Two Views on Taxi Regulations

Taxi regulations are big news these days. In many ways it seems that one of the challenges facing taxi regulators and the public is that it is not clear what taxi regulations are supposed to accomplish. Here are two op-ed pieces, one from taxi industry insiders in the Twin Cities, and one from a graduate student in public policy in Vancouver.

The Twin Cities piece is about entry into the market for Uber and Lyft, while the Vancouver piece is about liberalizing entry into the market. Effectively these op-eds are about the rules that regulate entry and who should be allowed to operate. They are also about maintaining license holder value. Both sides argue they are in the right, but they both cannot be. It is also possible that both sides are wrong. Resolving these regulatory issues is much harder than most people seem to believe.

Today's Taxi News: July 12, 2012

The New York Daily News picked up on some new research by Matt Daus, Jon Peters and me where we looked at NYC yellow cabs taking fares in New Jersey. Here is the story. From the article:

Yellow cab drivers make hundreds of thousands of pickups and dropoffs in the Garden State each year — even though though their services are needed in the five boroughs — an analysis of GPS data revealed.
The numbers crunching by a team of experts found that yellow cabs annually make more than 360,000 trips that start in New Jersey. And nearly 160,000 trips begin and end in Hudson County alone, the researchers told the Daily News.
“New York City taxis are doing a better job serving the needs of Hudson County than Staten Island, or southeast Brooklyn or eastern Queens,” said Jonathan Peters, a finance professor at the College of Staten Island.
Peters, former city Taxi and Limousine Commission Chairman Matthew Daus and David King, an assistant professor at Columbia University, analyzed GPS data for 3 million randomly selected taxi trips. They used it to figure out how much business hacks were doing on the other side of the Hudson in one’s year time.

James Fallows rounds up the reporting on Uber's successful regulatory challenge in Washington, D.C. at this link.

The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission voted to raise taxi fares by 17 percent starting in September. This should be good for drivers. Not only will they get higher wages and tips, but six cents from each taxi ride will go into a healthcare fund for drivers. Hopefully we can estimate the elasticity of demand for certain types of rides from this natural experiment.

In Vancouver, TransLink announced that it will maintain a taxi voucher program for disabled people. From the story:

Admitting that TransLink failed to fully understand how disabled people use its services, the agency’s board chair announced Wednesday it is reversing a decision to eliminate a program that provided taxi discount coupons for them.
“I regret any angst we have caused for people. That was never the intent,” said Nancy Olewiler. The board chair formally announced the TaxiSaver program would continue for people who can’t use the region’s regular transit system or its specialized HandyDart buses for all rides.
“But even some of the folks employed in the program didn’t understand all the ways it was used.”

I will add that we know very little about how users use taxis and other for-hire services. Taxis are a great opportunity to improve access and mobility for many who now rely on paratransit services, many of which are poor quality (due to scheduling problems) and most of which are unnecessarily expensive.

CNN reports on the Parisian taxi market and the potential to expand the fleet to create jobs:

Back in 1937, Paris capped the number of taxi permits at 14,000. Now, 75 years later, a bigger and vastly richer Paris receives some 27 million tourist visits per year -- and the number of cabs has edged up less than 14%, to 15,900. Result: In wind and rain and baking sun, Parisians must stand in long lines at taxi stands for cabs that never come.

In 2007, the new government of Nicolas Sarkozy proposed to supplement the existing fleet. It would license 6,500 new cars in Paris, 23,500 in the rest of France. The proposal triggered a strike that shut down the city for a day -- and frightened Sarkozy into surrender.
Five years later, it's as difficult to find a cab in Paris as ever. (Paris has about 2,000 more cab licenses than New York, which has a much bigger population, but New York has a vast fleet of cars for hire to supplement medallion cabs -- and except for the luxury market, car services are illegal in Paris.)

On the list of world problems, the difficulties of Paris taxi riders may seem to rank low.
Think again.
Almost 3 million French people are now out of work, the severest unemployment in 12 years. Millions more have quit the workforce altogether, subsisting on disability pensions or other social benefits.
Prolonged mass unemployment in Europe has triggered a global debate about the euro currency, and rightly so. Yet it's also true that every day, people in Europe are denied work by dumb laws that prevent willing customers from hiring them.
Adding 30,000 new taxi licenses in France would mean more than 90,000 daily taxi shifts: In other words, upwards of 90,000 new jobs.

