Lyft is suing San Francisco to prevent competing bikeshares from moving in

https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/7/18657312/lyft-bike-share-lawsuit-san-francisco-dockless-docked-transportation

by pulisse • 7 years ago

28 15 7 years ago

vikramkr• 7 years ago

Regulatory capture is a wonderful thing isn't it? They cry "too much regulation!" when the city goes after them and then "not enough!" when the regulations are in their favor.

supermanfan• 7 years ago

What you're describing is irony.

Regulatory capture is when a company gains control of their regulator through bribery or promise of jobs.

For example, if you look at Wall Street's regulators, the most powerful are former financiers. Which is why any effort to impose fiduciary rules on brokers (ie. salesmen) is doomed. aka "Where are the Customers' Yachts?"

mdorazio• 7 years ago

All you need to know here is right in the first paragraph: "Lyft filed a lawsuit against San Francisco today claiming city authorities are violating a contract it has with the ride-hailing company that gives Lyft exclusive rights to operate bike-share programs in the area. San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency, on the other hand, says it has the authority to sign partnerships with dockless (also called stationless) vendors, and that Lyft’s contract gives it exclusivity only on docked bike shares. Lyft is seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent the city from issuing bikeshare permits to new vendors."

They're disagreeing on specifics of the contract Lyft signed with the city. This is exactly the kind of thing I would expect to be settled out of court with some kind of compromise agreement.

deogeo3• 7 years ago

How is such a contract legal in the first place? Shouldn't a city have to treat all businesses equally as a matter of law?

lancepioch• 7 years ago

Which law are you referring to?

untog2• 7 years ago

In short, no. The city gives public space for Lyft to install these docks. Forcing them to treat every company equally in that regard simply wouldn't work, not to mention that the cost of building the network in the first place requires some guarantees in return. A bike share system needs lots of docks in order to be successful, granting one company a monopoly isn't that crazy in that context.

tanzbaer• 7 years ago

Hilarious. Lyft is behaving like cabbies used to. The cycle continues and disruption is shown to become inevitable.

Apocryphon• 7 years ago

Given their tenuous financial positions, Uber and Lyft seem to be poised for disruption.

dwd• 7 years ago

It's exactly the same except the cabbie licenses/medallions were often shared among multiple independent businesses.

I'd be interested to know what the contract covered and the rules around placement and clearance rules, accessibility, lighting and safety around the docking stations - all things that the "fees" cabbies paid supposedly went towards.

I find non-docking (scooters from experience) to be a public nuisance - left anywhere and creating a tripping hazard especially for vision impaired people. They would be better off with council owning the docks (make them modular so you can expand/contract to match demand in an area) and selling licenses to cover the upkeep.

CaliforniaKarl• 7 years ago

The actual complaint is worth a read: https://www.scribd.com/document/412705747/Lyft-Motivate-v-Th...

For example, I’ve wondered for some time why I’d see Lime Scooters in San Jose, but not bikes. The complaint contains the answer!

Lyft is suing San Francisco to prevent competing bikeshares from moving in

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