So they are back to being illegal now. That was dumb.

It's embarrassing how our "progressive" city gets weak-kneed & mush-headed at the invocation of "innovation." Reminds you of hayseed towns voting out of religion.

So they are back to being illegal. Maybe arresting a few drivers for lack of proper insurance would kick some sense into them. Or a RICO suit against the corp heads. It's obvious they won't negotiate without kicking and screaming, they've just opened the door to kicking, KICK THEM.

> It's obvious they won't negotiate without kicking and screaming,

God forbid they try to get the voters involved, it's not like they should have a say in whether or not quotas are applied against a service that is drastically better than what it's competing against.

@ 3 No reasons progressive have to be against uber the Taxi service is piss poor.

That means that it is illegal to operate these businesses again.

If it passes, Goldy's going to shit a kidney stone.

@7 There's much to be suspicious about. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/01/shari…

I can understand why drivers are eager to bypass the taxi medallion rules, but it all feels a bit like Napster redux. Some few executives and venture capitalists are becoming billionaires by disrupting an existing market with questionable tactics.

If they take this to the ballot, I will vote to keep the regulations in place. I don't want unregulated and uninsured drivers out there. That's just an invitation to a lawsuit.

@ 10 Read it don't really agree worrying about nothing.

Time to jail them for breaking the law

@15, interesting. I read it as well and found it very worrying in that "sharing" companies are all about exploiting the market until told otherwise. These signature-gatherers have been everywhere, presumably paid by the ride-share companies to promote a pro-customer issue. Bullshit. It's pro-stakeholders of Uber, etc. They're just another cab company trying to make money by dodging the rules. Y'all liberals suddenly got all free-market crazy on this one issue.

It's time for Metro to build its own ridesharing app and bring cars into the transit mix.

That's what people really want.

The low cost, and security of transit run mobility.

Will the flexibility of car travel...even it's shared.

@10, sorry, a bit off-topic, but regarding that article, I hadn't really connected ride-sharing with AirB&B before. Last year we went to Europe and used AirB&B almost the whole time. 2 of 4 stays were amazing, while the other two were just low-rent skids renting out a bedroom for a night or two. The one German guy told us how it was clearly illegal and his landlord had a suit pending, but there we were, sharing a tiny dirty kitchen.

Ha ha.

@19 I used it, too, on a trip to San Francisco that would've been prohibitively expensive had I stayed in a hotel.

That said, wasn't NYC after AirBNB because there aren't regulations on the books holding them to the same safety standards that hotels are?

@18 - You keep up with good ideas like that, and you're going to hand the stupid card over to collectivism_sucks.

Yay, unregulated strangers can give you a ride in the serial killer capital of the world!

After reading about the protests of the Uber drivers the other day, it's obvious that "rideshare" drivers should form their own co-op, develop their own app, and own their own business. Why be the victim of billionaire California vulture capitalists?

something, something, take over the school bus systems..............

@5, Sam sarcastically wrote, "it's not like [voters] should have a say in whether or not quotas are applied against a service that is drastically better than what it's competing against."

"Better" depends on your criteria, of course. I value privacy, safety, and accommodation for the disabled more than convenience and pretty cars. If these companies' drivers would accept cash for payment, guarantee the same arrangements for disabled people we require of taxis, carry adequate liability insurance, transport anyone who pays the fee and follows lawful rules the companies publish, and do so without storing personally-identifiable information, I'd be all for them.

@17 -

They're just another cab company trying to make money by dodging the rules. Y'all liberals suddenly got all free-market crazy on this one issue.

Bingo!

And I'd like to note that at least this progressive/liberal is not all "free market" on this issue.

#22

The capitalist alternative would be a subscription based Uber.

One monthly fee that gives you unlimited use.

So instead of paying a $200 auto loan, and $150 a month insurance, and $2500 a year repair bills, you'd take some portion of that money and buy unlimited car rides/trips + a Metro pass for regional travel (where you can be picked up at a LINK station by Uber).

For vacations and long hauls, you could rent from Enterprise for a week.

