If it's such a good idea, Jeremy, set one up...

The leader of the Labour Party has been talking about business (while smiling benignly at his youth wing who want to nationalise Greggs). He tweeted this:

Imagine an Uber run co-operatively by their drivers, collectively controlling their futures, with profits shared or re-invested.

Splendid. There are some great worker-owned businesses - John Lewis, Arup and so forth - although none of them started that way. But the implication of Corbyn's comments sound a little more sinister - even a hint of some form of nationalisation for dear old Uber.

But seriously, if it's such a good idea to have a ride share co-op, Jeremy, why not set one up? No-one's stopping you (except maybe the Mayor of London and his Black Cab mates).

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Let's not let politicians get away with crying 'immoral' to justify their prejudices

It is always a worry when politicians start invoking morality in the promotion of their particular policy or prejudice. It doesn't matter much which side you're on, the objective is always to try and make out that those who support what you oppose are bad people. This applies as much to William Hague going on about the moral case for low taxation as it does to the latest piece of moralising from Labour's 'business spokesperson', Rebecca Long-Bailey:

Ms Long-Bailey told Today: "I don't personally use Uber because I don't feel that it is morally acceptable but that's not to say they can't reform their practices."

She added: "I don't want to see companies model their operations on the Uber model."

The objective here is to make you feel bad when you choose to use Uber - or, by implication, any other business using the 'gig economy' model. Obviously, Ms Long-Bailey has every right to choose the (usually) more expensive option of a hackney carriage or traditional private hire, but when she claims this makes her morally superior she is changing the argument entirely. Where we had an argument about working conditions and business models, we now have one based on making people who don't agree with Ms Long-Bailey feel bad.

Morality is a tricky area for politicians - after all arguments based on morality kept homosexuality illegal, brought in prohibition in the USA, helped keep women out of the workforce, and resulted in the unwarranted stigma of illegitimacy. In this case the appeal to morality is based on an assumption that Ms Long-Bailey knows precisely the minds and motivations of those people who drive for Uber.

The thing is that we know one thing that makes Ms Long-Bailey's argument false - no-one is forcing anyone to be an Uber driver. More to the point, the employment basis of most taxi and private hire drivers is pretty much identical to that of Uber drivers - they are self-employed. And Uber across most of the UK is licensed in the same manner as a private hire vehicle. This company is no more exploitative of its drivers than the typical Leeds, Bradford or Manchester private hire business.

What Labour and Ms Long-Bailey are saying is that it is morally wrong for a new business employing people on pretty much the same basis as the businesses it competes with to charge less money. This is about is protecting the local authority taxi monopoly and the excess rents earned by that monopoly and its employees - this is not about morality but about competition and the desire to protect one section of the market. All at the expense of the consumer - you and me.

Labour are entitled to make the argument for this protectionism using grounds such as safety, tradition, market stability and so forth. I think these sorts of arguments are wrong but that's an opinion. What is wrong here is that Ms Long-Bailey wants to make out that my opposition to her position on the technological disruption of public transport is somehow immoral. It clearly isn't.

This approach represents an unhealthy trend in recent left wing politics. It used to be the conservative right that would invoke morality as justification for policy but today we find this moral imperative used by socialists like Ms Long-Bailey. Whether it's the defence industry, disruptive digital technology, online distribution or Brexit, elements of the left turn quickly to an argument based on morals. We see this starkly with Ms Long-Bailey's unjustified attack on Uber but it's familiar to those who've witnessed arguments for 'ethical' procurement or investment, arguments based not on a real moral code but on the translation of political credo into an ethical platform. If I oppose 'Fairtrade', fossil fuel disinvestment or bans on tobacco advertising then I am a bad person because such policies are 'ethical' - opposing them makes me, in effect 'unethical'.

We need to start kicking back. Using Uber is not immoral, the 'gig economy' business model is not unethical, and to say so is to corrupt the meaning of ethics and morality by twisting it to serve a political ideology. Ms Long-Bailey's argument cannot be allowed to stand there without challenge, to become the presumed truth about self-employment in the UK because it is simply not true that it is immoral to use Uber, it misrepresents the business model and rather insults the folk who earn a decent crust driving for that company.

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"Gimmicks" - or transport innovations at they're known outside West Yorkshire

Tomorrow's driverless taxi?

The West Yorkshire Combined Authority is going out to consultation on its transport strategy. This is a strategy and plan intended to set the direction for transport in West Yorkshire up to 2036. In doing this, the WYCA is acting quite properly - transport schemes are expensive, slow to develop and take a long time to implement so a twenty year planning horizon is sensible. You can contribute to the consultation through the page on WYCA's website.

