Oct. 08--In the local, national and worldwide battle between taxi drivers and Uber, I'm with the cabbies.
The taxi drivers staged a pair of protests Thursday -- a daylong strike by some operators and a cab caravan to six North and Northwest Side aldermanic offices -- designed to call attention to the unlevel playing field on which they must compete with the lightly regulated "ride-sharing" services, of which Uber is the biggest and best-known.
Are they trying to protect their old-fashioned jobs from the challenge of modernity and the merciless advance of technology?
Of course!
That doesn't mean they're wrong.
The emerging ability of customers to use smartphone apps to hail and pay for rides from private citizens driving their personal cars profoundly threatens the conventional taxi industry.
Uber, Lyft, Sidecar and similar services are often cheaper and more quickly available than conventional cabs. They're also thought to be safer because riders and drivers share identifying information about themselves digitally before the ride begins, and all payments are handled within the app.
Innovative. Popular. But profoundly unfair to the men and women who have worked hard and played by the rules that govern traditional taxi service.
For instance, taxi drivers have to study for and obtain a chauffeur's license, which requires drug and background testing. Uber drivers, which I'll use going forward in the generic sense, only have to have ordinary driver's licenses.
Taxi drivers have to buy or lease a city medallion -- a once-expensive permit designed to limit the number of cabs on the street. Uber drivers labor under no such restrictions.
Taxi drivers may charge only fares that are strictly regulated by the city. Uber drivers use a "surge pricing" model in which fares are higher, often dramatically so, when bad weather, major events or other factors increase the demand for their services.
Taxi drivers have to pay more than $1,500 in special annual fees per vehicle. Uber drivers don't.
Taxi drivers can't park their vehicles on residential streets. Uber drivers can.
Additionally, taxi drivers are subjected to stricter insurance, vehicle inspection and vehicle age standards than Uber drivers are.
These sorts of discrepancies have provoked protests and even mini-riots around the world, and for very understandable reasons.
I can't and won't defend all the regulations on conventional taxis.
The medallion requirement, for instance, strikes me as anti-competitive and therefore protectionist. It's regrettable that some drivers and companies have in the past invested up to $300,000 per medallion and that eliminating the requirement would make that investment instantly worthless. But the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents some Chicago cabbies, says that all the competition from ride-sharing companies has already sapped most of the value from the medallions.
The ban on surge pricing for conventional taxis is also anti-competitive and hard to justify. Transparency in pricing -- making sure passengers know the fare before they get in the car -- is far more important than consistency.
Similarly, the special licensing requirement for cabbies seems unnecessary. A good, not necessarily perfect, driving record would suffice.
Yet some of the regulations make sense. Enhanced vehicle safety inspections and robust liability insurance are the sorts of common-sense consumer protections that ought to be in place.
Either way, though, taxi drivers and Uber drivers offer very similar services and ought to be covered by very similar rules.
If Uber drivers gain access to city airports -- where local cabbies now earn a reported 20 percent of their income -- then taxi drivers should be unleashed from the regulations that make it difficult for them to compete with Uber there and on all other fronts.
The protests will end only when the law strikes a fair balance.
So, soon, I hope.
Comments www.chicagotribune.com/zorn
