“We have met the enemy, and he is us” according to Pogo.
At a recent, well attended, joint meeting of several state and local associations discussion turned to the usual suspects like the driver shortage and overzealous regulation.
Eventually an operator raised the specter of Uber (and it’s digital cousins like Lyft), indicating that they were competing unfairly and damaging his business. He felt that one solution was to regulate them.
To the extent that new rules create a safe environment, that’s hard to argue with.
Over-regulation is one of our industry’s major bugaboos. Some of us feel that big companies influence regulators, and use them to drive legitimate, but smaller, competitors out of business. Do we really want to use that method to squish Uber?
It’s a bit like riding a tiger… once you get on, getting off is dicey. New regulations might bite US too.
We need to compete by finding newer and better ways to serve the public.
The same gentleman pointed to the fact that taxi companies paid tons of money for medallions that are now worth virtually nothing, while Uber isn’t burdened by that capital expense.
True, but the majority of companies in that room had benefited from deregulation of the motorcoach industry. On September 20, 1982 the operating authority that legacy operators spent tons of money buying and defending became virtually worthless. As the great philosopher Yogi Berra said, “it’s deja vue all over again”.
One undeniable fact is that the public loves Uber, and ham-handed attempts to regulate them out of business will likely fail, making us look bad at the same time. Lobbying for more rules beyond basic safety measures (many of which have already been implemented) puts us in the same category as the big buslines teaming with regulators to eliminate coach competitors.
Not only does the public love Uber… they vote, and politicians take note.
A wizened transportation executive pointed out that Uber is not doing anything that cab operators couldn’t have done years ago. The technology Uber uses to match customers with available cars has been around for decades in the rudimentary form of dial-a-ride services. Taxi companies chose to not to make an investment that would have served their customers far better because, after all, what choice did the public have?
How’s that working out?
Yogi also said “When you come to a fork in the road… take it”. Until recently I thought he was stealing silverware, but have come to understand Yogi was referring to situations similar to the one the coach industry now faces.
We can try to squelch competition with various forms of “regulatory capture” or we can learn from competitors like Uber and try to beat them at their own innovative game. Squashing them MAY help us profit short term, but will not bring in the new customers we need to grow as an industry. In addition to snatching passengers from taxi and bus companies, Uber has created a bazillion new riders who use public transportation rather than their own vehicles.
In an aside… if you substitute “curbside carrier” for “Uber” this column would be virtually the same. Years ago legacy carriers railed against them… and now a massive portion of scheduled service is… curbside.
Once again, I’m long on questions and short on answers. There are revolutionary business models and technologies looming on the horizon. Some of them will be wildly successful… some fads that fail, and I’m not smart enough to guess which will work. Crowd sourcing is one possibility, and other revolutionary technologies are lurking just over the horizon. We need to hunt them down.
What’s certain is that taking the correct fork is critical to our survival as an industry. Otherwise, once again, Yogi gets it right … “The future ain’t what it used to be”
