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Uber and Lyft paid SFO about $50M last year
- thaumasiotes 3y agoWhy is Uber paying this? The concept is that you book a ride with no involvement from SFO, and then the car shows up wherever you happen to be, looking exactly the same as every other car. It doesn't appear that SFO would have any way to collect their rideshare fees except for honor-system voluntary payment.
- nightfly 3y agoSo Uber should just ignore it and risk getting sued or their drivers trespassed from the airport property?
- lambda_lord 3y agoFor arrivals, SFO has signs that direct passengers to a designated rideshare pickup area, and the rideshare apps direct passengers to a designated stall. It would be possible to monitor how many cars are picking up passengers there with cameras, because non-rideshare cars would not pick up people there. It would also be possible for an auditor to spot-check with the Uber app and see if they get charged the fee or not, and whether the app directs them to the rideshare pick up area. From there it’s easy to see if a company is circumventing the surcharge.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> and the rideshare apps direct passengers to a designated stall. That's part of their voluntary cooperation. They could also direct passengers to go stand at the curb like everyone else.
- CPLX 3y agoThat would be illegal. This isn’t voluntary, it’s regulation.
- quickthrower2 3y agoLike taxi medallions?
- CPLX 3y agoYes like that. Also notable, the airlines pay for the gates and the landing slots and so on. It’s a transportation hub. The various forms of transportation that use it pay a fee.
- skeeter2020 3y agoand every single passenger also pays an extra fee unrelated to the actual act of travel, the airport improvement fee, aka a tax that's not a tax.
- CPLX 3y agoIf it’s a fee that’s only charged to passengers who are traveling then it’s related to the act of travel.
- quickthrower2 3y agoMy point is: you are right but Uber has been known to skirt the law.
- javawizard 3y agoAs others have commented, it would be relatively simple for airports to deploy ANPR[0] to detect cars picking up passengers at the curb more frequently than an average person would be expected to, at which point they have the usual trespassing remedies at their disposal. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recogni...
- fallingknife 3y agoAren't they public roads at the airport?
- khuey 3y agoThey're owned by the airport and there are restrictions on their use.
- sveiss 3y agoSFO’s involvement is that they own or lease the roads and parking lots where the pickups happen, and so have the right to set conditions on their use. Parking enforcement isn’t automatic at parking lots without barriers either, but that doesn’t mean paying a parking fee to the operator is a “voluntary payment” just because you might not get a ticket if you do skip payment. As for how they could enforce it, it’s pretty easy to walk around outside the airport and spot the cars with Uber/Lyft decals, or multiple phones, or use ANPR to identify frequent visitors, or just ask passengers as they get into cars. Multiple options for enforcement. The enforcement might end up targeting the drivers rather than Uber itself, but it would have the same effect.
- Cheer2171 3y ago> It doesn't appear that SFO would have any way to collect their rideshare fees except for honor-system voluntary payment. It's called a tax. By that logic, it doesn't appear that the US government would have any way to collect their income taxes except for honor-system voluntary payment.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> By that logic, it doesn't appear that the US government would have any way to collect their income taxes except for honor-system voluntary payment. That's why they collect income taxes directly from employers instead of trying to collect from employees.
- jncfhnb 3y agoAirport Uber works different. Drivers wait in a designated queue.
- skeeter2020 3y agoFirst, Uber is not paying this, you the rider pay it. Second, one of the major (valid) complaints has always been that Uber's "disruption" is really just skipping the things other providers are required to do: fleet maintenance, insurance, licensing, taxation, and more. Uber's well past the "break shit and move fast stage", now that they're the dominant player it's in their best interest to pull in regulation barriers and promote any form of moat. They should lobby for HIGHER taxes and fees, pass those on to customers and push for aggressive enforcement - that would be easier than competing with the next startup.
- acd 3y agoGini index/Gini coefficient meassuring income equality. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Income_inequality_-_share_of_income_earned_by_top_1%25_1975_to_2015.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Income_i...
- donw 3y agoIsn’t that like a bagel and coffee at an airport these days?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- aidos 3y ago$50M at $5.50 per trip means over 17 trips per minute every minute of the year. That’s pretty wild.
- raverbashing 3y agoI wonder how does that compare with the overall budget of the airport
- dbt00 3y agoarticle says 1.4$bn or 3.5%.
- perryizgr8 3y agoUber and Lyft didn't pay this. Its the passengers arriving at and departing from SFO who paid this extra fees.
- jgalt212 3y agoI guess you never took Econ 101.
- atq2119 3y agoThis kind of lowbrow commentary adds nothing to the conversation. The fact is, you as a passenger don't make a payment transfer directly to SFO when you use Lyft or Uber, so it is in fact them who make the payment. The fact that Lyft and Uber can't create money out of thin air and therefore the money has to come from somewhere is obvious.
- skeeter2020 3y agoWell based on the geniune question above "Why does Uber bother paying this?" maybe this is needed and you're coming down rather hard on the poster.
- perryizgr8 3y agoI meant to point out that this kind of fee is finally just making it costlier to fly for everyone at SFO. It barely affects Uber or any of their drivers. It's effectively another hidden fee that airlines and airports are so fond of.
- dbt00 3y agoSo SFO is recovering 3.5% of its annual budget from rideshare apps. Given the absolute massive amount of traffic flow, that seems perfectly reasonable to me. The last two times I drove into SFO the two lanes into the central parking garage were blocked by rideshare traffic. Maybe the rates should be higher. Especially if the waiting pool is still overflowing the cellphone lot like it was a few years ago. I haven't gone back there, I time my trips to avoid it now because it was worse than pulling over onto the shoulder on 101 to wait. (What's really a travesty is the surcharge you pay to take BART from Millbrae to SFO. It's $5.20 per person, rather than per group/vehicle).
- zilti 3y agoCalling Uber and Lyft "ridesharing" is one hell of an euphemism. They're just taxi services. Where the "independent" drivers don't pay taxes.
- monero-xmr 3y agoThe drivers 100% pay taxes. Everything is reported to the government. Not sure why you think someone paid by a major corporation would avoid having their income reported.
- zilti 3y agoBecause that's exactly what most Uber/Lyft drivers did for many years, which led to them getting banned or forced to properly employ their drivers. They held their drivers in a pseudo-self-employed-contractor state so they also wouldn't have to pay social security, unemployment insurance, etc., why else do you think they were able to be so cheap? If that is different now in California, that's very recent.
- fallingknife 3y agoThey are still required to pay taxes, and Uber/Lyft are required to send 1099s to the IRS to declare the income. Nobody was hiding anything.
- joelhaasnoot 3y agoIf only there was public transit...
- sva_ 3y agoI took the BART to the airport exactly once in a cold winter night, and can say that I will never do that again. Not until they somehow mitigate the issue of homeless crackheads assaulting random people.
- skeeter2020 3y agoIn my experience with the BART it's not just cold nights and long runs, every ride is like that.
- eiiot 3y agoReminder that there’s a free shuttle to Caltrain and a BART connection at SFO. De-incentivising ride share use and encouraging public transit seems like a good thing.
- khuey 3y agoBART passengers are paying more or less the same amount to BART in a surcharge that (at least in theory) is supposed to pay for the construction.
- shuckles 3y agoIt’s even worse as BART charges per rider while ride share surcharges are per vehicle. It’s often not even cost competitive to take transit if you’re a couple or family.
- tekla 3y agoI remember the first time I took the BART with luggage. After a few stops, the announcer said effectively "Tunnel is broken, no more BART service" and dumped everyone out. I have a very high tolerance for this kind of shit, but I have a hard time trusting the BART again.