INDUSTRY IN REVIEW

By Don McCurdy

What’s more important?

Every jurisdiction that regulates taxicabs has a “refusal to convey” section in their governing ordinance. The purpose of this section is to prevent taxicab companies from realigning areas that they do not want to service.

While there are certainly ways for drivers to get around this issue the question is: which is more important, the theoretical denial of service or the taxicab driver’s life? Certainly there are drivers who avoid “problem” areas, especially if they know they will be forced to answer a call even if the location for pickup is a relatively safe and known address though the community is a dangerous one.

A recent report out of Elizabeth New Jersey points up just such a situation. Despite the murder of a taxi driver by a caller blocking his cell phone number on caller ID, a taxicab was sent to another ill intentioned Elizabeth caller who had blocked his identification. Is it legal for a company to refuse to send a vehicle if the caller blocks his/her telephone number?

In most jurisdictions it is illegal to refuse service because the caller blocked his/her telephone number. Why is that? We rave about companies using the latest technology. Uber jumps to mind. They identify every caller who registers into their app.

We don’t allow this simple, potentially life saving feature to be utilized to offer a small measure of safety to the driver. There isn’t a week that goes by when a half dozen drivers aren’t attacked or murdered in the United States. So, I ask all of you regulators, which is more important?

Do we have those stats?

A current article out of New York City claims that “ride sharing” company Uber now has more vehicles than there are yellow cabs. Professor Matthew Daus, Esq., writing in his column in this issue of TLC Magazine, states that Uber is now the largest ground transportation company in NYC history with 14,809 vehicles.

Uber recently had a small issue with the TLC requiring it to produce trip records. I wonder if Uber has produced the statistics on how many of their rides are actually shared by more than one passenger from different pick up points?

While billing them as “ride sharing”, I believe the press is applying a description that is not actually fact. A true “ride sharing” company is Super Shuttle. I’d wager Super Shuttle could tell you how many of their trips are single passenger or, more clearly, single pickup, single destination. So, do stats exist on how many of Uber’s trips are truly “shared ride” or is the press once again imagining a concept that isn’t fact?

They can’t say.

Reports from Chicago are that recent medallion sales have not been closed. They can’t say why because the process is still underway. The reported minimum bid was $360,000 which would have netted the windy city a cool $18 million. Nobody knows the status of the transactions or the selling prices.

Gee, I wonder what happened? Well, let me help you understand what happened. Taxicab medallions used to be a license to print money. Now, they’re a costly license to compete with Uber on an entirely uneven plane.

The potential buyer of these assets that may become worthless assets are just a little shy about shelling out $360k for something whose value may not be protected by the city at some future point.

Whiners! I’ve always hated dealing with government entities since they can change the rules at any time and you might end up stuck like chuck. While Chicago is currently protecting their medallion holders, it may come to pass that they stop protecting them and allow Uber free access to the taxi/car service markets. Wouldn’t you hate to be the last guy who bought a medallion for half a million and then couldn’t get a driver for it? Yeah, that would be somewhat of an asset let down.

Safer than a taxi?

California taxicab companies are reportedly suing Uber for claiming they’re “safer than a taxi.” That would be a hard claim to believe if I were on the receiving end of that advertising, because there are just enough questions remaining about Uber’s passenger insurance coverage.

For instance, if an Uber driver finds out a rider is going to be at a meeting for half an hour before returning to the car and the trip was substantial, the driver might just tell the customer that he will wait for the rider to return at no charge. I did this regularly as a taxicab driver, but the passenger was covered by insurance because my vehicle was covered 24/7 by the taxicab company’s insurance.

Now, said passenger gets back in thinking they’re covered by Uber’s insurance, but would that be the case? Insurance may have covered the rider going to the destination initially recorded by UBER but would it cover the passenger on a return trip that was not arranged by UBER? That isn’t the question in the lawsuit, but it sure is a question I would have. Couple that with the idea that Uber drivers have been reportedly waiting at transportation centers for walkups and you have an even larger issue.

With their own “cube”, any driver could process credit cards and bypass Uber altogether. Where would that leave the rider coverage wise? Are Uber drivers safer than taxicab drivers? I doubt it. Any driver with excessive citations or collisions is usually jettisoned by the companies as undesirable.