A Brief Review of the MV-1 Taxi, Plus Taxi Links

I had the fortunate opportunity to ride in a new MV-1 taxi on the Upper West Side a few days ago. Short review: it was great. These are vehicles that are fully compliant with the Americans with Disability Act. It is unfortunate that the first new Taxis of Tomorrow will not be fully ADA compliant, but hopefully that will change soon. In the meantime the MV-1s can still be brought into taxi service with conventional New York City medallions. There is a tremendous opportunity to improve accessible transit services by using conventional taxis in lieu of Access-a-Ride services, which cost about $66 per trip(see this IBO report from 2002, the costs have increase substantially over the past 10 years.). Here the Daily News is supportive of such a program.

So the MV-1 is ADA compliant, roomy and comfortable, and easy to get in and out of. If the engines are CNG, it is even relatively clean (the one I rode in was CNG). Hopefully more will hit the streets soon. Here is a Crain's story about the MV-1.

Links:
Meet Ron Sherman, a guy who owns 200 NYC taxi medallions and really hates the outer borough taxi plan.

New York City was counting on the $1 billion from the sale of 2,000 new taxi medallions. The city budget is now in trouble.

DNAinfo covers the commuter van service in the Bronx that is designed to shuttle passengers who previously rode the now discontinued Bx34 bus. Supporters of the van service hope to show that the bus route should be reinstated, but it is plausible that they will show that ridership is low enough that van service is adequate. Time will tell, but this is a nice example of creative thinking for transit service.

Here is an interesting story about a new technology that can more accurately count passengers in taxis.


In this story the LA Times reports on how much a typical taxi ride from an airport to the center of cities around the world. Highlights:

Ever wonder what the typical cost of an airport taxi ride is for major cities around the world?
The Associated Press sent reporters out with a tourist's itinerary on a weekday in June in five cities around the world to compare various costs.
Here's what they found in regard to taxi rides from major airports into cities:
Tokyo, $82.40; 20 minutes from Haneda Airport, which is being used by a growing number of international tourists. Fare from Narita International Airport runs $300.
Paris, $73.50; one hour.
New York: $58; one hour, 15 minutes, including waiting in line to get the cab.
Buenos Aires, $33.40; one hour 15 minutes.
Dubai, $13.60; 10 minutes.

This Week in Taxi News

It's been a big week for taxi news. Here are some links from around the world:

Alan Fels, who has been leading the Taxi Industry Inquiry project in Victoria, Australia, released the draft report for comment. This is about a systematic a study of the taxi industry completed in decades. Hopefully this type of work will be repeated in other cities and cities can learn from each other about how to better serve users with taxi services.

Two writers in Slate have a nice piece about the economic perversity of New York's medallion system.

GetTaxi, an Israeli company, just received $20 million in venture capital money to build an app to help book taxis. (h/t DL)This is a crowded field. From the story:

It’s also worth noting that GetTaxi could be attempting to blindside Hailo by getting a foothold in The City That Never Sleeps. New York was the obvious contender for Hailo’s first foray into North America, but it seems that regulations are rather tight there which is why it’s opting to start off its North American operations in Chicago first. Though Hailo co-founder Jay Bregman tells us that he has now fully re-located to NYC to manage its rollout there, and it has a team working towards a full launch there some time in the autumn.

This is in addition to our teams in Chicago, Toronto, Boston, and Dublin, which are all now fully staffed and barreling toward full launches before the end of the year.

Of course the biggest news was that NYC's outer borough taxi plan was blocked by the courts. This is a major development and we don't know what exactly this means for the future of the program. For those in NYC and interested, on June 26 the University Transportation Research Center (UTRC) is sponsoring a seminar "Taxi and Livery: Issues of Today and Tomorrow" at Baruch. Flyer here, and it will be webcast for those who can't attend.

Assorted Taxi Links from Around the World

A federal appeals court ruled in favor of New York's taxi expansion plan:

A federal appeals court gave the city on Thursday a green light to roll ahead with its taxi reform plan, despite objections from advocates for the disabled.

The advocates were upset 2,000 new taxi medallions are about to be given out to a fleet that is not in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and they wanted the Taxi and Limousine Commission to produce a detailed plan on how to remedy the problem.

On Wednesday, the federal appeals court froze the order after the TLC argued it would have prevented the city from implementing a key part of the reform plan.

The city maintains a large part of that fleet would have been wheelchair-accessible.

 Nissan is using the Taxi of Tomorrow as an entry into taxi markets worldwide. The company is about to launch an ad campaign about this. Here is one understated response:

“This is the greatest moment for taxis since Danny DeVito played Louie De Palma on ‘Taxi,’ ” said Rob Schwartz, chief creative officer at TBWA/Chiat/Day Los Angeles, which is the Playa del Rey, Calif., office of the TBWA/Chiat/Day unit of TBWA Worldwide, a division of the Omnicom Group. 

Reports from the public hearing about the NYC taxi rule changes:

Several livery base owner groups and individual bases said they were concerned that the rules as written would penalize livery bases with fines or a point system when drivers with these new permits break the law.

