Rhythmanalysis in Taxicabs and Soft Cabs: a report from three North American cities

Here is the abstract of my latest publication, a chapter in Rhythmanalysis: Place, Mobility, Disruption and Performance, edited by Dawn Lyon, and just now out in print:

Rhythmanalysis in Taxicabs and Soft Cabs: a report from three North American cities

Just who is the “analyst” who practices rhythmanalysis? The extension of the name “rhythmanalyst” to other than scholarly practitioners makes possible an investigation of the relationship of rhythmanalysis to other rhythm-analytic forms of knowing and representing urban space, and the ways in which these differing but related practices may challenge, undermine, or inform each other. In this paper, drawing on years of ethnographic and autoethnographic research in three North American cities, I discuss the rhythmanalytical practice involved in cabdriving, as this is shaped by the technologies drivers use to sense the city, and by the transformation of the taxicab into the “ridesharing” or soft cab. First, I discuss the occupational knowledge and wayfinding practice of cabdrivers, and the extent to which their work requires the development, by means of a variety of tools and practices, of a sense of the city as composed of multiple interacting rhythmic movements, or polyrhythmia, with which they must strategically converge and facilitate. Second, I discuss the redelegation of the role of rhythmanalyst to predictive algorithms and mobile interfaces, as part of the reinvention of the taxicab, and its associated micropolitics and power/knowledge relations, by smartphone enabled hailing and dispatching services. Struggles over, and transformations of, these non-academic forms of rhythmanalysis may provide insight, in turn, into the contemporary politics of the production of social space.

Digital Mediation, Soft Cabs, and Spatial Labour

The new special issue of Digital Culture & Society on "Mobile Digital Practices" has been released, featuring my article on "Digital Mediation, Soft Cabs, and Spatial Labour:"

https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/dcs.2017.3.issue-2/issue-files/dcs.2017.3.issue-2.xml

Click here for the free repository version of the article.

Abstract

Critics of digitally mediated labour platforms (often called the “sharing” or “gig economy”) have focused on the character and extent of the control exerted by these platforms over both workers and customers, and in particular on the precarizing impact on the workers on whose labor the services depend. Less attention has been paid to the specifically spatial character of the forms of work targeted by mobile digital platforms. The production and maintenance of urban social space has always been dependent, to a large degree, on work that involves the crossing of spatial boundaries - particularly between public and private spaces, but also crossing spaces segregated by class, race, and gender. Delivery workers, cabdrivers, day labourers, home care providers, and similar boundary-crossers all perform spatial work: the work of moving between and connecting spaces physically, experientially, and through representation. Spatial work contributes to the production and reproduction of social space; it is also productive of three specific, though interrelated, products: physical movement from one place to another; the experience of this movement; and the articulation of these places, experiences, and movements with visions of society and of the social. Significantly, it is precisely such spatial work, and its products, which mobile digital platforms seek most urgently to transform. Drawing on several recent studies of “ridesharing” (or soft cab) labour platforms, I interrogate the impact of digital mediation on the actual practices involved in spatial work. I argue that the roll-out of digital labour platforms needs to be understood in terms of a struggle over the production of social space.

We need better reporting from NPR about Uber

Here is the rant I just sent to NPR, regarding their recent Marketplace segment, "Why ride sharing companies are absent from SXSW":

As a transportation scholar who has conducted research on e-hailing services, including Uber and Lyft, I was surprised and disappointed to hear Molly Woods’ one-sided reporting from the SXSW conference. Your segment, “Why ride sharing companies are absent from SXSW” is 1) misleading (there are plenty of e-hailing companies in Austin, including both taxicabs and “ridesharing” services), and 2) your segment did not actually address the question of why Uber and Lyft are absent!

Uber and Lyft voluntarily left the city to avoid regulations which the voting public approved of. Regulatory limitations on Uber and Lyft, as well as AirBnB, are based on serious considerations of economic and social welfare—but these were dismissed as “quirky” on NPR, the one network from which we expect a more critical and even-handed perspective, now more than ever.

Just as infuriating were the implications that, for daring to challenge these corporations, Austin is somehow backwards, or non-tech-friendly. While other cities are still stuck with Uber and Lyft, Austin is incubating the next generation of e-hailing services—more responsible, and more accountable than the corporate giants. 

What the world wants to know—and what NPR can more responsibly report on—is how well these new, non-Uber-and-Lyft e-hailing companies are servicing Austin. We all know that companies like Uber are unsustainable. Austin is the place where we see what will happen next—please give us some reporting on that. 

I normally try to stay away from comments or emails like this, but this time I couldn't help it. I think I showed great restraint by not even asking them why they are still calling it "ridesharing" (though they must know better by now)...

I haven't looked closely at what has been happening in Austin since my early post about "ridesharing" apps swarming into Austin, right after Uber and Lyft left. It would be great to see some real reporting on how the new, local apps are working out. For a good start at this, see this recent article on Shareable.

