Said lifts were via the wonderful smartphone app Lyft, which
summons GPSed, community-rated, friendly,
paid-through-credit-cards-on-file drivers to you wherever you are
and gives you rides—in Texas and much of the country, for a
suggested donation (though in California it is directly
fee-for-service).
For anyone who has used it, you will understand why traditional
regulated ride for hire services are scared to death of it, because
it is almost always superior in nearly every way to those services.
It’s a real computer-age consumer-friendly miracle.
Naturally, city governments want to really mess up the lives of
people providing the service.
See Reason‘s copious archives on Lyft
and its main competitor Uber for many such stories. The latest is
out of supposedly super tech friendly, self-consciously cutesy and
“weird” city Austin, which should vibe with Lyft’s whimsical pink
moustache attachment and fist-bumpingly friendly style, but instead
is out to ruin it.
On May 31, a city-run sting near the downtown Four
Seasons Hotel impounded two Lyft drivers’ cars and cited
them for operating without a valid chauffeur permits. Another
driver was cited on May 29, according to a spokeswoman for the
city. The move comes after a continuing escalation following the
transportation networking company’s announcement that it
would begin
service on May 29.Still, the possibility of legal trouble didn’t dissuade
Austinites from checking out the service. The company reports that
more than 15,000 people in the Austin area have downloaded the
app….Lyft, which has faced similar situations in cities across the
U.S., has indicated that it would bear fees and legal costs for its
drivers – though a driver could still risk having the relatively
minor charge on his or her record.“We responded immediately to provide support and we are also
covering the cost of impound fees and any necessary legal
assistance,” a spokeswoman for Lyft said in an emailed
statement.
There is nothing that makes life better for so many people so
grand that regulators won’t try to harm people for doing it.
The entire city currently allows only 756 taxi licenses, and
demands that ride sharing suppliers receive as compensation no more
than the federal tax codes auto mileage reimbursement rate of 56
cents a mile.
I wrote in detail about California’s far
more sensible regulation of these e-hailing services last
October.
Last year, Sidecar, another smaller company in this business,
sued
Austin’s Department of Transportation over its
restrictions.
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