Beleaguered ridesourcing giant Uber has been criticized for a wide variety of sins, both real and imagined. But their biggest sin yet may be what they apparently want to do to the public in the future: force everybody to use Uber’s service by outlawing private automobiles. (I warned this might happen back in 2014.)
Uber has signed onto a document called “Shared Mobility Principles for Sustainable Cities,” which was prepared by short-term car rental company ZipCar and a who’s who of left-wing green pressure groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, Smart Growth America’s Transportation for America advocacy project, and the World Resources Institute, to name a few.
Most of the principles are fact-free platitudes about “livability,” “zero emissions,” and “sustainability,” which is typical politician-speak for increasing mass transit subsidies and painting bike lanes on city streets while neglecting maintenance. So, they basically call for upholding the status quo in urban transportation politics. And to this motley progressive coalition’s credit, the principles document does endorse user fees, with road pricing being the only known way to effectively mitigate traffic congestion.
But where it really goes off the rails is with its final principle:
10. WE SUPPORT THAT AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES (AVS) IN DENSE URBAN AREAS SHOULD BE OPERATED ONLY IN SHARED FLEETS.
Due to the transformational potential of autonomous vehicle technology, it is critical that all AVs are part of shared fleets, well-regulated, and zero emission. Shared fleets can provide more affordable access to all, maximize public safety and emissions benefits, ensure that maintenance and software upgrades are managed by professionals, and actualize the promise of reductions in vehicles, parking, and congestion, in line with broader policy trends to reduce the use of personal cars in dense urban areas.
Uber, Lyft, ZipCar and others propose outlawing personally owned self-driving cars in central cities, leaving the entire urban core market for automated road vehicles in the hands of corporate fleet owners, as Uber, Lyft, and ZipCar all imagine they will be in the coming years. Uber sees the competition of the future—and it’s you.
Fortunately, to stop Uber, Lyft, and ZipCar’s shameless, greenwashed crony capitalism, we already have a simple solution: state preemption of local policies on self-driving cars. Illinois, Nevada, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas have already preempted municipal and county governments from enacting ordinances prohibiting self-driving cars.
As many of the transportation departments in major U.S. cities are defined by their incompetence and corruption, state legislators should move quickly to stop this rent-seeking before it takes root in their communities.
DeepDishPi on February 2nd, 2018 at 07:11 UTC »
This reminds me of Lars Ulrich publicly thanking fans for helping Metallica rise to fame by sharing bootleg concert tapes, then later condemning them for sharing music on Napster.
garimus on February 2nd, 2018 at 05:54 UTC »
The hypocrisy of a disruptive technology being upset about technology that could disrupt their technology. Adapt or die.
Edit: Please, people. It's understood that:
All of these companies are incentivized in an attempt to maintain their market dominance (not just UBER)
The adapt part is two-fold: 1) changes to the industry with self-driving cars should be welcomed by these companies (otherwise hypocritical), and 2) these companies need to adapt their executive mindset to include the fact that no personal driver would willingly allow them to monopolize self-driving cars
"Technology" is colloquially accepted as any intellectual concept or property that can be utilized to reduce effort or increase productivity. The bearded capuchin that uses rocks to break open palm nuts is using a simple technology. Disruptive simply implies a new or innovative change to the existing industry. Disruptive technology fits perfectly well in this instance. It's not ground-breaking or highly advanced in its innovation, but it is, none-the-less, disruptive to the current status quo of technology.
jello_sweaters on February 2nd, 2018 at 05:41 UTC »
...otherwise this new, disruptive, technology-driven service might make it harder for their taxi service to make money?