uber and Lyft work because they go where I want to go and when I want to go at a reasonable price. Busses are not full of people who want to ride the bus, they are full of people who must ride the bus. No amount of taxation will ever change that.

jypepin 8y ago

> Ridership is now at its lowest level in more than a decade, driven by a shift to driving instead of using Metro’s sprawling bus network. Maybe if they realised that the reason nobody takes public transit is because LA's is one of the worst of developed countries, they'd be a bit more incentivised into building a better system instead of trying to blame external things and create more taxes. I barely use Uber/Lyft when I'm travelling in Amsterdam, Paris, London or NYC, but find myself having no choice but be in a car when I'm in SF or LA.

akerro 8y ago

Uber and Lyft are fighting their what they created https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/10/16/uber-lyft-responsible-for-half-of-increased-traffic-in-sf-study-says/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/10/16/uber-lyft-responsible...

Grue3 8y ago

What a great plan! Not improving public transportation. Not taxing people who own private cars. Taxing cars who serve dozens passengers a day! Guess what, if these people weren't using Uber, each of them would be driving their own car.

Golfkid2Gadfly 8y ago

The headline is a lie. This is all about raising money to pad their pensions.

StreamBright 8y ago

Using cars is embedded into the DNA of American people so deeply that I am not sure it can be changed. I remember the first time I was in LA for a longer period and somebody did not believe me that I do not own a car. She literally though I am a liar and I do not want to share with her what sort of car I drive instead of believing me that I do not have one.

telaport 8y ago

If anything they should be giving tax rebates to Uber and Lyft drivers since this is called f'ing car pooling, and it's saving additional cars from getting on LA roads.

Amendeson530 8y ago