I generally away from regulation, but let me articulate the pro-regulation argument.
Markets that are important (like transportation) and have network effects need to be regulated. A monopoly with Uber and/or Lyft dominating local transportation is not good for consumers or cities in the long-term.
Cities should take control of their transportation and ensure competition by managing allocation of capacity. I think the best parallel is managing of spectrum in telecom to ensure competition.
San Francisco just granted two companies a monopoly when previously there were multiple companies fighting for the same business. That’s the exact opposite of what you’re advocating.
VCs would not be giving billion $ valuations if they thought this will be a highly competitive market with many players. Everyone is betting on a winner takes most market.
Scooters are cheap enough and slow enough that the benefits to scale
- aren't hard to reach for anyone with funding, and
- can be maintained over relatively small geographic areas (neighbourhoods/cities, not states/countries/globally).
If some new company invents a scooter with better tires or a better battery or a disco ball and a stereo it's not hard for them to enter the market. And, in fact, this regulation is happening because the city thinks it's too easy for upstarts to get a toe-hold and cause negative externalities like sidewalk crowding.
(Besides these points: Has anyone made the argument that "overwhelming, unapproachable network-effect leads" are kinda great outcomes for consumers? Like, assume there were 10 facebooks instead of one -- kinda terrible. Or if there were a hundred Ubers and Lyfts, and you didn't know which one had cars close to you... awful.)
I’ve noticed that a lot of “natural” monopolies are regulated under the assumption they will become monopolies but before they actually do.
I suspect a lot of that regulation has been wrong, monopolies would not have emerged, and we would be better off regulating only the monopolies that actually exist.
I’d rather see the scooter companies fight it out than have the city government pick winners and losers when the industry is only a few months old and multiple viable competitors already exist.
This is a time-limited pilot program that also caps the number of scooters. It's far from a market monopoly.
In addition, there's no network effect with scooters. Car sharing has the chicken-and-egg problem where you need enough drivers to meet demand, and you need enough passengers to give drivers a reason to drive for you. But scooters are cheap and easy to dump a whole bunch on a city, so there's no reason why a new company can't move in on an existing scooter market. For the most part the only important pieces are the brand recognition of the company and how easy their app is to use. If Uber is serious about scooters, I fully expect them to just move back in when the pilot program is over and immediately pick up a sizeable chunk of the market.
I disagree. There is a network effect here, people will use the brand that already is installed on their phone PLUS the one that has the most scooters. This is what can occur here.
If someone wanted to sell a new app, they have to get people to recognize their brand and install their app no matter what.
Ride sharing companies then also have to reach a critical mass where drivers and riders can match in a reasonable time. I think overcoming that is the network effect.
"Overcoming entering into a new market" is categorically different from "Overcoming a mandatory 6 month freeze on your ability to compete while your competitor gets first dibs."
Using the app already on your phone isn't a network effect. A network effect is when the more users there are, the more valuable the network is to each new user. For ridesharing, the more drivers there are, the more useful the service is to passengers, and the more passengers there are the more attractive the service is to drivers. But for scooters? Whether a given scooter brand is popular or is unknown has no bearing whatsoever on its utility to a new user, all that really matters is whether the scooters are available when and where the user wants them, and whether the app is easy to use.
There is definitely a density effect with scooters although. And seeing the past behaviors of governments, 'temporary' things often become permanent limits.
They created conditions for a massive degradation of the public sidewalk especially for wheelchair users. They did nothing to fix it. Regulators act slowly and rarely, but when they do they always overreact. Entirely predictable.
>A monopoly with Uber and/or Lyft dominating local transportation is not good for consumers or cities in the long-term.
As opposed to a city ineffectively delivering transportation to such an extent that people have to drive their personally-owned cars everywhere?
Anyone in SF who was here before Uber will tell you that Uber and Lyft were and remain a godsend. Cabs were few and far between (there's an Eddie Izzard bit about this actually) and Muni is slow and unreliable.
You are attacking a position that I am not advocating. I am not suggesting government run transportation. I am suggesting that government ensure that the private market remains competitive with multiple players by allocating capacity.
In any case, the only thing worse than government running services is a company with a monopoly running services. The first tends to be inefficient. The second tends to be inefficient with a profit motive (see Comcast).
If you consider the short term rental of inexpensive scooters an important market needing laws to regulate their capacity (..by the wise and benevolent leaders of this sparkling city..), it's hard to imagine any market that would fall short of your importance threshold.
The notion that the only way to ensure competition is to forbid it is convoluted.
I have no need for one and I don't need to throw somebody else's brightly colored garbage onto the property of or into the streets I share with my neighbors.
Have you heard of the expression "live and let live"? The level of entitlement displayed in your comments is astounding.
You feel it's reasonable to prevent everyone else from using a very cheap and convenient transportation service just because the vehicles aren't esthetically pleasing to you?
Who is doing the "let live" when a bunch of rental bicycles or a bunch of rental scooters are getting thrown across sidewalks or into a community pond, exactly?
In your world, it's incumbent upon me to let them shit up my town, but not incument upon them--either the users or the companies that supply them--to not shit up our town.
If the trip is less than 5 miles, it will be cheaper than $1 to drive my hybrid car there AND back. (Assuming $3.35/gallon at 40 MPG, which is quite realistic for a pair of 5-mile trips.)
Why pay $1 for something that should cost $0.05, and would be difficult to integrate into my life? If I wanted to ride a bicycle, I'd spend the equivalent of 150 Lime rides at Target or Wally World and own my own bicycle. Why rent what you can own?
Yes, assuming that the government massively subsidizes your driving by socializing the carbon externality and providing you with a free mandatory parking space at your origin and destination then it’s “cheaper” to drive.
The government doesn't subsidize those parking spaces; I pay for one of them in rent ($75/mo), and the other in higher prices/competition. (My workplace is in a city that mandates companies only have 80% parking, to force some employees to bus etc.)
How much do Lime and their competition pay for their parking spots? They're usually left in a sidewalk or other public walkway, using government-provided locations that were intended for a different purpose.
Bellevue, WA has a very unique solution. Most of their east-west avenues channel traffic to Bellevue Collection's shopping squares.
But not all. One street in either direction of Bellevue is essentially bus/pedestrian/bicycle friendly - 6th Street and 108th Ave. At their intersection is Bellevue's bus hub. 6th Ave provides bus access to the freeway, and pedestrian-only access to the Bellevue Collection.
108th has a bicycle lane wedged between car parking and the driving lane on either side, and this is where almost all of the Lime Bikes congregate. There are special painted squares, almost like Zipcar parking slots, where the bikes can usually be found. The bikes are occasionally seen outside apartments and businesses, but never for long - none have been there long enough to become a real eyesore.
1) I believe urban areas--say, within half a mile of a subway stop--should be generally car-restricted to its residents, yes. (Exceptions of course exist but they can be managed; Boston has an MBTA car service for the disabled, as an example.) But no, cars don't belong where humans live.
2) As the sibling comments note, cars tend to park in observance of the law and don't go whizzing down the sidewalk while I am walking to work.
It seems the City Govt are more worried about the eyesore of parked bikes, rather than the cheap mode of transportation enabled by these scooters, in many cases which is even affordable by the homeless. Outright banning or even capacity limitation is pretty dystopian and rent seeking from the part of the City, perhaps the City should just legislate norms for safety and fair usage.
Even if many of these scooters are improperly parked, the parking was done by the users and not the companies themselves, so holding the companies solely responsible for that dose not appear fair.
Wait, so a monopoly with Skip and Scoot is somehow better? Literally the only thing creating any sort of scarcity or monopoly here is regulation, so claiming it's necessary to prevent a monopoly is a bit ludicrous.
I don't think many people are in favor of zero regulation, but politicians literally picking winners and losers instead of the market is even worse.
How do "transportation" companies (dockless scooters in this case) have network effects? The automobile industry, which is about as mature as markets get, has seven companies in the US with at least 5% market share and the leader (GM) has merely 17%, and is largely bereft of command-and-control economic policies.
For a scooter, I have to walk until I find a scooter for a company that I'm enrolled with. Do I even have company X's app on my phone to show their scooter nearby? If I run across company Y's scooter, how much effort is it for me to enroll to use it? And is company Z offering me a bulk discount?
All of these are totally different from buying a car.
Neither. I'm saying they're completely different things with respect to network effects, in response to someone who thought they were similar in some fashion.
There aren't a lot of barriers to entry in the ride-hailing market. Want to ride with another service? It's just another app. Want to drive for one more service in addition to the rest? Again, just another app that sends notifications.
If Uber and/or Lyft get a monopoly and then jack up prices, they won't have a monopoly for long.
Business permits should be shall-issue: if an applicant adheres to a set of rules known in advance, the city ought to have no power to deny its permit application.
Want to limit the number of something? Fine. Auction off medallions or something in a transparent, open way. Don't pick and choose businesses the way SF busybodies do.
San Francisco has severe and worsening problems primarily due to rampant interference in the operation of the free market. The city keeps doubling down on this interference every time someone, somewhere, tries to find a way around the city's thicket of rules.
Same with home renovation / remodeling / addition / construction permits. If your design meets code and zoning, it should automatically get approved. None of this nimby-neighbor-going-to-the-planning-meeting-and-getting-your-project-cancelled-because-your-chimney-will-cast-a-shadow-on-their-backyard bullshit.
So you are saying you wouldn't complain if a 50 storey apartment complex was built right next to you and bathed your entire house in darkness 24/7. Sure thing.
One issue is that zoning rules don't always cover every potential problem. For example, there's been a huge controversy in Redwood City (and neighboring Atherton) regarding a coffee shop that is going in, which will employ lingerie-clad baristas (and apparently have mirrors on the ground, to make things even skeezier). [1]
This coffee shop apparently meets all current zoning rules, though the employees may need to be somewhat less scantily-clad than the ones working at other locations. Regardless, this shows one way in which zoning rules don't always predict developments that neighbors might reasonably want to avoid.
b) Make everybody ask the city council and all their neighbors for permission for every little thing, every time
(a) is at least trying to make an even playing field for everyone. The rules are for everybody, and everybody has to follow them, regardless of political connections or money or lawyering, etc. At least in theory.
With (b), you start by trying to get an exception carved out for yourself, so in practice only those with the most patience, money, lawyers, political connections, etc. will be able to get what they want, and everybody else gets the Kafka treatment.
Can zoning rules be changed retroactively? And even if this is allowed, can zoning rules be put in place with the goal of booting out a specific business? I think ex post facto prohibitions only apply to criminal laws, but in general I think we disfavor targeting individual businesses with legislation.
For background, I live in a neighborhood where the property sizes are much much smaller than the rest of the zoned area. So we have to get exceptions for many things because the rules were written for properties that are 10x to 50x the size. I wish that rules could be written to cover every possible eventuality, and I personally feel the pain because they cannot (I have to pay for every exception and variance in the approval process). So having seen how rules are blunt instruments, I have some sympathy for folks who are caught up in the process.
I didn't downvote, but my mental reaction isn't positive. You don't think anybody in Redwood City would want to go to a place like that? If you want to ban strip clubs and casinos, then ban strip clubs and casinos, but from your description it sounds like trying to block a Hooters from opening, after they have already agreed to limit themselves out of regard for what some might call Puritan concerns. You're arguing against something using an example that most of your audience doesn't agree is valid.
Oh I'm not saying I don't think anyone in RWC would want to go there (though the discussions on NextDoor have been mostly one-sided). I'm just pointing out that there are gaps in zoning laws, since we can't anticipate every possible thing. That's what leads people to want to have zoning rules that err on the side of conservatism, so that they don't end up with something like this. Thanks for explaining your reaction.
I should also note that this is somewhat closer to a strip club than a Hooters, since the attire is lingerie, not tight shirts. Basically, they're falling somewhere between two things that were known to exist (strip clubs and Hooters) when the rules were presumably made. In the future, I'm sure towns around here will make rules that are more restrictive, citing this as an example of what happens when you leave more room.
Playing devil's advocate here (which is my way of saying "bring on the downvotes"): because what they build can still generate negative externalities that affect their neighbors. So even though a 50-story building might be in compliance with zoning laws, it still blocks neighbor's access to a valuable, albeit non-essential resource (sunlight, cool ocean breeze, etc.) that probably factored into the price the original owner paid for their property.
In other words, you are free to build whatever you want on your own property, as long as its effects don't negatively impact the value of mine. (I personally will never block developments, but I think I would have a right to be pissed off as hell if something like that happened, still.)
