This seems to be a smart way to go about it. This business of classifying workers as independent contractors is merely an attempt to circumvent labor laws. Overall, though, this ride share form of providing individual transportation sure beats out the old pseudo-monopoly system of taxi medallions.

@1 the medallions serve the purpose of restricting entry to the market. Without them, nobody can make any money because the cost of entry is so low and competition on price collapses to zero.

The only reason Uber et.al. function is because they lose money. For some reason, the stock market is willing to subsidize your ride home from the bar because... ???. Capitalism - go figure. When they get tired of doing that, Uber will disappear and we'll be right back where we started.

The way Lyft and Uber drivers is indeed bad, but this is one of the worst possible policy responses. There are "contractors" in worse arrangements being left out in the cold by this - which is essentially proof that this is purely a PR move, and not motivated by "effective use of government power to address societal wishes" or whatever it is we think our elected officials are doing. What a joke of a mayor. Between Mayor Durdurdurkan, the child-molestor mayor, and the babyfucking mayor in Portland, people will finally start to realize that gay people are people?

Used to be that taking a taxi was an expensive, albeit convenient, way to get from point a to point b. Thanks to shareholder loss subsidies, Uber and Lyft have convinced everyone that riding in a taxi is affordable. Now it seems that (mostly young people) take Uber's and Lyfts like it was just riding in the car with a friend. Yes it's convenient, but at what cost? They clog up our already busy streets, they are horrible drivers who constantly break traffic laws, they diminish public transportation. Plus, it seems that the companies themselves exploit their labor force bigly.

We should also combine this with police enforcement of bike and transit lanes, with automatic 72 hour roadside suspension of vehicles using those. And after three incidents, a revoking of your permit to drive a cab in the city.

Every tech company is just a thing that already exists but skirting labor laws and other regulations.

Uber and Lyft aren’t profitable because they are investing so much in new technology (hiring people) and expanding into new markets. Amazon was unprofitable for years and Bezos’s attitude to shareholders (like myself) was, I don’t care. You people seem to forget there’s two sides to businesses ledger and Uber and Lyft are looking long term, not at quarterly earnings reports. One of the reasons I bought AMZN over a decade ago.

Oh, and fuck taxis with a long hot poker.

Good on Mayor Durkan for taking on these exploitatative companies. (Raising the minimum wage of their employees is a very Seattle way of doing it, too!) I do wish the money would be spent more on support for ride-share drivers and local traffic improvements, rather than on a traffic-snarling toy trolley for tourists.

“Fifty-one percent of Seattle Lyft rides start or end in low-income areas,”

Because they’re counting International Boulevard, which abuts Sea-Tac Airport, as a low-income area. Indeed it may be, but that’s not the reason so many ride-shares terminate there.

"Uber and Lyft aren’t profitable because they are investing so much in new technology (hiring people) and expanding into new markets. "

HAHAHAHA. You don't fool anyone, feebs. you don't own a dime of Amazon stock. I AM a sock holder, however. And you don't know shit. God your business acumen is as delusional fantastic as your supposed mythical vacations you take to "quail hunt" in Alaska. HAHAHAHA.

The biggest quarterly loss Amazon posted ever was about $440 million. On quarterly revenues of over $20 BILLION.

Uber lost about $5.2 billion in a single quarter! On revenues less $3 billion! Of course the significance of that eludes you because you're an idiot.

Losing OVER $5 BILION dollars in a SINGLE QUARTER isn't a "long term strategy." Especially as it's growth keeps slowing. You understand they told their investors nonsense like that there was an $12 trillion “addressable global market” they were going to grab by some magical stretch of economic physics (HAHAHA... global GDP is only about $80 trillion). And of course their rosy prediction of this endless growth is predicated on the non-existence of other global ride shares like Didi or Ola in India, and Grab in Thailand.

In order for Uber to grow that much, regardless of their yet to materialize driverless tech - hahahaha - that they're "investing in" by taking huge exec compensation packages, our streets would have to be literally flooded with millions more Uber cars. It's belies reality.

No. Losing $5 billion in one quarter of investor money is a bunch of grifting executives padding themselves with massive $3.9 billion stock compensation packages (which they did) and getting ready to hit the ejection seat.

