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

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-uber-tax-los-angeles-20190226-story.html

by prostoalex • 7 years ago

172 314 7 years ago

burlesona3• 7 years 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.

dmitrygr3• 7 years 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?

seanmcdirmid6• 7 years 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.

burlesona3• 7 years 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• 7 years ago

Public will used to hold some very shocking positions in he past.

bsder3• 7 years ago

Popularity does not imply correctness.

shereadsthenews6• 7 years 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.

ars3• 7 years 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.

burlesona3• 7 years 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.

dkarl• 7 years ago

Either people need to drive or they don't. People don't drive just for the fun of it anymore.

This isn't true. Some people live in places where it's possible to reduce their driving quite a lot, but when they decide to do that, it isn't as easy as simply choosing not to drive. Once they're motivated, they start to figure out opportunities to drive less. They start to figure out which other forms of transit are practical in their area, and they figure them out one by one. They start to figure out how they can adjust their habits to reduce driving. (Fewer, larger trips to the grocery store, for example.)

There are a lot of degrees of "not driving." You might bike to work in perfect weather at one level of motivation, and bike to work in the rain at a different level of motivation. One level of motivation might prompt you to make fewer, larger trips to the grocery store; at another level of motivation, when you run out of milk unexpectedly, you might walk five blocks to a corner store of driving ten minutes to the supermarket.

The only perspective from which it seems like a clean either/or is for people who haven't yet found a reason to try. People living in the same neighborhood with the same economic means can and do drive drastically different amounts depending on how motivated they are.

jayd162• 7 years 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.

SilasX7• 7 years 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_arc...

anth_anm• 7 years 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• 7 years 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_State...

seanmcdirmid6• 7 years 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• 7 years ago

If efficient cars are a problem, tax efficient cars, not Uber. But given CA's environmental goals, this would be counterproductive.

stale2002• 7 years ago

Efficient cars cost the city less money.

This is because efficient cars are usually smaller, and cause much less damage to the roads.

It is a good thing for society that they are using Priuses. It makes road maintenance cheaper.

Why should we be trying to lose money, by discouraging behavior that helps the city out? IE, fuel efficient, smaller cars.

whalesalad2• 7 years ago

Do you want EV adoption or fuel revenue? Choose one.

clay_the_ripper• 7 years ago

Agreed. This sounds like a tax that will generate money for the govt and nothing else - it’s not like suddenly people are going to stop going places when the price goes up a tiny amount since there are no viable alternatives to driving in LA, either rideshare or private car.

sbarre• 7 years ago

since there are no viable alternatives to driving in LA, either rideshare or private car.

The article seems to imply otherwise, that tons of money has been spent on improving public transit.

Not agreeing with you or the article either way, just pointing that out.

SilasX7• 7 years ago

Exactly. I could understand if the tax were tailored to the ostensible goals:

- No Uber taxes outside of rush hour, since they're not contributing to congestion then.

- Money is specially allocated to mass transit projects and subsidies for Uber pools/Lyft lines at rush hour where they are carrying multiple passengers.

But of course, that's not the proposal, it's just another golden goose.

ars3• 7 years ago

They really said that? Your local pizza place also uses public roads, and they get the profit.

What kind of stupid.........sigh.

The point of having public roads is that it benefits the city by increasing economic output.

Did he forget that there are PEOPLE in those Uber and Lyft cars? Those same people he is supposed to serve? Or does he think the cars are driving around for no purpose making profit the whole time?

dragonwriter7• 7 years ago

Did he forget that there are PEOPLE in those Uber and Lyft cars? Those same people he is supposed to serve?