> In other words, you are free to build whatever you want on your own property, as long as its effects don't negatively impact the value of mine.
That is nowhere near a good enough rule. What if I buy commercial retail property in a bustling district, but over a few years the bustling industry shifts half a mile away, leaving my district with less foot traffic and thus negatively impacting the value of my property? Have those developers harmed me in a way that should be illegal?
You may be tempted to say “well, no, obviously that’s different.” And indeed, it is obviously different. But the challenge is coming up with a rule that actually works without needing you or someone to decide on a case by case basis what is “obviously” an exception.
So first of all, you don’t have a right not to live in a shadow. Millions of people in cities all over the world deal with it every day. It’s not that bad (tbh it probably helps AC bills too). You have certain rights when you buy property, but “a view” isn’t one of them. If you want scenery, move to the country. It’s gorgeous!
Second, it’s frustrating that people only think of themselves. “What about my view?” What about the hundreds or thousands of people who can’t live near their jobs or their kids’ schools because of your precious view? What about the people who will be forced to drive in and get stuck in traffic, people who probably can’t bike because they’re forced to live in another town only reachable by a long highway trip? What about the people who are forced to pay higher and higher rents because everyone blocks development everywhere in the city?
I can understand this point of view, and I don't own a house so I'm not really "defending" anything here. I'd love for housing to be cheaper and for more people to build in SF.
However, think about how you'd feel if you bought a house and spent most of your life savings on it (like most are forced to), only to find that it drops in value dramatically putting you underwater on the payments. It's not just about their "view". They paid for amenities which (whether we like it or not) include the view and environment.
I don't even have a solution - but it's not so simple as "give up your view so more people can live near their jobs".
That’s the other thing: real estate is not a guaranteed investment. If you invest money in a house and its value goes down, I’m sorry, but that’s the risk you take. A home is not a guaranteed investment vehicle, despite that being the outcome when NIMBYs vote and craft policy to make it so.
Also, I don’t think people’s home values drop all that dramatically when new housing is built. We’ve been putting this off for decades, but we’ve also been artificially inflating housing prices. Maybe your tiny bungalow ISN’T actually worth $500,000. Maybe decades of bad local policy have ballooned the price of your house at the expense of others.
And even so, even if building housing makes your house decrease in value, that’s still not a good reason to prevent development. I care much more they cities are healthy and plentiful housing than I do about some Boomers who got lucky with when they bought into the real estate market.
The solution is actually remarkably simple: build more housing. We did it before; plenty of other countries with more sensible zoning laws do it. There aren’t enough places for people to live. We can either start killing people, or we can put up some walls. Personally, I’m a fan of buildings.
I agree with you in that I still think the right thing to do is build.
I also think it's really easy to say "sorry, you fucked up when you spent all your money on a house" if it's someone else. These aren't all "Boomers who got lucky" - they are also millennials buying their houses today at current rates.
I think we have to have more empathy for these people if we want to make progress.
If you can show me that building more housing causes everyone else’s property values to fall, I’ll believe you. Until then, these are the exact same arguments people use to prevent building any housing.
Remember, this all rests on the assumption that building housing necessarily depresses property values, and that isn’t a guarantee. You can tell because it goes further than that. It’s hard to build any housing at all. My city had about 100,000 people in it. I know some smart urban planners and they estimate it would take about 20,000 to 30,000 new units to stabilize our rental market. Not drive prices down, just stabilize. But we can’t even build ONE apartment building, let alone tens of thousands of units. Even if more housing would drive property values down (which it doesn’t necessarily), it would take so much housing before it ever got to that point.
And once again, we can have empathy and we can build housing. I promise one or two apartment buildings isn’t going to ruin grandma and grandpa’s home value. I promise.
>>That’s the other thing: real estate is not a guaranteed investment.
The types of people the parent is describing don't buy real estate as an investment. They buy it as an asset. And for most Americans, their house is their most valuable asset.
So can you not spare a shred of sympathy that they are hyper-conscious about what happens to the value of that asset?
Can you not spare a shred of sympathy for people who want to live in the city they work in but can’t because property owners won’t let them? Sorry, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people who actively block building new housing because “screw you, got mine”. (Also, building housing doesn’t just tank the value of your home, trust me.)
>>Can you not spare a shred of sympathy for people who want to live in the city they work in but can’t because property owners won’t let them?
Of course I can. My sympathy goes both ways.
>> (Also, building housing doesn’t just tank the value of your home, trust me.)
I'm not talking about simply increasing the supply of housing. The specific example we are discussing is a new skyscraper blocking the view from an existing one.
In which case the property value should be fine. As far as view goes, I believe I addressed that further up (but to recap: thoughts and prayers for people who are so burdened by others having a place to live).
If you buy a property that has a magnificent view, but has an empty building lot next door, or an old dilapidated home ripe for being pulled down, then, in a transparent zoning situation, you'll be fully aware that you may be built out and you'll have no rights to prevent it.
That means you'll pay less for your property, and you get to enjoy your view for as long as it lasts, and keep some money in your pocket.
If on the other hand you do have all sorts of rights to prevent anyone from building out your view then that same house will cost you a lot more - perhaps more than you'll be able to afford.
Either of these situations seems fair, because you know the rules in advance.
Crappy situations arise when the rules are not clear. In that case, you don't really know how much you should pay for that house, and you may suffer immense angst when your view disappears.
>>You have certain rights when you buy property, but “a view” isn’t one of them.
I have a right to what I pay for. This is simply inarguable.
In most highrises, the view tends to make up a significant portion of the value. This is why units become more expensive the higher up they are: the view is better from a higher altitude.
So essentially, when a developer comes and builds another highrise next door, they are destroying a big part of the value of the original highrise units.
So, if I have a right to what I pay for, and someone is doing something to negatively affect that, the NIMBY argument becomes rather straight-forward.
(Again, these aren't my actual views. I'm simply saying I can sympathize with NIMBYs, even though I despise them.)
And you’re (Not you personally) free to do what like on your property barring negative outcomes for the entire community. Imposing restrictions on land you don’t own certainly falls in that category.
Imagine you owned a home and somebody wanted to put a nightclub on one side of you and an abattoir on the other. Do you think that might affect your quality of life at all? I mean hey, it's their property!
"It technically complies with the law"seems like cold comfort. Anyway you're just moving the locus of struggle from the approval process to the zoning regulations, since anyone with their head screwed on is going to demand that the city council use the law to block a development like this.
Yeah, I understand that zoning is often used as a way to discourage building things that people don’t want built. But my idea was that hopefully there’s a way to make zoning “work”. I have no inherent issues with a nightclub; I just think it would be better from a noise perspective to put it downtown where it’s not going to bother other people.
:/ I understand the reasoning for zoning and don't have a better solution. Thus I am generally for zoning.
I was responding to (middle OP?) "Why shouldn't land owners be able to build whatever they want on their own property? It's not your backyard, it's your neighbors property" and "As long as they follow the noise and disturbance ordinances, then sure."
Those former seems to suggest getting rid of zoning altogether which would cause horrible negative externalities IMO. The latter assumes noise disturbances would somehow balance the market which I highly doubt.
That's where zoning comes in. Residential, commercial and so forth. NYC has dozens of zoning codes (eg., R6, R2, https://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/zoning/districts-tools/re... is just a link to R and there are links on the left to C and the rest), and re-zoning requires a complicated political process. There's no chance of a nightclub opening up next door, but there's plenty of chances a few blocks aware where light industrial is being rezoned.
Are we talking through each other because I feel like we are arguing the same point.
jzymbaluk said "Why shouldn't land owners be able to build whatever they want on their own property? It's not your backyard, it's your neighbors property" which screams "No zoning" to me.
Then "saagarjha" said "As long as they follow the noise and disturbance ordinances, then sure." which screams "the market will naturally balance homeowner satisfaction with factories/businesses".
I responded with "Are you suggesting that nightclubs should be banned altogether? If not, then where do you suggest to put them since they are inherently noisy?" as without zoning, homeowners, businesses, and factories could be right next to each other.
Overall the point I was trying to get at “if they follow the rules, then I don’t care if they’re next to my house”. Ideally there would be rules protecting me from annoyance such as noise pollution. Zoning rules would allow those that require more lenient regulations their own place to stay (note: this isn’t a NIMBY argument. It’s a “follow the rules” thing, which ideally should be constructed in a way to make it possible to build these while still not making it horrible for everyone else living there, and not putting any other restrictions just because I don’t want it next to my house).
His exact words were "Why shouldn't land owners be able to build whatever they want on their own property?" Zoning also prevents this sort of absolute freedom.
Changing conditions within an incredibly dense metro area are part of the terms and conditions into one moving there. If you want land, there's plenty of space for it -- outside the city as opposed to where people have a pressing need to work and live without spending hours commuting and are willing to put up with the density. It is unreasonable to expect things to stay static when so many lives depend on things changing.
Chances are that a 50 story building isn't going next to a single family home without serious changes to the entire block. More likely, people want to build multi-families which are not going to ruin your sunlight. Additionally, changing all of this takes a lot of time, just because zoning may be relaxed doesn't mean overnight its going to turn in to Manhattan or Hong Kong as opposed to Paris which largely is ~6 stories and not particularly known for being a hellhole.
It is immoral to always in favor of the people lucky enough to have bought at the right time. Surely it is a difficult balance, but chances are your home has appreciated enough to give you a lot of options too.
It doesn't make any sense to assume that someone would want to buy Home A, tear it down, and build a paper mill there, but that nobody could ever want to buy Home B next door and build a profitable venture there as well. Often in these situations, housing values go up, because the opportunity exists to build something more valuable than a house.
Furthermore, when you buy a house, you are a taking a risk. You're making an investment. I don't see why the rest of the world should be bending over backwards and living in stasis to protect your investment. If you want absolute control over what happens on your block, buy your block.
I think if you look a little harder you can find entire neighborhoods of homes becoming worthless because of industrial ventures nearby but I guess your theory sounds nice on paper.
That doesn't contradict my point, as I never claimed that was impossible for housing values to depreciate, only that the alternative happens "often". Specifically:
You're treating all real estate as if it's the same, but the world is more complex than that. We're talking about dense metro areas, where development primarily happens to support growing populations and an influx of businesses. How many expensive homes in downtown SF have become worthless because of industrial ventures nearby? Far, far, far less than have become extremely valuable, if any. This isn't just some theory on paper.
Are we? I was responding to a claim that property owners should have absolute rights to build whatever they please on their property. Nobody builds big smoke stacks in the middle of major cities anymore but you could refer to some 19th-Century writing about London to see how that could be bad as well. Or you could read about the time the Thames stank so bad Parliament all had to leave and was finally compelled to do something about waterway pollution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink
In short there are a lot of reasons to want to regulate what people build.
As far as I can gather from jeffbax's comment, yes, that's what he was talking about. Not giving property owners absolute rights to build whatever they please. I don't know how many people would seriously support going to that extreme.
The exact question I was answering was "Why shouldn't land owners be able to build whatever they want on their own property?" I imagine he must be a hardcore libertarian because there are a bunch of them here and that is the question he asked and not some other one about mixed zoning.
Oh I see. Yes, he did say that further up, and I think your reply to that was correct. However when he got specific in his next comment and talked about dense metro areas, I don't think your reply was valid, and that's what I've been responding to.
So actually, Japan does something like this. Residences can be built pretty much anywhere (except near super heavy industry), because their zoning is all about how much of a nuisance something is. They also don’t have strict usage restrictions like Euclidean zoning in the states. So for example, if something is zoned for medium commercial (making that up), you can build everything from commercial “down” (so to residential), which allows mixed use too.
And let’s not be flippant. Nobody wants the ability to build anything anywhere, but it’s eaually absurd to not build much of anything at all. You can have density and affordable housing and a good quality of life; lots of cities do it already!
Land ownership is never absolute because it isn’t the product of human endeavor, so owning it means you either violently excluded people from it, formalized that violence through law, or bought it after one of the above had happened. That’s why I can’t build a big laser beam on my land and use it to set your house on fire, among other things.
Exactly that. I was reading today that ~66% of Seattle's residential housing is single-family homes. Boston by comparison is 14%. It's absurd.
And then so many people in Seattle want to complain about plunging affordability.
"Seattle homeowners have vigorously fought changes to zoning laws that would increase density on the grounds that it would alter the character of neighborhoods filled with picturesque (if small) craftsman-style bungalows."