At the recent WYCA full meeting - where the leaders of West Yorkshire's five councils plus a couple of others tagged on for good measure (like me, for example), we discussed this transport strategy. Not in much detail - these meetings are never big on detail - but enough to get a feel for what it's proposing. And it's not very good.

The strategy is linear seeing challenges such as congestion, air quality and connectivity as solvable only with existing technology - trains, buses - and new infrastructure (roads, bike lanes and so forth) within the existing spatial circumstances. Thus we are keen on HS2 and HS3 (or Northern Powerhouse Rail - NPR - as afficionados will now call it) as transformational schemes and we bemoan the lack of foresight at the Department for Transport in not allowing us to build our exiciting and innovative new 'bus-on-a-string'. As if the 19th century technology of the trolley bus is somehow a solution to 21st century transport challenges.

In setting objectives, the strategy focuses on modal shift, getting journeys shifted from nasty bad cars onto lovely buses, trains and bicycles. The strangest thing about this policy is that it is essentially backwards looking in seeking to move people from a 20th century transport system (the car) onto 19th century systems (rail, bus, bike). And while this is all fine it represents another triumph for anti-invention green strategies.

In our discussions, I mentioned emerging transport technologies - autonomous vehicles, drones, zero-emission vehicles - and wondered why, given the strategy runs to 2036, none of these emerging transport systems was considered worthy of even consideration in our planning? The chairman of the WYCA's Transport Board and the Leader of Kirklees Council dismissed this suggestion. The former thought the 'holy grail' would be to have an integrated ticketing syste across rail and bus by 2036. For Londoners, this is us taking 20 years to introduce the Oytster card system you guys already have.

For the latter, Cllr David Sheard, these new technologies are "gimmicks" and we should focus on "real-time data" (which we already have through the Metro phone app) and "smart ticketing" (those Oyster cards again). The extent of West Yorkshire's transport innovation will be to introduce a system London already has and to improve another system already available in West Yorkshire. And we want to be some sort of powerhouse? With this sort of thinking we'll be lucky to keep up with Manchester let alone close the gap with London.

So, for the benefit of my colleagues on the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, here are some of those gimmicks being introduced elsewhere in the world.

Singapore is gearing up to become the world's first "smart nation", with another deal to bring self-drive taxis to the city.

The city authorities signed a deal with start-up nuTonomy to test autonomous vehicles in March.

Now Delphi Automotive will also offer a small fleet of automated taxis to carry passengers around a business park.

The driverless cabs could reduce an average $3-a-mile ride to 90 cents, the firm said.

Initially, the cars will have drivers, ready to take over if the system fails but the plan is to gradually phase the human out in 2019.

And - even more creative:

A drone that can transport humans has been given the go ahead to carry out trials in the US.

The Ehang 184, which was first unveiled at CES 2016, is a small, personal helicopter that can transport a single passenger. Rather than one large rotor above the body, the "taxi drone" has four rotors underneath the body, resembling a remote control drone.

Ehang will start running tests in Las Vegas later this year in the hope that it could eventually be used as part of the state's transport system, according to a local publication.

Buses might not be so dull:

A driverless electric bus is set to be trialled in Perth in a test run for the use of autonomous vehicles on West Australian roads.

The staged trial is being conducted and funded by WA's RAC later this year using a French-made electric shuttle bus.

With no driver, it will use three-dimensional sensing technology to carry 15 passengers at speeds up to 45 kilometres per hour.

And there's autonomous delivery systems:

"Whilst driverless vehicles once sounded like science fiction, it's now within our grasp," said Domino’s Pizza UK marketing director Simon Wallis. "Harnessing this innovation for pizza delivery opens up a new world of opportunities for us."

The vehicles navigate via GPS technology and feature an onboard Pizza Interface (PI) that calculates the fastest route to the customer.

Plus drone delivery of course:

Amazon will step up its drone tests in UK airspace after winning approval from the Government to lift strict flying restrictions in a major boost to its plans for unmanned delivery aircraft.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has granted the internet retailer special permission to test its aerial vehicles without several of the rules that typically bind drone pilots.

The agreement will see Amazon move a step close to Jeff Bezos’s dream of fleets of drones delivering small packages directly to shoppers within 30 minutes.

Or, on a bigger scale, semi-autonomous freight trains:

Six convoys of semi-automated “smart” trucks arrived in Rotterdam’s harbour on Wednesday after an experiment its organisers say will revolutionise future road transport on Europe’s busy highways.