Disrupt the Disruptors! An Interview with Kelly Dessaint

Cabdriver, zine publisher, and Examiner columnist Kelly Dessaint’s Behind the Wheel series is a must-read for anyone interested in an on-the ground view of how tech gentrification and the “sharing” economy have transformed the experience of life and work in San Francisco.

Kelly Dessaint's Behind the Wheel series chronicles his path from Uber/Lyft driver to licensed San Francisco taxi driver. They are available in print or pdf from his website, as well as from Amazon. He also writes the I Drive SF column for the Examiner.

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I’m inbound on Post street. While I wait for the light to change at Jones, I practice my double bass drumming on the steering wheel along to the Slayer CD blasting from the stereo in my taxicab. (Behind the Wheel 3, page 1)

The third installment of Behind the Wheel begins and ends just like most of the stories it contains—in motion through the streets of San Francisco. Dessaint was the first driver/writer to publish about the experience of driving for Uber and Lyft, and he has since joined the ranks of the city's licensed taxi drivers. Like most writing about cabdriving, the stories in Behind the Wheel take the form of fragmentary, slice-of-life episodes, but Dessaint’s stories are unified by a sense of movement, recurring characters, and a compelling theme of analog resistance to the digital colonization of everyday life.

One of the most striking characters is San Francisco itself. At least since Tex Reed’s 1970 book Hey Taxi, San Francisco cabdrivers have been writing complicated love stories to the city. Cabdriving memoirs from other cities often emphasize a sense of the alienation of disconnected service work, or even the despair of being caught in a dead-end job. San Francisco’s cab writers—including Dessaint—don’t overlook the downsides of the work, but they always balance it with a sense of intoxication with the city, and the myriad stories of the people they drive through it. The result is a mix of light and shadow, of spleen and ideal, a performance far more human and interesting than the sugar-coated kitsch of (for example) Lyft Me Up San Francisco. Dessaint calls it “the incurable madness of taxi driving:”

San Francisco is like a drug. When it gets inside you, each moment is a revelation. Until things get ugly. (Behind the Wheel 3, page 10)

Behind the Wheel paints a psychogeographic portrait of San Francisco, joining a tradition that includes Rebecca Solnit’s Infiinite City and Gary Kamiya’s Cool, Gray City of Love. Like the “spatial stories” described by the philosopher De Certeau, Dessaint’s stories are narratives in motion, lighting up the city through the movements of a cabdriver and his passengers:

And if you’re lucky, one ride follows the next, like jigsaw puzzle pieces falling into place. One minute you’re working the swanky hotels on Snob Hill, the next you’re dropping off in the oft-forgotten Bayview, where urban detritus collects like dust bunnies under a credenza.

And you’ve seen it all, cause you’re a cabdriver, or at least you’ve seen most of it, although in reality, you don’t know fuck all. (Behind the Wheel 3, pages 58-9)

We meet a myriad of other characters of course—passengers from all walks of life, taxi drivers hanging around the garage or the cabstand—but the most interesting is Dessaint himself. Unlike the wry persona affected by many cab writers (such as the Examiner’s old Night Cabbie columnist), Dessaint reveals his own reactions to what he encounters, showing his defeats along with his triumphs, and his exhaustion, uncertainty, and anguish at the hands of abusive passengers, particularly during his “ridesharing” phase:

It’s nights like these that make me want to curl up into a fetal position and rethink this whole ridesharing deal. (Behind the Wheel 2, page 28)

As a whole, the three Behind the Wheel books tell the story of Dessaint’s growth through cabdriving, and his own arc of progress from Lyft driver, to Uber driver, to licensed San Francisco taxi driver—in a direction diametrically opposed to the official narrative of the “sharing economy.” And this is one unifying theme of the Behind the Wheel series: it is a story of defiance, an act of political activism. The series is a war-cry against the gentrification of the city, and the intrusion of tech interfaces and algorithmic manipulation into everyday life. In one of the most important chapters of Behind the Wheel 3, Dessaint teams up with a disgruntled Uber driver to confront David Plouffe himself at a tech conference. In a later chapter he argues with some passengers who don’t realize the contradiction between supporting Bernie Sanders, and patronizing Uber and Lyft:

This new gig economy is regressive. It pushes the most vulnerable members of our society into wage slavery, where they’re paid for piecework rather than given an opportunity to secure a stable income. And what’s more, instead of seeing their profits increase by working more, due to the constant Uber/Lyft price wars, they actually make less in the process. How can you support a system like that? (Behind the Wheel 3, page 55)

The Behind the Wheel series is a must-read for anyone interested in seeing the real, gritty, human reality of how work and urban space have been transformed by the tech-centric “sharing” economy (And as a bonus, each book comes with a “Disrupt the Disruptors” bumper sticker!)

My Other Car Is A Taxicab

I interviewed Kelly by email about Behind the Wheel, along with his long-running zine Piltdownlad, his Examiner column I Drive SF, and his future plans.

How did you start writing a column for the Examiner?

