Portland to implement highest ride-share surcharge of any US city
> Starting July 1, #Uber and #Lyft riders in #Portland will pay significantly more for each trip as the city increases its #rideShare surcharge to $2 per ride, the highest flat rider fee of any city in the country.
> The city expects the new fee to generate roughly $10 million annually for the Portland Bureau of #Transportation
I just got picked up in a #Lyft that is a Mercedes GLE Class SUV.
Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb are suing San Francisco, asking for more than $320 million in tax refunds, while SF is demanding austerity from its employees to pay for it. This while the city deals with an $800 million deficit over the next 2 years.
Keep in mind, those same companies already demanded, and won, huge tax breaks by getting the city to rewrite its tax law, transferring more of the tax burden onto smaller companies.
Keep in mind, these 3 SF companies wouldn't even be rich and successful if SF hadn't allowed them to break the law their first couple of years in existence, allowing huge profits, by allowing them to skip out of the medallion fees that cab companies had to pay, and skirting the law that prohibited short term rentals without paying hotel tax. This, thanks to former mayor Ed Lee.
And their defense?
"We aren't companies. We're apps. We don't have to pay minimum wages, taxes, benefits"
#Lyft is trialing some kind of #AI snooping and transcribing. How it is related to this incident, I don't know. But we need to watch this closely and not normalize #surveillance in rideshares / taxis. #privacy
#UX that need to do better: #Lyft 's and #Disney 's display names for user accounts. The American smart-phone apps don't accept Icelandic letters. That's odd: there is no sound technical reason for such limitations (as proven by Mastodon, for instance), and forces people with non-American letters in their names to seek alternatives. And that, in turn, will cause legal problems in countries that require one to use the name and spelling registered at birth and / or immigration. Do better.
FTC Probes UBER and LYFT Over Potential Antitrust Violations
https://www.tipranks.com/news/ftc-probes-uber-and-lyft-over-potential-antitrust-violations
Here's my personal #discountcode for #lyft : https://www.lyft.com/i/ANDRE54254 It gets you up to $10 off a ride in the US, if you haven't ever used Lyft before. First come, first served. If you use this discount code, I also get $10 off my next ride.
Why doesn’t #SEAAirport send #Uber and #Lyft dropoffs to the same garage area as where passengers wait for pickups? If the #PortOfSeattle and these #rideshare companies offered a few dollars’ discount, that might cut down on the perennial congestion on the departures drive.
#urbanism #justRideLightRailIfYouCan
Had an instance where I was denied an Uber ride because of my white cane. Lyft too! I eventually had to use UZURV to get me home. For those not in the know, UZURV is an on demand ride share specifically designed for Disabled people and my city covers the costs of these rides via the Paratransit partnerships with UZURV. I had booked a ride to go from the library to my home. Each time, on each service, the driver pulled up just enough to see me, see my cane, then pull away. Both apps said my trips were canceled. I logged the incident and complained to both Uber and Lyft. I got ride credits from Lyft, which tells me they are well aware this is happening and have some internal mechanism to deal with things like this, which tells me they aren't doing enough. They are doing enough just to make the problem go away. Radio silence from Uber. Not every state has a Paratransit partnership with UZURV and I don't know about other countries, but I think UZURV is a United States only thing. These tech companies need to be held accountable. This has got to end, and not with just giving a user Lyft credits and told to essentially go away. #Uber #Lyft #RightToRide
#ElectionDay is just around the corner! If you need a ride to the ballot box, we’ve got you covered.
This year, NAACP has partnered with
#Lyft to provide discounted rides to help voters get to the polls.
Use the code NAACPVOTE24 while supplies last. #NAACPVotes
PLEASE REPOST EVERYWHERE.
This is really terrific reporting and use of data by Bloomberg investigating Uber and Lyft’s locking drivers out of using the app in order to avoid paying them minimum wages. I suspect this report will both garner enough attention and includes enough detail to thoroughly launch an investigation.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-uber-lyft-nyc-drivers-pay-lockouts/
Imagine if you worked at McDonalds but they won't tell you what wage you're going to earn that day until you show up. "Sorry, we can only offer you $3 an hour today, take it or leave it"
“Lyft issued a massive correction to its outlook for earnings margin in 2024, saying its margin is expected to expand by 50 basis points, not the 500 basis points written into an earnings presentation released earlier yesterday...
"Ride-hail giant #Lyft will pilot a new feature called Price Lock that will let a rider purchase a monthly subscription 'that caps the price for a specific route at a specific time,' according to CEO David Risher."
https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/07/lyft-to-open-up-a-can-of-whoop-ass-on-surge-pricing/
Uber and Lyft are strictly for shareholder profit and oppose a living wage for workers.
https://www.npr.org/2024/06/17/nx-s1-4942958/uber-minimum-wage-minnesota-lyft-lobbying
#Capitalism #Uber #Lyft #Union
@pluralistic
Uber's strategy of breaking laws to build a constituency for deregulation is ethically problematic.
I wrote about this in "Regulatory Entrepreneurship, Fair Competition, and Obeying the Law," Journal of Business Ethics 181 (2022): 249–261.
https://robertchughes.com/obeying-law-AAM.pdf
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-021-04932-y
I just did my once-a-month visit to Instagram and a friend had sent this video, a guy with a super deep voice who made a recording you can use when you're in an Uber/Lyft and feeling unsafe.
It's just the sweetest thing and made me tear up that a guy would think to do this. Yes I am a total dork, why do you ask?
Anyway it's here if anyone wants it:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CqboRgwPlsV/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
I made an audio recording and put that here as well:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/gzh5u1f1z6z06fin09vcn/h?rlkey=acbboukrlffqjp6uxs0ygn3ft&dl=0
My latest video for @show is about Trickle-Down EV economics.
Can we please stop pretending that #Uber and #lyft and other #RideSharing platforms are AFFORDABLE?
They're not. They're equitable. They're not universally available. You can't BUY an Uber with cash. You can't get an UberPass.
You can't jump on an Uber for the same price at 12 am as you can at 6pm.
Ride Share is not equitable. It's another way for wealthier citizens to get around, and in its most dire form, a tax on our more vunlerable citizens who don't have a car, whose bus just failed to turn up, and who need to get to work or they'll be fired.
@arstechnica I'm not an advocate of doxxing or mob justice but I can't say I'd be upset over this driver getting a taste of what's coming to him by way of the Internet.
This guy did the demonstrably wrong thing 3 times:
Taking off despite pleas to stop Dumping the animal with no regard Providing zero assistance once contacted
And all this after being begged by the cat's owner. A sick cat at that. What an utter PoS.
@arstechnica what the heck was the driver thinking just letting the cat out? I don't care if you're allergic, that level of irresponsibility and lack of customer service should disqualify a person from working for such a company.
MikeMathia.com 
