New York City Council Votes To Cap Uber, Lyft And Other E-hail Taxi Apps

Source: Daily News, Jillian Jorgensen
Photo: Taxi drivers celebrate passage of a bill to temporarily limit the number of for hire cars for a year in New York City Wednesday, August 8, 2018 in Manhattan, New York. (Barry Williams for New York Daily News)

The City Council voted Wednesday to stop issuing new licenses for most for-hire vehicles for a year in an effort to regulate e-hail apps like Uber, Lyft and Via, whose rapid growth has thrown the city’s taxi industry into chaos.

“This is about supporting and uplifting drivers, making sure they are paid enough to support their families,” Council Speaker Corey Johnson said. “Our goal has always been to protect drivers, bring fairness to the industry and do our best to reduce congestion — or at least not add to it.”

The bill cruised to victory with a vote of 39 in favor and 6 against, three years after a similar push led by Mayor de Blasio aimed at curbing congestion failed.

This time, the effort was bolstered by the vocal support of yellow and livery drivers who have seen the value of their taxi medallions, at one time worth more than $1 million, plummet in the face of competition from the apps. Six struggling drivers have committed suicide this year. One of them, Douglas Schifter, 61, killed himself with a shot gun while sitting in his sedan outside the gates of City Hall. His brother George Schifter, was among those who attended Wednesday’s vote.

“There was a time in New York City when you could, as a recent immigrant … drive a cab and be able to make into the middle class, provide a better future for your family and your children,” Councilman Stephen Levin (D-Brooklyn), the prime sponsor of the license legislation, said during a committee vote on it. “What we’ve seen over the last few years is that foothold of the American dream slip away for thousands of drivers.”

The bill was part of a larger legislative package that also includes a bill requiring a minimum pay standard for drivers working for the largest e-hail apps.

Levin’s legislation puts a yearlong pause on new for-hires while the Taxi & Limousine Commission studies the impact of the vehicles on the city’s streets, whether their total number should ultimately be capped, and whether to regulate how often the cars are allowed to drive without passengers — a practice that helps reduce wait times compared to dispatching from a base, but which increases congestion.

There are two carve-outs in the bill. New licenses can be issued for wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which are in short supply in the city. And the TLC will be able to issue new licenses if it determines parts of the city — like those outerborough areas poorly served by yellow cabs — are in need of more for-hire vehicles and that adding them won’t “substantially contribute” to traffic.

It was neighborhoods like those that Uber, Lyft and other apps made the focus of its opposition to the legislation — arguing that drivers who left the platform wouldn’t be replaced, reducing the number of rides available and prompting drivers to flood the most profitable area: midtown Manhattan.

That, the companies had argued, would only worsen traffic in the most gridlocked part of the city, while meaning fewer vehicles available to pick up riders in parts of outerboroughs poorly served by mass transit or yellow cabs.

“The city’s 12-month pause on new vehicle licenses will threaten one of the few reliable transportation options while doing nothing to fix the subways or ease congestion,” Uber spokeswoman Danielle Filson said in a statement.

The company said it would take City Council Speaker Johnson at his word that the effort isn’t “intended to reduce service” and asked him to hold the TLC accountable.

“In the meantime, Uber will do whatever it takes to keep up with growing demand and we will not stop working with city and state leaders, including Speaker Johnson, to pass real solutions like comprehensive congestion pricing,” Filson continued.

Having lost its effort to stop the bill, the company Wednesday pointed to the possibility of additional licenses in areas that need them as one way it would seek to maintain service levels, and said it would explore means to ensure that drivers who weren’t using their licenses could give them to other drivers, to prevent attrition.

But for some members, assurances that the TLC could revisit the issue if their neighborhoods saw reduced service wasn’t enough of a guarantee. In the weeks before the vote — and after its passage — civil rights groups and the e-hail apps pointed to the history of discrimination by yellow cabs against people of color, which is largely removed by e-hail apps that don’t show a driver the passenger’s race or destination.