I'd been blogging about my experiences driving for Uber and Lyft for a while and getting a decent amount of attention. I was extremely critical of both companies and how they were treating drivers. I'd already put out the first two zines and started writing for Disinfo.com and Broke-Ass Stuart. To explore other aspects of driving for hire, I was planning to go to taxi school and get my a-card.

On New Year's Eve 2014/2015, Flywheel ran that special where every ride was $10 and it killed business for Uber and Lyft, who'd been getting bad press about surge pricing. I worked that night and it was dismal. Just horrible. I drove around empty most of the night. The next day I wrote a blog post called "Night of the Living Taxi" that made the rounds. Several news outlets contacted me, including Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez of The Examiner. We talked on the phone for a while and the next month he recommended me to the new editor as a modern version of the Night Cabbie, but as an Uber driver. By this time I'd already started driving a taxi, so I pitched my idea of a column about a former Uber/Lyft driver turned cab driver. The editor was interested. When we met to go over the details, he told me that one of the things he wanted to do when he took over The Examiner was revive the Night Cabbie. Of course, in the beginning, and still to this day, comparisons are made between his column and mine. Except I'm not anonymous.

Incidentally, the editor was relieved that I wanted to use my real name. Though I quickly realized the advantage the Night Cabbie had by not revealing who he was. Writing for a newspaper is restrictive because there are limits to what you can write about. Which is why I find doing the zine more liberating because I can write whatever I want. And I'm not bound by a 700 word limit.

How did you first get into writing and zine publishing?

I've always written. It's something my parents encouraged me to do for as long as I can remember. Whether it was filling notebooks with derivative song lyrics or pecking away at my mother's Royal typewriter trying to compose bawdry poems, writing was a way I was able to truly express myself. And shock the adults around me.

As a teenager, I wrote vociferously. Exploring both verse and prose before eventually settling on prose as my preferred method of communication. After getting rejected by any half-way decent magazine I found on the newsstand, I started my own zine and book publishing empire. (And by "empire" I mean that Gateway computer set up in a burned out garage behind my mother's house in East LA.)

I modeled my publications on lit journals from the 60s that I'd found in used bookstores and collected over the years, as well as contemporary handmade, photocopied punk zines coming out of the underground, listed in the back of Maximum Rocknroll and Flipside.

From there, I just kept pushing the boundaries... writing and publishing and designing... collaborating with different artists and writers until we inevitably went our own ways... usually acrimoniously. But not always...

In 2010, I started my latest project: Piltdownlad: A Personal Narrative Zine. 

How did you pick the name for the zine? Some relation to Piltdown Man?

Pitldownlad comes from an album by the D.C. band Fidelity Jones entitled "Piltdown Lad." I combined the two words for aesthetic reasons. Fidelity Jones was the first punk band I saw live, during a visit to D.C. when I was 17. "Piltdown Lad" is their only full length LP. There is very little commentary associated with the album or a title song, but I assume it's an expansion on the idea of the Piltdown Man (a fake early man) to incorporate feeling "fake" as a young (new) person. Perhaps. Or a reference to arrested development. Or, the Peter Pan complex. I don't know really... 

I used Piltdownlad as a vehicle to explore the darkness of my childhood in relation to my current existence as a writer trying to make sense of the past and the future, as well as an outlet to review equally, over-personal zines. 

Where does the Behind the Wheel series fit into this?

After ten issues, around 2014, I discovered Lyft, the ride-hail company. I thought to myself, here is something that is culturally relevant - albeit entirely absurd - that I'd love to document. Something I was convinced surely wouldn't last for long. From Lyft, I delved into Uber, which I also assumed was a fly by night operation at best. 

As I documented the stupidity, the madness, the desperation of using one's personal car as a taxicab, I stumbled onto many fascinating discoveries... Namely, that I loved driving around San Francisco, witnessing the last gasps of a city that I'd always associated with free expression and limitless artistic possibilities as tech start ups took over and molded the cultural reality into something darker and sinister... And the realization that Uber and Lyft weren't going anywhere soon. 

That's where the Behind the Wheel series was born, and from which it has evolved: detailing the nightmare of what was, and what may never be again. And holding a torch for the last bastion of analogue technology: taxi driving. 

It's safe to say I may have bit off more than I can "eschew." And now I'm in a vicious circle. But I still believe that salvation comes from hard work. And driving a taxi in San Francisco is a challenge I have yet to master. And may never master. But I am keeping notes... 

What do you mean when you say you're in a "vicious circle"?

The vicious circle I referred to is driving a taxi to write about driving a taxi... The writing comes easy. The driving, not so much. I suppose I could just work a few days each month, collect some stories, talk to other cab drivers, get their stories and do the column without subjecting myself to the physical stress, the poor financial returns and the constant sense of futility. But that's not the type of writer - or person - I am. Unfortunately, the story I want to tell requires active participation. And that comes with a plethora of consequences, both personal and financial. 