Most of that money didn't go to tech investment. It went to lobbying and payoffs. Uber may survive for a few more years. But cities are gong to regulate the fuck out of them because the literally have no choice. Uber knows this.

Christ. You are so transparently dumb.

Oops. "Stock holder." But, yes, also a "sock" holder.

@6 It's interesting that many of your solutions requires a massively repressive and watchful government. Not to worry though, in your imagination they will always be on your side.

@12 do you suggest an alternative that is free from consequences or regulation? Perhaps you are in favor of Seattle's lax drug enforcement laws and street camping rights?

@11: More like a Sock Puppet Holder. Good lord man, enough anger already. You claim you know he doesn't own Amazon stock, and yet it's you who's transparently dumb for claiming such knowledge about an anonymous commenter.

Still there are some interesting factoids in your venting. You're like GermanSausage with a brain.

Hey. I'll indulge you this one time. Not because you're capable of learning, self reflection, or understanding, but maybe someone else who might read this cesspool may be and I have another three hours to kill.

See. They're just "facts," not factoids, dipshit.

This sock puppet loser (I suspect you're also a sock puppet. But alas. I don't really care. ) constantly attempts to pepper his superficially googled "knowledge" with these little "envy" moments t puff up his loserdom. Usually about non-existent vacations and his mythical affluence. Just like SeattleBlues did before him —and got busted defying physics in one of his lies about going to italy. Maybe even this feebs moron IS SB. Again. Don't care. You're all losers.

If you possessed any kind of ability to observe, to think critically, or hold memory beyond that of a demented gold fish — and, well, a life outside your perpetual occupation of commenting here fifty times a day, every day — then you'd also see right through his bullshit.

Because his comparison to Amazon was laughable. It displayed the total lack of knowledge about the history of Amazon's performance that anyone who claimed ownership of its stock for as long as he claimed could possibly conclude. Dumbfuck.

"The new ridesharing tax rate, which would increase from $0.24 per ride to $0.75 per ride, would generate $130 million over the course of five years, according to city estimates. That money would be spent on the new downtown streetcar, provide $52 million for 500 new affordable housing units, and pay for a new city-created non-profit to support drivers if they get wrongly terminated from the driving apps."

Since Lester is a shitty repoter, and neglected to include the breakdown, here it is:

$52 million for affordable housing near transit
$56 million to fully fund the Center City Connector streetcar
$17.75 million to create a Driver Resolution Center for Uber and Lyft drivers.

So, this is primarily a funding mechanism for the streetcar boondoggle, allowing Durkan to appease activists wanting that to go forward, without looking like she is waffling on her concerns about the cost. Only a small fraction of the funding (~13%)would benefit rideshare drivers.

It'll be interesting to see how the IRS deals with the California law. If independent contractors who normally pay self-employment tax and can deduct business expenses are now treated as employees under state law, what's the IRS going to do? Will workers still get those deductions? (Including getting an "above the line" deduction for individual health insurance.) Will they no longer have to pay SE tax? Can't wait to see the court cases.

What a terrible idea! Yet another blow to affordability (ride share tax) to fund a downtown vanity project already riddled with cost overruns?? Any transportation tax should be directed to funding cross-city public transportation that benefits working class people, not highly paid downtown workers. The ROI on subsidized housing is terrible, I think we’re better off building in cheaper areas and getting better transpo infrastructure in to move people around.

Fuck UBER and Lyft. Fuck the sharing economy. Their drivers are "not integral to their business" (their words). They are "technology companies, not transportation companies" (their words). All of this means their employers, their customers, and the society in which they operate all get the shaft while they make a profit. Take a taxi. At least that person was vetted, had to pay for a license, and is easily identified should they rape you (this day and age all taxi companies use GPS and many even have cameras in their vehicles). At least if you take a taxi and you are a disabled person, the taxi company is required to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Are taxis perfect? No fucking way! But there are so many laws and regulations that protect the drivers and the customers AND companies are held accountable when things go wrong.

