E-HAIL RAGE
DRIVERS’ PROTEST JAMS UP CITY
They wanted to drive their point home, but they ended up driving New Yorkers crazy.
Hundreds of Uber and Lyft drivers created massive traffic snarls in downtown Brooklyn and along Manhattan’s East Side Tuesday morning as they formed a slow-moving caravan over the Brooklyn Bridge to protest new measures by the two app-based companies that could affect drivers’ income.
The driver revolt caused jams near the foot of the famous East River span and under the BQE by Tillary St., and all the way into the northbound FDR, according to a city traffic-delay notification issued shortly after the protest kicked off.
The drivers inched their way all the way to Gracie Mansion on the Upper East Side to show Mayor de Blasio how much they dislike his efforts to curb congestion by imposing new restrictions on the for-hire companies.
Dozens of angry commuters took to Twitter to complain about the slowdown.
“Want to know how to not get people on your side? Try honking your horns for 10 minutes while slowly approaching the Brooklyn Bridge at 7:30 a.m.,” one enraged person tweeted.
“You are only hurting yourselves,” another posted.
The group stopped down the street from Gracie Mansion, blaring their horns. The mayor was not home when they arrived — he was en route to Staten Island for a press conference regarding a police-involved shooting.
The Independent Drivers Guild, which organized the protest, estimated that some 6,000 drivers participated in the caravan, although that number could not immediately be verified.
The driver slowdown is in response to a letter Uber sent to its New York-based drivers on Friday, informing them that they would begin kicking some of them off the for-hire app in neighborhoods of lower demand in order to comply with the city’s minimum-wage rules that went into effect earlier this year.
Lyft began engaging in a similar practice this summer — enraging the guild, which organizes app-based drivers and often carries water for the e-hail companies.
The drivers group believes the new practice will scam drivers out of fair pay and demand that the mayor and City Council put a stop to it.
“For months we warned that if the city failed to take enforcement action against Lyft for violating the pay rules, that the other apps would follow suit and drivers’ pay would suffer,” said guild Executive Director Brendan Sexton. “Already thousands of drivers are struggling to pay their bills because Lyft is blocking them from the app. Now with Uber following suit more than 80,000 New York City families will pay the price if the city refuses to stand up for drivers and crack down on the app companies.”
The city’s rules require app companies to pay their drivers $17.22 per hour after expenses, but they’re only considered to be working during the time they have a passenger, not the time they are heading to pick up a ride or are waiting to be dispatched.
The rules have proven to be too costly for the app-based companies to hold on to as many drivers. There are more than 80,000 of them registered in the city.
“We have said for months that the unintended consequences of regulations will be less driver flexibility,” said Uber spokesman Harry Hartfield. “The changes to the app are a direct result of the mayor’s regulations.”