When writing the three Behind the Wheel issues, do you have a particular audience or reader(s) in mind?

I do. And it changes with each issue. When I wrote the first one I thought of readers of my previous zines. The second, people who read my blog. And the third, readers of my column. I've been fortunate to receive a decent amount of messages and comments from people who read my stuff. I don't always reply but I try to incorporate responses in future writings, either through inside jokes or references that only a few will catch.

I know from talking to taxi drivers that geography is a major issue to them when they read about locations. So I always make sure not to fuck up my cross streets or routes. Cause when I do, I immediately hear about it.

A few months back, some guy left a comment on an old column of mine in which he questioned my claim that taxis serve poor people, or the working poor, rather. His argument being that Uber is way more affordable. True, but that's irrelevant. Obviously. The complete lack of insight into how poverty works makes my mind swell each time I think about his comment. I still haven't figured out a single rebuttal because there are so many to make. When I try my mind just goes pfffffftttttttt. And yet, I find myself incorporating the subject of poverty into what I'm writing, not in a direct way, but just adding small scenes along the way. It's a subtle reply, I guess.

What are the most important things you want your readers to learn or understand from your writing?

I think writing should be exciting to read. It should be honest. It should capture the feel of a time and place. It should break rules and constantly push boundaries. I don't see much of that today. I'm often amused by things I read, but rarely am I excited. Like first discovering Henry Miller. Or Thomas Pynchon. Or Hunter Thompson. Not that I actually believe I'll ever reach that caliber, you know, but at least try, right?

Will there be a 4th Behind the Wheel? Do you have other future writing planned?

I've started working on the new BTW. Which will be mostly unpublished stuff about the daily process of driving and going into the city every day from Oakland. "The Thin Checkered Line."

Before I started documenting my experiences driving for hire I was working on other personal narratives under Piltdownlad. I'm actually hoping the new zine will lead to a return to those past stories to wrap up a manuscript I should have returned to the publisher over a year ago. I released a book about my abusive childhood several years ago and that's what led to Microcosm, the publisher, approaching me about another book that dealt specifically with punk rock as a method of recovery from abuse, called No Fun: How Punk Rock Saved My Life.  

The Behind the Wheel series is available from Dessaint's website, or from Amazon.

Related Posts:
"It Ain't Just a Job, Folks!" The New Deep City Press, 1975-1978
Taxi Inferno, Anthropologist Wallace Zane's harrowing cab ride through Los Angeles
Big Tom's Antique Hack Yarns

Posner's Taxi Ruling Is Based on Falsehoods and Bad Logic

Conservative jurist Richard Posner, writing for the US 7^th Circuit of Appeals, has issued what is likely to be an influential ruling on the regulation of soft cabs (such as Uber, Lyft, etc.; in his ruling Posner refers to these as “TNPs”) and other taxicabs in the city of Chicago. This is unfortunate, because Posner’s ruling is riddled with errors, inaccuracies, and false logic—in fact he all but admits cribbing part of his argument off the internet! Here I’m going to go through Posner’s most ridiculous statements point by point; you can read his full text here.

The first is that allowing the TNPs into the taxi and livery markets has taken away the plaintiffs’ property for a public use without compensating them. A variant of such a claim would have merit had the City confiscated taxi medallions, which are the licenses that authorize the use of an automobile as a taxi. Confiscation of the medallions would amount to confiscation of the taxis: ... Anyway the City is not confiscating any taxi medallions; it is merely exposing the taxicab companies to new competition—competition from Uber and the other TNPs.

Does Posner understand anything about how the taxi industry works? Of course medallion owners can’t complain about competition, because they are already in competition with each other. Even drivers for the same company are in competition with each other. It’s like Posner is borrowing an image of a monopoly from a completely different industry and trying to impose it on the cab industry. Do your homework, sir.

The real complaint from the taxi industry was not “we are being competed against” but “we are being charged licensing fees, etc., but other people operating the same business are not being charged the same fees.” In other words, the argument is not against competition but against unequal competition as an effect of unequal regulation.

An apt comparison would be if someone paid a license fee to run a liquor store, then complained because the city allowed someone to sell liquor next door without a license. Or, if the electric company was only allowed to charge certain rates, but then another electric company was allowed to operate in the same city, charging whatever they wanted. Would Posner really argue that such companies had no legal recourse against the regulator for allowing such unequal competition?

Posner then rambles off into another argument borrowed from the internet—that the difference between Uber and taxis is the simple fact of historical technological change:

Indeed when new technologies, or new business methods, appear, a common result is the decline or even disappearance of the old. Were the old deemed to have a constitutional right to preclude the entry of the new into the markets of the old, economic progress might grind to a halt. Instead of taxis we might have horse and buggies; instead of the telephone, the telegraph; instead of computers, slide rules.