More than a dozen self-driving trucks made by six of Europe’s largest manufacturers arrived in the port in so-called “truck platoons” around midday, said Eric Jonnaert, president of the umbrella body representing DAF, Daimler, Iveco, MAN, Scania and Volvo.

And the landing of drones in drone ports:

Foster + Partners has unveiled the first full-scale prototype of its Droneport concept at the Arsenale, which is designed to transport medical supplies to remote regions in Africa using unmanned flying vehicles (+ slideshow).

The structure is the inaugural project from the Norman Foster Foundation, set up by the British architect to anticipate technological advances in the field, respond to humanitarian needs and encourage a more "holistic" view of architecture.

All this is before we've got to a world where autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles begin to replace the car as the dominant form of personal transport. This requires us to think about ownership, to look at the way in which we licence taxis, road safety and pedestrianisation. Instead we're going to fuss about installing better bus stops and holding interminable meetings to discuss ticketing arrangements between trains and buses. And instead of infrastructure investment paving the way for autonomous vehicles, drones and other innovations, we'll spend it on trying to shift one-in-thirty journeys from the car to some other form of transport.

With the collapse of the tram and trolley bus proposals for Leeds, there's the opportunity to step over our obsession with trains and buses and to plan for the future that emerging technology is taking us to. Sadly, the leaders of West Yorkshire think that's just "gimmicks". Seems to me we need some new ones - leaders that is, not buses and trains.

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We are reminded that unions are not in the consumer interest

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Izabella Kaminska - whose trendy lefty ignorance we've touched on before - says that the good folk who drive cabs for Uber need to unionise:

In the first instance, the Uber drivers working on these systems aim to withdraw supply en masse if rates go below their average break-even rates exposing customers to surge pricing more regularly. But the aim eventually is to gain collective bargaining power against Uber in all sorts of worker-rights disputes.

The point that Izabella is making revolves around here belief that Uber has too many (or rather allows for there to be too many) drivers or "ignoring the law of supply and demand" as she ignorantly puts it.

...Uber doesn’t really care about how many drivers are in the market at any particular time because the company is more concerned about taking a commission linked to total utilised capacity than ensuring supply and demand is ever properly matched. Nor do customers care about market imbalances since they are the temporary beneficiaries of the app’s arguably unsustainable cost structures.

The solution is for the drivers to unionise and to use this 'collective bargaining' to force Uber to place a limit on the number of drivers in any given taxi market. The argument for this this limit isn't consumer interest but a belief that somehow Uber's drivers are a special case in the 'being-exploited' stakes. And that this will happen:

The fundamental truth being ignored in the “sharing economy” is that exploited labour always wises up. That open-ended supply markets always form licensed communities to protect jobs and minimum wages. That unregulated markets inevitably self-regulate from the bottom up. And that workers always have an interest in aggregating and sharing the cost of risk and insurance between them, which is ultimately factored into the cost of service.

Or as Adam Smith put it:

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices”.

Indeed this is entirely what has happened in taxi markets - taxi operators and drivers, aided and abetted by local or national government, has placed expensive barriers in the way of market entry. And one of those contrivances - those conspiracies against the public - is the union. For the entire purpose of the union is to improve the lot of its members. For all the noble purposes laid claim to by unions the bare truth is that their purpose is seldom, if ever, in the interests of the consumers who use the services those union members provide or the products they produce. Indeed Izabella, in her lefty reverie concludes this too:

The core point really is that taxis can never serve customers as well as outright ownership of a private car in optionality terms — because taxis can never be perfectly supplied to meet peak rate time demand without somebody somewhere carrying the cost of off-peak idle capital. Nor can they, for that matter, ever be as cost effective as public transport.

If and when Uber drivers efficiently unionise to reduce the scale of oversupply in the market, we’ll finally understand that.

Let's leave aside the self-evident observation that this point is entirely contained in the fact that a train ride from Bingley to Leeds is less than a fiver whereas a taxi ride will costs you £40 or more. Instead let's consider what's being said here - essentially Uber, by not limiting how many drivers a market can hold, has pushed down prices. As a consumer this is excellent news - although the bus or the tube will still be cheaper, I'll take a 20% drop in fares as well as less reliance on surge pricing (because the increased demand for cabs on say New Years Eve means more drivers come out to meet that demand). If the drivers are unionised and succeed in 'reducing the scale of oversupply' the result will be a system more like the one we have.

It's clear that, wherever we look, unions - by promoting the interests of their members - act to raise costs, limit supply or otherwise act against the consumer interest. This is the case with doctors, lawyers and local government officers just as much as it is with taxi drivers. And this is why the activities of unions need to be regulated and limited - just as is the case with any rent-seeking anti-consumer cartel.

