Johnson calls for ‘cap’ on app-hail cars, study
UBER continued from p. 1
my heart I believe it’s the best path forward,”
Johnson said by e-mail. “Our
goal has always been to protect drivers,
bring fairness to the industry and
reduce congestion.”
In addition to the halt on issuing new
licenses for any non-wheelchair-accessible
for-hire vehicles, other bills would
create a new license for high-volume
transportation services with more than
10,000 trips a day, waive the license
fee for wheelchair-accessible services,
lower fi nes on livery cabs picking up in
street-hail exclusionary zones and set a
minimum payment for drivers.
Uber — which supports the bulk
of the proposals, though strongly opposes
the license freeze — started an
ad campaign on Twitter, TV and radio
against the Council’s legislation. Early
this week, it launched a so-called “App
takeover,” which the Daily News fi rst
reported, calling on its app’s users to
“Tell the City Council not to restrict
your access to reliable transportation.”
The company launched a hashtag campaign
under #DontStrandNYC.
Like Uber, Lyft vehemently opposes
what both companies call a “cap” on licenses.
The legislation, as it stands, is a
one-year freeze on new licenses besides
wheelchair-accessible licenses.
Adrian Durbin, Lyft’s policy communications
director, slammed the proposal
to cap licenses as regressive.
“It would take New York back to an
era where you would have to stand on a
corner and hope to get a ride,” he said.
“It would be particularly problematic in
the outer boroughs, and for people of
color who historically have had a diffi
cult time getting rides in traditional
taxis.”
Civil-rights groups rallied behind
Uber and Lyft, The New York Times
reported, saying that people of color
have long faced diffi culties hailing yellow
cabs. Plus, in the outer boroughs,
there are fewer yellow cabs, not enough
of the new green cabs, and often inadequate
public transit — gaps that companies
such as Uber, Lyft and Via have
fi lled.
Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio and
the Council launched the Offi ce of
Inclusion within the T.L.C. to combat
service refusal during the ongoing feud
between the apps and the city.
Another bill in the Council’s package
of Uber regulations would create a new
type of T.L.C. license for companies
like Uber and Lyft. As currently construed,
the legislation would require
companies to submit a business plan,
conduct an environmental assessment
and provide data to the T.L.C.
“One of the alarming things about
that proposal is that it would require us
to quote, unquote ‘justify the service we
provide’ on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood
or zip code-by-zip code basis,”
Durbin said.
Jennifer got into an app-hail car outside the Soho Grand Hotel Wednesday
morning. The driver declined to answer when a photographer
asked which company he worked for. More people were taking yellow
cabs than app-hail rides at this location by a ratio of about 3 to 1.
Though the license-freeze legislation
doesn’t directly remove services,
Durbin added that the high turnover
rate of drivers will, in fact, cause a decrease
in services, especially in the outer
boroughs, since the company won’t
be able to readily add new licenses during
the freeze. Driver job opportunities
at Lyft would also shrink during the
year-long freeze, he added.
“We aren’t taking away any service
that is currently being offered,” Johnson
argued. “We are pausing the issuing
of new licenses in an industry that has
been allowed to proliferate without any
appropriate check. And if anyone wants
to put a new wheelchair-accessible vehicle
on the road, they can do that. In
fact, we encourage them to do that.”
Councilmember Margaret Chin, who
is co-sponsoring the bills that would
freeze new app-hail licenses and increase
driver wages, said she believes
the measures would address congestion
issues in Manhattan.
“The time for us to take action to address
congestion — while giving drivers
from all sectors an opportunity to
make a living — is long overdue,” Chin
said by e-mail. “With roughly 2,000
new for-hire vehicles being added to
the road every single month, more and
more Lower Manhattan residents are
forced to suffer from the traffi c-safety
and quality-of-life issues that stem from
worsening congestion on our overburdened
streets.