What makes these examples particularly funny, to me, is that I actually research the history of two of these transitions—from the telegraph to telephone, and from horse-drawn cabs to taxis. I’m sorry Mr. Posner, but those transitions had almost nothing in common with this current case. For one thing, those were actual, significant technological shifts, but there is no actual difference in technology between an Uber and a taxi. Both are just automobiles, and both can be hailed from a smartphone. I realize that Posner, like many people, may not be aware that smartphone apps for taxis have been around longer than Uber (in Chicago, Curb (formerly Taxi Magic) has been available since 2009). But you would think that a legal scholar making an important ruling on a case like this would bother to do some actual research on the history of this technology, instead of taking Uber’s crypto-history at face value.

The plaintiffs argue that the City has discriminated against them by failing to subject Uber and the other TNPs to the same rules about licensing and fares (remember that taxi fares are set by the City) that the taxi ordinance subjects the plaintiffs to. That is an anticompetitive argument. Its premise is that every new entrant into a market should be forced to comply with every regulation applicable to incumbents in the market with whom the new entrant will be competing.

Here Posner briefly comes back to reality before taking another swerve off into his own imaginary land. At least he states the taxi industry’s complaints correctly: yes, they are upset that someone competing against them, offering the same service they do, is not subjected to the same rules and regulations. In other words, they are asking for a level playing field. How is this remotely an “anticompetitive argument?”

Then Posner launches into his already infamous “taxi drivers are like dogs” argument. Let’s just quote this, slightly amended for clarity to show what he is strongly implying:

[Taxi drivers] on average are bigger, stronger, and more aggressive than [Uber drivers], are feared by more people, can give people serious bites, and make a lot of noise outdoors, barking and howling. Feral [Uber drivers] generally are innocuous, and many pet [Uber drivers] are confined indoors.

Thank you, Mr. Posner, for so clearly and cluelessly articulating part of the deeply racist and classist imagery at the heart of Uber’s popularity. This ugly little quote is too packed with significance to be fully dealt with here. Suffice it to say for now that the contrast Posner is articulating is known, in US history, as “the house slave and the field slave.”

Let’s move on to Posner’s next insanity, where he takes issue with the lower court judge who had granted some merit to one of the cabdrivers’ claims:

She ruled that the City, by failing to place as many regulatory burdens on the TNPs as on the taxicab companies, might have denied the latter the equal protection of the law. But this was taking equal protection literally, and it should not be taken so. Otherwise prospective entrants to a market who had lower costs than incumbent firms would not be allowed to enter the market unless some regulatory entity burdened the new entrants with regulations, whether or not necessary or even appropriate, that eliminated any cost advantage the new entrants would otherwise have in competing with the incumbent firms.

“Equal protection of the law” should not be taken literally? Wow, Mr. Posner. Just, wow. I suppose we ought to leave that one wide open to interpretation, huh? Otherwise we all might have to be treated... equally... well, we can’t have that!

The next sentence is where his argument gets really ridiculous. According to Posner, if we had to offer all competitors equal protection (or, an equal playing field, basically), we would have to handicap any new entrants who had a special advantage. Like saying: runner A is faster than runner B, so if they compete, runner A has to carry weights to make them run the same speed.

Well, this is a fascinating diversion into philosophical speculation, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with the real-life case that Posner is supposedly writing about. The taxi operators are not asking for additional burdens, above and beyond what taxis bear, to be placed on Uber and Lyft to make them competitive; they are just asking for equal regulations. Equal treatment. Literally.

Mind you, there is a very important truth buried here, which Posner has completely failed to recognize. Uber and Lyft really aren’t in a truly competitive market situation against taxis, because while taxis have to compete in a real market, Uber and Lyft (for the time being) are being subsidized by a constant influx of new investment capital. How “competitive” is it to have to keep a small business legitimately afloat while competing against someone who can lose money hand over fist, while constantly attracting more funding? There is no real “market” here as long as Uber (and its backers) have a heavy hand on the scales.

Posner finally turns to his most important argument, that taxis and soft cabs like Uber are too different to be regulated in the same way. First of all, he repeats the very tired argument that taxis can be hailed off the streets, but that Ubers can only (legally) be hailed with a phone app. What Posner completely fails to understand is that this difference is the wholly arbitrary effect of regulation, not a pre-existing difference that regulation is “responding” to.

Not that regulation never responds to the nature of the industry regulated: in fact, much existing taxi regulation is just such a response. In many cities, for instance, it was long illegal for cabs to take street hails—regulators wanted cabs only to pick up at set locations like cabstands, or to respond to orders via phone. Over time, those restrictions were worn away by demand. In some cities, such as Mexico City, there are still different categories of taxi, some of which respond to street hails, while some can only be picked up at stands, and others can only be ordered by phone. This is, incidentally, a very inefficient system, brought about by regulation that arbitrarily creates a distinction between dispatch modes. There is an inherent pull, I would argue, for taxis to ultimately be made available by all dispatch modes. Uber (and other soft cabs) is in fact already starting to experience this.