In NYC I was able to take an abusive driver to taxi court and he got fined and points on his license and a judgement against him that would ensure if he behaved as he did with me with another customer, he would never drive a cab in NYC again. When I moved to Seattle the taxis were pretty bad (2002). By the 2010s, however, taxis had improved immensely (and I had to take them numerous times, hailing them, not calling them, and I am disabled).

Now cities (like Portland) have to contend with creating entire traffic flow plans in order to deal with Uber and Lyft vs. taxis (big example: the MODA center) and are being bullied into accommodating corporations that do not contribute in any way to these cities.

The only people who love UBER and Lyft are wealthy white people who think it's awesome they can use their smart phones to order rides in cars with strangers and don't have to deal with taxi drivers. Oh you got raped by your driver? Shrug. Oh you were stabbed and robbed by a customer? Risk you take! Oh that disabled person got left on the side of the road and told they could not be picked up because they aren't able to accommodate the mobility aid? Sucks to be them! All fo the taxi drivers who spent money on getting their licenses/medallions and who have to answer to the corporations for which they work (the corporations who are also there to have their backs when things go bad with customers)? Suckers!!!!

@21: Is your beef with Seattle that we have standards, or is it that you just don’t like the standards we enact? Because, while the latter is negotiable, the former is not, and if your beef is with the former, you might want to do yourself a favor and go live somewhere else.

As for your usual dire warnings about economics, how about you go back to all of your predictions of local economic catastrophe, circa 2015, which our then-proposed high minimum wage would bring? (Quaint, eh?) Unless you show some minimal ability to admit you were wrong — and draw some conclusions as to why you were so completely, utterly, and totally wrong — the rest of us shall continue to respond to your complaints by pointing and laughing.

To help get you started down that very, very long (and excruciatingly hard) road of recognition, here’s an example of your incomplete thinking:

“I just love it when the city council and mayor butt into something they ought to just leave the hell alone as a matter between the drivers and the company hiring them.”

As if the increased and changed traffic patterns (mentioned @20) are none of the city’s business? We have infrastructure and laws for taxis. Cramming on-demand, for-profit, unregulated ride-shares into that infrastructure is not a formula for success, and airily declaring some magic free-market ideology will somehow solve the resultant problems is lazily wishful thinking at the most destructive. (I’m not saying the city’s response is a good one, just that some response is required.)

Uber & Lyft appear to base their business models on tax evasion (workers comp, unemployment insurance, etc.) and some sort of pyramid scheme in which they suck more and more money out of their investors. I have NEVER heard a coherent explanation of how they actually plan to be profitable except for some vague argument about self-driving cars and getting rid of drivers. If they raise rates enough so that they are actually making money, I suspect that they'll be expensive enough that ridership crashes. It's about time they started getting held to reasonable labor standards and had to abide by the same rules as other businesses. If that means they go under, so be it.

@21 - the increased traffic and air pollution resulting from "independent contractors" is between more than the companies and the drivers. The "independent contractors" parking in bike & bus lanes to pick up fares is between more than the city & the companies. The employment taxes that Uber/Lyft are evading are between more than the city & the companies. Etc. Etc. The City (and the state, for that matter) has every right to regulate them.

@25: Yak, yak, yak, and not a single example of a restaurant closure given — let alone any closure due to our minimum wage increase. How sadly typical for you. (Of course, you don’t dare to touch the unemployment rate, per-capita income, or any other real economic statistic for Seattle, because you may just yet know those actual numbers all contradict your smug and simplistic predictions from years ago.)

As for the homeless, the city’s own surveys have shown for years that most of them arrived here without homes or jobs, and with drug/alcohol habits. Hence their lack of interest in finding jobs during our sustained period of low unemployment and high growth. (King County’s lawsuit against Purdue Pharma claims flatly that most of the County’s homeless are addicted to opioids.)

@26: Oh, look — you just admitted we’ve had no recession in the YEARS since you breathlessly predicted economic distress from raising our minimum wage. I’ll be very interested in your extensive economic analysis of why your predictions have totally failed come true. Chop chop, time’s a-wastin’!

(But hey, admitting the truth, no matter how back-handedly, is still a major first step forward for you. Godspeed on your agonizingly painful journey!)