People want to use upzoning to change permissable uses after people have bought. That’s the problem.
So you’re either arguing for zoning to remain static to maintain the property rights of surrounding owners, or someone’s getting screwed when zoning changes.
The equitable solution would be to compensate surrounding owners for their property losing value or them losing enjoyment when zoning changes (similar to eminent domain), but if that makes zoning changes prohibitively expensive (or owners turn down the offer entirely), we’re back to square one. Someone is losing something.
I would rather try to cure cancer than fix land use and housing in California.
> The equitable solution would be to compensate surrounding owners for their property losing value or them losing enjoyment when zoning changes...
So we should use public money to compensate private property owners for making a bad gamble, at the expense of people who need a place to live. I’m sorry, but why is owning property a guarantee of a return on your investment? Should we compensate people who hold stock in coal companies when we regulate the coal industry too?
It’s not a gamble, it’s ownership. It’s not a guaranteed return, it’s compensation for loss of value by an injuring party.
Them the breaks of real estate law and it’s English origins, and while I won’t dissuade you from action, know that it will take decades before you see meaningful change. Plan accordingly.
You lost me when you acted like property owners in California are poor and need protection. They have seen some of the greatest unearned wealth increases by sitting on their butts doing nothing in the past generations. Meanwhile, the low income renters are the ones actually needing “equity” in this situation
All property owners are afforded protection under the law, regardless of income and wealth status. Low income renters, by the very definition, have no equity in the situation. Someone would need to subsidize the equity you want them to have (no complaints with that, just find the voluntary party willing to pay for it).
> The equitable solution would be to compensate surrounding owners for their property losing value
They already get compensated in the form of lower taxes. Just like how if the neighbors build something that increases their property value, they need to pay more in taxes.
You’re free to make that argument to property owners and see if it sticks. If I was a gambling man, I doubt you’d get any traction. And if you attempt to use legislation, you’re going to get shot right down, because property owners have more to lose than transient renters.
Big fan of FWD:Everyone by the way, great product.
And thanks! I've been writing regex ten hours a day for the last six weeks to fix thread parsing issues in weird corner cases, we'll have some improvements to the site that will be more visible in the next couple months though.
That’s called by-right and lots of cities (maybe all? Not sure if it’s a local/state/federal thing) have that. That doesn’t stop NIMBYism (all you have to do is downzone), but for areas that are reasonably densely zoned, you don’t need any variances for projects that conform to zoning ordinances.
The real issue with NIMBYs is how restrictive zoning is. Sure, you can build anything you want if it conforms, but good luck getting it to conform. For example, single-family home neighborhoods are pretty much stuck that way. Want a nice, compact apartment building? Or maybe even a fourplex? Good luck. In my reasonably-sized college town, upzoning happens once PER DECADE.
This is the affordable housing crisis at its core, and it’s remarkably procedural and boring. People are unable to afford homes and apartments because of simple tedium that takes place in beige board rooms at 11:00 PM on a Monday (i.e. local politics).
> The real issue with NIMBYs is how restrictive zoning is
Yeah, zoning in the US tends to be single use, which prevents most buildings from being built in most places. I recently read a fantastic blog post on how zoning works in Japan, where uses are instead ranked by how much of a "nuisance" they are, and zones have a maximum nuisance level. Anything at or below that level can be constructed in that zone.
I guess it makes me a dirty NIMBY but I live on a very suburban street with a row of modest single family homes, and I'd rather my neighbor not start a tire recycling business in his backyard, or replace it with a 3 story apartment building. That said, I have no problem with people who want urban living in already-urban areas, and it's a shame when NIMBYs try to stop that kind of development.
As a local example that doesn't even apply to multi-family/multi-unit houses, consider the absolutely insane zoning rule in San Mateo county that requires every SFM to have at least 2 covered parking spaces. Seriously, wtf.
>This is the affordable housing crisis at its core, and it’s remarkably procedural and boring. People are unable to afford homes and apartments because of simple tedium that takes place in beige board rooms at 11:00 PM on a Monday (i.e. local politics).
What is preventing companies from moving to less expensive cities? By the free market logic, it should decrease demand/rent in hot cities, and provide these companies more affordable workers.
At which point is the housing pressure strong enough so that jobs start moving elsewhere, and market effects between cities or state come into play (i.e. if a city "choose" to limit housing it will limit it's economic potential compared to others)?
>What is preventing companies from moving to less expensive cities?
Those cities also have the same restrictive zoning laws, preventing new office buildings and housing just like the expensive cities.
Many American cities are experiencing price increases out of line with prevailing wages to the point that the median income cannot afford the median house. And we're not talking NYC and SF;think Nashville.
Furthermore, talent is concentrated in a few areas. A software firm in Nome, Alaska will have a harder time hiring than one in New York. Infrastructure like airports keeps businesses in hubs. Ports make goods cheap to ship. Having large numbers of local customers helps too
Companies do this all the time with their regional offices and factories. Usually they milk the city for subsidies and tax breaks while dangling the promise of job creation and trickle-down revitalization of local businesses. Then when the tax breaks expire, they move to greener pastures, leaving the city in a bigger financial hole than they left it.
In Silicon Valley the dynamic is different, because it’s mostly global headquarters full of upper management and highly paid engineers. Unlike low-wage employees in regional offices, those people are not considered disposable, and aren’t willing to relocate on a whim. So relocating headquarters to another city or state is extremely hard for large companies.
Don't forget the fun of HoA's. Those nice standardized apartment blueprints now need 2 tons of architectural foam glued on them to match the mcmansions in the neighboring subdivision, and then the renter's get charged an extra $20 a month so a group of jaded retirees can argue with each other about the grass height surrounding their $500,000 houses
I can imagine about 100 other layers of law and regulation that would be better suited at dealing with this scenario than some municipal licensing issue. So, yes?
Can we at a minimum focus on practical participants and outcomes when debating policy?
I always have maintained that local governments tend to be the most corrupt compared to the amount of power that they have, but the corruption is usually too small to gain notice.
Many work in the local gov and make it in the fed gov after they "prove" they are worth it so I wouldn't say they are less corrupt. It's not uncommon for mayors to run for the ultimate job in the fed gov.
The companies in question already had a history of operating illegally in San Francisco. I don't think it's fair to dismiss that as "picking and choosing". Dumping those scooters over the city is effectively littering.
Business should be able to operate freely, but they should not be able to break the law until someone catches them.
For that to be analogous, it would have to be "Enterprise" or "Hertz" doing it. Not Toyota. If Hertz (Or CityCarShare) just went ahead and just put their cars willy-nilly anywhere they wanted, then you'd have a point.
That is a dumb law that was made when motorcycles were the only vehicles competing inside walks.
There is very little traffic on sidewalks and using it for pedestrians and scooters and bicycles is much better. Especially considering that cyclists can pause or go around pedestrians when necessary.
Having an absolute law rather than an adaptive is not useful to the community.
If I'd started a scooter company before scooter companies were a thing, went to any city and asked for permission, they would have said "wtf? no." (assuming they answered my petition at all) and that would have been the end of it.
The only reason we're here arguing about this is companies like Bird chose to ask for forgiveness rather than permission in the past.
In all cases, no. In this case, yes. Improving the sad state of transportation options in the bay area is beneficial to all residents. Two wrongs don't make a right. Fine them for breaking the rules and then allow them to continue. Don't give their business to a competitor in an act of revenge against their breaking the rules.
You're phrasing it as if it's "revenge" rather than the city looking out for its citizen's best interests. If this company has been willing to flaunt the rules, who's to say it won't again? That isn't "revenge," it seems more like using common sense.
Why? It's not like they've made a mistake. They intentionally broke the law; they've displayed propensity for unlawful behaviour. The reasonable thing to do is to give their business to parties who did not, so far, show the same propensity.
So did lyft and uber initially, those services are immeasurably better than the previous taxis (although their treatment of employees may be worse but I haven't seen much evidence taxi drivers get better conditions/benefits).
In then end I guess I don't care because I truly believe the rules are backwards and protecting cars above any useful alternatives that may represent a useful future for green sustainable urban transportation.
I should also say, look below[0]. Bird's application was terrible . Scoot on the other hand set an example for a great application to a government body for a resource of some kind, I can compare it to my experience for writing grants.
I can imagine some class on professional writing contrasting these very two applications as examples of what not to do and what to do when applying for something from a government. After scanning both, I'm pretty much convinced the city chose the applications based on the quality and substance behind each application, not based on anything else.
Yes of course it's good. Look at the history of Uber and Lyft vs. Taxi companies and other vested city interests. The government regulatory complex almost never represents citizens interests better than the free market.
I do. The government originally instituted the taxi medallion system to protect riders from predatory taxis, but it ended up granting a monopoly to the predatory taxis and locking out potential competition.
The free market has worked out much better. Uber/Lyft have to provide competitive service at a low price. If they stop doing this, they too will be replaced.
A free market doesn't mean free from consequences, or that it won't be dire. Many govts have performed experiments on their own people, and people died from it, without telling anyone. It also doesn't mean free from any regulation (at least to me). Not everyone pushing for free market solutions is an an-cap fool.
In most situations, a process that allows for more freedom is the solution. I do not count corporations as people and as far as I'm concerned, they should be required to be far more open about operations than they are currently. I'm also not a fan of IP laws generally speaking and think they should all be scaled back.
Before the scooters littered the city, the companies talked to SFMTA, and SFMTA said they were drafting up regulations to govern the scooters prior to giving permission.
The companies went ahead and littered the city with them anyway, without permission.
Claiming that breaking the rules is what led to the SFMTA coming up with regulations to allow scooters is just plain wrong. They were working on them already. The companies just got greedy and figured it was a first-mover market and that they'd be able to pull an Uber and continue operating despite breaking the rules.
SFMTA was busy drafting regulations because Bird first broke the rules in Santa Monica and introduced the world to this kind of scooter rental concept.
If they'd asked for permission before anyone had heard of the idea of a scooter company, SFMTA would have ignored the request.
That is disingenuous FUD. Cities are totally willing to work with companies if they provide a net benefit. Do you think a politician is going to deny access to a company if it costs them nothing and makes their constituents happy?
What they say "wtf, no?" to is companies treating public good and spaces like sidewalks as something they can just offload all of their costs onto, without ever asking permission.
Look at the Boston area with Bird right now. Bird just started dumping their scooters on sidewalks, got asked to stop by the towns, got told to stop by the towns, and then finally stopped only because the towns were confiscating all of the litter Bird left around and the number of locals who started destroying the scooters because they were abandoned property and none of them took lightly to companies dumping their shit on public grounds.
There is an argument to be made about how their is corruption in governments and they will push back on startups even though they are better for society, or how regulations strangle change and smaller firms. That argument doesn't apply to companies worth billions like Uber or Bird. They are just trying to break the law and offload costs to society, and then trying to claim it's disruption so they can tap into that feeling of doing good and changing the world that SV used to have 15 years ago
> Do you think a politician is going to deny access to a company if it costs them nothing and makes their constituents happy?
Yes. The politicians already do this all the time, every time a development company wants to turn a vacant lot or McDonald's into an apartment building even though that building meets all the codes and standards.
It turns out that politics is often times negative sum, and whatever good thing you are doing will stopped, merely because you havent given them their cut.
You're missing the "and their constituents want it" part. That empty lot and McDonald's might meet all the standards, but if your voting base is too NIMBY, you're not going to allow them. These organizations using public resources as storage space are both creating a cost for communities and thus their politicians, _and_ the citizens of many citizens are turning against them because of all the externalities they are generating.
When you meet an asshole you've met an asshole. When you meet assholes all day, you're probably the asshole. These dockless companies are complaining about everyone's reaction to them, which is making me think they might just be assholes
You honestly believe that had Bird, initially an unheard of company, gone to say, the city of Los Angeles and said "We'd like to put scooters everywhere, is that cool?" They'd have said "sure"? I think that's incredibly naive.
The absolute best outcome for Bird would have been the city saying "you can put them in designated scooter areas, and they have to be docked in designated scooter areas". And that would have turned them into just another e-bike: utterly useless and used by no-one.
Now, there's absolutely a reasonable conversation to be had about corporate over-reach, responsibility, and externalities here. However, let's not pretend that this could realistically have been accomplished any other way.
> You honestly believe that had Bird, initially an unheard of company, gone to say, the city of Los Angeles and said "We'd like to put scooters everywhere, is that cool?" They'd have said "sure"?
