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Last-minute California ruling means Uber and Lyft won't shut down today:
A California judge has granted Uber and Lyft an emergency reprieve from an order requiring them to treat their drivers as employees. The companies were facing a Thursday deadline to comply with the order. Earlier today, Lyft announced that it would be forced to shut down in the state at midnight tonight.
[...] Uber had warned that it was likely to do the same if the courts didn't delay enforcement of the law.
[...] The judge's emergency stay means that Lyft and Uber will be able to keep operating under their current model while they continue litigating whether the new law applies to them.
Previously:
California Judge Rules Uber and Lyft to Immediately Classify Drivers as Employees
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 21 2020, @12:44PM (16 children)
Public transportation in LA has always felt anemic. Every time I go there for business I have to rent a car because there's no other way to get around. Uber and Lyft have provided a useful alternative to that. If they stop operating in California San Francisco and the Bay Area might limp along on their better public transit, but LA would not fare well.
It also seems like an immediate consequence of this law will be to throw tens of thousands more people out of work in already tough economic times.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by helel on Friday August 21 2020, @02:50PM (1 child)
There seem to be a few cab companies still hanging on despite competition from Uber and Lyft in the LA area. If the demand for personal transport is unaffected by the departure of Uber and Lyft then these cab companies would even need to hire more drivers to fulfill demand, thus boosting employment and easing tough economic times.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2020, @06:26PM
but the number of medallions granted is limited and those cab companies need medallions to operate. So there is a limit to the number of drivers they can hire.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday August 21 2020, @03:31PM (6 children)
It is. And it's not just LA, lots of other quite large American cities have lousy public transportation. To pick a random but in my experience typical example here: Phoenix AZ has 5.8 million people. Its public transit system consists of a single 20-mile light rail route that runs every 15 minutes most of the time but not late at night, and about 100 bus routes that run every half-hour or hour and are pretty much by definition slower than driving. Also, if you look at the Phoenix public transit map [valleymetro.org], you'll notice significant areas of the city with absolutely no public transit services.
And when you listen to public debates about public transit systems in the US, you'll find out exactly why, and it's not mainly because of funding. A major reason public transit sucks in America is racism: If a local government proposes adding a bus route or heaven forbid a rail or subway route into a relatively wealthy and white area of town, you'll regularly bring out the NIMBY types who are afraid that having good public transit will turn their suburb into the ghetto. White suburban folks will gladly buy cars and sit in traffic for hours and take on the risk of getting into a wreck each day they go into work just to avoid the thought of sitting on a bus or train with a scary black or Hispanic dude.
The same dynamic comes into play when you talk about larger-scale projects. For instance, Amtrak has at various times proposed high-speed routes up and down California, because they get lots of business for their California routes, there's a ton of traffic between the major urban centers like San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and there's urban centers close enough together that it would make a lot of sense. However, to build those routes they would need the approval of local governments in places like Orange County that flat-out refuse high-speed rail because of fears that it might bring "those people" into their communities. And so the LA-SD trip that should take around 1.25 hours by high-speed rail actually takes about 2 hours by car, 2.5 hours by rail, at 3 hours by bus.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday August 21 2020, @04:12PM (4 children)
> public transportation
We don't want your socialist transportation, thank you very much.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday August 21 2020, @05:05PM (3 children)
If you think it sucks so much, you don't have to use it. And you don't even necessarily have to pay for it: For instance, Amtrak is likely to report a profit this year, and thus have extra money to put into improving its services by, for instance, investing in high-speed routes, which means that it's their passengers paying for those improvements.
But I for one think it's stupid to say "No, I don't want more convenience, faster travel time, lower costs, and safer trips, because that might be socialist."
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday August 21 2020, @05:58PM (2 children)
I was joking - it probably didn't come across.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday August 21 2020, @06:54PM (1 child)
You're quite right that it didn't come across - I've met too many people who actually think that way.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday August 21 2020, @06:59PM
Sorry, I guess I was being British
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 22 2020, @12:11AM
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday August 21 2020, @03:40PM (6 children)
Because there's no alternative possible except Uber/Lyft or public transport?
I wonder how California managed to get along before Uber/Lyft?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2020, @06:06PM
Rail car (think Trolly) service showing up between the late 1800s and the 1940s or so. It got quashed by the automotive companies buying them up and shutting them down in order to increase demand for cars. There are still portions of abandoned lines between Sacramento and Elk Grove related to this, and supposedly the line would have extended to Stockton otherwise.
For now we have Amtrak and freight rail, but in an alternate future we could have had ubiquitous rail lines running all over the state. Unfortunately once a certain level of sprawl set in and eminent domain got (rightfully!) frowned upon here, the chances of new rail lines more or less dried up. Unfortunately that eminent domain issue i mentioned still comes up when the moneyed and politically motivated push for it, and usually results in the ED'd land being sold for a pittance a few years/decades later after the government sat on it and depreciated its sell value, while the actual land prices were increasing (you can find examples all over the state.)
For all certain individiuals talk about how 'liberal' California is, there is a lot of nasty front and back room dealing here around real estate and other unfavorable business ventures and tax breaks. Go look into how many citiies are willing to cut deals giving companies industrial quantities of water at residential rates while telling their people they are in a drought, and at the same time giving companies 10 year no tax deals only to have them leave at the beginning of that 11th year where they are supposed to start recouping taxes. Lots of obvious corruption and stupidity out here that shows the pro-business crowd is bipartisan, whatever crap they sell you on the face of it.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday August 21 2020, @07:04PM (1 child)
They have some rail (nowhere near the standards of most developed countries, but it at least exists), buses, private limo buses, cabs, car services, and of course rental cars and privately owned vehicles. Those all continue to exist without Uber or Lyft.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday August 21 2020, @07:15PM
In spite of the world's idea about Australian and East European countries, one actually get exposed to "rail..., buses, private limo buses, cabs, car services, and of course rental cars and privately owned vehicles" while living there.
(hint: those were rhetorical questions. Shoulda shouted "false dichotomy" instead of asking them)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday August 22 2020, @12:34AM
My understanding is that besides out-competing regular taxis, Uber and Lyft were quite heavily used by Millennials who eschewed car ownership.
Of course the Bay Area has BART, CalTrain, Muni, cable cars, buses, and some ferries that connect Oakland and SF to Marin County. When I lived there twenty years ago it was feasible to get around without a car, but Soylentils who live there can better chime in on how it is now.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday August 22 2020, @08:03AM (1 child)
That's a fallacious argument. How did humans manage to get along before agriculture?
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday August 22 2020, @09:53AM
Because Uber/Lyft is as revolutionary in transport as agriculture was at its time, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford