Mayor Charlie Hales and Commissioner Steve Novick today proposed a 120-day pilot program to regulate Portland’s for-hire transportation industry in an attempt to allow Uber and Lyft to operate in Portland along side traditional fleet companies.
“Evolving consumer interests, population growth and a booming tourism industry have generated more demand for taxis and other for-hire transportation service,” says a release issued by Hales and Novick this afternoon. “In addition, Transportation Network Companies, or TNCs, such as Uber and Lyft, have emerged as a new model of for-hire transportation service.”
The proposed pilot program will next go before city council for a vote. Bryan Hockaday, a spokesman for Novick’s office, says the vote is scheduled for 5pm on Tues., April 21.
UPDATE, 2:45 pm: The proposal falls into two parts: a resolution empowering the Portland Bureau of Transportation to enact “interim administrative rules” regarding ride hailing companies like Uber and Lyft, and an ordinance that will modify city code as pertains to existing taxi companies.
Hockaday and Hales aide Josh Alpert tell the Mercury the proposal they’ve concocted hammers out thorny questions about insurance and data sharing. Uber and Lyft, they say, have each agreed to enter into forthcoming deals requiring them to share anonymized data with City Hall. Taxi companies will also need to share information during the four-month pilot.
But the most significant way the proposal differs recommendations a citizen task force floated last week? It includes benchmarks companies must meet when serving customers in wheelchairs. Unlike cab companies, neither Uber nor Lyft—the only two TNCs in talks with the city—have their own fleet of wheelchair-accessible vehicles. Both have signaled they’ll contract with companies that do.
“TNC’s [transportation network companies] will implement service performance measures to provide timely and equitable service to persons with disabilities,” the proposes rules state. That requirement is separated into four stages.
During the first 30 days of the pilot project, TNCs will simply be required to collect data on wheelchair-accessible rides, “with reasonably prompt service.”” In the second month, the companies will have to keep collecting data, but ensure that theres no more than a 30 minute differential between regular service and service for people in wheel chairs. In the third and fourth months, that differential decreases further—20 minutes and 10 minutes, respectively—with a caveat that companies can also provide service in line with “what previous data supports.”
TNCs are also required to allow customers to specifically request a wheelchair-accessible ride, and can’t charge extra for the service.
As we’ve noted, service to disabled users has been among the stickiest points of this whole discussion. The task force convened in January to look at cab regulations hadn’t planned on addressing the issue until later this year—which angered advocates like Sue Stahl of the Portland Commission on Disability.
“My hat’s off to Sue Stahl,” Alpert tells the Mercury. “They educated the rest of the task force throughout the process. It became incredibly logical this should be one of the first things addressed.”
Another change from the task force’s recommendations: There’s no upper limit on what cabs and ride-hailing services may charge. And there’s a whole schedule of civil penalties PBOT will be able to assign to TNCs if they’re caught breaking the rules. Here it is.
Other interesting bits:
•As recommended by the citizen task force, there will be no upper limit on the number of cabs and TNC vehicles that can flood Portland streets during the pilot project.
•The city will have explicit authority to inspect any for-hire vehicle with 48 hours notice, or any time an inspector comes across one parked, and without a passenger.
•TNCs are required to accept “any request” from any part of the City
City staffers have been working hard to hammer out the pilot proposal since Tuesday, during a lengthy city council work session over the rules. The urgency, they said, came from commitments made last year. In December, the city committed to crafting rules to allow TNCs to operate legally in Portland by April, after successfully pushing Uber out of the market (using the leverage of a lawsuit and nearly $70,000 in fines).
“We wanted to live up to our end of the agreement that took place in December,” Alpert says.
Update, 3:54 pm: No surprises here, but the taxi companies don’t like the proposal Hales and Novick have come up with. Raye Miles, president of Broadway Cab, just issued a statement on behalf of the Transportation Fairness Alliance, a partnership of most of the city’s cab companies. She says the regulations don’t go far enough to rein TNCs in, and that the city’s opening up a Pandora’s Box.
“If Uber is allowed to operate unregulated, even for a short period of time, its track record in other jurisdictions illustrates that it will not cease operations later, nor will it accept being regulated,” Miles says. “As Portland’s experience with Airbnb has shown: Once the genie is out of the bottle, you cannot put it back in.”
Miles also claims Uber will break the terms of the agreement, and that cab companies have recurring costs that TNCs don’t, meaning local cabbies will be undercut.
“With few fixed costs, and billions of dollars in capitalization, Uber and Lyft can, and likely will, lower rates significantly below what taxis must charge to be sustainable,” Miles writes.