Yes? I'd assume it would take finding someone friendly who works for the city, getting them interested in the concept, and getting their help and support in navigating the process, but yes, I'd absolutely expect the city to say "sure", maybe "sure, with caveats". Hell, maybe the city folks could find a way to finance half your deployment with taxpayer money. It's not like city administration exists only to sit on their collective butt and default-deny every request.
Maybe. But have you checked if your city isn't cool too?
Were I only following the local media and other people's opinion on our city, I'd still be believing it's all bunch of busybodies led serving a no-good city president. But, as a part of leading a local Hackerspace, I ended up involved in city-NGO cooperation space. I've interacted with both city officials and private organizations trying to run publicly beneficial projects in the city, and it turns out my city is really willing to help, to partner, to support.
Of course, the local and national politics sometimes leak through and create issues, so it's not all roses. But I left the space with the impression that one only has to try to start a friendly conversation, and there's plenty of city officials, with budgets behind them, willing to cooperate with your new endeavour.
EDIT: Oh, and yes, there are procedures. Things move much slower than you expect, and if you're trying to get some of the city money for the project, you end up organizing public consultations and preparing recommendation reports to the city, and doing other busywork that may seem, or even be, pointless in the case of your project. It can be frustrating.
”We'd like to put scooters everywhere, is that cool?”
That would have gotten a no, but ”we would like to do an experiment decreasing road congestion” could have gotten them a yes _and_ a subsidy for running the experiment.
And yes, that “yes” would have had strings attached, even if it weren’t subsidized, but that’s normal for anthingmyhea affects shared space. If a company goes to the city and says “we would like to park our cars on the street instead of on our expensive parking lot” or “we would like to semi-permanently occupy the space in front of or shops”, would you expect the city to say “yes”, too?
Yeah but an experiment wouldn’t have gotten them those fat VC dollars.
Fat VC dollars come when they think you’ll dominate the world of scooters and put them everywhere. If you spend some of those millions fighting city governments so be it. Bribe them, make them fail elections, find loopholes, extend court trials forever. This companies have almost an unlimited supply of money.
Or, maybe the city actually wants to improve the transport situation (and maybe even has some money earmarked for it), and the politician will gladly accept this new company that's going to do half of this work for him.
I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Here in London, most of the time when I see someone using an Ofo bike it’s some kids who clearly aren’t paying for them, but have found a way to unlock them.
I think you do. I dislike the scooters for my own reasons, mainly the fact that people ride them on sidewalks. But this is not littering.
You tell me if you see a scooter on the sidewalk if that strikes you as the same as people disposing of trash on the sidewalk: loose papers, cigarette butts, plastic bags, etc.
I get what you're saying for the sake of argument, but littering is a disgusting act that makes most people feel like their city is unclean.
You are absolutely right. Dockless mobility uses public space for the benefit of a private corporation. I cycle to work and there is not a single day where I see an OfO bike or Grab bike parked in the most annoying places. Maybe "society" is not ready for dockless and we need to create norms and rules of behavior (i.e., enforce that with fines)
While I agree that this is an issues, in my opinion it is exceedingly minor, especially in comparison to the amount of cars illegally stopped or parked that I see while biking. In fact I had to merge into traffic a few times to go around tonight. A few bikes haphazardly placed is nothing more than a mild nuisance. Never mind the homeless camps and other litter everywhere in the bay area.
Some, I've posted about this before but in many areas of Oakland parking is so inexpensive/free that cars are parked basically indefinitely. If you then want to just run into the bank or pick up take out (and you are driving) your options are drive around for a long time to find a spot, stop in the bike lane or just leave your car in the middle of the road. As someone who drives and cycles routinely I understand the choice. In Berkeley parking is time limited and expensive and you can usual find a spot to run in quickly.
I don't mind ubers quickly stopping to drop someone off on a non-separated bike lane as long as they don't cut people off and signal and merge safely. I'm happy to wait behind them or merge around just like a car would had they stopped in the main traffic lane. We can share the infrastructure, just don't leave your car in the bike lane!
Homeless people are obviously not litter, and think its a bit of an unfair exaggeration to read my comment in that way, however, I do see how you could infer that. Regardless, in my experience the camps have tons of trash/litter around. It seems not that surprising as my house would have lots of trash if I didn't have garbage collection service. Just drive to some of the camps in Oakland/Berkeley.
Well guess what, every time you personally park your bike outside, or even bike on the road, you are using public space for your own private benefit.
Why's that ok? You are a private individual. You are using public space for private benefit, instead of , I don't know, letting the needy homeless use it.
If the state have a problem with that maybe they should roll their own dockless solutions as part of their public transport strategy. Seriously, first they design cities so that 90% must drive to get anywhere and then they ban companies who bring solutions. Regressive and unacceptable.
They did not break the taxi laws of every city they operated in. The taxi laws of many cities only required a "medallion" for taxi-style car services that allowed passengers to "hail" the car on the street.
So-called "black" cars where passengers arranged transportation in advance were governed differently, and required no licensing or a different and more permissive kind of licensing. Black car services were already widely available in many cities from lots of different companies, often independent owner/operators - it's just that no one had provided a service that worked across many different cities and was available conveniently as an app.
I won't claim that Uber and Lyft broke no laws, because there are a lot of jurisdictions in the world, and I don't know the laws of all of them, but many cities regular taxies and black cars very differently.
Edit: Why the downvotes? Am I wrong? Evidence would be appreciated.
Have you ever driven a taxi? Worker’s rights are a joke. Talk to your cabbie in New York about worker’s rights. The cabs are owned by large firms. Cabbies are hired and fired all the time for arbitrary reasons. And the wages are really low for the driver. But the owner makes a bunch as does the investor that owns the medallion license.
If companies broke specific laws, convict them in a court of law, and apply statutory penalties or reasonably-computed damages.
This sort of retaliatory "shit list", constructed without due process, from which a company might only be able to extricate themselves by "kissing the ring" of local politicos/bureaucrats, is a recipe for inefficiency and corruption.
I also don't think the "litter" charge against the initial scooter deployments is correct, anyway, for reasons I outlined in a prior thread:
This is a brand new business category and no one has any idea how much demand there is and what rules are needed or are reasonable or are sufficient to prevent problems like blocking sidewalks.
What you're describing might be possible for a mature business category.
> Business permits should be shall-issue: if an applicant adheres to a set of rules known in advance, the city ought to have no power to deny its permit application.
The problem is that the named companies already have shown their willingness to use their VC backed resources to stomp over local regulation.
These companies were jerks who basically said "Nya. Nya. We're too powerful, you can't regulate us. <middle finger>"
To which SF replied: "Nya. Nya. Yes we can. No permits for you and now we can fine the snot out of you if you disregard us."
Doesn't that normally start with a pilot to determine what rules are good?
It seems like if you want to come up with a permit process and rules, rather than just making them all up at once you'd grant permission to a small group for a limited period to figure out what rules make sense, then write the rules, then open up the permitting process.
When selecting the pilot group it also makes sense to try to find partners that are likely to co-operate and be responsive to your requirements rather than companies with long histories of completely ignoring local laws.
You're right that SF has a history of abusing permits in the interest of Nimby-ism -- see the 'war on fun' for one example -- so I do agree it could all turn out terribly in the end, but that doesn't make this an unreasonable start.
> "due to rampant interference in the operation of the free market"
But maybe in another sense, San Francisco is a product, and the feature it's selling includes rampant overregulation.
If that's not a good business model, another city can step up and offer better incentives. And people can move there. There are many nice cities and towns in the US. If you insist on living on the dirty tip of a tiny overcrowded peninsula, that's a choice.
You're trying to regulate San Francisco's right to regulate.
We do. That's what people here are complaining about. They have no stake in this game, have no intention of becoming part of the community, they're just looking for a cheap buck and don't mind if they ruin everything that makes our home great. There are plenty of other places to go to, and everybody whining about "San Francisco being a zoning failure" might want to remember that we have a larger GDP than many developed nations. If that's failure, what exactly is your idea of success?
Based on your response I'm guessing you are not being sarcastic in saying that GDP is the main measure of success.
GDP is just a measure for a particular system. I could think of several more direct measures than GDP without trying very hard, for instance quality of life, cost of living, and overall happiness.
Oh, you don't want the apps and services you use chosen by the San Francisco city government based on criteria they choose? Why not, they do such a good job with everything else right?
What's the permit for leaving your product lying on the public sidewalk? There are several (for signs, seats, etc), and you're also supposed to pick up after your animals, not leave stuff laying about.
Undocked transportation? I think that without some formal approval it would be within the cities right to confiscate items left on the public right-of-way and auction it off to the highest bidder.
You can't even legally leave garbage out for collection (in unapproved containers) except for certain days.
And they get towed all day every day... the fine for towing from a sidewalk is $400 last I checked, plus towing fees, plus nightly storage. Pretty soon you'll owe $10k on each scooter, and if you want to operate as a business within city limits you have to pay the fines.
Actually, if the city went after them as moving vehicles they would be collected by the towers in hours.
You have to realize that those parking spots are explicitly intended for car storage, no? The city even marks many of them --- even charges for their use by the hour.
If you were going to claim that our allocation of city resources to parking is excessive, I'd agree, but you can't reasonably claim that parking a car there isn't using the space for it's intended purpose.
And the federal government issues effectively binding guidelines for the cap design of baby food. The upside? Windows don’t fall out into people and babies don’t choke on the caps.
Nothing in the linked 14-page window replacement guide has anything at all to do with safety in general or windows falling onto people. It is entirely to do with preserving the "historic character" of buildings. I don't think you can reasonably equate that to the regulations governing the design of caps on baby food.
Look at the last paragraph. A good city government will not just aim to meet business easy, they'll also have criteria for ensuring good impact on other policy fields, eg here low income residents.
This whole "hands off" approach has proven a failure many times,. Look at how Uber and Lyft are exploiting their drivers, which end up working below minimum wage and 100% on own risk - in the big scheme/long term these have no insurance, no pension benefits, might lose everything through an accident, and will mostly end up dependent on handouts.
In some cities bike rental schemes failed and the city is left to clean up broken bikes, stations, etc once the provider disappears. Sure, it was easy to get in, but the taxpayer foots the bill.
Yes, an application process makes things a bit more intransparent and slow, but (if done well) it also assures that the average citizen is not left holding the sticky end.
Isn't that up to the workers? Uber drivers know they don't get benefits. It's meant to be a side-hustle not a full-time job. No one forces anyone to drive for Uber or Lyft. I don't find it exploitive in the slightest bit.
Kindly, get involved in our political system, shut-up, or leave. This is our home, we have spent decades building a radical system of democracy, something lacking in most cities. We the people own San Francisco, not a bunch of rich, bratty little start-up bros. If you want this city to match your view of the world, then get involved in our political process, it's that simple. Otherwise, go read your Ayn Rand books in New York or Dallas where it's cool for businesses to own every aspect of living.
if san francisco spent half as much time trying to deal with the homeless problem (needles, urine, poop and people on the streets) than restricting businesses the right to operate, it would be a better place.
Does San Francisco miss the powerful impact on traffic and the environment this can have? There are so many cars in SF already, parking is a nightmare, and "rush hour" lasts most of the day. Public transit is limiting, Uber is unpredictable and expensive. With a city the size of SF, you can go almost anywhere on a scooter in a reasonable amount of time. But when I commute up to the city, I'll take my car instead of Lime or Bird (which I use regularly in my home city). The walk from Caltrain to my typical destinations is too long, yet probably faster than waiting for an Uber, and I'm not going to get stuck waiting on public transit. You'd think that what seems to be one of America's more socially-conscious liberal cities, would embrace getting more cars off of the road and use of personal zero-emission vehicles.
I keep getting Lime confused with Limeade - the latter work to increase efficacy of corporate health plans, to make sure your employees get what you're paying the health insurance company for.
I'm honestly surprised more people aren't taking the battery packs off bicycles. I've heard there's effectively a cell phone inside (microphone, speaker, accelerometers, GPS, cell connection, etc), and announces that it's calling the police, when moved unexpectedly.
But cracking that case and pulling the batteries has to have some value. I'm honestly surprised we don't hear more news about that sort of criminal activity. Maybe if lithium were involved in the production of meth...
In Oakland (where Bird and Lime dumped all their junk after SF told them off) I have seen lots of stripped scooters. Also it’s trivial to hotwire a Bird, and everyone in Oakland seemingly knows how to do it.
