Last week, the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission restricted the amount of new Uber and Lyft drivers in the city.
This shouldn’t have been too surprising, as it has been common practice since the 1930s for cities to limit the number of for-hire cars in order to maintain stable wages for drivers.
But what should be surprising: how quick cities have been to restrict or even ban dockless scooters and bikes.
In Seattle, the city with the largest presence of dockless bikeshare in the United States, the city’s department of transportation has capped the number of bikes to 5,000 per company. It has also capped the number of bikeshare companies to four, hence permitting a maximum of 20,000 bikes in the city. Electric scooters are entirely banned as regulators work on rules for the new devices.
For comparison, it’s hard to even find out how many transportation network company (TNC) drivers there are in Seattle. It was only by order of a judge that Uber and Lyft were forced to reveal that the companies were permitted a combined 9,200 drivers in the Seattle area.
In New York City, the story is similar. There are roughly 80,000 TNC drivers in the city – at the time of the cap – while the city has restricted dockless bikes to just a few hundred operating in restricted zones. While the restrictions on dockless bikes are in large part meant to prevent the new companies from infringing on the publicly-operated Citibike docked system, their fleet size is only 12,000 bikes.
There are certainly good reasons for cities to regulate dockless bikes and scooters. There is a public interest in keeping the curb and sidewalk free of clutter. Unregulated bikes and scooters can block pedestrian pathways and make curbs impassible to wheelchairs.
However, similar concerns also apply to for-hire cars. Drivers often block bus stops or curbs to load or unload passengers (or to sit and wait until someone e-hails them for a ride), and it’s becoming increasingly clear that TNCs have added to congestion by drawing riders away from transit. By contrast, dockless bikes and scooters show promising signs of replacing car trips, even with their limited numbers.
So why are cities restricting the number of bikes but allowing TNCs comparatively free reign?
In part, this is because cities don’t really have a choice in the matter. In many states, TNC regulations have been assumed by state agencies, undercutting local control. When locals have tried to crack down on Uber and Lyft early on, the companies fought back hard.
It is also far more difficult to pin down which cars are TNCs, while shared bikes are designed to stand out, making it easy for regulators to simply impound them.
Photo by Abe Landes for Mobility Lab.