Get ready for self-driving cars
Once again, New York City has been bested by a for-hire vehicle operator taking advantage of the city’s laws to their own benefit, flooding our streets with even more non-medallion taxi services at the expense of tens of thousands of medallion owner-operators who played by the rules, but were let down by the city.
Late last month, Revel, a company known for their zippy electric scooters, announced their plans to launch a for-hire vehicle service in New York City that relies on fully electric cars, scoffing the spirit of a law passed by the City Council three years ago to curb the number of such vehicles and bring a little order to the chaos on our streets.
It’s widely acknowledged that the diminishing value of taxi medallions in major cities like New York was driven by app-based for-hire vehicle services like Uber and Lyft. These companies were able to thrive because they exploited a system so lacking in regulation and beset by government inaction that by the time the city realized it had a problem, it was too late.
To prevent another devastating blow to urban mobility, local governments need to proactively assess the coming wave of technological disruption and regulate ahead of time. Companies like
Google, Lyft and Tesla are planning business growth and development decades in advance, and government regulation needs to match their timeline. The next looming technological advancement ripe to disrupt the FHV market is Autonomous Vehicles. Our city government needs to take action immediately, before it’s too late.
Many people still think AV technology is years, if not decades, down the line, but the reality is AV cars are already on the road. Google’s self-driving car company, Waymo, is currently providing driverless rides in its Arizona market. Tesla and Cruise have also announced plans to deploy robotaxis through their own proprietary apps. Yellow and green taxi drivers were already struggling to stay afloat when COVID hit, and the pandemic has left them in a critical condition. Government needs to act now to prevent the FHV market from being dominated by massive app-based platforms — again.
To start, we must explicitly give the city authority to decide how many AV medallions can be issued with a hard cap, and who will receive them. Regulations should require all autonomous FHVs to have testing and operating licenses issued by the city, along with tailored safety standards to new autonomous technology. The future of tech needs to be diverse, and this is the only viable option for cities to take sweeping action to save drivers, protect medallion values and balance the industry.
By doing this, we can make sure that current owner-operators will have the ability to buy into the AV medallion system first, so as to make sure it goes to those who were devastated by the rise of e-hail FHVs this past decade are given the economic opportunity to benefit from the next generation of taxis. We can also make sure there is a tight cap on how many licenses can be issued to anyone individual or company so no one has a monopoly. Finally, we would be leveling the playing field for owner-drivers to compete with big app-hailing companies like Google.
These rules would in turn protect driver jobs from disappearing, in addition to protecting medallion values from plummeting further than they have over the past decade.
For years, the public filings and public statements of massive FHV operators like Uber and Lyft have clearly shown that they see AV technology as their path to profitability by eliminating their highest cost: human drivers. To reach profitability, these firms will need to drastically cut labor costs, and the easiest way to do so is by getting rid of the people behind the wheel, who demand livable wages and benefits and fair working conditions. Appbased FHV operators will do everything in their power to achieve market dominance by purchasing AVs and associated medallions as soon as they possibly can. That will deal a possibly fatal blow to the vulnerable green and yellow taxi drivers who have already been battered by a debt crisis and the pandemic.
By preemptively creating a regulatory structure that allows for AV testing and operating licenses, cities would then be able to distribute such licenses fairly, allowing a smaller, more equitable pool of owners and operators the opportunity to stay competitive, and keeping a small cadre of massive app-based FHV operators from dominating the market. Cities must act before this technology reaches full commercial viability to get ahead of this looming crisis and guarantee fairness in the for-hire vehicle market for decades to come.
The toothpaste doesn’t go back in the tube.