Hitchin’ a ride

Consumers continue to make their preferences clear when it comes to transportation. As a result, Uber and Lyft are hammering local cab companies.

The number of Clark County taxi trips declined by more than 19 percent last month when compared with November 2015. For the year, the Nevada Taxicab Authority reports, the Las Vegas cab business has experienced a ridership drop of more than 16 percent.

Revenues for the 16 local cab companies are off 13 percent for the first 10 months of the year.

None of this is any great mystery. Ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft have transformed the market and will continue to grow in popularity thanks to their convenience, price and service.

Nevertheless, the authority’s chairman, Stan Olsen, hinted that the industry will again try to strong-arm lawmakers next year into expanding the regulatory state to shackle Uber and Lyft for the benefit of the taxi cartel.

“Fees and operating licenses are not being regulated in a fair and equitable manner between taxi and transportation network companies,” he told the Review-Journal, “and I am a big believer in playing fair.”

Well, then, how about freeing the industry from unreasonable dictates rather than seeking to hamstring the popular innovators? The issue, argues Brent Bell, president of Whittlesea-Bell Transportation, comes down to taxi companies “learning how to be more competitive.”

Exactly.

In reference to the Review-Journal’s Dec. 16 article, “Las Vegas taxi numbers plummet”:

In reference to Uber and Lyft, Stan Olsen, chairman of the Nevada Taxicab Authority, said he is a big believer in “playing fair.” When has the the Taxicab Authority ever played fair? The agency is quite possibly the most corrupt institution in the state.

The authority is responsible to the 16 approved taxi companies and the small group of elites that own those companies (the taxi cartel). The authority is charged with enforcing taxi company policies, making law through cronyism and corruption and ensuring the taxi monopoly remains intact.

There has been only one new taxi company approved in the past 50 years. The best thing that could happen for the Las Vegas riding pubic would be to deregulate the industry and abolish the Taxicab Authority. The small group of elite families that own every cab in Las Vegas would probably go bankrupt, but the taxi industry would survive.

To my knowledge, at no time did Hillary Clinton set foot in Wisconsin during the general election campaign. Yet now the alt-left is telling us she lost that state due to meddling by the Russians.

Congress took seriously the complaint about Russian hacking and called the intelligence community to appear and present evidence. The intel types didn’t have any evidence — and didn’t bother to show up.

Could it be that she needed to campaign there to win? No, that can’t be it. Must be the Russians.

These are the same folks who are complaining that they have been the victims of “fake news.” Oh, the sweet irony.

I’m confused that our state has the death penalty yet isn’t able to purchase the drugs needed to perform executions. Just recently Georgia held an execution. And other states — such as Florida and Texas — perform executions on a regular basis. Nevada has a brand new facility to carry out the death penalty, as well.

Maybe state officials need to make a phone call to one of these other states to find a source from which they can purchase the lethal drugs. Shouldn’t be too difficult.

During Nevada’s last regular legislative session, a bill was introduced to put us on permanent daylight savings time. Unfortunately, the bill died.

I’m a long-time resident who absolutely adores living here. However, we’re subjected to around four months — a full third of the year — where the sun is down by the time many people get off of work at 5 p.m. This is horribly depressing and robs us of time when we can get home and enjoy some lingering sunlight and our stunning sunsets.

It also robs us of afternoon daylight on our days off when we’d like to be out enjoying our mild winter days — whether hiking Red Rock or simply running errands before it gets dark.

I implore our legislators to re-introduce the concept in the coming session and get it passed. We could either keep us on daylight savings time all year, or put the eastern half of the state into the Mountain Time Zone, where we really belong.

I would like to respond to Roger Eisenzopf’s letter from Dec. 14. In response to the parking fees, he suggests just spending less at the Strip casinos when we locals go there. I think that is all well and good, but it is probably a little too subtle for the casinos to notice.

I am physically disabled, so I always use valet. I don’t have any intention of going to a Strip hotel again where there is a charge for parking or valet. If I should, however, I intend not to tip the valet attendant at all. Since this is now a paid service, that relieves me of paying any tip.

This is a much more noticeable form of protest — and it will start the valet attendants screaming to management. This is bad for the attendants, but we have to fight fire with fire.