Right now soft cabs are only (legally) hailable by phone; but this is just the arbitrary effect of the exemption that regulators have created. But anyone coming out of a busy concert and trying to hail an Uber knows that dozens or hundreds of vehicles converging at once, each looking for a specific person, is a complete mess. Now, imagine that the Ubers were instead allowed to line up at the concert exit, and everyone coming out could just take the first one in line. Wouldn’t that be more convenient? Rest assured that, at some point in the near future, regulators will be asked to make this change.

Or say that, as Posner believes, licensed taxis are completely driven out of business. Who then will serve the demand for street hails? Uber, of course, will be given the right to accept flags off the street. And it is perfectly rational, in fact almost inevitable, that this will happen. The only irrational aspect to it would be the inconvenient fact that Ubers had first been created as a separate category on the temporary, and arbitrary basis that they were excluded from these forms of dispatch. But there is no inherent reason for this exclusion, or for the legal distinction between taxis and soft cabs.

Posner then makes a series of false or illogical statements in rapid succession:

A major difference is that customers, rather than being able to hail an Uber car, must sign up with Uber before being able to summon it...

Remember, you can e-hail taxis just like soft cabs, requiring all the same pre-arrangement. This is an absolute red herring.

Unlike taxicab service Uber assumes primary responsibility for screening potential drivers and hiring only those found to be qualified, and the passengers receive more information in advance about their prospective rides—information that includes not only the driver’s name but also pictures of him (or her) and of the car.

This is an odd way to put it, because for taxicabs the “primary responsibility” for these falls to regulators. Uber is only exempt from this (and thus allowed to take “primary responsibility”) because they were granted an exemption by lawmakers. Furthermore, if you’ve followed Uber in the news and the courts at all you are likely to have a dim view of their sense of “responsibility.” Posner is really arguing here that you should simply trust this corporation when it comes to safety. But if Uber was really committed to safety, and background checks, etc., why are they so against being required to follow the same level of safety regulations as taxis already face?

Furthermore, the TNPs use part‐time drivers extensively, and it is believed that these part‐timers drive their cars fewer miles on average than taxicab drivers, who are constantly patrolling the streets in hope of being hailed; and the fewer miles driven the less likely a vehicle is to experience wear and tear that may impair the comfort of a ride in it and even increase the risk of an accident or a breakdown.

If Posner was posting this on Wikipedia, an editor would flag “it is believed” as weasel words. Not only is Posner’s statement weaselly, it is precisely the opposite of “what is believed.” Having studied and written about this very aspect of the industry, I find these falsehoods particularly insulting. The truth is that the core of Uber and other soft cab services are provided by drivers who rely on it as a job; incidental or “part-time” drivers as Posner imagines them only provide a fraction of overall rides. Second, part-time and incidental drivers are not more efficient in their mileage than full-time drivers; in fact, the opposite is likely to be the case, as I pointed out in my 2014 publication on this very question. Mayber Posner should have read some of the literature before jumping to these assumptions?

Posner ends by showing his true colors, with a paean to the disastrous experiments in taxi deregulation back in the 1970s. He lauds the fact that “the deregulation movement has surged with the advent of the TNPs.” Which leads to the most important lesson to be learned from this entire saga:

There is really no such thing as “deregulation;” there is only different regulation.

Posner completely fails to understand (or to admit) that all the differences between soft cabs and taxicabs which he feels justify separate regulatory regimes for the two forms of on-demand car service, were in fact created by those very regulations. Thus, even though he celebrates this as “deregulation” it is really just an arbitrary shift—from one game, involving a certain set of rules and certain players, to another game, with different players and different rules. Even the neoliberal economist Friedrich Hayek recognized that markets are artifacts in this way. The surprising thing is that Posner does not apparently realize this—that regulators are not “recognizing” a real distinction between two markets, but creating that distinction; and Posner in issuing his decision, is actively assisting in that creation.

Ride-hailing Apps Swarm Into Austin

Uber alternatives are fine with being regulated, and do not use surge pricing.


In the wake of Uber and Lyft huffily leaving Austin, a swarm of lesser-known "ride-hailing" or "soft cab" services are rushing in to fill the void. Unlike the giants Uber and Lyft, these companies seem to be fine with following local regulations. And the big news is: not a single one of these Uber alternatives uses "surge pricing", the dynamic pricing system which Uber and Lyft use to manipulate the market.

Dallas-based GetMe shows an absolutely insane number of cars available on their app. Uber always tried to make their over-saturation less noticeable by limiting the number of visible cars to 8 or so. GetMe shows so many cars available it actually interferes with the screen refreshing rate. It might also be daunting to would-be GetMe drivers -- how easy can it be to make money with this much competition?

Playing the Lyft to GetMe's Uber is Fare, founded in Phoenix. Part of Fare's selling point is that they claim to be friendlier to drivers. They appear to be far, far behind GetMe in terms of drivers available, but that might be a good thing as far as sustainability of the network is concerned.