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Signalling the end of the private car?

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There's a bit of kerfuffle about the arrival of Uber in London and its disruption of the taxi business in the city - Londoners are being threatened with go-slows and blockades by black cab drivers. However in reading one person's experience on using Uber, I read his observation about the private car:

Once you start talking about systems like Uber and robot cars in the same sentences, is the longer term implication of things like Uber going to be: fewer privately owned cars? Will Uber 3.0 be the first robot car killer app?

After all the specific advantage that the private car offers over public transport is that it takes you from the place where you are now to the place you want to be. Buses, trains and trams, unless you are a trainspotter or tram fan, take you from one place you don't want to be to another place you don't want to be.

If a public system - it could be a Uber-type application, a robot car or even Milton Keyne's little pods - takes me directly to the place where I want to go then there is less need for me to spend many thousands on buying a rapidly depreciating hunk of metal with an engine. Especially in a large urban areas (and approaching three-quarters of us live in these urban areas) there are huge benefits - not just the money people save by not owning a car but the space saved by not needing to store the vehicle somewhere.

If we marry this with the reduced need for people to travel - think of how other innovations are removing the need to attend meetings and how the world of shopping is disrupted by home delivery or 'click-and-collect'. And this shift is being accompanied - especially in those big urban areas - by a shift to zero emission vehicles. A shift that is driven by wanting a healthier atmosphere rather than supposed threat of climate change. Indeed, as the evidence showing the negative health impact of poor air quality builds, we will see an accelerated shift to very low and zero-emission transport.

The private car won't disappear - people in rural areas will require a vehicle and some folk will remain in love with the idea of owning and driving a car - but we could see a future generation where not doing so is pretty much the norm. And not because of officious, interfering governments but because people decide they don't need the pain and expense of having a car.


Update: In a moment of serendipity, I found this little  snippet from Clemance Morlet on the Project for Public Spaces blog today:

In Paris, where I hail from, 60% of journeys are by foot - far beyond car trips (7%) – and 60% of Parisians do not own a car[1]. In the heart of New York City, 53%[2] of those who live and work in Manhattan never use a car, bus, subway or train in their everyday trips but instead walk, ride a bicycle or motorcycle, take a taxicab, or work at home. Not to mention the large and increasing number of tourists visiting the city (more than 50 million people yearly in 2011[3]), who widely enjoy Manhattan on foot.

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On the disruption of the taxi business

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Plenty has been written about ridesharing and applications such as Uber that are disrupting the cosy taxi business. I take the view that, subject to insurance and roadworthiness, there shouldn't be barriers to entry - a view that the hackney licensing business (a nice earner for local councils and a fixed market for taxi companies) doesn't share.

However, I was fascinated by the response of London's Licensed Taxi Drivers Association (LTDA) to the decision by Transport for London (TfL) not to intervene in the use of the Uber application to set private hire fares. The LTDA argue that this is tantamount to having a taximeter, which would be illegal.

So the LTDA intend to take direct action and 'blockade' the city to protest at TfL allowing the use of Uber:

"Transport for London not enforcing the Private Hire Vehicles Act is dangerous for Londoners," Steve McNamara, LTDA's general secretary, told the BBC.

"I anticipate that the demonstration against TfL's handling of Uber will attract many many thousands of cabs and cause severe chaos, congestion and confusion across the metropolis." 

There are two possible reasons for this decision: either the LTDA believe direct action will work or else they know that taking legal action won't. Which is important because the complaint is about how TfL has interpreted the law and the place to establish whether they have acted properly should be the court not Piccadilly Circus.

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How public monopoly prevents transport innovation

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For perhaps the wrong reasons we're focused again on issues relating to public transport. And this is done knowing that the majority of Brits favour the nationalisation of the railways and, I assume, believe that mayors or councils should run the buses, trams and tubes.

The problem is that we're in a time of new opportunity and change that challenges the dominant idea that city transportation schemes need to be planned. That challenge sits in our pocket or our handbag.

Just as we've seen with financial transactions, governments and the agency businesses that feed off the granting of monopolies are resistant to the disaggregated and dispersed self-service models emerging as a result of the smartphone's growing ubiquity. And in doing so we do the public a disservice.

Before I talk about some specifics - drawing on US examples where the challenge to public transportation monopoly is more developed - here's a section of Boris Johnson's 'tribute' to union boss, Bow Crow:

"Whatever our political differences, and there were many, this is tragic news," he said.

"Bob fought tirelessly for his beliefs and for his members.

"There can be absolutely no doubt that he played a big part in the success of the Tube, and he shared my goal to make transport in London an even greater success. It's a sad day."