Many of them are tourists or business visitors, not the people local government is supposed to serve. Local government fees designed to milk those people (which incidentally also hit residents) are not at all unusual.

liability3• 7 years ago

Politicians don't serve the people, they serve themselves and seek reelection. Sometimes it happens to be the case that seeking reelection motivates serving the people, but that is nothing more than a happy coincidence. Sometimes a dictator earnestly wants to help his people; that too is a happy coincidence. The genuinely altruistic politician in a democracy is no more common than a genuinely altruistic dictator.

dragonwriter7• 7 years ago

Public roads are supposed to be paid for through fuel taxes,

No, they aren't, at least in California; fuel excise taxes (and diesel, but not gasoline, sales tax) are a part of road funding, but other sources, including general revenue (largely, sales taxes and personal and corporate income tax), are used.

EDIT: Not that taxing ride-sharing is likely to reduce congestion. It plausibly could increase it, if it induces residents of mostly walkable communities (which, sure, LA has fewer of than it should) who might otherwise rely on ride-sharing for occasional car needs to instead keep a personal vehicle, which then tends to encourage additional, less-necessary driving.

thegayngler3• 7 years ago

Something else to consider is that traffic was bad way before ride sharing companies started popping up. Secondly, additional taxes will ultimately end up being paid for by people who do not own a vehicle. A better way to help alleviate traffic conditions is to raise gas taxes across the board or maybe just using the tax dollars more efficiently to build public transportation like trains on top of the existing infrastructure that cars typically use. I don't know why California is wasting time on obviously bad legislation. Why do they feel the need to consider the crazy option?

stefan_• 7 years ago

Fuel taxes do not come remotely close to funding the roads.

shereadsthenews6• 7 years ago

Fuel tax revenue and other direct user fees like annual registration in California amount to less than 25% of what the state and its cities pay to maintain the roads and streets. Roads are massively subsidized from general revenues. If you are proposing a $5/gallon fuel tax then I completely agree. That would be about equivalent to what other rich countries tax motor fuel and consistent with the state's greenhouse gas emission goals.

SilasX7• 7 years ago

That's misleading -- yes, in the aggregate, gas taxes cover only part of the expenses, but that's not because of personal cars. Damage on the roads -- and thus maintenance costs -- scales with the 4th power of weight per axle. So the damage is virtually all from large trucks, with sedans and SUVs as a rounding error.

If you were to apportion out the maintenance cost due to personal cars, they are overpaying.

briandear2• 7 years ago

Those roads are what allow stuff to be delivered. How do you ship an air conditioning unit on a bike path? The point is that the roads serve commerce and a tax on roads is really a tax on everything. Roads aren’t exactly massively subsidized — the commerce they generate results in taxes. Tax revenue generated per mile driven is far greater than any supposed subsidy. We could make an argument that schools are massively subsidized — the parents of students attending don’t pay the actual cost of attendance however, the tax revenues generated by an educated workforce are considered a net win compared to the cost of the “subsidy.” My kids don’t go to public school and some people don’t drive on roads, but we all benefit from roads and other people’s kids being educated and the economic gain vastly outweighs the subsidy. Not everyone uses the roads, but everyone benefits from them — thus a direct user-fee really serves no purpose, it’s just an additional tax on everyone. Since practically every single product touches a road at some point, taxing the roads more just makes everything more expensive.

You are also incorrect suggesting that $5 per gallon is “about equivalent to what other rich countries tax motor fuel.” In France, it’s $2.77 per gallon. In the UK, it’s $2.83 per gallon. Netherlands is $3.5 per gallon. Sweden is $3.51. In Australia, it’s $1.12 per gallon, New Zealand is $1.58. None of those countries are even close to $5 per gallon.

reaperducer3• 7 years ago

Which is why I always laugh when I hear people complaining about evil subsidized high-speed rail in America. That's just talking points from the airline and trucking industries, which are already far more heavily subsidized than rail.

baddox2• 7 years ago

If the usage fees aren't sufficient, then that's true for all drivers, whether it's Uber, or an eighteen wheeler, or a personal driver. If you get those usage fees right, then the argument that "specific group X profits from using public roads" goes away.

