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| I've never seen those Lyft mustaches in my neighborhood |
Because
these transportation services, at least as far as they exist in Chicago, seem
to be limited to the north lakefront neighborhoods. Maybe a few other patches
of the city and a couple of the inner suburbs that border the city to the
north.
THEY’RE
FAR FROM being an integral part of the way Chicago-area people get from place
to place. There are many times in my life that I need to get to places they
just don’t want to go to.
Yet
the companies that operate traditional taxicabs seem threatened enough that
they will steal prime pockets of business that they now want the General
Assembly to crack down with assorted regulations.
Or
at least that’s the way the defenders of these services want to view this
political fight brewing now in Springfield. These developing services just want
to compete with the existing taxi services, only those goons are bringing out
their lobbyists and cash to try to crush competition.
Personally,
I view it a bit differently.
MORE
LIKE THE companies who complain about how environmental regulations are killing
their ability to compete on the business side.
Life
isn’t as simple-minded as these people wish it could be. Nor should it be.
Now
for those of us (a majority, I suspect) who are reading this commentary and
wondering, “What’s he babbling about?,” an explanation is probably warranted.
With the increased use of smartphones and apps, these services allow people to
use them to call for rides.
The
people providing those rides aren’t traditional taxi drivers. They’re more like
independent contractors who provide their own vehicles. The fare structure, as
I understand it, varies. Certain rides in more prominent areas of Chicago will
cost more. There is none of the licensing that the traditional taxi companies
have to engage in with Chicago in order to operate cabs.
WHICH
IS WHAT supposedly makes them potentially more profitable than the traditional taxi
companies – they have next to no overhead in terms of maintaining a fleet of
vehicles.
But
the reason that city officials developed so many of those regulations and
licensing requirements for taxicabs is out of a sense of security. It is what
ensures that there’s a chance that the taxi drivers operating the cabs are
actually safe – even though some of us persist in making jokes about Pakistani
taxi drivers and their wild ways!
Now
I know there are those who use these new services (because the places they want
to go fall within their range of the world they want to cover) who say they’re
as safe, and in some cases safer and cleaner, than a traditional taxi cab.
But
one has to have a lot of faith in these newcomers to trust that each and every
ride is going to be the same. I wouldn’t know. They don’t come out very often
to the land where places like Hyde Park and Bridgeport are “up north” and the
North Side at times feels like a foreign land.
I
ALSO FIND it amusing to learn that some people try to compare these services –
which seem like they’re geared toward people who like to play with their
smartphones and probably wish they could figure out a way to get their laundry
done by phone rather than having to do it themselves – with the jitney cabs
that for decades have operated in the predominantly African-American
neighborhoods that the cab companies themselves try to ignore.
Those
drivers weren’t licensed by the city – although they were subject to crackdowns
from officials whenever someone political felt the need to get themselves
law-and-order-related publicity. I'm sure somebody is going to want to believe it's the same sensibility at work here. But it's not!
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| Would Lyft riders have looked twice at a jitney? |
It seems these services want to get into the transportation business, but don’t want to go along with the rules. Which makes them come across like those people who argue that minimum-wage laws are unfair because they cut into the profit margins the business owners think they’re entitled to.
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