How about setting base rules and auctioning off permits that require annual renewal rather than playing king-maker. Or even better, set base rules for which the companies must comply then allow all companies to compete and fine those companies that don't comply.
This really comes off as spiteful and childish. Bird and Lime didn't come kiss the ring before daring to provide services to the residents of San Francisco, so they get kicked to the curb in favor of a couple of companies who's timing hadn't yet angered the City.
True — no, they didn't. They just clucked it up so bad in their launch locations that the smell had already wafted up from the Beach Cities down here to the Bay.
Move fast and piss people off doesn't work too well, eh?
I just don’t understand this attitude that these companies are owed their ability to do business, particularly when it involves just dumping these things on the public sidewalks.
Their customers dumped them on the sidewalks, and it seems to be a San Francisco thing - if you go to other cities with active scooter sharing, you don't see this behavior. Of course you also don't see peopel dfecating on the street in most other cities either, so San Francisco is a special kind of special.
The entire experience felt like a Monty Python interview- engineers driven on a death march to get their stuff done and interview an endless stream of qualified candidates, all the while management isn't ready to hire, but still bringing on a torrent of candidates.
The interviewing process was one of the most disorganized and chaotic I've ever gone through. Pair programming exercises scheduled without working computers, that kind of thing.
Considering San Fran is already famous for hilariously spiteful and terrible zoning/real estate development practices, it isn't exactly surprising. Are the companies who got permits local? That may have factored into it.
Also, considering the sheer hatred these companies and their business model inspire in me, I can't say it doesn't fill me with glee.
I'd love to be proven wrong, only future will tell, but this seems to be yet another fad being funded by free money from VCs. In fact the only winner in all of this are the manufacturers who are making these scooters.
According to https://qz.com/1257198/xiaomi-makes-the-bird-and-spin-scoote... at least Bird and Spin are using Xiomi scooters.
Lime is also made overseas, read China. So, this is nothing but Silicon Valley VC money, actually their LP's money, moving to China.
Seems like the Scooter is not popular and only useful for a niche segment of the population.
The bike sharing business has caused a hazard in places like China, because of the unrestricted dumping. So there is definitely a point that government needs to chime in and do some stuff.
If they are not popular why is there a need to regulate them, they will simply go out of business. Also, I see people riding them all the time in the East Bay.
They are popular amongst those who ride, not all people who use the sidewalk and street, which is a larger segment of the population. Might as well ask why we need smoking areas in buildings.
Because it's a problem with oversupply. And sure, eventually they'll go under, but there's no reason why everyone should have to kick their way through VC funded lithium trash, just to walk down the street until they do.
Oh yeah, and when they do go under, you're still going to be left with all this detritus, because when the company ceases to exist, it won't be picking them up. Here, you can force the dumpers to still clean up their mess.
To maintain a presence of 2500 scooters for a year, you'd need 2500 * (365 days / 50 days (scooter lifespan)) = 18.2k scooters. That's 18.2k * $600 (lifetime cost) = $10.9 million in capital.
Each of these scooters generating $14 in revenue a day is $12.7 million in revenue a year, for a profit of $1.8 million and a 16% return on capital. If we assume a San Francisco quota was rolled out to the entire country, that'd be (325 million / 880k) * 1.8 million = $664 million in profit, at best.
The 50 day lifespan seems too low. Even if the batteries can only survive ~50 charges, the rest of the scooter will outlive the battery. Revising that number upwards skyrockets the ROI figure...
I agree. It will take a combination of logistics and design. Ofo are winning that race in the bike space but mobike aren't far behind. Here in Singapore obike got it woefully wrong. It was obvious that whoever purchased their bikes is not a cyclist because the bikes were terrible. Obike went out of business.
SFMTA has published the detailed feedback[1] and summary ratings[2] for each petition. Although the actual applications are not published, it really looks like Bird did a poor job on paper. For example, most of the companies relied on swipe-through screens in apps to remind people to use helmets, which the SFMTA deems insufficient. I have to agree, as I have rarely seen someone on a scooter with a helmet.
Hners should browse the applications by Bird and by Scoot here. It's like night and day. The Bird pages are short and lack significant detail. Scoot on the other hand, actually has what look like questions taken directly from the application, bolded in red, and what look like responses undernearth. That is, they respond directly to the questions being asked with a good amount of detail. This is precisely what you do when applying for things, like say when applying for a grant.
For a community that waxes poetic about presenting themselves and communicating well, Scoot sets a rather good example here.
A car would get a big fat “poor” on every point of that evaluation. And yet, we allow our city to be totally overrun with them! I certainly hope that SFMTA is feverishly working to apply these standards to car companies. No car should be allowed to operate in San Francisco until its maker has demonstrated that they can affirmatively prevent them from blocking sidewalk ramps and until they all have programs to track and ban abusive drivers.
It's not illegal to buy your own electric bike or scooter and ride it around SF. Not like SF is banning electric bike manufacturers. So your analogy is pretty bad.
I disagree - the analogy seems appropriate. The poster was comparing the features of each vehicle in use, disregarding the source (manufactured or ride-shares). Similarly, shouldn’t regulations not look too far past the actual impact of an entity?
The analogy would be appropriate if the poster compared scooter sharing services with car sharing services. Note that car sharing services are pretty regulated - you can't just dump cars onto the road and create an app. You have to get a permit first.
There's also a difference between people who own their own scooters vs heavily VC funded firms who want to dump as many of their scooters onto the streets as possible to target high growth. An individual owner has the incentive to keep their vehicle off the streets since otherwise people can easily steal them. This is not the same as these large firms, who have GPS trackers on each scooter. Plus, each scooter is so cheaply made that a loss is not majorly important since they have a ton of money in the bank -- each scooter is peanuts compared to the salaries of their software engineers. Individual scooter owners are much more price sensitive and generally tend not to throw their scooter onto the streets.
I think another argument is one of public space. The sidewalk is a public space that I pay taxes to maintain. Why should a low-revenue growth-hacking startup be allowed to use the public space -- which SF citizens pay to maintain -- for free? I'm a pretty staunch capitalist, but this seems like a "privatize the gains, socialize the losses" scenario.
I would be okay if either 1) startups who wanted to deploy scooters faced heavy taxes for certain violations or 2) they proposed concrete plans to explain how they will not clutter sidewalks. The San Francisco government seems to be doing the latter.
TLDR: Incentives are different between individuals and VC funded firms. Also, don't use public spaces to growth-hack your startup. Or if you do, either 1) respect other people who use them or 2) pay fines / more taxes to compensate the city for extra upkeep costs and to compensate other citizens for inconvenience.
The core benefit of rental scooters is to cover the last mile, between public transport and your house or work. If you have to drag the scooter everywhere, the utility is severely diminished.
Just out of curiosity I read Section C "Plan for Safe Riding and Storage of Scooters" of the applications for Bird and Scoot. There really isn't a comparison. Scoot's is far more detailed and you can tell they have actual experience in operating responsibly at scale.
An example that stuck out to me: when asked where they plan on operating, Scoot had detailed block-by-block outlines of how they would expand and when. Bird literally just has a Google Maps screen capture of San Francisco.
For a start-up as well funded as they are, it really seems like Bird phoned it in on the application.
I ride them daily, and I don't want to use a helmet. I feel that I and I alone am responsible for my own safety. It's not like other people are going to get hurt because I'm not wearing a helmet.
You have no parents, no siblings, no friends to grieve over you? The EMT whose effort to stabilize or resuscitate you fails should shrug and move on? Your employer is able to replace you with no disruption? Your insurance will cover your treatment and disability for the next 20 years?
Interesting. Both Bird and Lime were recently approved to come back in Indianapolis after being asked to leave. The council wanted to re-evaluate the whole concept and set up some rules, fees, etc.
Then they allowed these two companies to return. [1]
The mafia was taken down in Chicago because it was providing something that was desired by the people, people who should be in control of their own lives and will ultimately be responsible for the decisions that they make, freedom. Unfortunately, the powers that be did not see it that way, you can argue that Al Capone was taken down for tax evasion, I don't care, this is how he was convicted,one has nothing to do with the other.
Al Capone was taken down because he had more power than that of the government. These companies are being shut down because they are not willing to pay the shakedown money by the city mafia.
We need to take this country back and until you people do not understand this, you will remain slaves. I almost believe that this is what you want..
I do not. This is NOT what this country was built upon and changing this, being OK with this will eventually lead to the destruction of our country, which, before that happens, will be a civil war.
> Al Capone was taken down because he had more power than that of the government.
Really? Not conceding the point of him having more power or that being the reason he got taken down, but isn't it good thing we had strong federal government with tough regulation to pick up the slack of lax local regulators
> this will eventually lead to the destruction of our country, which, before that happens, will be a civil war.
Amazing performance there. From "denied scooter licenses" to "dystopian communist dictatorship" to "Civil war" in under 5 paragraphs.
I’m confused. My sense is that the approach here should have been to put forward a set of regulations and enforcement, and then open up the market. If one of the companies violates the rules, then obviously ban them.
I'd prefer banning personal cars (within city limits), as those take up a massive amount of space, with regards to parking.
Taxis on the other hand, have usage rates of ~50 percent. Whereas personal cars, parked on the side of the road, are only being used ~5 % of the time, and the other 95% is wasted.
Personal cars spend most of their time parked on the side of the road using up valuable real-estate.
Transportation services like Uber or taxis use the road to move people around and don't take up as much space as personal cars. Public transit and bikes are much more space and energy efficient, though don't get the investment they need to work for most people.
US cities are optimized for sprawl and personal car centric transportation, which makes it annoying that new ideas like these scooter startups (which are actually pretty great when you try them) are blocked by officials in favor of a system that is expensive and sub-optimal for the health of society.
I recently went south to LA and SD, and the scooters are awesome there. I saw them mostly near the beach, and 0 thrown in the middle of the pavement, none blocking exits or riding them obnoxiously.
They even have scooter police that will give you a ticket if you go too fast (I am not saying that as necessarily a good thing, just that they seem to have their stuff together as cities). For the first time I actually made an account and hopped on one of them.
However, in SF they overdid it. I don't know if SF residents got replaced by a bunch of self-entitled nerdy manchildren, but holy hell they were obnoxious. You would see 5-6 of them blocking the entrance to a restaurant (at anchorsteam brewery tap room especially). Thrown down in the middle of the pavement. People riding them on the sidewalk yelling "GOTTA GO FAST", going somewhat fast (at least have some dignity and dress like Sonic the hedgehog if you 're gonna do that). Think of an 80s action movie where the punks or hell's angels type of gangs run amok in the city, but it's dudes wearing startup t-shirts on electric scooters instead. Anyway, I 'm not a nimby but their presence in SF really left a sour taste.
But after seeing them in LA and San Diego I am convinced they can work super nicely if a little bit of common sense is applied. Maybe the SF populous is early adopters and jumped on the latest trend with too much passion, or maybe those companies put on the streets too many units. I don't know, but it can be done right and I 'd really like to see them back.
Who cares though, they are all the same. (I forgot which company's I used, until I checked my phone now to see the app). They really didn't work much on brand recognition, I 'm surprised people have favorites
I'm mostly upset by the # limits. It's not enough for the entire market.
Also I feel like some of the bad behavior was vandalism by haters. Who the hell would put black sharpie on the QR codes or shit on scooters themselves? Probably not someone who uses them.
I felt the same to be honest (my comment above was meant to be somewhat humorous). I 'm pretty sure many of the ones thrown around where parked properly and someone just kicked them down. Pretty sad.
The sharpie thing might actually be someone trying to "reserve" a scooter for themselves. (Take a picture of the code before making it unreadable, then the scooter always stays wherever they left it.)
This is what I've seen in CA as well. SD has not had nearly the reported issues other cities appear to be having. Nothing all that different about SD or the people (transplants) so what gives? why can't people not make a mess of the service?
I think there's opportunity for the scooter companies can mitigate the abandonment or carelessness of their products by using some thoughtful software. If someone leaves a scooter tipped over, they get banned for a day. Do it again, they get banned for a month. etc... Maybe have a clearing house to monitor cross service users are bad actors?
One reason it might make sense to have a service like this provided by just a two or three companies in a given city instead of a large number is verification and enforcement of safety regulations such as requirements that the companies keep the scooters well maintained.
Two ways come to mind for a city to verify that a company is handling such things properly.
First, the city can have auditors regularly examine the internal operations of the company, talk to employees, and review consumer feedback.
Second, the city can pull a random sample of the company's scooters off the street and have city mechanics inspect them.
The number of scooters you have to examine from a company to determine if it is meeting maintenance requirements depends on the margin of error that you are willing to accept, not on the number of scooters in that company's fleet. Let's say you need to examine 50 scooters to get the desired margin of error.
Suppose are going to allow 5000 scooters in your city. If you do that with two companies, 2500 each, and you audit annually, you'll be doing each year two audits of the facilities and employees, and checking 100 scooters (50 from each company).
If instead you have that same 5000 scooters, but now provided by 10 companies, you'll be doing 10 facility and employee audits, and checking 500 scooters.
So same number of scooters on the street in both cases, but about 5 times the administrative costs to the city in the 10 company case is in the 2 company case.
Also, if consumers need a different app for each scooter company, a smaller number of companies will probably serve consumers better. Again, take a city with 5000 total scooters. If those were supplied be two companies, evenly split, then a consumer would only need two apps to have complete coverage. A consumer with only one of the apps would still have a decent change of being able to find a scooter in a reasonable time frame.
If that 5000 were split among 10 companies, a consumer with only one app would only have a pool of 500 scooters available. If those ended up spread out around the city it would be hard for a one app consumer to find a nearby scooter. If that company concentrated in one smaller area that could solve that problem...but then the consumer would probably end up needing the apps of several others, too, to find scooters when they are in other parts of the city.
There is going to be some optimum number of scooter companies for a given city and total fleet size which balances things. Lower numbers are more convenient and usable by consumers, and cost less to regulate and verify, but higher numbers have more competition which might lower prices.
My guess...and it is just a guess...is that three would be about right for most reasonably large cities.
Thank you SF. Too many scooters littered on too many corners of streets - makes walking near places like hospitals quite the hazard. The litters don't seem to care since they're not in the area.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 269 ms ] threadMarkets that are important (like transportation) and have network effects need to be regulated. A monopoly with Uber and/or Lyft dominating local transportation is not good for consumers or cities in the long-term.
Cities should take control of their transportation and ensure competition by managing allocation of capacity. I think the best parallel is managing of spectrum in telecom to ensure competition.
- aren't hard to reach for anyone with funding, and
- can be maintained over relatively small geographic areas (neighbourhoods/cities, not states/countries/globally).
If some new company invents a scooter with better tires or a better battery or a disco ball and a stereo it's not hard for them to enter the market. And, in fact, this regulation is happening because the city thinks it's too easy for upstarts to get a toe-hold and cause negative externalities like sidewalk crowding.
(Besides these points: Has anyone made the argument that "overwhelming, unapproachable network-effect leads" are kinda great outcomes for consumers? Like, assume there were 10 facebooks instead of one -- kinda terrible. Or if there were a hundred Ubers and Lyfts, and you didn't know which one had cars close to you... awful.)
I suspect a lot of that regulation has been wrong, monopolies would not have emerged, and we would be better off regulating only the monopolies that actually exist.
I’d rather see the scooter companies fight it out than have the city government pick winners and losers when the industry is only a few months old and multiple viable competitors already exist.
In addition, there's no network effect with scooters. Car sharing has the chicken-and-egg problem where you need enough drivers to meet demand, and you need enough passengers to give drivers a reason to drive for you. But scooters are cheap and easy to dump a whole bunch on a city, so there's no reason why a new company can't move in on an existing scooter market. For the most part the only important pieces are the brand recognition of the company and how easy their app is to use. If Uber is serious about scooters, I fully expect them to just move back in when the pilot program is over and immediately pick up a sizeable chunk of the market.
Ride sharing companies then also have to reach a critical mass where drivers and riders can match in a reasonable time. I think overcoming that is the network effect.
As opposed to a city ineffectively delivering transportation to such an extent that people have to drive their personally-owned cars everywhere?
Anyone in SF who was here before Uber will tell you that Uber and Lyft were and remain a godsend. Cabs were few and far between (there's an Eddie Izzard bit about this actually) and Muni is slow and unreliable.
In any case, the only thing worse than government running services is a company with a monopoly running services. The first tends to be inefficient. The second tends to be inefficient with a profit motive (see Comcast).
Choices in my market are: dialup, dsl, and Comcast.
There is actually a small independent WISP here I would love to use, but they don't serve my particular location currently.
The notion that the only way to ensure competition is to forbid it is convoluted.
Boston hasn't been overrun yet, and I am hopeful that we stay that way.
You feel it's reasonable to prevent everyone else from using a very cheap and convenient transportation service just because the vehicles aren't esthetically pleasing to you?
In your world, it's incumbent upon me to let them shit up my town, but not incument upon them--either the users or the companies that supply them--to not shit up our town.
That's a pretty nasty world.
Why pay $1 for something that should cost $0.05, and would be difficult to integrate into my life? If I wanted to ride a bicycle, I'd spend the equivalent of 150 Lime rides at Target or Wally World and own my own bicycle. Why rent what you can own?
How much do Lime and their competition pay for their parking spots? They're usually left in a sidewalk or other public walkway, using government-provided locations that were intended for a different purpose.
I care.
Wait, no, I really, really, really really don't.
Ends matter and the ends of the shitty scooter companies are awful at the human scale.
But not all. One street in either direction of Bellevue is essentially bus/pedestrian/bicycle friendly - 6th Street and 108th Ave. At their intersection is Bellevue's bus hub. 6th Ave provides bus access to the freeway, and pedestrian-only access to the Bellevue Collection.
108th has a bicycle lane wedged between car parking and the driving lane on either side, and this is where almost all of the Lime Bikes congregate. There are special painted squares, almost like Zipcar parking slots, where the bikes can usually be found. The bikes are occasionally seen outside apartments and businesses, but never for long - none have been there long enough to become a real eyesore.
2) As the sibling comments note, cars tend to park in observance of the law and don't go whizzing down the sidewalk while I am walking to work.
Even if many of these scooters are improperly parked, the parking was done by the users and not the companies themselves, so holding the companies solely responsible for that dose not appear fair.
I don't think many people are in favor of zero regulation, but politicians literally picking winners and losers instead of the market is even worse.
All of these are totally different from buying a car.
If Uber and/or Lyft get a monopoly and then jack up prices, they won't have a monopoly for long.
Want to limit the number of something? Fine. Auction off medallions or something in a transparent, open way. Don't pick and choose businesses the way SF busybodies do.
San Francisco has severe and worsening problems primarily due to rampant interference in the operation of the free market. The city keeps doubling down on this interference every time someone, somewhere, tries to find a way around the city's thicket of rules.
This free for all world sounds downright scary.
Emphasis mine.
Seriously, wtf.
This coffee shop apparently meets all current zoning rules, though the employees may need to be somewhat less scantily-clad than the ones working at other locations. Regardless, this shows one way in which zoning rules don't always predict developments that neighbors might reasonably want to avoid.
1: https://abc7news.com/business/lingerie-bikini-clad-baristas-...
EDIT: Thanks for downvoting, but perhaps a response would be more productive?
a) Fix the zoning rules
b) Make everybody ask the city council and all their neighbors for permission for every little thing, every time
(a) is at least trying to make an even playing field for everyone. The rules are for everybody, and everybody has to follow them, regardless of political connections or money or lawyering, etc. At least in theory.
With (b), you start by trying to get an exception carved out for yourself, so in practice only those with the most patience, money, lawyers, political connections, etc. will be able to get what they want, and everybody else gets the Kafka treatment.
For background, I live in a neighborhood where the property sizes are much much smaller than the rest of the zoned area. So we have to get exceptions for many things because the rules were written for properties that are 10x to 50x the size. I wish that rules could be written to cover every possible eventuality, and I personally feel the pain because they cannot (I have to pay for every exception and variance in the approval process). So having seen how rules are blunt instruments, I have some sympathy for folks who are caught up in the process.
I should also note that this is somewhat closer to a strip club than a Hooters, since the attire is lingerie, not tight shirts. Basically, they're falling somewhere between two things that were known to exist (strip clubs and Hooters) when the rules were presumably made. In the future, I'm sure towns around here will make rules that are more restrictive, citing this as an example of what happens when you leave more room.
In other words, you are free to build whatever you want on your own property, as long as its effects don't negatively impact the value of mine. (I personally will never block developments, but I think I would have a right to be pissed off as hell if something like that happened, still.)
That is nowhere near a good enough rule. What if I buy commercial retail property in a bustling district, but over a few years the bustling industry shifts half a mile away, leaving my district with less foot traffic and thus negatively impacting the value of my property? Have those developers harmed me in a way that should be illegal?
You may be tempted to say “well, no, obviously that’s different.” And indeed, it is obviously different. But the challenge is coming up with a rule that actually works without needing you or someone to decide on a case by case basis what is “obviously” an exception.
Second, it’s frustrating that people only think of themselves. “What about my view?” What about the hundreds or thousands of people who can’t live near their jobs or their kids’ schools because of your precious view? What about the people who will be forced to drive in and get stuck in traffic, people who probably can’t bike because they’re forced to live in another town only reachable by a long highway trip? What about the people who are forced to pay higher and higher rents because everyone blocks development everywhere in the city?
Screw your view, honestly.
However, think about how you'd feel if you bought a house and spent most of your life savings on it (like most are forced to), only to find that it drops in value dramatically putting you underwater on the payments. It's not just about their "view". They paid for amenities which (whether we like it or not) include the view and environment.
I don't even have a solution - but it's not so simple as "give up your view so more people can live near their jobs".
Also, I don’t think people’s home values drop all that dramatically when new housing is built. We’ve been putting this off for decades, but we’ve also been artificially inflating housing prices. Maybe your tiny bungalow ISN’T actually worth $500,000. Maybe decades of bad local policy have ballooned the price of your house at the expense of others.
And even so, even if building housing makes your house decrease in value, that’s still not a good reason to prevent development. I care much more they cities are healthy and plentiful housing than I do about some Boomers who got lucky with when they bought into the real estate market.
The solution is actually remarkably simple: build more housing. We did it before; plenty of other countries with more sensible zoning laws do it. There aren’t enough places for people to live. We can either start killing people, or we can put up some walls. Personally, I’m a fan of buildings.
Edit: typos (phone)
I also think it's really easy to say "sorry, you fucked up when you spent all your money on a house" if it's someone else. These aren't all "Boomers who got lucky" - they are also millennials buying their houses today at current rates.
I think we have to have more empathy for these people if we want to make progress.
Remember, this all rests on the assumption that building housing necessarily depresses property values, and that isn’t a guarantee. You can tell because it goes further than that. It’s hard to build any housing at all. My city had about 100,000 people in it. I know some smart urban planners and they estimate it would take about 20,000 to 30,000 new units to stabilize our rental market. Not drive prices down, just stabilize. But we can’t even build ONE apartment building, let alone tens of thousands of units. Even if more housing would drive property values down (which it doesn’t necessarily), it would take so much housing before it ever got to that point.
And once again, we can have empathy and we can build housing. I promise one or two apartment buildings isn’t going to ruin grandma and grandpa’s home value. I promise.
The types of people the parent is describing don't buy real estate as an investment. They buy it as an asset. And for most Americans, their house is their most valuable asset.
So can you not spare a shred of sympathy that they are hyper-conscious about what happens to the value of that asset?
Of course I can. My sympathy goes both ways.
>> (Also, building housing doesn’t just tank the value of your home, trust me.)
I'm not talking about simply increasing the supply of housing. The specific example we are discussing is a new skyscraper blocking the view from an existing one.
That means you'll pay less for your property, and you get to enjoy your view for as long as it lasts, and keep some money in your pocket.
If on the other hand you do have all sorts of rights to prevent anyone from building out your view then that same house will cost you a lot more - perhaps more than you'll be able to afford.
Either of these situations seems fair, because you know the rules in advance.
Crappy situations arise when the rules are not clear. In that case, you don't really know how much you should pay for that house, and you may suffer immense angst when your view disappears.
I have a right to what I pay for. This is simply inarguable.
In most highrises, the view tends to make up a significant portion of the value. This is why units become more expensive the higher up they are: the view is better from a higher altitude.
So essentially, when a developer comes and builds another highrise next door, they are destroying a big part of the value of the original highrise units.
So, if I have a right to what I pay for, and someone is doing something to negatively affect that, the NIMBY argument becomes rather straight-forward.
(Again, these aren't my actual views. I'm simply saying I can sympathize with NIMBYs, even though I despise them.)
Hence the stalemate I guess.
I was responding to (middle OP?) "Why shouldn't land owners be able to build whatever they want on their own property? It's not your backyard, it's your neighbors property" and "As long as they follow the noise and disturbance ordinances, then sure."
Those former seems to suggest getting rid of zoning altogether which would cause horrible negative externalities IMO. The latter assumes noise disturbances would somehow balance the market which I highly doubt.
It's more complicated than Sim City ever was.
jzymbaluk said "Why shouldn't land owners be able to build whatever they want on their own property? It's not your backyard, it's your neighbors property" which screams "No zoning" to me.
Then "saagarjha" said "As long as they follow the noise and disturbance ordinances, then sure." which screams "the market will naturally balance homeowner satisfaction with factories/businesses".
I responded with "Are you suggesting that nightclubs should be banned altogether? If not, then where do you suggest to put them since they are inherently noisy?" as without zoning, homeowners, businesses, and factories could be right next to each other.
Having laws about quiet times and public smells prevents the nightclub and abbattoir from locating there without blocking usages.
Chances are that a 50 story building isn't going next to a single family home without serious changes to the entire block. More likely, people want to build multi-families which are not going to ruin your sunlight. Additionally, changing all of this takes a lot of time, just because zoning may be relaxed doesn't mean overnight its going to turn in to Manhattan or Hong Kong as opposed to Paris which largely is ~6 stories and not particularly known for being a hellhole.
It is immoral to always in favor of the people lucky enough to have bought at the right time. Surely it is a difficult balance, but chances are your home has appreciated enough to give you a lot of options too.
Furthermore, when you buy a house, you are a taking a risk. You're making an investment. I don't see why the rest of the world should be bending over backwards and living in stasis to protect your investment. If you want absolute control over what happens on your block, buy your block.
You're treating all real estate as if it's the same, but the world is more complex than that. We're talking about dense metro areas, where development primarily happens to support growing populations and an influx of businesses. How many expensive homes in downtown SF have become worthless because of industrial ventures nearby? Far, far, far less than have become extremely valuable, if any. This isn't just some theory on paper.
In short there are a lot of reasons to want to regulate what people build.
And let’s not be flippant. Nobody wants the ability to build anything anywhere, but it’s eaually absurd to not build much of anything at all. You can have density and affordable housing and a good quality of life; lots of cities do it already!
You can't live in a happy, healthy community without giving up a little bit of control in favour of the common good.
And then so many people in Seattle want to complain about plunging affordability.
"Seattle homeowners have vigorously fought changes to zoning laws that would increase density on the grounds that it would alter the character of neighborhoods filled with picturesque (if small) craftsman-style bungalows."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-30/how-big-t...
So you’re either arguing for zoning to remain static to maintain the property rights of surrounding owners, or someone’s getting screwed when zoning changes.
The equitable solution would be to compensate surrounding owners for their property losing value or them losing enjoyment when zoning changes (similar to eminent domain), but if that makes zoning changes prohibitively expensive (or owners turn down the offer entirely), we’re back to square one. Someone is losing something.
I would rather try to cure cancer than fix land use and housing in California.
So we should use public money to compensate private property owners for making a bad gamble, at the expense of people who need a place to live. I’m sorry, but why is owning property a guarantee of a return on your investment? Should we compensate people who hold stock in coal companies when we regulate the coal industry too?
Them the breaks of real estate law and it’s English origins, and while I won’t dissuade you from action, know that it will take decades before you see meaningful change. Plan accordingly.
They already get compensated in the form of lower taxes. Just like how if the neighbors build something that increases their property value, they need to pay more in taxes.
Big fan of FWD:Everyone by the way, great product.
And thanks! I've been writing regex ten hours a day for the last six weeks to fix thread parsing issues in weird corner cases, we'll have some improvements to the site that will be more visible in the next couple months though.
The real issue with NIMBYs is how restrictive zoning is. Sure, you can build anything you want if it conforms, but good luck getting it to conform. For example, single-family home neighborhoods are pretty much stuck that way. Want a nice, compact apartment building? Or maybe even a fourplex? Good luck. In my reasonably-sized college town, upzoning happens once PER DECADE.
This is the affordable housing crisis at its core, and it’s remarkably procedural and boring. People are unable to afford homes and apartments because of simple tedium that takes place in beige board rooms at 11:00 PM on a Monday (i.e. local politics).
Yeah, zoning in the US tends to be single use, which prevents most buildings from being built in most places. I recently read a fantastic blog post on how zoning works in Japan, where uses are instead ranked by how much of a "nuisance" they are, and zones have a maximum nuisance level. Anything at or below that level can be constructed in that zone.
http://devonzuegel.com/post/north-american-vs-japanese-zonin...
What is preventing companies from moving to less expensive cities? By the free market logic, it should decrease demand/rent in hot cities, and provide these companies more affordable workers.
At which point is the housing pressure strong enough so that jobs start moving elsewhere, and market effects between cities or state come into play (i.e. if a city "choose" to limit housing it will limit it's economic potential compared to others)?
Those cities also have the same restrictive zoning laws, preventing new office buildings and housing just like the expensive cities.
Many American cities are experiencing price increases out of line with prevailing wages to the point that the median income cannot afford the median house. And we're not talking NYC and SF;think Nashville.
Furthermore, talent is concentrated in a few areas. A software firm in Nome, Alaska will have a harder time hiring than one in New York. Infrastructure like airports keeps businesses in hubs. Ports make goods cheap to ship. Having large numbers of local customers helps too
In Silicon Valley the dynamic is different, because it’s mostly global headquarters full of upper management and highly paid engineers. Unlike low-wage employees in regional offices, those people are not considered disposable, and aren’t willing to relocate on a whim. So relocating headquarters to another city or state is extremely hard for large companies.
Source: I rent in one of these atrocities.
Is that the type of system you are proposing here ?
Can we at a minimum focus on practical participants and outcomes when debating policy?
Business should be able to operate freely, but they should not be able to break the law until someone catches them.
In contrast to Bird, Scoot hasn't attracted that much criticism in SF despite being a pretty similar service.
There is very little traffic on sidewalks and using it for pedestrians and scooters and bicycles is much better. Especially considering that cyclists can pause or go around pedestrians when necessary.
Having an absolute law rather than an adaptive is not useful to the community.
But I don’t think scooters parked in the sidewalk apply to me very much. If we’re moving, they or I move around each other.
lol. i guess the plebs who can't afford uber don't count as people. SF sidewalks have seem pretty packed to me whenever I am there.
The only reason we're here arguing about this is companies like Bird chose to ask for forgiveness rather than permission in the past.
Do you genuinely think it's good for society when businesses do this?
In then end I guess I don't care because I truly believe the rules are backwards and protecting cars above any useful alternatives that may represent a useful future for green sustainable urban transportation.
I should also say, look below[0]. Bird's application was terrible . Scoot on the other hand set an example for a great application to a government body for a resource of some kind, I can compare it to my experience for writing grants.
I can imagine some class on professional writing contrasting these very two applications as examples of what not to do and what to do when applying for something from a government. After scanning both, I'm pretty much convinced the city chose the applications based on the quality and substance behind each application, not based on anything else.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17882982
The free market has worked out much better. Uber/Lyft have to provide competitive service at a low price. If they stop doing this, they too will be replaced.
It's like everyone who preaches this line knows so little history or wants people to forget[0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_(horse)
In most situations, a process that allows for more freedom is the solution. I do not count corporations as people and as far as I'm concerned, they should be required to be far more open about operations than they are currently. I'm also not a fan of IP laws generally speaking and think they should all be scaled back.
Before the scooters littered the city, the companies talked to SFMTA, and SFMTA said they were drafting up regulations to govern the scooters prior to giving permission.
The companies went ahead and littered the city with them anyway, without permission.
Claiming that breaking the rules is what led to the SFMTA coming up with regulations to allow scooters is just plain wrong. They were working on them already. The companies just got greedy and figured it was a first-mover market and that they'd be able to pull an Uber and continue operating despite breaking the rules.
If they'd asked for permission before anyone had heard of the idea of a scooter company, SFMTA would have ignored the request.
What they say "wtf, no?" to is companies treating public good and spaces like sidewalks as something they can just offload all of their costs onto, without ever asking permission.
Look at the Boston area with Bird right now. Bird just started dumping their scooters on sidewalks, got asked to stop by the towns, got told to stop by the towns, and then finally stopped only because the towns were confiscating all of the litter Bird left around and the number of locals who started destroying the scooters because they were abandoned property and none of them took lightly to companies dumping their shit on public grounds.
There is an argument to be made about how their is corruption in governments and they will push back on startups even though they are better for society, or how regulations strangle change and smaller firms. That argument doesn't apply to companies worth billions like Uber or Bird. They are just trying to break the law and offload costs to society, and then trying to claim it's disruption so they can tap into that feeling of doing good and changing the world that SV used to have 15 years ago
Yes. The politicians already do this all the time, every time a development company wants to turn a vacant lot or McDonald's into an apartment building even though that building meets all the codes and standards.
It turns out that politics is often times negative sum, and whatever good thing you are doing will stopped, merely because you havent given them their cut.
When you meet an asshole you've met an asshole. When you meet assholes all day, you're probably the asshole. These dockless companies are complaining about everyone's reaction to them, which is making me think they might just be assholes
The absolute best outcome for Bird would have been the city saying "you can put them in designated scooter areas, and they have to be docked in designated scooter areas". And that would have turned them into just another e-bike: utterly useless and used by no-one.
Now, there's absolutely a reasonable conversation to be had about corporate over-reach, responsibility, and externalities here. However, let's not pretend that this could realistically have been accomplished any other way.
Yes? I'd assume it would take finding someone friendly who works for the city, getting them interested in the concept, and getting their help and support in navigating the process, but yes, I'd absolutely expect the city to say "sure", maybe "sure, with caveats". Hell, maybe the city folks could find a way to finance half your deployment with taxpayer money. It's not like city administration exists only to sit on their collective butt and default-deny every request.
Were I only following the local media and other people's opinion on our city, I'd still be believing it's all bunch of busybodies led serving a no-good city president. But, as a part of leading a local Hackerspace, I ended up involved in city-NGO cooperation space. I've interacted with both city officials and private organizations trying to run publicly beneficial projects in the city, and it turns out my city is really willing to help, to partner, to support.
Of course, the local and national politics sometimes leak through and create issues, so it's not all roses. But I left the space with the impression that one only has to try to start a friendly conversation, and there's plenty of city officials, with budgets behind them, willing to cooperate with your new endeavour.
EDIT: Oh, and yes, there are procedures. Things move much slower than you expect, and if you're trying to get some of the city money for the project, you end up organizing public consultations and preparing recommendation reports to the city, and doing other busywork that may seem, or even be, pointless in the case of your project. It can be frustrating.
That would have gotten a no, but ”we would like to do an experiment decreasing road congestion” could have gotten them a yes _and_ a subsidy for running the experiment.
And yes, that “yes” would have had strings attached, even if it weren’t subsidized, but that’s normal for anthingmyhea affects shared space. If a company goes to the city and says “we would like to park our cars on the street instead of on our expensive parking lot” or “we would like to semi-permanently occupy the space in front of or shops”, would you expect the city to say “yes”, too?
Fat VC dollars come when they think you’ll dominate the world of scooters and put them everywhere. If you spend some of those millions fighting city governments so be it. Bribe them, make them fail elections, find loopholes, extend court trials forever. This companies have almost an unlimited supply of money.
If it's risky proposition, then yes, it's better to refuse.
If he accepts it and things go wrong, it'll be blamed on him, and he might get kicked out.
If he refuses, the worst that could happen is it could succeed somewhere else. In which case, he could then reconsider.
The only time where it makes sense to accept is when he's desperate and needs to shake things up, or there are enough kickbacks to make it worthwhile.
You tell me if you see a scooter on the sidewalk if that strikes you as the same as people disposing of trash on the sidewalk: loose papers, cigarette butts, plastic bags, etc.
I get what you're saying for the sake of argument, but littering is a disgusting act that makes most people feel like their city is unclean.
I don't mind ubers quickly stopping to drop someone off on a non-separated bike lane as long as they don't cut people off and signal and merge safely. I'm happy to wait behind them or merge around just like a car would had they stopped in the main traffic lane. We can share the infrastructure, just don't leave your car in the bike lane!
Why's that ok? You are a private individual. You are using public space for private benefit, instead of , I don't know, letting the needy homeless use it.
