4 ms·
All you need to know here is right in the first paragraph: "Lyft filed a lawsuit against San Francisco today claiming city authorities are violating a contract
by mdorazio 7y ago
All you need to know here is right in the first paragraph: "Lyft filed a lawsuit against San Francisco today claiming city authorities are violating a contract it has with the ride-hailing company that gives Lyft exclusive rights to operate bike-share programs in the area. San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency, on the other hand, says it has the authority to sign partnerships with dockless (also called stationless) vendors, and that Lyft’s contract gives it exclusivity only on docked bike shares. Lyft is seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent the city from issuing bikeshare permits to new vendors."
They're disagreeing on specifics of the contract Lyft signed with the city. This is exactly the kind of thing I would expect to be settled out of court with some kind of compromise agreement.
- deogeo 7y agoHow is such a contract legal in the first place? Shouldn't a city have to treat all businesses equally as a matter of law?
- lancepioch 7y agoWhich law are you referring to?
- deogeo 7y agoI suppose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Protection_Clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Protection_Clause - the city is treating people very unequally if it allows one company, and forbids others.
- Nasrudith 7y agoSadly that strong interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause never got held as precedent. It sounds like it would be great for anti-corruption purposes.
- untog 7y agoIn short, no. The city gives public space for Lyft to install these docks. Forcing them to treat every company equally in that regard simply wouldn't work, not to mention that the cost of building the network in the first place requires some guarantees in return. A bike share system needs lots of docks in order to be successful, granting one company a monopoly isn't that crazy in that context.
- deogeo 7y agoThe guarantees should then be limited to making available to Lyft enough space to build docks. Banning competition far exceeds that.
- joshuamorton 7y agoIt doesn't matter in practice (and in fact there's some decent arguments that one is better than two or more: consider the current ford Go-Bikes in SF. Would it be better or worse if there were 2 or 3 mutually incompatible bike racks? You end up fragmenting your transit system). You can only offer so many rack locations, so if Lyft takes 2/3 of them, no other provider can be as effective anyway. If we were looking at another kind of public transit, say, subway trains or busses that were subcontracted out to private companies, would you expect 2 competing subway providers? Or two competing bus systems in the same city? I wouldn't.
- untog 7y agoNYC used to have three separate subway systems. To put it mildly, it was not effective, and we're still contending with three effects of it today.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]