PORTLAND, Ore. —This town has a great bar scene, and this region is renowned for its beer. Portlanders see themselves as tech savvy, young and not staid.
But I can’t get an Uber here, and the city government is fairly explicit about why I can’t: They want to protect the taxi cabs.
In Portland, Uber, by law, would have to give you a minimum wait time of an hour, and they would have to charge at least 35 percent higher than a taxi charges. These aren’t consumer protection laws. These are nakedly about protecting taxis from competition.
Three months ago, Uber petitioned the local Private for-Hire Transportation Board of Review to end those two rules. The board unanimously voted no.
Geekwire had a good article on this in January. Here’s the part where the bureaucrat tries to argue that this is not just protectionism of incumbent business:
When asked if the board is trying to protect the taxi industry, which the city considers an extension of its public transportation system, [Board Chairwoman Kathleen] Butler said no.
“We’re protecting industry segment separation, and ensuring stability and availability of service,” she said. “Protecting consumers is our first priority. If we can find a way to enable Uber, or anyone else who’s providing an option to operate without damaging that industry stability, then we’ll figure that out.”
Got that? For the government to allow you to compete, you need to show that you won’t destabilize the business model of the people with whom you want to compete.
The best argument the cabbies and their regulator allies make is that cabbies have all sorts of burdensome rules on them: for instance, their fares are regulated, they can’t say no to a fare that wants to go very far, they have to have dispatchers around the clock, and they have to have cameras in the cabs. These regulations are costly, and so the regulators make up for it by keeping out competition.
Here’s an alternative: Examine how you could reduce the regulatory burden on the cabs.
D.C. has done that to some extent — deregulating the fares for cabs hailed electronically. And do you really need to require cameras in every cab?But deregulating would lead to real competition and leave things up to the market. How does that help the regulators or the cabbies?