So-called "black" cars where passengers arranged transportation in advance were governed differently, and required no licensing or a different and more permissive kind of licensing. Black car services were already widely available in many cities from lots of different companies, often independent owner/operators - it's just that no one had provided a service that worked across many different cities and was available conveniently as an app.
I won't claim that Uber and Lyft broke no laws, because there are a lot of jurisdictions in the world, and I don't know the laws of all of them, but many cities regular taxies and black cars very differently.
Edit: Why the downvotes? Am I wrong? Evidence would be appreciated.
Lots of just causes broke unjust laws.
This sort of retaliatory "shit list", constructed without due process, from which a company might only be able to extricate themselves by "kissing the ring" of local politicos/bureaucrats, is a recipe for inefficiency and corruption.
I also don't think the "litter" charge against the initial scooter deployments is correct, anyway, for reasons I outlined in a prior thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17268697
What you're describing might be possible for a mature business category.
The free market doesn't always magically work.
The problem is that the named companies already have shown their willingness to use their VC backed resources to stomp over local regulation.
These companies were jerks who basically said "Nya. Nya. We're too powerful, you can't regulate us. <middle finger>"
To which SF replied: "Nya. Nya. Yes we can. No permits for you and now we can fine the snot out of you if you disregard us."
With "shall-issue" rules there is no one in city government to bribe and/or make special deals with.
That's not how SF likes to operate.
It seems like if you want to come up with a permit process and rules, rather than just making them all up at once you'd grant permission to a small group for a limited period to figure out what rules make sense, then write the rules, then open up the permitting process.
When selecting the pilot group it also makes sense to try to find partners that are likely to co-operate and be responsive to your requirements rather than companies with long histories of completely ignoring local laws.
You're right that SF has a history of abusing permits in the interest of Nimby-ism -- see the 'war on fun' for one example -- so I do agree it could all turn out terribly in the end, but that doesn't make this an unreasonable start.
But maybe in another sense, San Francisco is a product, and the feature it's selling includes rampant overregulation.
If that's not a good business model, another city can step up and offer better incentives. And people can move there. There are many nice cities and towns in the US. If you insist on living on the dirty tip of a tiny overcrowded peninsula, that's a choice.
You're trying to regulate San Francisco's right to regulate.
GDP is just a measure for a particular system. I could think of several more direct measures than GDP without trying very hard, for instance quality of life, cost of living, and overall happiness.
Undocked transportation? I think that without some formal approval it would be within the cities right to confiscate items left on the public right-of-way and auction it off to the highest bidder.
You can't even legally leave garbage out for collection (in unapproved containers) except for certain days.
Actually, if the city went after them as moving vehicles they would be collected by the towers in hours.
If you were going to claim that our allocation of city resources to parking is excessive, I'd agree, but you can't reasonably claim that parking a car there isn't using the space for it's intended purpose.
This whole "hands off" approach has proven a failure many times,. Look at how Uber and Lyft are exploiting their drivers, which end up working below minimum wage and 100% on own risk - in the big scheme/long term these have no insurance, no pension benefits, might lose everything through an accident, and will mostly end up dependent on handouts.
In some cities bike rental schemes failed and the city is left to clean up broken bikes, stations, etc once the provider disappears. Sure, it was easy to get in, but the taxpayer foots the bill.
Yes, an application process makes things a bit more intransparent and slow, but (if done well) it also assures that the average citizen is not left holding the sticky end.
It's like "Pandora Nexus" all over again.
Or the startup that opens a chop shop for disassembling all these abandoned scooters and sells the parts?
Seriously though these scooter permits sound corrupt, or have the potential for massive corruption.
But cracking that case and pulling the batteries has to have some value. I'm honestly surprised we don't hear more news about that sort of criminal activity. Maybe if lithium were involved in the production of meth...
This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
Move fast and piss people off doesn't work too well, eh?
And the current Uber too, actually. :D
Combined, the lesson here seems to be this:
* Asking permission for something new will tend to get you squashed.
* If you're big enough, popular enough, and rich enough, you can work around this.
* If someone else fails at that approach, you might get in in an arbitrarily regulated way some time later.
I can see where some might like this lesson! Though personally, I think there might be some opportunity for improvement.
The entire experience felt like a Monty Python interview- engineers driven on a death march to get their stuff done and interview an endless stream of qualified candidates, all the while management isn't ready to hire, but still bringing on a torrent of candidates.
The interviewing process was one of the most disorganized and chaotic I've ever gone through. Pair programming exercises scheduled without working computers, that kind of thing.
I never wish any company to fail, but...
Also, considering the sheer hatred these companies and their business model inspire in me, I can't say it doesn't fill me with glee.
Bird is based in Santa Monica.
According to https://qz.com/1257198/xiaomi-makes-the-bird-and-spin-scoote... at least Bird and Spin are using Xiomi scooters. Lime is also made overseas, read China. So, this is nothing but Silicon Valley VC money, actually their LP's money, moving to China.
> Bird could buy a fleet of 500 scooters for $137,500, or 0.1% of its total funding
They are available at $250 - $299 a piece (https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/hot-sale-best-origina...) Plus there is shipping, which I don't know the cost.
So, that itself, before shipping and customs is is $8.75M - $10.465M. Not exactly chump change.
The bike sharing business has caused a hazard in places like China, because of the unrestricted dumping. So there is definitely a point that government needs to chime in and do some stuff.
Oh yeah, and when they do go under, you're still going to be left with all this detritus, because when the company ceases to exist, it won't be picking them up. Here, you can force the dumpers to still clean up their mess.
https://medium.com/13-notes/unit-economics-of-the-bird-scoot...
To maintain a presence of 2500 scooters for a year, you'd need 2500 * (365 days / 50 days (scooter lifespan)) = 18.2k scooters. That's 18.2k * $600 (lifetime cost) = $10.9 million in capital.
Each of these scooters generating $14 in revenue a day is $12.7 million in revenue a year, for a profit of $1.8 million and a 16% return on capital. If we assume a San Francisco quota was rolled out to the entire country, that'd be (325 million / 880k) * 1.8 million = $664 million in profit, at best.
[1] https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-docume...
[2] https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-docume...
Also, note that Scoot already has an arrangement with the city for the red electric mopeds they rent out.
https://www.sfmta.com/reports/original-2018-scooter-applicat...
For a community that waxes poetic about presenting themselves and communicating well, Scoot sets a rather good example here.
There's also a difference between people who own their own scooters vs heavily VC funded firms who want to dump as many of their scooters onto the streets as possible to target high growth. An individual owner has the incentive to keep their vehicle off the streets since otherwise people can easily steal them. This is not the same as these large firms, who have GPS trackers on each scooter. Plus, each scooter is so cheaply made that a loss is not majorly important since they have a ton of money in the bank -- each scooter is peanuts compared to the salaries of their software engineers. Individual scooter owners are much more price sensitive and generally tend not to throw their scooter onto the streets.
I think another argument is one of public space. The sidewalk is a public space that I pay taxes to maintain. Why should a low-revenue growth-hacking startup be allowed to use the public space -- which SF citizens pay to maintain -- for free? I'm a pretty staunch capitalist, but this seems like a "privatize the gains, socialize the losses" scenario.
I would be okay if either 1) startups who wanted to deploy scooters faced heavy taxes for certain violations or 2) they proposed concrete plans to explain how they will not clutter sidewalks. The San Francisco government seems to be doing the latter.
TLDR: Incentives are different between individuals and VC funded firms. Also, don't use public spaces to growth-hack your startup. Or if you do, either 1) respect other people who use them or 2) pay fines / more taxes to compensate the city for extra upkeep costs and to compensate other citizens for inconvenience.
An example that stuck out to me: when asked where they plan on operating, Scoot had detailed block-by-block outlines of how they would expand and when. Bird literally just has a Google Maps screen capture of San Francisco.
For a start-up as well funded as they are, it really seems like Bird phoned it in on the application.
Then they allowed these two companies to return. [1]
1. https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2018/08/28/dockless-elec...
Al Capone was taken down because he had more power than that of the government. These companies are being shut down because they are not willing to pay the shakedown money by the city mafia.
We need to take this country back and until you people do not understand this, you will remain slaves. I almost believe that this is what you want..
I do not. This is NOT what this country was built upon and changing this, being OK with this will eventually lead to the destruction of our country, which, before that happens, will be a civil war.
Really? Not conceding the point of him having more power or that being the reason he got taken down, but isn't it good thing we had strong federal government with tough regulation to pick up the slack of lax local regulators
> this will eventually lead to the destruction of our country, which, before that happens, will be a civil war.
Amazing performance there. From "denied scooter licenses" to "dystopian communist dictatorship" to "Civil war" in under 5 paragraphs.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
People drive them with a vengeance, clutter up the streets while they are in parking mode, and are a general eyesore.
Taxis on the other hand, have usage rates of ~50 percent. Whereas personal cars, parked on the side of the road, are only being used ~5 % of the time, and the other 95% is wasted.
Transportation services like Uber or taxis use the road to move people around and don't take up as much space as personal cars. Public transit and bikes are much more space and energy efficient, though don't get the investment they need to work for most people.
US cities are optimized for sprawl and personal car centric transportation, which makes it annoying that new ideas like these scooter startups (which are actually pretty great when you try them) are blocked by officials in favor of a system that is expensive and sub-optimal for the health of society.
However, in SF they overdid it. I don't know if SF residents got replaced by a bunch of self-entitled nerdy manchildren, but holy hell they were obnoxious. You would see 5-6 of them blocking the entrance to a restaurant (at anchorsteam brewery tap room especially). Thrown down in the middle of the pavement. People riding them on the sidewalk yelling "GOTTA GO FAST", going somewhat fast (at least have some dignity and dress like Sonic the hedgehog if you 're gonna do that). Think of an 80s action movie where the punks or hell's angels type of gangs run amok in the city, but it's dudes wearing startup t-shirts on electric scooters instead. Anyway, I 'm not a nimby but their presence in SF really left a sour taste.
But after seeing them in LA and San Diego I am convinced they can work super nicely if a little bit of common sense is applied. Maybe the SF populous is early adopters and jumped on the latest trend with too much passion, or maybe those companies put on the streets too many units. I don't know, but it can be done right and I 'd really like to see them back.
Also I feel like some of the bad behavior was vandalism by haters. Who the hell would put black sharpie on the QR codes or shit on scooters themselves? Probably not someone who uses them.
I think there's opportunity for the scooter companies can mitigate the abandonment or carelessness of their products by using some thoughtful software. If someone leaves a scooter tipped over, they get banned for a day. Do it again, they get banned for a month. etc... Maybe have a clearing house to monitor cross service users are bad actors?
Two ways come to mind for a city to verify that a company is handling such things properly.
First, the city can have auditors regularly examine the internal operations of the company, talk to employees, and review consumer feedback.
Second, the city can pull a random sample of the company's scooters off the street and have city mechanics inspect them.
The number of scooters you have to examine from a company to determine if it is meeting maintenance requirements depends on the margin of error that you are willing to accept, not on the number of scooters in that company's fleet. Let's say you need to examine 50 scooters to get the desired margin of error.
Suppose are going to allow 5000 scooters in your city. If you do that with two companies, 2500 each, and you audit annually, you'll be doing each year two audits of the facilities and employees, and checking 100 scooters (50 from each company).
If instead you have that same 5000 scooters, but now provided by 10 companies, you'll be doing 10 facility and employee audits, and checking 500 scooters.
So same number of scooters on the street in both cases, but about 5 times the administrative costs to the city in the 10 company case is in the 2 company case.
Also, if consumers need a different app for each scooter company, a smaller number of companies will probably serve consumers better. Again, take a city with 5000 total scooters. If those were supplied be two companies, evenly split, then a consumer would only need two apps to have complete coverage. A consumer with only one of the apps would still have a decent change of being able to find a scooter in a reasonable time frame.
If that 5000 were split among 10 companies, a consumer with only one app would only have a pool of 500 scooters available. If those ended up spread out around the city it would be hard for a one app consumer to find a nearby scooter. If that company concentrated in one smaller area that could solve that problem...but then the consumer would probably end up needing the apps of several others, too, to find scooters when they are in other parts of the city.
There is going to be some optimum number of scooter companies for a given city and total fleet size which balances things. Lower numbers are more convenient and usable by consumers, and cost less to regulate and verify, but higher numbers have more competition which might lower prices.
My guess...and it is just a guess...is that three would be about right for most reasonably large cities.