“These sweeping cuts to transportation will bring New Yorkers back to an era of struggling to get a ride, particularly for communities of color and in the outer boroughs,” Lyft vice president for public policy Joseph Okpaku said.

Councilwoman Inez Barron (D-Brooklyn) pointed to the absence of yellow cabs in her East New York district.

“I think that my community will be hindered, suffer and not have the services that they need,” she said

Several white members of the council who voted in favor of the cap acknowledged they could not know what it was like to raise their hand for a cab and see empty ones drive by due to their race.

Councilman Jumaane Williams (D-Brooklyn) said he’d had that experience — and got a driver suspended for it — but voted for the cap anyway in an effort to regulate the industry. The Council will also take up legislation aimed at requiring yellow cab drivers to be trained on how to be inclusive.

Other members objecting to the cap noted they represented portions of outerboroughs that were starved for transit, and said they were loathe to put limits on companies that had increased ways for their constituents to get around.

Councilman Eric Ulrich (R-Queens) blasted the proposal to save a yellow cab industry that was “nostalgic” but, as he put it, “in decline” due to technological changes.

“That would be the equivalent of the City Council saying we’re going to put a cap on Netflix subscriptions because we’re worried about Blockbusters closing,” Ulrich said. “Technology changes. Society changes. The economy changes. This is a free market and we have to be able to move with the market.”

The vote came as the same time the Council passed a re-zoning of Inwood — which was met with noisy protests that eventually led the Council to clear the balcony. That meant some people who were simply there to watch the taxi vote — including relatives of drivers who had died — were removed.

The Council also voted Wednesday to require the TLC to set a minimum pay level for drivers of the largest e-hail companies, like Uber and Lyft — whose drivers work as independent contractors. Uber has noted that won’t apply to black car livery drivers who work for other base dispatchers — and who may be more tempted to work for the app-dispatched companies that will be required to have a pay floor.

The bill’s sponsor, Councilman Brad Lander (D-Brooklyn) said the bill also includes a study on expanding that minimum pay floor to other livery drivers.

“I think our goal is to make it so that all drivers across all sectors of the TLC make a living wage,” Lander said.

Joseph Heller, 27, who commutes from Scarsdale to Manhattan for his sales job, said the e-hail apps are a big help when he’s working late — but he saw upsides to a cap, too.

“I think one aspect is that it could lead to less traffic in the city,” he said. “I’m definitely sympathetic to cab drivers who have invested a lot of time and money into their medallions.”

But Milton Diaz, 33, of Sunset Park, a full-time Uber driver whose been working for the company for two years, said he had been hoping the cap would fail. A former yellow cabbie, he said he didn’t want to return to “square one” — and that Uber had been the “best thing” that had happened to the industry.

“I was sick of people being robbed and of people who didn’t want to pay,” he said.

But MD Sarker, 42, of Queens, who has driven a cab for six years, said the legislation would help him — and others.

“It’ll be a good thing for me. Because there’s too many uber and only traffic and not make money. It’s not bad only for taxi drivers but for everybody. Having too many doesn’t work,” he said.

But passenger Melissa Ramirez, 24, of Queens, a childcare worker, said Uber has been more convenient — and allows you to determine the price before you ride, and prevents drivers from declining to pick you up based on your destination.

“I think there’s another way that you can help cabs without cutting out the whole business,” she said.

Emily Chan, 21, said she had mixed feelings about the council vote.

“I feel like in our generation—especially younger people, and a lot of working people—they use Uber and Lyft and ride-sharing technologies a lot more than hailing a cab,” said Chan, a Briarwood resident, and St. John’s student who works as a hostess at Manhattan’s Public Hotel.

“But at the same time, it’s a New York thing to have taxis, and in a way, you are taking a way from peoples’ livelihoods and their source of income.”

With Khadija Hussain, Emilie Rusco, Irene Spezzamonte, Esther Shittu and Mikey Light

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-pol-council-uber-cap