“By putting a temporary cap to the
number of new for-hire vehicle licenses,”
she said, “we as a city can push
the pause button to better understand
how these vehicles are utilized, level
the playing fi eld for drivers, and ensure
that our streets are safe for children and
seniors — all while continuing to give
riders from all fi ve boroughs the option
to use their transportation method of
PHOTOS BY TEQUILA MINSKY
choice.”
Councilmember Carlina Rivera, who
co-sponsors four of the bills, said she
supports congestion pricing, but that
a temporary cap on for-hire vehicles is
necessary to determine a more permanent
solution to address Manhattan’s
congestion.
“Since I entered offi ce in January,
increased traffi c on our streets has
been one of the biggest concerns that
constituents in my district have let me
know about,” Rivera said by e-mail.
The added for-hire vehicles, she added,
“are driving or idling on district side
streets day and night, often without
passengers, and they are keeping critical
bus lines, like the M15 or M9, at a
crawl while increasing environmental
pollution as well.”
In 2015, the city tried to regulate
the industry, to no avail. But in recent
months, six suicides by taxi drivers —
including one in front of City Hall —
have added to the urgency.
A Council spokesperson said that
the city cannot forget those six deaths,
which he attributed to shifts in the taxi
industry and the rapid growth of apphail
companies.
But Wednesday, Politico broke the
news of a private conference call where
Uber, Lyft and Via offered Johnson a
deal: The companies would underwrite
$100 million for a “hardship fund” for
yellow cab drivers who have fi nancially
suffered from the decreased value of
their medallions, so long as Johnson
scraps the yearlong freeze from the
package of bills.
Johnson declined the deal, according
to Politico.
“We feel that the hardship-fund concept
would actually directly address
one of the key problems that policymakers
seem to be trying to solve here,”
Lyft spokesperson Durbin said, “which
is providing relief for those individual
medallion owners.”
Jennifer Fermino, the Council’s communications
director, said Lyft and
other companies can establish a fund
without Council authority.
“We don’t negotiate in public, but we
can say that we are confi dent the bills
that will be voted on will help drivers,
reduce congestion and bring fairness to
the industry,” Fermino said in a statement.
“Lyft and other high-volume forhire
vehicle companies are welcome to
establish such a fund with a nonprofi t
and assist drivers who are experiencing
serious fi nancial diffi culties. They don’t
need any Council authority to do that.”
Uber spokesperson Danielle Filson
and Lyft’s Durbin called for congestion
pricing as a true solution to traffi c
problems that have been exacerbated
by the for-hire cab industry. Filson said
the Council should pass a resolution
in support of congestion pricing that
would fund the city’s subways.
“We must work together on real solutions
New Yorkers agree will fi x the
city’s subway crisis without stranding
outer-borough riders,” she said in a
statement.
Nick Sifuentes, executive director of
the Tri-State Transportation Campaign,
echoed the call for congestion pricing,
saying the legislation doesn’t address
the root causes of the city’s traffi c problem.
Sifuentes said legislation to reduce
“deadheading” — when drivers are
driving around without any passengers
— would be an example of a better
regulatory approach than temporarily
capping licenses.
“So we freeze licenses for a year
and then what?” Sifuentes said. “Freezing
the status quo isn’t going to work
for anybody. The question then becomes,
‘So what?’
“If we artifi cially suppress the number
of vehicles available or create
structures that incentivize going for
the wealthy areas and not the outerborough
areas, we’re going to have an
equity problem,” Sifuentes said.
He added that his organization is
supportive of raising pay standards for
drivers and waiving license fees for fully
accessible vehicles.
“At the end of the day, we’ve had congestion
problems in Manhattan long
before Uber and Lyft ever existed,” he
said. “Have they exacerbated the problem?
Yes.”
But reducing the number of Ubers,
Lyfts, Vias and the rest on the streets,
he added, is “taking options away from
people instead of doing the thing we
should be doing, which is saying to people,
‘Fine you can drive in Manhattan
below 60th St. if you want to. You’re
just going to pay your fair share to do
that.’ And that will change human behavior,”
he said, “not by taking away an
option, but by fairly charging people for
taking that option.”
22 August 2, 2018 TheVillager.com
/TheVillager.com