C1sc0cat3• 7 years ago

Do you not have a road licence tax for all vehicles with trucks and HGV's charged a lot more (as they do the moast damage) as we do in the UK.

updateYourMind2• 7 years ago

This is a very bad solution, especially as share rides decrease the number of cars when people use uber pool

thaumasiotes• 7 years ago

If you believe that Uber and Lyft are decreasing the number of cars on the road, then taxing them to "free up congested roads" is misguided, as it will have exactly the opposite effect.

crummy• 7 years ago

Not sure on the accuracy of this report but there are some indications that Uber, etc increase the number of cars on the road: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/uber-lyft-creating-traffi...

I think the implication is that people with cars keep using them and people without cars use Uber instead of alternative transport.

thisisweirdok4• 7 years ago

Talk to anyone with a reasonable public transit system about how ridesharing is clearing up the roads (spoiler alert: it's not, they're decreasing public transit ridership and contributing to a constantly worsening congestion issue).

conanbatt2• 7 years ago

Gotta tax drunk driving.

baroffoos2• 7 years ago

This seems to be a recurring problem. We have all these subsidies and taxes that penalize or prioritize certain kinds of actions instead of charging everything at its true cost. This means the government is forcing a certain kind of solution to the problem rather than charging the problem makers the cost of their problem.

A better solution would be to charge all drivers the exact cost to run their cars including all road maintenance for the roads they use and the cost to the health system and environment that their cars create.

Then provide multiple options such as rail and bike lanes. People will naturally gravitate to the best solution.

I often see complaints about how this will raise the cost of products like food because they need a lot of road and fuel resources. But the thing is you already pay for this cost through other means. By charging the true cost the price of an apple may go up but the price in your tax goes down. And this way the seller of the apple is now incentivized to source the apple locally and reduce the transport costs because its no longer paid for by everyone.

SethTro• 7 years ago

This is very hard to implement; How do you amortize startup costs (building the roads, buying new paving trucks) vs maintenance costs (raw cement, human, cost @ year 1, cost @ year 10, cost to replace the system after X years).

Do you penalize users/tax payers who have a lower use and less scaled systems? (e.g. should it cost more to mail my grandmother a letter because her post office is less at scale than mine?)

Do you increase the costs if some of your users leave (and risk even more attrition)?

This has been investigated in depth with schools and local businesses. Gov gives them a sweetheart deal with the hope that they contribute back and as the deal get's less good (and Gov starts ramping taxes to deal with paying infrastructure costs) businesses leave. For me the natural conclusion is the government has to provide some balancing (rain day funds, progressive taxes, ...)

vkou2• 7 years ago

Public roads are supposed to be paid for through fuel taxes, which every Uber and Lyft driver pays. California has gasoline taxes of:

Even in California, collected gas taxes do not remotely approach the cost of construction and repair of roadways.

mlindner• 7 years ago

Thank you for bringing this up. Uber and Lyft are already taxed. Taxing them more doesn't solve anything.

whalesalad2• 7 years ago

Not to mention Uber and Lyft drivers are wholly responsible for vehicle fees, maintenance, registration, their cellular data plans, wear and tear. California is out of control with it’s liberal tax policies. I spent the first twenty years of my life here and every time I return back I start to remember why I left.

thisisweirdok4• 7 years ago

eeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Uber undercuts both public transit and traditional taxi services with prices that are unsustainable and can't provide a living wage for their drivers.

This was OK initially because taxis in many places were benefiting from localized monopolies and also screwing many drivers, but in the long run it means Uber kills all the competition and then just jacks prices back up anyway.

