Now, now, how much revenue would the city and county lose if they allowed drunks to catch a ride? Do you have any idea how much money drunk driving generates for municipal budgets? To say nothing of the private companies who install breathalyzers in cars, give drunk driving counseling, etc.? Why if you knew how much money forcing people to break the law (or just facilitating it) provides you would applaud driving the free market out of America, or are you some sort of commie?!?

Ya know, in Ferguson MO. the city generated 60% of its income from tickets and police actions? Why those people would have had to pay more taxes if not for the helpful members of the city council making sure that only lawbreakers and other such scum pay the freight for the city budget. Think about that little miss liberal!

Great point, Warhawke.

I've blogged about those tickets. It's sick. In one case, they ticketed a lady for not having proper curtains.

And then there's charging people for getting arrested -- whether they are deemed guilty or not:

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2016/12/26/the_cops_have_b.html

That is a good point. Of course, a callous disregard for the lives and safety of innocent people, endangered by the increasing number of drunk drivers, is essential.

I had a business trip to Austin a few months ago. The organizer had emailed links to two ride-sharing services (Fare and Fasten) that had gone into the market after Uber and Lyft left. A few data points:

- I arrived at the hotel to find a colleague arguing with her traditional cab driver; at the airport he had agreed to take a credit card, but when he got to the hotel suddenly the machine "wasn't working." I advised the doormen, who wrote down his license plate number and had a word with him, and all was fine. But what an unpleasant start to the trip for this woman.

- Fare and Fasten worked OK, but their GPS was not as sophisticated as that of Lyft or Uber, and there were much fewer cars on the road, so waits of 15 or 20 minutes were common.

- My best ride was given by a heavily tattooed young woman in a pedicab/rickshaw arrangement on her bicycle. She took me from one end of downtown to another (including up some hills) and we had a great chat the whole way. She quoted me a price of $10 and I gave her $15 — those hills were taxing and she had to do a lot more than press a gas pedal.

- I talked to several Austinites about the Uber/Lyft thing. Everyone wanted them back.

A little OT:

Why is it okay to impose burdensome regulations on the rumor or unfounded suspicion that sexual predators might use ride-sharing services to find victims, but not okay to limit bathroom or locker room use on the similarly unfounded fear that sexual predators might lie about being transgendered to gain access and find victims?

And, no, I'm not defending the "bathroom bill." Both it and the anti-Uber measure are ridiculous overreactions to a single incident. It just seems that the same logic is being used in one case to defend government overreach and in another to assail it. In each case, there was only one incident out of thousands that could realistically be used to justify the safety concerns. In both cases, rhetoric and fear prevailed over facts and rational decision-making.

Could the difference lie in the fact that "homophobic" Republicans passed one measure and "enlightened" Austinites passed the other?

An editorial in the New York Times praised the stubborn independence of Austinites in the Uber/Lyft case.

What it does show, though, is that Uber and Lyft will have a harder time bullying cities with strong local identities, places where convenience is not the same as necessity, especially when the price is selling out a large chunk of public control.

If nothing else, folks in Austin are feeling pretty good about themselves this week. We may be slackers, but we’re not pushovers.

Wonder if the Gray Lady praised the North Carolina legislators who refused to be pushovers. Doubt it.

Now, can we get back to being adults? Do we need the government to regulate whether we get into a stranger's car or how we use a bathroom? If you don't trust Uber, call a service that fingerprints its drivers. If you find a pervert in your locker room, call security or a manager.

Uber and Lyft provided services that Austinites needed with a reasonable margin of safety; seven reported incidents with only one resulting in criminal charges. Out of how many thousands of Uber/Lyft trips?

==============================

In the pre-Uber/Lyft days, my wife and I went to an affair in San Francisco's City Hall on a cold and blustery Saturday night in December. When we left, we called the city's largest cab company and were promised a cab in "fifteen minutes." Several calls and over an hour of waiting produced no cab - and none passed by on the street. We ended up hoofing it six blocks to a BART station, my wife in high heels and an evening dress.

San Francisco, like Austin, operated on cab monopolies and did not issue enough medallions for the companies to serve the city 24/7. The cab companies liked it that way; it meant constant demand and shifted the balance of power to the cab companies. "Don't like us? Ride the bus." This imbalance of power in American cities is why services like Uber and Lyft are thriving, not just dirty cabs and rude cabbies.

Fare and Fasten worked OK, but their GPS was not as sophisticated as that of Lyft or Uber...

That's been my experience too, living in Austin.

Many of the drivers (and this was the case for Uber and Lyft, too) aren't Austinites. They live in San Antonio and other surrounding areas. Not knowing the city well was fine with Uber and Lyft, as their GPS was on point. But I tried to use Fasten several times from my workplace. And all three times, it sent the driver to the wrong building. With the local driver, I was just able to call and say, "Hey, Fasten's GPS sucks, it's actually the such-and-such building, just drive two blocks south on X street" and the driver understood and came right over.

But the other two drivers were out-of-towners and got confused. One took 10 extra minutes to argue with me (insisting the GPS was right) and the other cancelled the ride entirely.

There's a non-profit rideshare in town called Ride Austin that's cheaper than Uber and Lyft were, but they don't have enough cars on the road, and the wait is too long.

All this is going to be a SHIT SHOW when SXSW happens.

I simply don't go out in Austin any more. Not because we used Uber-that was rare. But because "dodge the drunk" got to be a really old game on the trip home. The trip to work at 5am new years day, right through the heart of Austin on I35, is why starting tomorrow I'm working in Round Rock, despite the fact that I really liked my job. It wasn't worth dying in a wreck for.

Now wait a minute. Is all this saying that Uber and Lyft are banned, but other, locally owned services are being allowed to operate? How much money do these other services donate to local politicians?

CD, these other services submit their drivers to fingerprint tests, as required by the new Austin law. Uber and Lyft do not require fingerprint tests and refuse to implement them because of cost and other concerns. This is why these other services are more expensive and have fewer drivers than Uber and Lyft did when they operated in Austin.