Committee wants to Bar Uber for Playing God

The Committee for Taxi Safety s calling on the TLC to suspend Uber's TLC licenses because the New York City Uber chiefs have been using the company’s “God’s View” technology to track the movements of one a Buzzfeed reporter.

Uber’s God’s View tool allows Uber to track an individual's use of the service, marking when and where they traveled by an Uber-dispatched car. Reportedly Ubers NYC general manager Josh Mohrer told Buzzfeed reporter Johana Bhuiyan he had been tracking her Uber vehicle as she made her way to his office for an interview. Mohrer also emailed Bhuiyan logs of her Uber rides to answer questions she brought up in the interview. Mohrer did not ask for Bhuiyan’s permission before doing so. This is according to a report in the Guardian.

Now, the Committee for Taxi Safety, a group which represents taxi medallion leasing agents, is calling on the TLC to investigate Uber. In a letter by Tweeps Phillips, its executive director, the committee asked that Uber's license "be suspended until the riding public can be assured that their privacy and data are safe.”

Of course, the TLC has used its own GPS tracking power to track and gather evidence against cabbies for use in civil and criminal prosecutions.

NY AG wants Livery Drivers to be Free

According to BuzzFeed, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is weighing in against a newly-proposed rule that would require livery cab drivers to affiliate with one base and one base only. Schneiderman has written a letter to the TLC saying hat the proposed rules, as written, would unfairly limit competition. “From a competitive standpoint, these advances may lower the costs of entry for new for-hire vehicle services and encourage existing services to compete more effectively for both drivers and passengers.”

The proposed rule would, some fear, give Uber an insurmountable competitive advantage because a driver limited to one base would naturally ally with Uber, the market leader, because it has the most potential passengers using its app.  The TLC would allow multiple affiliations if there was a formal agreement between bases allowing drivers affiliated with one to also affiliate with the the other. 

But Schneiderman says this requirement would still unduly restrict the drivers. “Requiring agreements between competitors raises serious antitrust issues. Ultimately the proposed rule is likely to lead to market consolidation around a small number of the best-capitalized and most well-known services, whether large existing firms or well-financed newcomers. This market concentration will hurt consumers, who can expect fares to increase and service to decline. If this anticompetitive outcome followed from collusion in the industry, it would be illegal. It is no less disturbing as a product of regulatory action,” the letter reads.  

Even Uber has opposed the rule, though it would supposedly benefit from it.  The real losers, if the rule passes, are more likely to be livery drivers who may want to ally themselves with a neighborhood base and also sign on with Uber, Lyft or some other app-bases service to gain business when a business is slow at a local base.

The TLC likes the proposal because it would make the industry easier to regulate.

Uber has also said it does not like the rule because it comes with a requirement that for-hire vehicle bases would be submit trip data to the TLC,

A mid-level New York appeals Court has given taxi owners permission to bring their challenge to the Taxi of Tomorrow program to the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court.

The ToT would require most cab owners to purchase a taxi made by Nissan Motor Co. Traditionally, a taxi owner could use any car that met TLC specifications.

The plan has been challenged by the Greater New York Taxi Association and others, which claimed that the commission could not force taxi operators to buy specific vehicles. Last October, a state supreme court justice said the TLC overstepped its authority in requiring purchases of the NV200, but an appeals court reversed the ruling. The order today allows the  state's highest court to decide, probably early in 2015.

Uber Sued in S.F. over Driver Tips

A federal judge denied Uber's motion to dismiss a lawsuit accusing Uber of pocketing most of the 20% gratuities that the company says it is collecting for drivers. 

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco said Uber must face multiple civil counts, including an allegation the company violated California's unfair competition laws.

The case is Caren Ehret vs. Uber Technologies Inc in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 14-0113.

Taxi Legal Mashup in Milwaukee

A lawsuit in Milwaukee combines a host of taxi-related issues, with taxi companies suing the City of Milwaukee over a new ordinance that clears the way for app-based services like Uber and the Institute for Justice taking the City's side, saying that the existing taxi system, predicated on licenses and medallions is a restraint of trade. 