Aside from that drama, there are big questions about how Tuesday’s special council hearing will play out. Hockaday and Alpert say the plan is to have the ordinance passed as an “emergency” meaning it would take effect immediately. But passage of an emergency ordinance requires a unanimous vote in council—with at least four commissioners present.
It’s not remotely clear that vote exists. Commissioner Amanda Fritz has repeatedly raised serious reservations about the safety of TNCs, and Commissioner Nick Fish has voiced skepticism as well. A ‘no’ vote from either commissioner could slow the process down to normal speed, requiring a second reading of the ordinance and a 30 day waiting period until it kicks in.
Here’s the press release sent out earlier:
The proposal builds on the recommendations by the Private for Hire Innovation Task Force, which Novick appointed in December to examine the issue and recommend how the City should modernize its regulations. Evolving consumer interests, population growth and a booming tourism industry have generated more demand for taxis and other for-hire transportation service. In addition, Transportation Network Companies, such as Uber and Lyft, have emerged as a new model of for-hire transportation service.
Under the proposal by Hales and Novick, the City would lift the cap on taxi fares, so taxis and TNCs could both set their own fares without city regulation. Both taxis and TNCs would be required to provide service to people with disabilities, provide service 24 hours a day/seven days a week and certify that their drivers have passed City-approved background checks. The City will audit these records to enforce compliance. The resolution directs Transportation Director Leah Treat to create and sign an administrative rule launching the pilot program.
“This is a historic deal,” Mayor Charlie Hales said. “We were able to move from confrontation to collaboration, with an open process and tough negotiations that have come up with a result that will improve our transportation system and creates a real win for consumers.”
“The existing taxi companies have had two lines of argument against the pilot. One is, simply, that they should be protected from competition in order to ensure a living wage for drivers and good service for people with disabilities. Given that our best information is that the average net hourly income of Portland taxi drivers is $6.22 an hour, and given the complaints people in the disability community have about taxi service, we are not entirely persuaded by that argument,” said Commissioner Novick, who oversees the Portland Bureau of Transportation. “But the other line of argument is that any competition needs to be fair competition. We agree with that, and in order to ensure fair competition, the proposed framework makes some changes to the task force’s recommendations – and underscores certain features of those recommendations that might not have been well understood.”
The Portland City Council is scheduled to conduct a public hearing and vote on the resolution by Hales and Novick (attached) on at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, April 21. The hearing will be held at City Council Chambers, Portland City Hall, 1221 SW Fourth Ave.
Under the proposed framework:
The rules for fares will be the same for TNCs and taxis: The City will lift the cap on fares and, as always, have no minimum fare.
Background check requirements for taxis and TNCs will be the same. Both can use City-approved third-party background check providers and the City will audit random samples to enforce compliance.
Taxis and TNCs will implement service performance measures to ensure timely service for people with disabilities.
The TNC companies will not be allowed to pick up passengers until permits have been certified.
Taxis and TNCs will both be required to offer 24/7 service. Neither will be allowed to reject trip requests based on the shortness or length of the journey.
The City prohibits disclaimers of liability for negligence or other tortious conduct contained in Terms of Service and requires that all tort claims be governed by tort law in effect at the time of a claim.
The framework differs in some respects from the private for hire task force recommendations the City Council heard last week. It does not include a cap on taxi fares. It also includes specific language on TNCs’ legal liabilities.The Task Force is recommending a two-phase approach, which still guides City action. Phase 1 includes a 120-day TNC pilot program, during which time market data will be collected and analyzed. During Phase 2, the Task Force will assess the market data and solicit public input that will inform recommendations for an overhaul to all of the City’s PFHT rules. The Task Force’s final report is expected this summer and will include recommendations for all modes of for-hire transportation, including taxicabs, TNCs, accessible for-hire transportation service, Limited Passenger Transportation companies, pedicabs and shuttles.
Hales and Novick thanked the Task Force for its recommendations, which were the basis for the resolution. “This task force did the City an incredible service by tackling these tough issues in a very tight timeframe,” Hales said.
“Thanks to the task force, the City Council can rest assured that our pilot program has been thoroughly vetted,” Novick said. “The task force did groundbreaking work, and I look forward to their report this summer on broader for-hire transportation issues.”
The City of Portland has been regulating private for hire transportation for more than a century, and that responsibility was moved in July 2014 from the Office of Management and Finance to the Portland Bureau of Transportation. For more information about private for-hire transportation, visit: www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/pdxrides.
This will solve half of the problems in IA.