Now I'm sure that these were nice words about the boss of a key London 'stakeholder' but it beggars belief to say that a union forcing costs up and resisting change or efficiency is in the interests of London's transport systems.

So to San Francisco where there have been a series of battles around what are know as "tech buses" - these are services, provided by Silicon Valley business, that take workers from the city out into the valley for work. And they are unpopular with users of existing (more expensive and less reliable) public transport systems. Resulting in a variety of bus-based class warfare:

This December, several anti-bus rallies were held in the Mission District by a group that called themselves the San Francisco Displacement and Neighborhood Impact Agency. The group blocked buses and held up signs with statements like “Warning: Two-Tier System.” One man made headlines by dressing up, and, after claiming he worked for Google, berating the protestors with appalling class rhetoric. But it turned out he was really just an imposter, having worked previously as an Occupy organizer. Another protest in Oakland led — as ones there often do — to bus vandalism.

Note the words 'two-tier system' - hipster techie folk who earn good money out in the valley get a lovely shiny bus service whereas the other folk have to make do with late, dirty buses. And it spills over into the Bay Area's gentrification rows:

“In case you’re wondering why this happened, we’ll be extremely clear. The people outside your Google bus serve you coffee, watch your kids, have sex with you for money, make you food, and are being driven out of their neighborhoods. While you guys live fat as hogs with your free 24/7 buffets, everyone else is scraping the bottom of their wallets, barely existing in this expensive world that you and your chums have helped create."

The problem isn't American capitalism though. The problem is the municipal monopoly - the unholy alliance between the city government and unions to deliver an inefficient, expensive and unresponsive transportation system:

Muni, the city’s local bus, rail, and cable car service, is similarly inefficient. A study last May found that its on-time ratings hovered around 50 percent due to rail cars that regularly broke down. These delays cost an estimated $50 million in productivity — yet Muni has California’s second-highest paid transit workers.

The government-run rail that follows a similar route as the tech buses is Caltrain. Today, its customers endure a plodding, 90-minute ride from San Francisco to San Jose. This same trip takes under an hour by automobile, helping explain why some companies now bus in their employees.

Those 'tech buses' are a response to a failed service monopoly (and that monopoly's owner - the city council - has got its rents from the 'tech buses' by charging them a fee to stop at a bus stop) that doesn't meet the needs of local commuters. Looking a little deeper we find that the San Francisco authorities want to stamp out any innovation - not just the 'tech buses' but the growing use of ridesharing, a business that threatens the lucrative taxi monopoly (a license in San Francisco is over $250,000, in New York the coveted 'medallion' sells at touching $1m).

Indeed the business threat of this 'sharing economy' (we've seen the same regulatory response to Airbnb, for example) is repeated across other US cities - Seattle, for example, has threatened rules that would limit the numbers of drivers using services like Uber and Lyft, and one Seattle councillor proposes that the cab drivers become 'unionized city employees'.

Back in San Francisco, where Uber started, the debate is stuck at finding ways to control these new private transportation systems, to force the 35,000 people using the 'tech buses' back onto the old creaking public system and to regulated cabs rather than find a neighbour to share your ride with.

For Britain (outside London) the situation remains more flexible with a mixed economy of provision as well as the widespread availability of mini-cabs as well as Hackney cabs. There are moves by public transport authorities towards more directed and planned models such as 'quality bus contracts' and local councils jealously guard the revenue generator that is the taxi trade. But what isn't happening - with one or two striking exceptions - is the exploration of new economy solutions to urban transportation. Indeed the debate, such as it is, seems to me moving more towards greater use of monopoly power to prevent innovation than towards actually meeting the transport needs of local residents.

But then, so long as we think union bosses like Bob Crow are part of the solution rather than an obstacle to better services we will be stuck in this dead debate. Even worse if we persist with the 'Big City Boss' approach to delivering those services that Boris Johnson (drifting ever nearer to Bloomberg's urban fascism) seems to prefer. The development of better transport really isn't down to pouring billions of borrowed money into the ground and cosy deals between union bosses and city mayors.

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Rent-seeking at work...

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From New York:

This week, New York held an auction for individual yellow-cab medallions, the rare and wonderful permits that give drivers the right to operate a taxi and pick up street hails. Winning bidders paid as much as $965,000 for the latest batch of medallions.

That's right folks, you pay nearly a million dollars for the right to drive a cab in New York. This suggests that not only are there not enough taxis but that, as a result, the price of a taxi fare is higher.

And the winner? The City Council that has assumed the power to say whether you can take someone from A to B for a fee.

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