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You make reference to protecting mass transit as well as to the cost to consumers. These arguments make sense if there are zero externalities, but unfortunately

You make reference to protecting mass transit as well as to the cost to consumers. These arguments make sense if there are zero externalities, but unfortunately there are: carbon footprint, both directly as well as second order effects from increased congestion, commercial exploitation of subsidized infrastructure, increased collision risk to cyclists and vulnerable road users, abuse of contract law by preventing independent rate setting and concealing negotiable information, artificially depressed prices fueled by venture capital in order to create a monopoly and capitalize later. These externalities are borne by society at large, so a pure "let the consumer decide" philosophy is not fully justified in this scenario. Some of these externalities apply to taxis as well, which is precisely why regulating and limiting taxis is good, though I think one could do a lot better than the medallion system.

manigandham 7y ago
Regulation is what made taxis so terrible. We don't need the government to control everything. Many of the externalities you describe would be the same if people just drove their own cars. If ridesharing is so bad then govt should invest in proper public transport to create more choice, not try and crush a valuable service used by millions.
- tasogare 7y ago
  No, taxis are bad because companies try to squeeze the maximum amount of money while providing the least possible service. They could provide a good service within the term of the regulations if it were their focus. Where I live taxis are regulated yet provide a decent/high quality of service. And it’s true even in cities like mine where the public transportation network is crap (bus based).
  - manigandham 7y ago
    Taxis got away with it because there was no competition until ridesharing came around. They wouldn't have provided good service on their own when protected by laws. Nothing has improved commercial services like competition. Nothing has ruined it like regulation. I've yet to hear how any of these externalities are solved with regulation, or how they are unique to ridesharing vs private car ownership.
- GVIrish 7y ago
  The answer to bad regulations is not necessarily no regulations. The taxi medallion system was broken and in need of an overhaul. Replacing a broken system with a ridesharing Wild West is not optimal. I agree that there needs to be a lot more investment in mass transit but in the meantime governments shouldn't be turning a blind eye to regulating ridesharing.
  - manigandham 7y ago
    What's wild west about it? What needs to be regulated exactly vs having people drive their own cars?
    - thelock85 7y ago
      I’m no fan of unnecessary regulation, but you cannot compare externalities of driving your own car for your own purposes vs. ride share, accept in cases where people are ride share driving in the same capacity/frequency as personal driving. My opinion is that people who drive their own cars don’t do so at the same clip as people driving for money. In the former, people do so out of convenience or routine. In the latter, people do so as long as needed to meet financial obligations. Maybe I’m wrong and people are out here driving hours and hours for wages they don’t need to survive or support others.
      - derangedHorse 7y ago
        That still doesn’t answer the question of why it’s different in way that we should care
      - manigandham 7y ago
        It's the same amount of driving. The Uber drivers are giving rides to people who need to get somewhere, and who would otherwise be using their own cars or taxis. If anything there are less total cars on the road since the same Uber driver can service many passengers (or same amount of cars delivering more people with less parking).
    - koolba 7y ago
- danans 7y ago
  > If ridesharing is so bad then govt should invest in proper public transport to create more choice This is an excellent idea, and is consistent with also taxing any societally borne externalities caused by ride-sharing, the primary being congestion. And taxis should be held to the same regulatory standard.
  - manigandham 7y ago
    The congestion would be the same if people just drove on their own. You can see this in Los Angeles and New York. The answer to getting cars off the street (whether private or shared) is to build other options that people can use. Taxis are cars too by the way. How did all those taxi regulations improve externalities?
    - learc83 7y ago
      There's studies that show uber increasing congestion. It makes sense when you think about it. Uber drivers are routinely on the road with no passengers. Either waiting or driving to or from picking up a passenger.
      - manigandham 7y ago
        Those passengers would be in a car anyway. They don't stop going places. Like I said, ridesharing either reduces cars on the road or decreases the amount of parked cars for the same amount of people. The biggest study was in SF and was inherently flawed by looking at traffic over years. It's obvious that an increasing population will generate more traffic, and Uber has allowed more people to travel than before. Serving more people isn't a bad thing, it's a natural situation that cities should plan for instead of being constantly surprised by.
        symkat 7y ago
        > Those passengers would be in a car anyway. They don't stop going places. Are you sure? 100% of riders, for all rides they take, would choose to use a car if they could not use ride sharing? Absolutely none would walk, ride a bike, take a bus, take a train, choose not to go? I have a hard time believing that it's purely a "car I have access to or a ride share," 100% of the time. So I believe some amount of rides are happening that would not have people driving. Of the drivers for ride sharing, there is some amount of time between trips that they are simply waiting for the next customer. This is time they wouldn't be on the road if they were not driving, and time the person who is using the ride sharing wouldn't be on the road either. So, I also believe that drivers must be on the road more often than the sum of the time they've kept other people from driving. If drivers are on the road more with ride sharing, and if less than 100% of people using the ride sharing service would choose a method of transport other than a car, I cannot see how ride sharing wouldn't strictly require an increase in traffic?
- bamboozled 7y ago
  There are some crap Taxi's in Tokyo, but on average they're amazing. I'm sure there is still regulation and taxes they need to pay in Japan too. It's not just because they're Taxis they suck. There is also bad Uber drivers too.
  - dantheman 7y ago
    Never had a bad uber driver, but I've had a ton of bad taxi drivers -- and I've ridden in uber far more.
  - manigandham 7y ago
    Why are they amazing? Japan has great public transportation and very dense cities. It's not as car-centric as the US but the taxi system still has similar problems. No apps, need to communicate destination (possibly in a foreign language), primarily use cash, expensive, paper receipts, no real-time status/tracking, hard to get back lost items, etc. They might be cleaner and quieter but those are minor details.
    - bamboozled 7y ago