I don't dig the drunk driving fear mongering either. If I hired the homeless $3 a trip to carry drunk people home that doesn't mean my exploitative program should suddenly be free of municipal adjustment.

dfilppi• 7 years ago

Agreed. Also consider that using taxation as a punitive tool is both immoral and ignores the fact that the government doesn't deserve the resulting revenue.

lr• 7 years ago

NYC streets are worse because of 250,000+ (obviously, not all at the same time) Uber/Lyft/Via/etc. vehicles being on the streets. I don’t care if there is demand, they have made congestion worse, period. I think all municipalities should treat all “private”, “shared”, whatever you want to call them, car services just like taxis, and require them to be painted a special color. You know not to travel too closely behind a taxi because they could stop or swerve at any moment. Unless you look at the very fine print on the license plate (and this is only in cities that require these cars to register), you do you know it is a car for hire, and to not follow too closely, unless you want to be blocked while they pick up a fare. How is it that these upstarts can “disrupt” an entire industry, and have a significantly lower barrier to entry than the incumbent? I say, require them all to be painted pink!

nodesocket2• 7 years ago

Uber and Lyft “are using public roads, and the profit is going to their companies,”

Using this logic, they should be taxing all companies that use public roads (food delivery, package delivery, service companies), instead they are specifically cherry picking Uber and Lyft to target. These sort of anti-business policies are causing companies and people in masses to flee California and New York. Perhaps that is the goal.

rb666• 7 years ago

Fuel is still extremely cheap in the US compared to more modern countries. It does not cover proper infrastructure, as can be witnessed in the US anywhere.

danjayh• 7 years ago

Also, they plan to tax ride sharing (which people have shown demand for) and use the money to improve public transit infrastructure (which people have shown distaste for). Why, why, aren't taxes like this directed to improve the infrastructure for the services that are being taxed? Elon Musk is on the right track - build out more roads, under the city, to improve capacity and reduce congestion. Don't burn the money on a service with ridership numbers that are in freefall.

Imagine if a private company substantially raised the price of its premier product (streaming movies, for example) to build tons of infrastructure for the product that nobody wants (DVD distribution hubs, for example) and neglected to build out the infrastructure required for the product in demand. It'd be gone overnight. This is absolute insanity.

The real solution:

- Tax all road users - most easily accomplished through license/registration taxes (IE, you pay an annual fee for a sticker that gives you permission to drive your car/bus/truck in the taxed area) and fuel taxes - By statute, require the money to be spent to improve/expand the road infrastructure - Where pollution is a problem, (optionally) spend a portion of the tax to build out EV infrastructure, and encourage EV use by charging reduced fees to EV users - Subsidize use of ride-sharing type services for people who would normally use public transit services

This would provide efficient, clean, point-to-point transit services for ALL users. Economically disadvantaged folks could finally stop paying the hidden 'poor people transit tax' (increased transit times).

jandrewrogers• 7 years ago

Public roads are supposed to be paid for through fuel taxes

Some States do, California does not. The underlying issue is that California roads can infamously cost an order of magnitude more to build and maintain per mile than the same road segment in other States (e.g. interstate highways). It is possible to pay for roads with fuel and use taxes, in some other States it is a constitutional requirement, but the extreme cost of roads in California make it difficult to fund the DoT that way and there is no evidence that California is going to curtail the obvious waste anytime soon.

swebs• 7 years ago

The underlying issue is that California roads can infamously cost an order of magnitude more to build and maintain per mile than the same road segment in other States

Why is that? It's not like they have harsh winters like New England or anything.

ozzyman700• 7 years ago

In my opinion, all taxes besides a land value tax are poor solutions. rent is the final resting place of capital generated by labor and land combined. Taxing unused land higher than used land forces landowners to sell the land to someone who could use the land productively enough to afford the tax bill.

All of taxes deter productivity from increasing. It is better to tax the land date trees grow on, than to tax the output of the trees themselves.

C1sc0cat3• 7 years ago

Lots of ways around that just demolish any buildings stick some goats on to graze and call it a farm "get oorf moi land revenue - waves shotgun"

xkcd-sucks• 7 years ago

Is "drunk driving" the new "the children"?

omouse2• 7 years ago

Public roads are supposed to be paid for through fuel taxes, which every Uber and Lyft driver pays

Do Uber and Lyft pay those drivers' fuel costs?

greeneggs• 7 years 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• 7 years 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.

gamblor9565• 7 years ago

In this case, reduced demand is desirable because Uber and Lyft drivers are a large part of the renewed traffic problems in LA.

jvanderbot• 7 years 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 ...

shereadsthenews6• 7 years 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.

perl4ever3• 7 years 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.

will4274• 7 years ago

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.

