Frustrating to see another letter from CPUC trying to slow Uber and Lyft down. How can CPUC deem this a bad thing? Carpooling means less ubers/lyfts on the road so less traffic and pollution. I've used Lyft Line numerous times and really enjoy it.
CPUC isn't deeming it a bad thing, its deeming it an illegal thing. While part of what the CPUC does is adopt regulation, this isn't that kind of action -- this is the CPUC looking at the law adopted by the legislature that it is charged with enforcing, looking at the action going on, and saying "this action does not comply with the law; under the law as it stands, you must apply for a different permit to do this action. Or you can ask the legislature to change the law."
This is not a judgement of good/bad. (You will find such judgement in regulatory actions where, given the law, the CPUC must choose what regulations to adopt to implement the law given the discretion it has within the law.)
If people have a problem with a service and don't get satisfaction, they (or their attorneys) typically call up the CPUC and say 'why are you letting company X get away with this?' which is why companies are supposed to apprise the CPUC of what services they're offering in advance.
I'm not a big fan of CPUC (for example I think they have far too cosy of a relationship with PG&E), but they're not making it up as they go along.
It seems pretty clear to me. CPUC isn't against multiple passengers in the same car. They are against billing those passengers individually, for whatever reason that rule was originally enacted. Perhaps to prevent cabbies from charging pairs of passengers $4 each when a single passenger would be charged $5.
And why is tswartz being downvoted?
Don't know.. maybe because he thinks a law that is 20 years old was somehow written specifically to attack Uber/Lyft?
Presumably, the airport shuttle vans have a different type of permit than the ones Uber et al have. Seems more like a temporary paperwork issue than a genuine showstopper.
Seems legit...
That was not the case. I remember paying a different amount than the person I was sitting next to, because we were travelling different distances.
The rate is the same for everyone in a given "zone" regardless of the specific route the driver must take.
Most likely the law is simple protectionism for unionized bus drivers, to stop private jitneys from putting them out of business. The use case is: you commute every day from point A to B, so you go along El Camino following the bus route, picking up people FROM BUS STOPS to share your ride and charging them what the bus would have charged. This is great news for the bus riders - they don't have to wait for the next bus so they get to their destination quicker - but if it catches on the bus lines ride empty, lose more money, and eventually political support for the bus route goes away.
> Perhaps to prevent cabbies from charging pairs of passengers $4 each when a single passenger would be charged $5.
Nah, that's not it. Normal cabbies (that use a taxi meter) have no flexibility over rates - the whole point of the meter is to make sure they're paying the right amount of taxes and kickbacks; accepting any extra regular fare (other than tips) would be illegal.
Car pooling/sharing is supposed to be sharing, i.e. split the cost. If you charge every pessenger individually you're trying to make a profit, not sharing or pooling.
Since the government considers the existing public transport infrastructure worthwhile to keep (buses, taxis), it doesn't want non-dependable competition to undercut it. Non-dependable meaning that these services aren't guaranteed to have a schedule, or to even transport you, like a bus will.
Do we know that? In this case it seems that they just didn't bother to apply. Unfortunately, that seems to be the normal way these ridesharing companies operate: ignore the law knowing that when they're called on it the media will spin it as "Evil Government Bureaucrat Does Job"
As others have pointed out, running the service inside of the regulation would probably require some changes on their part. In particular, I bet they won't be allowed to directly bill based on time or distance driven: if I'm on a bus that gets delayed in bad traffic or forced on a long detour I won't be asked for more money, but in a cab I would be. They should be able to still bill for distance-by-shortest-route though which should work well since it should be highly correlated, especially if they charge more during rush hour when travel is expected to be slower and thus costlier.
Before jitneys were generally outlawed in the US a popular billing method was based on zones. You take a map of the city, chop it into regions and there's a flat charge for travel anywhere within one zone, a different charge to travel between two or more zones. The zone map and payment schedule can then be printed on a business card the driver hands passengers or painted on the side of the vehicle. This is a LOT cheaper and simpler and more predictable than a taxi meter and removes any incentive to take a longer or slower route, but regulators tend to hate it because without metering it's too easy for the cab driver to take payment in cash and avoid paying any taxes on the income.