      No apps Wrong: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/japantaxi/id481647073 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/japantaxi/id481647073 Need to communicate destination. Not with the app. Primarily use cash Wrong, you can pay by many means, including the IC card, this is a good option and can be used with Apple wallet, super convenient. Expensive Compared to what? Paper receipts Not when using the app, you can just say you don't want a receipt. No real-time status tracking Wrong, the app does this too. Hard to get back lost items Call taxi company, get it back? Tokyo taxi drivers usually inspect the taxi before you get out too, I notice they do this every time I get a cab. Another benefit IMO is there are cabs driving around everywhere, you don't have to hail and wait for a cab, if it starts raining, you can just jump into a cab usually in under a minute.
- maximente 7y ago
  > Many of the externalities you describe would be the same if people just drove their own cars. no, this isn't correct and on its face looks like a straw man, so i'm pretty sure you're arguing in bad faith, but i'll try to give someone of the "market" mindset a market argument. market zealots tell us that as things become cheaper, people do more of them. subsidizing ride sharing, evading regulations, etc. generally made ride sharing become a cheaper alternative to taxis. as a result, it suddenly became generally affordable for well off people to "ride share" around everywhere as a manner of commuting. this very likely led to more congestion than a world without ride sharing would have. that some of these well off individuals could have done the same in private cars is not really relevant. ride sharing became so economical that bus riders, pedestrians and cyclists changed their behavior to make use of it. this isn't controversial - there's at least one study from SF that found this; i'm guessing other municipalities have found the same.
  - mav3rick 7y ago
    This is such a bullshit argument. What you're basically saying is people wouldn't have driven their cars and stayed at Home if Uber wasn't a thing. That's such an inane argument. Ridesharing is good and reduces overall traffic. It doesn't make people go out more than they require. No one says "it's a good day to Uber today ".
    - akdor1154 7y ago
      > What you're basically saying is people wouldn't have driven their cars and stayed at Home if Uber wasn't a thing He didn't say that at all, read his post again. He says that uber takes pedestrians and cyclists and PT users and turns them into car (Uber) users.
      - mav3rick 7y ago
        Go back to pre-Uber. No one called expensive taxis and used private cars, including the cyclists for non trivial distances. Uber came and solved the first step. Maybe some cyclists even take it for trivial distances. But that's blaming Uber for a good product and promoting a protectionsist scheme. Rather if you want more pedestrians and cycling, have more infrastructure and incentives to promote that rather than ban Uber.
- PaulRobinson 7y ago
  Perhaps government would invest in proper public transport if so many businesses weren't trying to figure out ways to avoid taxes by, say, insisting a huge number of people who contract full-time and long-term for them aren't really employees?
  - manigandham 7y ago
    What taxes are being avoided? Contractors pay just as much, if not more tax. There's no magical loophole. Also the govt is not lacking for funds. The problem is poor spending and that will never get solved by giving up even more money. I'd rather have private businesses that actually produce valuable services then wait on crappy transportation delivered a decade late by the state.
derrick_jensen 7y ago
Uber could very easily reduce carbon emissions if they bias their payments/ride assignments towards EVs and other efficient vehicles. I'm not sure about the legality of that, but its definitely an interesting idea if they need to pull some PR shenanigans. >Commercial exploitation of subsidized infrastructure What makes trucking different than Uber in this scenario? Is driving my own car around not abusing the infrastructure, but hailing an Uber is? Uber doesn't make money if nobody is riding somewhere in the car, so the market forces try and make utilization as efficient as possible. >Increased collision risk to cyclists and vulnerable road users Are Uber drivers more likely to hit people than non Uber drivers? If you control for the population utilization of the roads, does this have a measurable affect? >Abuse of contract law by preventing independent rate setting and concealing negotiable information You have a point there, but personally I disagree that these should be required by law in the first place. >Artificially depressed prices fueled by venture capital in order to create a monopoly and capitalize later Well its doing a pretty bad job if the goal is to create monopolies. For most tech companies, they have a reasonable amount of competitors given the chicken-and-egg situation they need to solve. Prices are artificially depressed, not going to lie, but a lot of prices are artificially depressed to make them usable by the masses, and its all the better for it.
- malandrew 7y ago
  > if they bias their payments/ride assignments towards EVs and other efficient vehicles. This happens naturally. From a previous calculation I did, I estimate that a hybrid Prius allows a full-time rideshare driver to gross more than $500 each month than a typical ICE sedan. The economics of more efficient vehicles biases drivers to get more efficient vehicles with fewer externalities. This is why Priuses and other hybrid cars are the most common vehicles used by rideshare drivers.
ImprovedSilence 7y ago
Taking drunks off the road, providing carpooling options, reducing need for parking, making it possible for for people to not need cars who are on the fence about buying one, frictionless payment options over cash, eliminating "zoning" by different cab entities that block off under-served neighborhoods. There are plenty of positive externalities to Uber too. I don't know about you, but I'm old enough to remember when cabs sucked and you dreaded it or considered risking just driving yourself after a night out. Uber made things easier, better, and safer.
- akdor1154 7y ago
  > Uber made things easier, better, and safer. Are you seriously suggesting that an entity could have both positive and negative effects? That's unpossible!
rayiner 7y ago
Mass transit in most places doesn’t come out ahead even accounting for externalities. The average passenger vehicle emits 0.91 pounds of CO2 per mile. Many estimates of CO2 price it at $30/ton. At that rate, the CO2 externality from driving is 1.4 cents per mile. The cost of CO2 recapture puts a cap on the cost of CO2, and currently it’s $100-$230 per ton. At that price, we are looking at $0.10 per mile. Typical subsidies for transit are in the $0.50+ per passenger mile range for rail, and $0.80 for bus: https://opportunityurbanism.org/2019/09/transport-costs-and-subsidies-by-mode https://opportunityurbanism.org/2019/09/transport-costs-and-... (scroll down to the graph).
meekstro 7y ago
In my country the most common uber vehicle is a Toyota Prius which uses about 4 L per 100 kms. As our buses are poorly run and empty the majority of the time, Ubers are the optimum environmental option to get from A to B.
hoten 7y ago
We need some Pigovian taxes.

manigandham 7y ago

Regulation is what made taxis so terrible. We don't need the government to control everything. Many of the externalities you describe would be the same if people just drove their own cars. If ridesharing is so bad then govt should invest in proper public transport to create more choice, not try and crush a valuable service used by millions.

tasogare 7y ago
No, taxis are bad because companies try to squeeze the maximum amount of money while providing the least possible service. They could provide a good service within the term of the regulations if it were their focus. Where I live taxis are regulated yet provide a decent/high quality of service. And it’s true even in cities like mine where the public transportation network is crap (bus based).
- manigandham 7y ago
  Taxis got away with it because there was no competition until ridesharing came around. They wouldn't have provided good service on their own when protected by laws. Nothing has improved commercial services like competition. Nothing has ruined it like regulation. I've yet to hear how any of these externalities are solved with regulation, or how they are unique to ridesharing vs private car ownership.
GVIrish 7y ago
The answer to bad regulations is not necessarily no regulations. The taxi medallion system was broken and in need of an overhaul. Replacing a broken system with a ridesharing Wild West is not optimal. I agree that there needs to be a lot more investment in mass transit but in the meantime governments shouldn't be turning a blind eye to regulating ridesharing.
- manigandham 7y ago
  What's wild west about it? What needs to be regulated exactly vs having people drive their own cars?
  - thelock85 7y ago
    I’m no fan of unnecessary regulation, but you cannot compare externalities of driving your own car for your own purposes vs. ride share, accept in cases where people are ride share driving in the same capacity/frequency as personal driving. My opinion is that people who drive their own cars don’t do so at the same clip as people driving for money. In the former, people do so out of convenience or routine. In the latter, people do so as long as needed to meet financial obligations. Maybe I’m wrong and people are out here driving hours and hours for wages they don’t need to survive or support others.
    - derangedHorse 7y ago
      That still doesn’t answer the question of why it’s different in way that we should care
    - manigandham 7y ago
      It's the same amount of driving. The Uber drivers are giving rides to people who need to get somewhere, and who would otherwise be using their own cars or taxis. If anything there are less total cars on the road since the same Uber driver can service many passengers (or same amount of cars delivering more people with less parking).
  - koolba 7y ago
danans 7y ago
> If ridesharing is so bad then govt should invest in proper public transport to create more choice This is an excellent idea, and is consistent with also taxing any societally borne externalities caused by ride-sharing, the primary being congestion. And taxis should be held to the same regulatory standard.
- manigandham 7y ago
  The congestion would be the same if people just drove on their own. You can see this in Los Angeles and New York. The answer to getting cars off the street (whether private or shared) is to build other options that people can use. Taxis are cars too by the way. How did all those taxi regulations improve externalities?
  - learc83 7y ago
    There's studies that show uber increasing congestion. It makes sense when you think about it. Uber drivers are routinely on the road with no passengers. Either waiting or driving to or from picking up a passenger.
    - manigandham 7y ago
      Those passengers would be in a car anyway. They don't stop going places. Like I said, ridesharing either reduces cars on the road or decreases the amount of parked cars for the same amount of people. The biggest study was in SF and was inherently flawed by looking at traffic over years. It's obvious that an increasing population will generate more traffic, and Uber has allowed more people to travel than before. Serving more people isn't a bad thing, it's a natural situation that cities should plan for instead of being constantly surprised by.
      - symkat 7y ago
        > Those passengers would be in a car anyway. They don't stop going places. Are you sure? 100% of riders, for all rides they take, would choose to use a car if they could not use ride sharing? Absolutely none would walk, ride a bike, take a bus, take a train, choose not to go? I have a hard time believing that it's purely a "car I have access to or a ride share," 100% of the time. So I believe some amount of rides are happening that would not have people driving. Of the drivers for ride sharing, there is some amount of time between trips that they are simply waiting for the next customer. This is time they wouldn't be on the road if they were not driving, and time the person who is using the ride sharing wouldn't be on the road either. So, I also believe that drivers must be on the road more often than the sum of the time they've kept other people from driving. If drivers are on the road more with ride sharing, and if less than 100% of people using the ride sharing service would choose a method of transport other than a car, I cannot see how ride sharing wouldn't strictly require an increase in traffic?