Can you cite a source? At least where I am (Seattle) Uber Pool and Express are quite popular - and I rarely see hard numbers.

themoonbus3• 7 years ago

You say "even with higher pricing", but are also saying that higher pricing (due to taxes) would ruin the services?

Uber and Lyft fares are unsustainably low right now, and at their current prices, they depress public transit interest and ridership. But what happens in 5 years when these ride sharing companies need to turn a profit? Self driving cars is potentially a solution, I suppose, but will it be ready at that scale by then?

Not only that, but in the meantime, they may be causing more environmental harm than good: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/04/how-uber-and-...

thegayngler3• 7 years ago

I think the popularity of Uber and Lyft is a direct result of the lack of adequate city transit solutions. If big city transit was robust and at least at the level of NYC or more people would likely opt for it and the big cities could plan their real estate around it better.

tareqak2• 7 years 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!

conanbatt2• 7 years 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?

tareqak2• 7 years 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.

dragonwriter7• 7 years 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• 7 years ago

Implement congestion pricing for all drivers.

l1ambda• 7 years 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.

updateYourMind2• 7 years ago

What about public transport?

kbos876• 7 years 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• 7 years ago

You just described Bus Rapid Transit

themoonbus3• 7 years ago

Which LA is thankfully building

mrhappyunhappy3• 7 years ago

State owned rideshare network will be better how exactly? People taking their car or someone else’s makes no difference.

kbos876• 7 years 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.

twblalock5• 7 years ago

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.

Uber and Lyft exist because the state didn't build one of those. In fact the state has built a completely inadequate public transit system in LA. Uber and Lyft are widely used because people in LA don't have an alternative.

kbos876• 7 years ago

Fine, but the concept is out in the world now. The cities should be able to replicate the concept, compete and leverage their strengths the same way any for profit entity could.

nodesocket2• 7 years ago

Private companies innovate and solve problems at rapid pace and huge scale while governments get bogged down and come up with solutions such as high-speed trains that get indefinitely delayed, outrageously expensive, and ultimately cancelled. When those all fail, they just shug and say tax it.

jak92• 7 years ago

Id like to see the start of a state owned rideshare network

You mean a bus.

kbos876• 7 years ago

Buses yes, but the market has asserted that buses serve a pretty different use case vs. door to door car service.

fishtacos• 7 years 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• 7 years ago

LA's plan for everything is a tax.

objektif3• 7 years 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.

paulgb3• 7 years 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?

objektif3• 7 years 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.

gamblor9565• 7 years 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.

integrate-this3• 7 years 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.

wjossey5• 7 years 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.

floatrock2• 7 years ago

and adding additional arteries

Time and time again cities learn this does nothing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

djakjxnanjak2• 7 years ago

Congestion taxes can also shift road use to other times. Imagine many people on the roads are making relatively short trips (eg. a trip that takes 20 mins in traffic instead of 10 mins) that generate a lot of lane changes and contribute to congestion. A congestion tax could encourage them to drive in non-peak times, use the bus, or not make the trip.

gamblor9565• 7 years ago

LA is building a rail parallel to the 405, and the Silver Express (bus) has run down the 110 for more than a decade. LA is also building 2 more rail lines in the SFV. The reason they're not already built is that the SFV opposed these lines 3 decades ago when they were originally proposed and only recently dropped its opposition.

Also, Buses run from downtown to Beverly Hills, and getting from Long Beach to Brentwood can be done entirely by public transportation.

wjossey5• 7 years ago

-- Edit --

Sorry, I see now the above comments are more a refutation than a statement of, "Look how good the transportation system is." I'll leave these though just to make my general point about how horrible the options are.

