[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by peter12

The question that reasonable people, and I think some of these people work in City Hall, are asking is what is the long game? Taxis have kind of worked for a long time. The economics of maintaining a semi-public good like a city livery service are complex, and it includes maintaining a standard of living for drivers, keep vehicles somewhat roadworthy, providing some choice for consumers, and providing a modicum of security through livery insurance.

Now, what is it that people hate about taxis, and what is it that they love about Uber?

People hate that when they need taxis at night on weekends they can't get them. And forget about Uber. The only thing Uber represents is an alternative to a broken system. At this point, people who need cabs in the evenings on weekends would welcome any alternative.

Originally Posted by peter12

Yeah, so if it was purely just about a convenient ride, then people would want the regulation. Except Uber doesn't do regulation because it would price them out.

Wrong. The regulations aren't flexible enough to handle the dramatic variations in demand. And efforts to widen the pool of licenses have been met with fierce resistance from the license-holders, who paid a fortune for the rights to drive a taxi in this city.

Originally Posted by jammies

That there has been an issue for decades that hasn't been resolved points to the opposite of the conclusion you've drawn, that I am wrong and that council spends a lot of resources on the problem. People complain, they commission a study, the study sees no viable solution that is bettr than the status quo, repeat ad infinitum. It is a back-burner issue that has only come to the fore now that there is a perceived solution, despite that "solution" being very much better in the short term but almost certainly not better in the long term, if Uber achieves its goals.

Wrong again. The city recognized the crisis in cab supply several years ago, before Uber was a viable alternative. This issue may have only come to your attention recently, but it has been simmering for years.

Originally Posted by jammies

They have addressed this minor issue multiple times, just not to anyone's satisfaction. Again, the fact that different councils over decades haven't been able to reconcile the needs of the taxi companies - and they DO have needs if they want to be able to run viable businesses, or there are no taxis for anyone - with those of consumers and the City, almost certainly means it's not as easy as "Down with Big Taxi! Up with Uber! Nenshi is a shill!"

You're right, the city chose the interest of a few hundred cab drivers and a few taxi companies over the interests of hundreds of thousands of citizens. And no, they didn't do it because of corruption. They did it because in 1985 the city put in place a misguided and dumb licensing system, capped the number at 1,311 in 1986 and only increased it by 100 by 2011, and then sat back and watched as a third-party market in licenses grew and grew until it cost the price of a small mortgage to get one. And once that happened, you had hundreds of people and several medium-sized companies deeply invested in protecting a system that was essential for them, but dysfunctional for a great many Calgarians.

I'm not suggesting the city had any easy options. They were going to make some people very, very pissed off whatever they did. But they chose to coast along on the path of least resistance, while the crisis in availability got worse and worse and worse. Once they reached a point where tens or hundreds of thousands of Calgarians had been left stranded multiple times, and so many citizens were furious enough that it became a serious political issue (which was about three years ago), the city started to make some changes to open up licenses to more drivers. But it was too little too late. Enough Calgarians are so frustrated with the current system that they'll welcome any alternative.