I'm not sure whether to be glad these companies are improving services or afraid that once they put the taxis out of business, we're going to regret letting them in.

I do know that it's bad the regulators lost control and now the public is getting involved in setting the rules as a proxy for the companies. The public only knows, "I like Uber!" They have little understanding of the history, the public policy issues, the labor force dynamics, etc. etc.

But then the regulators lost touch with just how much dissatisfaction there was with taxi service, so they're far from infallible, too.

Well no matter how you feel about rideshares (the commentary seems to be making up for Goldy's absence today) the ballot initiative might well get the younger liberal demographic to vote in the midterms. That's a good thing, right?

Sure. It'd be a shame, though, if young liberals were to equate good policy with the shiny new technological models of business that only really benefit some venture capitalists that may not even live here.

I have no love for the owners of Yellow Cab either. At this point I am waiting to see what comes out of the negotiations. Insurance and safety regs are important, caps are merely protectionist of those cab companies.

@33 I'm not sure Goldy's bank account agrees that the comments today are making up for his absence, but point well taken.
It's evolving it's interesting, but woe betide a newly appointed staff writer who fails to balance the interests of advertisers and the prevailing opinion of readership.

People need to quite conflating issues. There are the issues of safety, insurance, etc. and then there are monopoly protections. TNC's have already said they are open to establishing mutually acceptable training and insurance requirements (some are already working on it) but that has NOTHING to do with restricting the number of TNC drivers to protect the taxi monopoly (which is what the City Council "law" was really about). Once again the solution is simple... eliminate the corrupted taxi licenses altogether and start a universal driver-for-hire license. Weekend class, proper insurance, vehicle inspection. Done. Require TNC's and taxi company's to hire only these licensed drivers and provide or verify the required insurance. Done and done. This is not rocket science. If that doesn't satiate the City Council's regulatory hunger then they could even apply it to other commercial drivers that use their own vehicles (pizza dude, Chinese food delivery lady, etc). As a voter, I cannot wait to finally get a say in my daily transportation choices.

I just hope there is a clause added that requires City Council members to only use taxi's for ALL their transportation needs and forbids them from using their preferred choice. I can't wait to see them send their kids to school in a dirty taxi with an underpaid cab driver pushing through the 9th hour of a 10 hour shift.

Guys, they ARE regulated and they ARE insured -- BEYOND the requirements set in place for taxi businesses! Get the facts right before you start saying how these "unregulated uninsured maniacs" need to be off of the streets. The biggest (and only) concern should be how the drivers of these ride-sharing programs are treated (benefits, overtime, etc).

also @17 "suddenly got free-market crazy" -- you mean like city council legislating the rights to all personal transportation to 4 people in the seattle area? (the 4 people who own every taxi license, which they aren't making any more of any time soon)...

How did they get all those signatures so quickly? Hire Tim's signature-gathering machine?

@41: Don't know, but I saw signature gatherers doing brisk business at the Ballard farmer's market two weeks in a row.

It's funny to see the Stranger and many commenters rally behind the taxi oligopoly. I guess we hate technology and rulebreakers more than we hate crap service and government-enforced protection for the companies that offer crap service.

@39: They have voluntarily upped their insurance to something close to the commercial policies that taxis have to carry, but they are not currently regulated at all. Their argument seems to be that they don't need to be regulated, because innovation (or something). As a driver, I think that their drivers need to be subject to training and background check requirements. As an aside, I think that the required training for for-hire drivers (which under the now suspended new regulation would have been required of TNC drivers as well) is too weak, which is what leads to a lot of the problems with taxis as well (drivers that don't know the city well enough, don't speak english well enough, have poor driving skills, etc).

Personally I would also like to see the TNCs subject to regulation because so long as they are allowed to operate outside of the regulatory structure they are much more free to abuse their drivers. The regulations provide a lot of limitations on what taxi owners can impose on their drivers, and provide an avenue short of filing a lawsuit to address problems. Without that regulatory structure the power differential between the company and the drivers is even more lopsided. I personally think the caps are kind of a red herring, I don't feel like they're that important compared to bringing the TNCs into some kind of regulatory structure.