“The base would be held responsible for an action the base cannot control or be privy to or have no ability to stop in the future,” said Tarek Mallah, general manager of Dial-7 Car Service.

Richard Emery, with the trade association the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, was among the yellow taxi industry stakeholders who said there is already a problem of illegal poaching within the industry.

“Now the law and these rules seek to add up to 18,000 livery hail licenses that will compound, not alleviate the poaching scourge,” he said.

(I think poaching is a plausible problem, but I don't think this program will make it worse, and will likely improve service all around.)

On to Uganda, where there is disagreement about whether buses or jitneys should be used (this is an interview with a Mukono MP):

I'm not opposed to bus services in the country and, particularly, in the capital city. I think that's the way to go. But what we're demanding is transparency in awarding the concession agreement and in its making, and sharing of revenue and management of buses' operations among the local governments that make up Greater Kampala Metropolitan: Wakiso, Mukono, Mpigi and Kampala.
We are asking for a consideration of the people who have been offering transport services in Kampala -- the matatus (taxis). We can't afford to simply eliminate young men from employment for the sake of introducing a modern transport system.
We're also questioning our [technical] ability to manage such a grand project in terms of infrastructure and are opposed to the statutory instrument that provides for the operations of buses in Kampala.
First of all, this instrument was made by the former minister of [Works and] Transport, John Nasasira, deriving powers from the Traffic and Road Safety Act. It provides for many things that have to be provided before buses begin operations. It also says that once buses start operating in the Greater Kampala Metropolitan area, taxis and other public transport vehicles shall be phased out.
There are also several other issues. For example, PEB is being given monopoly without an alternative means of transport. This means that if we have a demonstration in Kampala, [PEB] can refuse to take people out of Kampala and to bring them back. A legislator has to look out for any clause likely to be abused.
There is also a clause that says that if you have taken alcohol or, if in the opinion of a driver or operating officer you're tipsy, you're not supposed to be taken on the bus.
But our laws provide that when you drink, you must not drive; you should be driven!

And the rest of the way around the world, details of the world's longest taxi ride:

When three Englishmen wondered how high a taxi fare could go while stumbling home after a few pints, they later decided to buy a cab and find out for themselves.

Fast forward four years to Monday, when the trio found themselves driving a London black cab through New York City's Times Square just as the meter hit $100,000.

Starting out in London, Paul Archer, Leigh Purnell and Johno Ellison, have traveled 32,000 miles across the world over the past 13 months in a 20-year-old classic cab named "Hannah," the Wall Street Journal reports.

Visualizing NYC Taxi Activity

New York City Taxi Activity from Juan Francisco Saldarriaga on Vimeo.


Above is an animation of yellow cab origins and destinations in New York City by time of day. This is drawn from some current research of mine where I am exploring the ways that taxi services complement conventional fixed route transit. In the video there are a couple of things to notice. First, and I argue most important from a planning perspective, is that taxi origins and destinations are geographically asymmetrical. This matters because it means that individual's travel journeys are multi-modal. If we want to have transit oriented cities we have to plan for high quality, door-to-door services that allow spontaneous one-way travel. Yet for all of the billions of dollars we have spent of fixed-route transit and the built environment we haven't spent any time thinking about how taxis (and related services) can help us reach our goals.

The second thing to look for changes by time of day. In the AM rush lots of Upper East Side travelers head to Midtown. (Origins and red and destinations are blue). By midday Midtown is largely in balance with origins and destinations. In the evening, there are many Manhattan to Queens and Brooklyn trips.

Here is the abstract of my current paper (with Jon Peters and Matt Daus):

ABSTRACT

            Taxi services are critical aspects of urban transportation systems. Taxicabs serve the public in a variety of ways, from metered fares to informal jitneys, and provide critical mobility for people of all income levels. Despite the ubiquity of taxi service in cities, there is limited scholarly research that explores how people use taxi service to support transit-oriented lifestyles and enhance mobility, and there is scant research exploring the complementary aspects of taxi service for conventional transit.  In this paper we argue that taxi service is a critical aspect of a transit system, and taxi usage exhibits complementary characteristics to conventional transit. Specifically, taxi usage is asymmetrical where origins and destinations have very different spatial distributions. This suggests that taxi riders have multi-modal travel journeys. In many cases taxi trips are part of journeys that began with transit trips, yet planning and expanding taxi service as an extension of transit networks is rarely undertaken in practice.  We use regulatory and Global Positioning System (GPS) data from  New York City as a case to demonstrate the asymmetrical nature of taxi usage and innovative regulatory approaches that foster high rates of taxi usage that complement transit ridership.