Uber is Evil. But Portland is Failing (to Address our Taxicab Crisis)

By Alejandro Savransky of Portland, Oregon. Alejandro is a former political organizer and environmental advocate. He currently works in energy efficiency consulting.

Uber is an evil and arrogant company. No one is disputing that fact. However, by filing its recent lawsuit, the City of Portland is spending its limited time and resources protecting a taxicab monopoly that is slow, antiquated, inefficient, and borderline unethical.

Instead, Commissioner Steve Novick and Mayor Charlie Hales should be working to find solutions to our cab crisis. Consider the following facts:

  1. From a recent conversation I had with the City’s Transportation For-Hire Manager, Frank Dufay, I learned that there are currently only 460 cab permits available in the City of Portland. Let’s think about that number for a minute. We’re a city of more than 609,000, so that means we have one taxicab available for every 1,323 Portlanders. Even more troubling is the fact that this number has been static since 2012. Now, this should not come as a surprise to many people since, at least in my experience, the service provided by incumbent cab companies is mediocre at best. Wait times are often long and no-shows are more common than they should be.

  2. According to the City’s own FAQ on Taxis and other Private-for-Hire transportation regulation, "Portland taxi drivers often work long hours and make a net hourly wage of $6.22 an hour, lower than the $9.10 Oregon minimum wage." So this means that Portland is suing Uber in order to protect a taxicab monopoly that charges high prices (as shown by Sightline Institute) and whose employees earn less than the minimum wage. Some cab companies in Portland are driver-owned, and I have heard that these drivers report higher satisfaction with their job and compensation. Still, it seems backwards to protect this industry without reforming it.

  3. Portland did not sue AirBnB. AirBnB entered the Portland market illegally, just like Uber. I admit that AirBnB eventually worked with the city to come up with a legal framework that now seems to work for all parties involved—but Uber has been in talks with the City as well. Even though many of the same concerns people have about Uber also apply to AirBnB, Portland did not take legal action against AirBnB. This seems completely inconsistent. At the same time, it seems troubling that the city is willing to let a company that benefits homeowners—who tend to be richer—bend the rules while, at the same time, pulling out the rulebook against one that is most helpful to those who live in “car-lite” or “car-free” households—who tend to be poorer. Thus, the argument that the city has an obligation to fight companies that come to Portland and operate against the law is shaky at best.

Portland needs to solve its cab crisis. I urge Commissioner Novick and Mayor Hales to stop wasting time with this lawsuit and start working on real solutions that will either a) give Uber, Lyft and other similar companies the opportunity to operate in Portland legally, or b) improve our incumbent taxicab service in order to better meet the needs of Portlanders.

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