Valiantly Protecting Consumers From Saving Money On A Ride To LAX
Many major cities or even perhaps most have streamlined, affordable ways to get to their airports. Los Angeles is not among them.

Los Angeles-based Fast Company reporter Neal Ungerleider has an op-ed in the LA Times calling for the city to start letting Uber and other ride-sharing services to pick up passengers at LAX.

I'm with him on this.

I was just in Boston, and I ended up staying in not such a great neighborhood, safety-wise, plus it was pretty far from Boston Common, where I needed to for the ev psych conference. Well, while a taxi ride would have been, I'm guessing, $25, it cost me only $10 or thereabouts for an Uber. And I got to Logan Sunday morning for $21.

Yet, here in LA, city government and special interest groups (taxis!) have kept the ride-sharing services from picking up at LAX -- while curtailing the number of taxis that can operate in the city. As Ungerleider writes:

Long before anyone had ever used a smartphone app to hail a car, the taxi supply to LAX was strictly regulated and artificially limited.

According to research by L.A. Weekly's Gene Maddaus, there are about 2,300 cabs allowed to operate within the city. Each is assigned a letter from A to E, and may only complete airport pickups on the day corresponding to their letter. This rotation system, the result of an agreement between taxi companies and LAWA, means longer and slower taxi queues for travelers than is necessary.

Many LAX customers would choose to circumvent this silliness by ordering an Uber -- if only that were possible. As the law stands, ride-sharing services can drop passengers off at LAX. But only Uber's black cars and SUVs with commercial licenses can pick them up.

These luxury services cost $75 to downtown and $59 to Santa Monica. If Lyft and Uber's more mass-market products were offered for LAX pickups, fares would surely be cheaper. (It's difficult to predict by exactly how much, because of airport fees. But here's what we do know: The mass-market UberX charges 90 cents a mile in Los Angeles as opposed to $3.55 a mile for black-car service.)

Also, I love that these drivers are smallbusinesspeople on wheels. And I particularly liked my driver to Logan this morning, Jeremias, who arrived in a suit, tie, and a snazzy hat.