The first two years of my taxicab driving adventure I had two collisions and got three citations. The next six years I had no accidents and no citations. It takes a period of time and a level of experience to become a professional driver and I doubt that part time amateurs can match up.

Oh no!

Ft. Myers, Florida has added “transportation network companies” like Uber into their regulations. While this affords Uber the chance to prove it can compete with traditional services like taxicabs, Uber is reported to have said that their drivers are mostly part time and the new rules create “too much burden” on drivers and the company.

Well, duh. Regulations, federal, state and local, create “too much burden” on a lot of industries, but we still try to compete. Basically, Uber stipulates that it needs to be unregulated because it finds the rules everybody else lives under to be “too much burden.”

I can get with that. The industry I’m in is highly regulated in a lot of states, but not in Texas. That’s probably why Texas is such a boom state and the more tightly regulated states are suffering. Regulations are reported to “protect” the riding public, but rarely is that the real purpose of regulations. Many regulations are there to protect our political friends or force one type of politically favored behavior or other.

A recent example of this for my family was the purchase of health insurance. If our company purchased the insurance through the exchanges we would have gotten a six thousand dollar tax credit. So, if we do what the government wants us to do we get to keep some of our own money. If we don’t do what the government wants they take more of our money. Now, that’s good government, buying your behavior with your own money.

Is Uber cheaper?

Reports out of the University of Cambridge in the UK are that Uber is cheaper than a taxicab if the fare is over $35. The study was conducted by Cecilia Mascolo on a huge
sampling of data from the NYC TLC.

It isn’t clear whether the study covered times of surge pricing, but it’s well documented that taxicabs are cheaper on grocery runs, long the bane of the industry. I doubt that Uber would have gotten a foothold if price were the only object, but it is most certainly important.

Is you is or is you ain’t?

Uber and Lyft are being sued! Okay, so almost everybody is suing them. But these are their drivers suing them. The suit claims the drivers are employees of the company while the company says they’re independent contractors.

The drivers filed suit in San Francisco so they probably have a prayer of getting a favorable ruling. However, it looks all uphill to me. Does the company set your schedule? No. Does the company force you to take trips? Uh, no. Do you have to wear a uniform? No. My opinion, worth all you paid for it, is that the companies don’t attempt to control the drivers enough to have them ruled employees.

That said, how can you predict what a jury will say? The interesting part of the report was the author’s belief that the recession caused the vacuum of full time jobs. Hello? Anybody ever heard of the Affordable Care Act? The act
says that you have to provide health insurance to full time employees if you have more than fifty employees.

While the author may dream that the recession was the root cause of the surge of part time jobs, anyone with any sense knows the part time economy was a created by the ACA, the Affordable Care Act. Two of my family members are holding down 29 hour a week jobs with a company that has never used independent contractors.

I don’t know how the case will turn out, but I wish reporters would stick to the facts they can prove rather than what they wish or imagine the facts to be.

Taxi Of Mãnana put off again.

The April roll out of the Taxi of Tomorrow was put off again. The Greater New York Taxi Association is reported to have applauded the ruling while claiming the Adolf Bloomberg overstepped his authority in ordering drivers to buy a
certain vehicle.

It’s pretty obvious that Bloomberg has unusual ideas since he is known for trying his best to disarm honest citizens. On a lesser scale, remember the soda issue?

Bloomberg has long been trying to disarm the American population from every firearm known to man. Now, the statistics don’t bear out the rhetoric that disarming us will make us safer. Since they know for a fact that disarming us will not make us safer you have to ask yourself why exactly they want to disarm us.

Examining history reveals that an unarmed population is subject to the whims of their government, be they good or be they evil. Since big government progressives are the usual suspects when it comes to gun control it follows that their aim is not the good of the people.

Armed with that information you know exactly why Bloomberg and his ilk are so hot to disarm the public. In my opinion anyone who is not for a robust Second Amendment should be looked at as hostile to our Constitutional rights. Attempting to propagate the lie that disarming us will make us safer is your first clue that a politician does not have your best interest at heart.

Wouldn’t it be nice if our “public servants” would simply honor their oaths to support and defend the Constitution. That would be too easy.

If you have any comments regarding this or any of my articles please feel free to contact me at don@mcacres.com. —dmc

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