Uber adviser: Don’t backtrack, Austin
The Austin City Council soon might tighten its rules governing so-called transportation network companies and begin regulating them more like traditional taxi companies. So, Uber released a study this week that highlighted how quickly Austin-area residents have embraced its smartphone-based app platform to connect with other residents offering to give them a ride for a fee.
David Plouffe, former campaign manager and adviser to President Barack Obama and now chief adviser to Uber, met with the Editorial Board and American-Statesman transportation reporter Ben Wear on Monday to discuss Uber’s study of the Austin market. Here’s an edited, condensed transcript of Plouffe’s remarks on several topics related to Uber’s presence in Austin:
On Uber’s rapid growth in Austin:
David Plouffe: We have 10,000 people here in Austin driving on our platform. Fifty percent of those drivers drive less than 10 hours a week. Most of our drivers are doing this to supplement their incomes. They’re doing it for a period of time that works in their life. And if you look at the satisfaction on the platform, people are pretty satisfied.
And the marketplace is bigger on the rider side than anybody realized. We’ve had about a half-million people here try Uber. We have an active, regular rider base.
Why we wanted to do this case study was to broaden the debate beyond some of the political back and forth about ridesharing, and look at what’s really happening on the ground. Assuming the City Council doesn’t do something ill-advised here, the number of drivers at the end of next year could be as high as 20,000 here in Austin. Again, most of the additional drivers are going to be people doing this 8, 10, 12 hours a week to augment their incomes. When you’ve got the power to dial up income when you need it on your terms, and you can control exactly when you drive or whether you drive at all, that’s very powerful.
On Uber’s potential traffic and economic benefits:
What’s clear in all the data is the forhire vehicle market has just exploded. And in a city like Austin — you know, if you actually can reduce personal car use because people go from two cars to one, or from one to zero, we can have a pretty important impact on congestion.
We’re serving underserved areas. A third of our trips happen in East Austin and 50 percent of our drivers come from East Austin. The average wait time for an Uber car in Austin is three minutes, no matter where you are, no matter what you look like, no matter what your last name is. We know from every sound economic and academic study that for lower-income people the cost of transportation, and the inaccessibility of transportation is a major problem. It is one of the factors that keeps them trapped in that income situation. So if we make transportation cheaper, people save money and they save time.
On the background checks Uber conducts on its drivers, and why it has resisted fingerprint checks:
We think from a safety standpoint, what happens on a trip has really been an advancement — there’s no anonymity, the driver and rider rate each other, you can share your ETA and every part of the ride is GPS-tracked. With a strong caveat that no background check is perfect, I think the fact we do federal, county and state background checks is important, because people move around the country.
Our big issue with fingerprinting is we think it disproportionately affects minority communities. Fingerprinting can have discriminatory impacts, just in terms of the people who get arrested but are never convicted of anything.
We’re learning a lot about what works. But generally, from a consumer standpoint, I think one of the reasons we’ve grown so fast is people feel safe on the platform.
On how well UberPool, the company’s carpooling service that allows riders to share a car with someone taking a similar route, is doing:
We have UberPool in a couple of cities in China and India and then we have it in L.A., New York, Paris, San Francisco and Austin, on the weekends. In San Francisco, it’s half the rides; in L.A. we’re up to 20 percent.
UberPool won’t work everywhere, but we are really excited about it, and a lot of people who try it tend to try it again. It’s a work in progress, but we’re excited by what we’re seeing.
On the issue at hand, the possibility the City Council will pass new rules governing Uber:
Austin put forward an ordinance that was very forward-looking and very modern. And this report and all that is happening here is in part built on the foundation of that ordinance.
Largely in the U.S., the regulatory debate has moved on. So it’s odd to see Austin maybe thinking about backtracking. Our concern is about anything that would make it harder for drivers to get on the platform, that would put too much of a burden on them, that would really constrict supply, which means the service would deteriorate and things like UberPool would become harder. When something’s not broken, don’t fix it. This is working really, really well here in Austin.