@40: That's blatantly untrue. There are WAAAAAY more than 4 people who own taxi licenses. Though there are quite a few individuals who own multiple sets of taxi plates, there are many many more than 4 owners. You may be conflating the taxi associations (Yellow, Orange, Farwest, Northend) with the owners, which is not how it works. The owners associate their cab with a given company, which provides dispatch services, marketing, and billing for a fee and requires the owner and any drivers leasing their cab to work within that association's rules. The owner still retains possession of their taxi and can take it to a different association if they're unhappy with the one they're with. Some of the associations (notably Yellow) also run co-op cabs, in which case the association handles the details of running the cab (maintenance, leasing to drivers, etc) and pays the owner for the use of the cab at a rate lower than what the owner would get for dealing with it themselves (essentially the owner takes less money than they would've gotten by dealing with it directly, but does not have to deal with the headaches involved at all). However the association does not gain actual ownership of the cab, that still belongs to the person who owns the plates.

Yeah, fuck these TNCs and their libertarian-tech overlords. Seattle's new offer should be this: nothing. GTFO. You had your chance, but you blew it. Start fining and arresting these motherfuckers and run them out of town. I'm sure the young, moneyed tech set will cry their little eyes out, but fuck them too. Ride the bus/streetcar, bike, walk or -- GASP -- take a cab from your over-priced condo in SLU to Amazon HQ and your cubicle where you can die slowly.

Hey, lets limit Broadband Internet companies because AOL still has its dial-up empire.

It's a free market and people are choosing ride sharing. Why? Because they can get a ride in 5 minutes as opposed to calling Taxi dispatch and being told "one hour" and after two hours you only get a cab because you walk out into the middle of the street and flag one down your own damn self. Because Taxi dispatch systems are antiquated. Fucking upgrade already. Uber works with a fucking cell phone (both for passengers and drivers) so it isn't like there's this "new technology" that cab companies don't have access to themselves. Just fucking adopt and innovate yourselves already. It seriously would go a long way towards protecting cab drivers in Seattle if passengers can communicate directly with their cabs without some stupid radio dispatch system that obviously doesn't work when every taxi passenger is frustrated and jumping out in front of cabs that are already en route somewhere, and cab drivers who don't give a shit because a fare is a fare.

Yeah. Technology and innovation and all that shit. It isn't irrelevant. Either get with the times or make way for those that do.

We live in a capitalistic society. Competition breeds innovation which benefits everyone when better products and services are introduced. Banning companies that innovate doesn't help anyone except those who refuse to get with the times and those who refuse to address customer dissatisfaction (and driver's discrimination, and driver's "scenic detour" fraud).

Sorry, but there it is. In my lifetime experience taxis have never been dependable. Uber has been 100% reliable. Taxi drivers have discriminated against me and my friends, kicked me out of their cabs in the middle of nowhere because I'm not a fucking hetero. Friends of mine were almost kicked out ON I-5 but convinced the cabby to at least take them to the next exit. Never once has an Uber driver been impolite or dogmatic towards me. In fact they have always been super pleasant. It's no wonder I choose them over Taxis because, for me, hailing a cab is playing russian roulette on whether I'm going to start or end my evening on a horrible note.

How did they collect 36,000 signatures? Because that many people (and more) support them and want to have their service OVER taxi service. Bitch and whine all you want. Let the people vote for what they want instead of being dictated to by cab companies and bought-and-paid-for politicians.

And if you're worried that Uber might win the vote, don't worry so much about it. Seattle has a long history of ignoring election results to favor special interest. We still don't have the monorail we voted for several times, and we do have not one but two stadiums we voted against. So yeah. You'll probably get your way anyway because "that's how Seattle does it."

And if cab companies are "all about fairness" then why aren't all companies being held to a 150 car maximum limit? Why is it ONLY the competition that is being limited in this way. I call foul, and I say that cab companies are being hypocritical.