Back in 2012, when Uber was just a limousine dispatching service, Tickengo was one of the first companies to go the "ridesharing" route. Since rebranding as Wingz, they have focused exclusively on airport rides--until now. Their new "WingzAround" service, available only in Austin, gets back to their roots. It's interesting that, while both Fare and GetMe's apps follow the map-based style which has become the e-hailing standard, Wingz is sticking with a text-based alternative format, as you can see from this screenshot.

Finally, there is Austin's licensed taxi app, Hail A Cab. Unfortunately this app uses a very old-fashioned (circa 2010) style of map-based format in which you can't see the available cabs until after you have ordered one. Nobody likes that, guys. The licensed cab industry in Austin might want to try attracting a more up-to-date taxi app such as Flywheel.

Certainly the time to roll out a competitive alternative is now, while the elephants are out of the room. If any of these smaller, more driver and passenger friendly alternatives can take hold before Uber and Lyft come crawling back, Austin could invent the future of e-hailing: locally regulated, and free of surge-pricing.

A Spectre is Haunting Uber: Jason Dalton’s tale of smartphone possession

We control the horizontal; we control the vertical.

Kalamazoo Uber driver and shooting suspect Jason Dalton’s story of being possessed by the Uber app is only the latest in a long history of such stories, in which people have attributed paranormal or spiritual powers to new technologies. Tales of otherworldly beings communicating through the telegraph, radio, television, or computer screen are motivated by the anxieties that arise with social and political changes driven by new forms of communication and action-at-a-distance. Today, while Uber’s PR department scrambles to keep the phrase “going Uber” from becoming an updated version of “going postal,” it is worth looking more closely at Dalton’s delusions for some insight into the particular fears and dreams of our up-and-coming app-governed existence.

In his book Haunted Media, Jeffrey Sconce describes the long history of stories of possession and paranormal activity surrounding new and unfamiliar technologies. The telegraph and radio gave rise to stories of spirit possession and the entire phenomenon of the spirit “medium:” a human who, not unlike a radio, was “tuned” to frequencies through which they could talk to the dead. Television and the internet inspired stories of mind control, alien invasion, and being trapped in worlds of illusion. In each case, the paranormal stories that have swirled around new technologies boil down to the hopes and fears these technologies inspire, and such questions as:

• how can you talk with someone who isn’t present?
• how can these images seem so real when we know they are not?
• how can we make sense of this invisible power that flows all around us, and through us?

We may laugh today at people being afraid of telephones and radios, but Dalton’s story owes more than a little to contemporary cultural anxieties over the increasing saturation of our lives with apps designed to influence, and to some extent to control, human behavior. Though exaggerated by his paranoia, each of Dalton’s crazy claims reflect the actual controls and suggestions made by the real Uber app.

In his interview with police, Dalton made these claims:

1. Dalton saw an “Eastern Star” or “devil head” in the app.

2. The app triggered Dalton's actions with colors and sounds.

3. Dalton described possession by the app as more of a “feeling” than a “telling.”

4. Dalton felt that the app was telling him where to drive.

5. Dalton felt that the app gave him special abilities or protections.

6. Through the Uber app, Dalton felt connected to some greater, inexplicable power.

Each of the quotes below (in italics) are from the interview notes made by officers Moorian and Ghiringhelli, and made available by WZZM in Kalamazoo.

1. Dalton saw an “Eastern Star” or “devil head” in the app.

Dalton said that if we only knew, it would blow our mind. Dalton then explains how when he opens up the Uber taxi App a symbol appeared and he recognized that symbol as the Eastern Star symbol. Dalton acknowledged that he recognized the Uber symbol as being that of the Eastern star and a devil head popped up on his screen and when he pressed the button on the app, that is when all the problems started.

Uber did just change its logo, but neither the old nor the new logo matches the “devil’s head” described by Dalton. Nevertheless, as Uber drivers have already started pointing out over at uberpeople.net, there are in fact upside-down five-pointed stars (as well as rightside-up ones) all over the background of the newly-designed app. Dalton seems to have fixated on this.

TruYouber: Sure, the new Uber app is covered with up and down-facing pentagrams. But isn’t it more disturbing that it is clearly modeled after the logo of the world-conquering corporation in the dystopian Dave Eggers novel, The Circle?

It was not enough for the devil’s head logo to simply be there: Dalton himself had to speak its name for it to take power over him. When he recognized the symbol and “spoke what the symbol was,” it responded (he claimed) by turning from red to black.

Dalton said that when the Uber symbol is red, it is just picking up and dropping off people, but when he recognized the symbol and spoke what the symbol was, the color changed from red to black.

Dalton said he wishes he would never have spoken what that symbol was when he saw it on his phone. Dalton described the devil figure as a horned cow head or something like that and then it would give you an assignment and it would literally take over your whole body.

Dalton said that if he wouldve never ever mentioned the Uber symbol resembling the Eastern Star, he never wouldve had any problems.

2. The app triggered Dalton's actions with colors and sounds.

Dalton was asked what was different tonight from the other nights and he said as a driver partner with Uber, the icon is red and it had changed to black tonight.