The Milwaukee Business Journal reports: "Five taxi groups are suing the city of Milwaukee, hoping to block an ordinance recently signed into law that lifts a cap on taxi permits and provides a path to legalization for mobile ride-booking apps."

The taxi owners say that a 1991 that caps the number of permits creates a property right that the new law lifting the cap denies them due process and equal protection. They say the new law will destroy the value of existing permits, currently priced at $150,000. The suit is seeking a temporary or permanent injunction of the city's law, as well as potential monetary damages.

But the the Arlington, Va.-based Institute for Justice, which has already sued the city to require it to lift the cap on new medallions, calls the cab companies' suit "desperate [and] baseless and belies their true motivation of protecting their monopoly at all costs."

Lyft Drops Its Threat to Enter the New York Market

There has certainly been a lot of talk about taxi apps on smartphones, and with that talk there is much confusion.  An app is just a way of hailing a vehicle. The real question is what vehicle is being hailed and who is driving it. Some apps hails cars licensed as taxi driven by licensed taxi drivers. Others hail anyone but.

Lyft, a major player in the taxi app space (to borrow a word from the heyday of the tech bubble) calls itself a "ride sharing" company. Its drivers are not licensed as cabdrivers; they drive their own cars, which are also unlicensed, at least not licensed as taxis. Because they are not taxis, the don't need taxi licenses. It says its drivers take "donations," not fares.  That's the theory at least.

But when Lyft announced plans to launch in Gotham, the TLC had a cow.

Earlier this month, Lyft said it would move forward with its New York City launch despite threats from taxi regulators, not just the TLC, but state regulators. That assertion prompted the TLC to declare Lyft an “unauthorized service” in New York City.

“Lyft has not complied with T.L.C.’s safety requirements and other licensing criteria to verify the integrity and qualifications of the drivers or vehicles used in their service, and Lyft does not hold a license to dispatch cars to pick up passengers,” the TLC said in a statement.

“Unsuspecting drivers who sign up with Lyft are at risk of losing their vehicles to T.L.C. enforcement action, as well as being subject to fines of up to $2,000 upon conviction for unlicensed activity,” it added.

In short, the TLC said it would seize Lyft cars, which is not an idle threat because the TLC seizes close to 30 cars a day.

Later, Lyft backed down in the face of cease and desist letter from New York’s Department of Financial Services, joined by the NY attorney general.

Meanwhile, Uber, probably the richest of the taxi app companies, has already gained a foothold in new York by taking advantage of a pilot program that allows app-hailing of some yellow cabs. Uber and similar services can also be used to summon livery cabs, which, under New York rules, cannot accept street hails, but can be hired by "pre-arrangement" whether by a traditional phone call or a smartphone app.

Oops! -- TLC seizes hundreds of cars in error

The Taxi and Limousine Commission seizes more than 9000 cars per year-- all without a hearing and without a warrant. The TLC will give the car back to those who quickly plead guilty and pay $600. If you want to plead not guilty, you can get your car back if you pay $2000.

Now it has been revealed by reports in DNAInfo by James Fanelli and others and in the New York Post by Rebecca Harshbarger and Kathleen Cullito that the TLC lost almost 1,500 court hearings in 18 months in which TLC inspectors seized cars and falsely claimed they were illegal cabs. The TLC's own tribunal dismissed 20 percent of the 7,187 cases involving illegal-cab violations, according to a TLC tribunal spokeswoman. The 20 percent figure almost certainly overstates the true error rate because many drivers plead guilty because they are told that doing so is the quickest and easiest way to get their car back.

The increase in rogue seizures, the Post says, came about because chiefs and captains bullied officers to seize as many cabs as possible. Many examples of inspectors making bonehead plays under pressure have been in the news, as have reports of inspectors being hounded to seize cars often on flimsy evidence.

As DNAInfo notes, TLC inspectors often seize cars where the driver or the passenger doesn't speak English and the inspectors don't have a translator to help understand the situation. Often inspectors don't know or can't be bothered with the rules, such as those that allow New Jersey of Long Island cabs to make pick ups outside New York City for trips into the City. Another common mistake is to seize cabs driven by chauffeurs or cars serving a particular business, neither or which need TLC licenses.