bamboozled 7y ago
There are some crap Taxi's in Tokyo, but on average they're amazing. I'm sure there is still regulation and taxes they need to pay in Japan too. It's not just because they're Taxis they suck. There is also bad Uber drivers too.
- dantheman 7y ago
  Never had a bad uber driver, but I've had a ton of bad taxi drivers -- and I've ridden in uber far more.
- manigandham 7y ago
  Why are they amazing? Japan has great public transportation and very dense cities. It's not as car-centric as the US but the taxi system still has similar problems. No apps, need to communicate destination (possibly in a foreign language), primarily use cash, expensive, paper receipts, no real-time status/tracking, hard to get back lost items, etc. They might be cleaner and quieter but those are minor details.
  - bamboozled 7y ago
    No apps Wrong: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/japantaxi/id481647073 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/japantaxi/id481647073 Need to communicate destination. Not with the app. Primarily use cash Wrong, you can pay by many means, including the IC card, this is a good option and can be used with Apple wallet, super convenient. Expensive Compared to what? Paper receipts Not when using the app, you can just say you don't want a receipt. No real-time status tracking Wrong, the app does this too. Hard to get back lost items Call taxi company, get it back? Tokyo taxi drivers usually inspect the taxi before you get out too, I notice they do this every time I get a cab. Another benefit IMO is there are cabs driving around everywhere, you don't have to hail and wait for a cab, if it starts raining, you can just jump into a cab usually in under a minute.
maximente 7y ago
> Many of the externalities you describe would be the same if people just drove their own cars. no, this isn't correct and on its face looks like a straw man, so i'm pretty sure you're arguing in bad faith, but i'll try to give someone of the "market" mindset a market argument. market zealots tell us that as things become cheaper, people do more of them. subsidizing ride sharing, evading regulations, etc. generally made ride sharing become a cheaper alternative to taxis. as a result, it suddenly became generally affordable for well off people to "ride share" around everywhere as a manner of commuting. this very likely led to more congestion than a world without ride sharing would have. that some of these well off individuals could have done the same in private cars is not really relevant. ride sharing became so economical that bus riders, pedestrians and cyclists changed their behavior to make use of it. this isn't controversial - there's at least one study from SF that found this; i'm guessing other municipalities have found the same.
- mav3rick 7y ago
  This is such a bullshit argument. What you're basically saying is people wouldn't have driven their cars and stayed at Home if Uber wasn't a thing. That's such an inane argument. Ridesharing is good and reduces overall traffic. It doesn't make people go out more than they require. No one says "it's a good day to Uber today ".
  - akdor1154 7y ago
    > What you're basically saying is people wouldn't have driven their cars and stayed at Home if Uber wasn't a thing He didn't say that at all, read his post again. He says that uber takes pedestrians and cyclists and PT users and turns them into car (Uber) users.
    - mav3rick 7y ago
      Go back to pre-Uber. No one called expensive taxis and used private cars, including the cyclists for non trivial distances. Uber came and solved the first step. Maybe some cyclists even take it for trivial distances. But that's blaming Uber for a good product and promoting a protectionsist scheme. Rather if you want more pedestrians and cycling, have more infrastructure and incentives to promote that rather than ban Uber.
PaulRobinson 7y ago
Perhaps government would invest in proper public transport if so many businesses weren't trying to figure out ways to avoid taxes by, say, insisting a huge number of people who contract full-time and long-term for them aren't really employees?
- manigandham 7y ago
  What taxes are being avoided? Contractors pay just as much, if not more tax. There's no magical loophole. Also the govt is not lacking for funds. The problem is poor spending and that will never get solved by giving up even more money. I'd rather have private businesses that actually produce valuable services then wait on crappy transportation delivered a decade late by the state.

derrick_jensen 7y ago

Uber could very easily reduce carbon emissions if they bias their payments/ride assignments towards EVs and other efficient vehicles. I'm not sure about the legality of that, but its definitely an interesting idea if they need to pull some PR shenanigans. >Commercial exploitation of subsidized infrastructure What makes trucking different than Uber in this scenario? Is driving my own car around not abusing the infrastructure, but hailing an Uber is? Uber doesn't make money if nobody is riding somewhere in the car, so the market forces try and make utilization as efficient as possible. >Increased collision risk to cyclists and vulnerable road users Are Uber drivers more likely to hit people than non Uber drivers? If you control for the population utilization of the roads, does this have a measurable affect? >Abuse of contract law by preventing independent rate setting and concealing negotiable information You have a point there, but personally I disagree that these should be required by law in the first place. >Artificially depressed prices fueled by venture capital in order to create a monopoly and capitalize later Well its doing a pretty bad job if the goal is to create monopolies. For most tech companies, they have a reasonable amount of competitors given the chicken-and-egg situation they need to solve. Prices are artificially depressed, not going to lie, but a lot of prices are artificially depressed to make them usable by the masses, and its all the better for it.

malandrew 7y ago
> if they bias their payments/ride assignments towards EVs and other efficient vehicles. This happens naturally. From a previous calculation I did, I estimate that a hybrid Prius allows a full-time rideshare driver to gross more than $500 each month than a typical ICE sedan. The economics of more efficient vehicles biases drivers to get more efficient vehicles with fewer externalities. This is why Priuses and other hybrid cars are the most common vehicles used by rideshare drivers.

ImprovedSilence 7y ago

Taking drunks off the road, providing carpooling options, reducing need for parking, making it possible for for people to not need cars who are on the fence about buying one, frictionless payment options over cash, eliminating "zoning" by different cab entities that block off under-served neighborhoods. There are plenty of positive externalities to Uber too. I don't know about you, but I'm old enough to remember when cabs sucked and you dreaded it or considered risking just driving yourself after a night out. Uber made things easier, better, and safer.

akdor1154 7y ago
> Uber made things easier, better, and safer. Are you seriously suggesting that an entity could have both positive and negative effects? That's unpossible!

rayiner 7y ago

Mass transit in most places doesn’t come out ahead even accounting for externalities. The average passenger vehicle emits 0.91 pounds of CO2 per mile. Many estimates of CO2 price it at $30/ton. At that rate, the CO2 externality from driving is 1.4 cents per mile. The cost of CO2 recapture puts a cap on the cost of CO2, and currently it’s $100-$230 per ton. At that price, we are looking at $0.10 per mile. Typical subsidies for transit are in the $0.50+ per passenger mile range for rail, and $0.80 for bus: https://opportunityurbanism.org/2019/09/transport-costs-and-subsidies-by-mode https://opportunityurbanism.org/2019/09/transport-costs-and-... (scroll down to the graph).

meekstro 7y ago

In my country the most common uber vehicle is a Toyota Prius which uses about 4 L per 100 kms. As our buses are poorly run and empty the majority of the time, Ubers are the optimum environmental option to get from A to B.

hoten 7y ago

We need some Pigovian taxes.