In numerous states and cities, taxi interests – notably unions representing taxi drivers – have come up with creative legislation to hobble the rise of ridesharing apps like Lyft and Uber. In Nevada, the taxi union recently proposed a package of measures to slam the apps good and hard, of which perhaps the most startling was this: drivers getting a rideshare booking would be required by law to wait to ensure that their fare was not picked up in less than ten minutes.
What a great idea – all must be brought down to the level of the least able! Echoing Vonnegut’s funny-dystopian short story Harrison Bergeron, the speediest would have to sit out in artificial penalty time to ensure that they did not arrive before the poky. “In a brief interview, [union president T. Ruthie] Jones said the union only wanted a level playing field,” reports the Nevada Independent.
And it gets even better. When legislators got a look at the union’s wish list of requests, whoever was in charge of drafting apparently decided that a 10 minute wait time didn’t go far enough. So Senate Bill 485, introduced on Monday, instead upped the handicap delay to 15 minutes. Per the Nevada Independent, “Taxi companies — long an influential Nevada industry — gave to 50 legislators throughout the 2016 campaign cycle for a total of $476,200.”
But the bill’s introduction stirred immediate and searching news coverage Tuesday. An Uber representative termed the 15 minute obligatory wait time “really absurd, frankly, on its face,” and said the service would pull out of the state if it were enacted. (That was the idea, right?) And by yesterday, Sen. Kelvin Atkinson (D-North Las Vegas), who chairs the committee on Commerce, Labor and Energy, said the bill was “bad policy,” dead and wouldn’t get a hearing. One of his opposite numbers had already commented critically:
Republican Assembly Leader Paul Anderson said in an earlier interview that the proposed restrictions were “atrocious” and said the measure was a blatant attempt to kneecap the industry.
“All it does is stifle an industry that is significantly providing a better service,” he said in a Tuesday interview.
My favorite comment came on Twitter: “I dunno, maybe the lawmakers should be forced to wait a while before they can drop this proposal…”
Imagine how many proposals of this sort would quietly slip through were it not for the vigilant, independent, and free press we are used to having in America.
