The Rideshare Archipelago
The other day, Uber and Live Nation, the world’s most malicious entertainment company, announced that at “over 62 Live Nation venues and 20 festivals nationwide, riding with Uber will be easier than ever thanks to new designated drop-off and pick-up locations where available.” The deal, granting Uber privileged access to Live Nation-controlled venues, is not so dissimilar from one that its rival, Lyft, struck a couple of months ago with South by Southwest; as the festival’s “official ridesharing partner,” Lyft was able to use “designated pickup and drop-off zones around downtown Austin” to more nimbly ferry its human cargo from their Airbnbs to exquisitely branded slip-and-slide fuckfests and back again.
These partner agreements are not especially remarkable; brands will #brand. More notable was Lyft’s agreement that same week to become “the first and only Transportation Network Company permitted to operate” at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, in exchange for ten percent of its revenue. Lyft did not merely benefit from smoother access or louder promotion; Uber drivers were technically barred from picking up passengers at the airport’s arrival terminal because the service would not pay the airport’s demanded “concession fee.” Uber’s customers were caught in the middle, denied access to the transit service of their choice at a moment of need — unless they hailed a somewhat bold driver, anyway — for reasons largely inscrutable to them. (And there are lot of reasons they might choose Uber over Lyft! Like for instance, for the simple reason that Uber still seemed to provide better service in Austin during SXSW, despite all of the advantages that Lyft had accrued.)
It’s not a far leap from the Austin airport or a Live Nation venue to imagining Uber or Lyft using their apparently bottomless war chests to pay all kinds of gatekeepers for exclusive access: Maybe Lyft becomes the official ride to and from Regal movie theaters, or only Ubers are allowed at Yankee Stadium, and did you really think that your Lyft driver could roll up to the San Francisco airport? Certain roads, or lanes, perhaps, could be designated for Uber or Lyft only. On a grander scale, maybe Lyft outbids Uber to become the exclusive rideshare service provider in the Miami city limits. The proposition is potentially more attractive to a city government than it sounds on its face, particularly in a sprawling city like say, Atlanta, whose public transit system is patchy, unreliable, and underfunded, and whose existing taxi system is absolute garbage — even as it is being flooded by a younger, more moneyed population that, as trend pieces about Los Angeles have taught them, want to go out, drink in cool bars until they’re blotto, and not drive. (Or maybe they’re just over car ownership, whatever!!) In Atlanta’s case, an official ride-sharing service that satisfies their creative class’s transit needs with a privatized solution that is vastly superior to its existing taxi services would allow the city to continue to marginalize its public transit system, MARTA, which is largely used by people with lower incomes and people of color, while trickling a fresh stream of revenue into the city’s coffers.
This scenario sounds not unlike state-granted monopolies for utilities — or essentially a wholly privatized metropolitan taxi service. Which, weird, right? But as Uber and Lyft have grown, and their potential customer base has expanded from people wanting to “liv[e] in the future” to anyone who needs a car for any reason at any moment, their strategies, practices, and products have become, in a few not-small ways, come to resemble the vague outline of a utility or even privatized mass transit. In most cities, it would be an improvement over the status quo. Until it isn’t, anyway.
Cartoon of the original Gerrymander via the Commons