At the end of the day, Uber and Lyft are incurring a lost with every single sale and no meaningful way to make those profitable. They can't increase revenue relative to costs thanks to their "market-hitting" pricing formulas, so decreasing costs is their only route to profitability.

However, costs are already to the bone: They're already functionally underpaying their drivers and are looking to pay less. Self-driving could be an answer, but of course that model will require their own fleet, and to either beat the big players to the punch or be able to survive with second-best self-driving technology (since there's no reason to license the tech to them; it'd be easier and more profitable to roll up a freeware version the ride brokering platform)

@13 If I had a choice, I'd choose the latter.

@31: From the Seattle Times’ story on Restauants Unlimited’s bankruptcy:

‘In mid-2017, well after Seattle’s new minimum wage was established, Restaurants Unlimited opened two Henry’s Tavern restaurants, in Seattle and in Bellevue, at a cost of more than $10 million, according to court records.

‘Both performed poorly: “The anticipated foot traffic and projected sales at these locations did not materialize and, exacerbated by the increase in employee costs, the company experienced significant operating losses at these locations,” the company’s recently appointed chief restructuring officer, David Bagley, wrote in court documents.’

How Seatte’s minimum wage hurt a restaurant in Bellevue is another mystery you’ll leave unexplained, I’m guessing.

That same story also contained this gem:

“...during six weeks during the summer of 2017, Seattle saw 40 new restaurants open...”

So maybe the reason I missed all the restaurant closures was I kept seeing more new ones opening?

(https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.seattletimes.com/business/restaurants-unlimited-shutters-some-locations-as-it-seeks-buyer/%3famp=1)

Basic economics. The minimum wage will restrict supply as drivers are no longer able to work whenever they choose. Uber/Lyft will not be able to afford this because they will be forced to pay for idle drivers. Seattle (and other cities) could have prevented all this by not restrict the supply of taxi medallions but instead allowing anyone qualified to enter the market and set their own rates. Instead they abetted monopoly providers leaving a large pool of unmet demand.

This is yet another idealistic and impractical idea (like the idiotic streetcar) that will make Seattle still less livable.

@33: Having utterly abandoned your previous (c. 2015) predictions about how Seattle’s high minimum wage should have devastated our economy, now you’re just making up facts to support your current claims. How do you know what size restaurants opened in Seattle two years ago? You don’t; you’re just not admitting your claim about restaurant closures in Seattle was bogus.

If you’d read the quote I’d provided, you would have seen how a struggling company blew through $10M in capital it did not have to open properties which then failed miserably. Your business can’t pay wages at any level if you have no customers.

(It should also be obvious that California Pizza Kitchen didn’t fail because of a high minimum wage in Seattle.)

@36: The number of homeless in Seattle actually decreased over the past year.

(Why is it every time you cite an example, the actual numbers go the other way? Have you any explanation for that?)

@38:

“The annual count is a snapshot, not a comprehensive look at one of the region’s top issues. Officials acknowledge it is very likely an undercount. Year-round data indicates the crisis is much larger.”

Which is true of every point-in-time count; it’s not specific to this year.

“An additional 4,239 people in the city were counted in shelters and transitional housing units, a slight increase over last year.”

So, the number of persons going through the system towards housing has increased. Good news.

“This year’s data comes as frustration over the visible crisis in Seattle has reached new levels.”

Yes, it has. We’ve spent huge amounts of money to watch opioid addicts move here in increasing numbers. That’s not the same as locals becoming homeless, and certainly not the same thing as locals becoming homeless due to minimum-wage increases.

“City of Seattle spokesperson Meg Olberding said there’s no doubt that people are seeing homelessness in their neighborhoods.”

So, she attended the District 6 meeting last year, where inhabitants of Ballard called CM O’Brien a liar to his face for his falsely claiming our homeless were local? Because this is no longer news.

“There continues to be a larger number of people falling into homelessness than exiting it,” Olberding said in an email.

That’s her opinion, unsupported by facts. And even if true, it in no way supports a claim that increases in our minimum wage have anything to do with it.

Ever explain how the minimum wage in Seattle closed the California Pizza Kitchen in Bellevue?