-- END EDIT --

Just pulled up google maps for Long Beach to Brentwood:

Public Transit Option: 3 hours

Car: 39 minutes (29.9 miles)

Just pulled up Downtown to Beverly Hills

Public Transit Option: 1h30

Car: 30 minutes

_cs2017_2• 7 years ago

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.

Gangsters have cars and don't rely on public transportation. DTLA homeless can and do use the MTA bus that goes literally from downtown to Beverly Hills.

Care to clarify your comment?

integrate-this3• 7 years ago

No, your perception of LA's public transportation is completely out of touch with reality.

Subway and train systems are fundamentally different modes of transit than bus systems. They are more accessible, run on regular schedules, and they are anonymous.

The urban poor in other cities utilize them disproportionately which is why Beverly Hills shuts down every hint of a conversation of adding public transit connection beyond commuter buses.

It's too bad if you're offended by what I said, but LA has more nimby's per capita than anywhere I have lived which is exactly why we do not have a public transportation system.

alkibiades• 7 years ago

if those rails were built, those ghettos would be gentrified so quick.

vallsurf• 7 years ago

I can't tell if this is a humorist take on the issue or not because its so completely off base. If you were really a knowledgeable LA resident you would realize that the Valley actually pays for most of LA's expenses (which is why the vote to make the Valley a separate city decades ago failed), but also more importantly realize that there is a lot more to LA's traffic situation than just the 405 and 110 chokepoints.

The simple fact of the matter is that LA has a serious housing and urban planning crisis with no real solution. The city has already been investing heavily in public transportation for years now with multiple heavy rail lines been under construction (purple and crenshaw) and some already opened (gold) - but the fact of the matter is that until a public transportation system that can replicate the freeway system - meaning a system that can replicate both the breadth and depth of the system (Think a 'good' Euro rail system spread across a 30-60 mile radius) - LA will always be a congested mess - unless a paradigm shift in transportation occurs (hyperloop, Uber Elevate, etc.)

wutbrodo• 7 years ago

I spent a lot of my childhood in Beverly Hills and still have friends in the area: what you're saying has historically been absolutely true, but in the last 5 years, my perception has been that the seemingly all-the-time-and-everywhere traffic has gotten to the point where even people living in the nice parts of West LA are fed up and opening up to a functional transit system.

This is obviously somewhat anecdotal, though; it's possible that for some reason my sample is skewed enough that it's different from the population's views in general.

emiliobumachar3• 7 years 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• 7 years ago

You tax something, you get less of it.

Tyrannosaur• 7 years 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• 7 years ago

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

floatrock2• 7 years 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.

scarejunba2• 7 years 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.

baroffoos2• 7 years 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• 7 years 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.

educationdata• 7 years 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.

xiaodai• 7 years ago

It was congested way before Uber of Lyft.

CorvusCrypto• 7 years 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• 7 years 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.

habosa2• 7 years 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• 7 years 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.

TeMPOraL2• 7 years 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.

habosa2• 7 years ago

I think more often they just don't get the tickets. I've had Uber and Lyft drivers complain to me about tickets they got and it seems like they were paying out of pocket for them and it was a very huge and noticeable expense.

Pretty sure one $200 ticket can wipe out 2-4 days of hard driving profits.

markbnj• 7 years 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• 7 years 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• 7 years 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• 7 years 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.

blobbers2• 7 years 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.

blobbers2• 7 years 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• 7 years 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.

amanaplanacanal6• 7 years ago

But is it really cannibalizing public transportation? Or is it cannibalizing private car driving? I assume somebody has studied this.

xenihn• 7 years 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.

liability3• 7 years 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• 7 years 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 ?

liability3• 7 years 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• 7 years 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• 7 years 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• 7 years 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• 7 years 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• 7 years 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• 7 years 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• 7 years 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• 7 years ago

Uber and Lyft are fighting their what they created https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/10/16/uber-lyft-responsible...

Grue3• 7 years 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• 7 years ago

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

StreamBright• 7 years 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• 7 years 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• 7 years 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.

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

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