The red-to-black shift which Dalton reported seeing is a bit harder to explain. On a normal, non-possessed Uber driver app, the screen does go black—right before a ride request, after which the screen zooms in on a blue circle centered on the hailer’s location, while a ringing/beeping sound alerts the driver to touch the screen to accept the ride. Dalton reported such beeping when the app was taking control of him.

I asked Dalton why the system allowed him to stop for the officers and Dalton said that he didn’t know. Dalton then told us that he did know one thing, that when the system switched from black to red and when the officer was about to say something to him it went beep beep beep for Dalton to log back into the system. ... Dalton said that when the system switched back is when Dalton got his presence back.

The Uber app is, of course, designed to influence driver behavior through the control of information, and through certain visual and audio cues; and Uber does have a history of experimenting on driver behavior by tinkering with the app. Nevertheless, it is probably safe to assume (barring further revelations) that Dalton hallucinated this whole red-to-black shift.

Dalton said that as soon as the police officer stopped him tonight, the symbol went from black to red and he felt like he was no longer being guided. Dalton said that was the reason he didnt shoot the officer because the app went from black back to red. Dalton explained that when the symbol turns to black, it literally has control over you. I asked Dalton why didnt he just uninstall the app and he said it sort of had you at a certain point.

3. Dalton described possession by the app as more of a “feeling” than a “telling.”

Dalton said it also told him to be available all the time. ...he said it wasnt like a telling, it was more of like a control. ...Dalton said that Uber requires a driver to have a car newer than 2007 and when you plug into it, you can actually feel the presence on you.

Significantly, Dalton said that the app didn’t tell him what to do; it rather took control of him through a sort of feeling of presence. This makes sense, because this is just how algorithms influence human behavior, by feeling or intuition, rather then “telling” per se. Paranoias about receiving instructions are so last century—befitting antiquated technologies like radio or television. Today, instead of being given instructions, we rely on algorithms working in the background to guide our behavior; apps like Uber work like video games, by giving users a circumscribed freedom of action within which we intuit or “feel out” the algorithms which assign value to our actions. McKenzie Wark calls this an “intuitive relation to the algorithm;” the most successful game players, or Uber drivers, are those who have “most fully internalized” the algorithm.

Dalton certainly internalized the algorithm; unfortunately, he seems to have confused Uber’s taxi game with a FPS.

Dalton said that he could only tell us that it has the ability to take you over. We confirmed with Dalton that he was referring to the Uber app and Dalton said yes. Dalton then told us that it feels like it is coming from the phone itself and he didnt know how to describe that. ... Dalton said that as he was sitting there with us, it was almost like artificial intelligence that can tap into your body.

Dalton then said that is why he is trying to tell us it is like an artificial presence.

Dalton said that it would take you over to the point that you are like a puppet.

4. Dalton felt that the app was telling him where to drive.

This one is hardly surprising. Uber driver apps are automatically integrated with Google Maps or with Waze, and while Uber drivers are not technically required to use and follow GPS, they are strongly encouraged to do so. Dalton seems to have interpreted this suggestion as mandatory.

I asked Dalton where he was headed when he was stopped and Dalton said that the system was telling him to drive. I asked Dalton if he knew where it was telling him to drive and Dalton said that the system was literally telling him to just take turns (as he made a motion with both hands on a steering wheel making turns).

Dalton said that it starts out that you have to follow the navigation, but it gets to the point where you dont have to drive at all, the car just goes. Dalton said that as long as you have a 2007 or newer car, your phone can link through your car.

Great news for driverless car fans: there is no need to wait five or ten years for scientists to develop self-driving cars when Uber can achieve the same effect right now through the magic of spirit possession!

5. Dalton felt that the app gave him special abilities or protections.

This is one of the most interesting aspects of Dalton’s story. Just like in any deal with the devil, you lose control of yourself, but you gain certain perks in return.

Dalton then told us that when the app would turn from red to black and it was a 5 star driver that is when it was telling you you could drive just as fast as you wanted to.

This tallies with the stories told by several of Dalton’s passengers, that he drove insanely fast, and blew through stop signs and stoplights. The app, apparently, was giving him superhuman driving powers and privileges.

Dalton said that the Iphone can take you over. Dalton explained how you can drive over 100mph and go through stop signs and you can just get places.

The five-star rating system is one of the means whereby Uber (and its similar competitors) encourage drivers and passengers to feel like they have some power within the system. Dalton seems to have taken this very seriously:

Dalton explained how there is a customer service score on Uber and when he tapped the button, he could say anything he wanted to about the person and it would be anonymous. Dalton then said that he could hear other peoples phones ding and their score or rating would go down.

6. Through the Uber app, Dalton felt connected to some greater, inexplicable power.

Dalton attributed great knowledge and power to the Uber app, or some greater power that it was “attached to.”

Dalton said he was seeing himself from outside of his body. Dalton said that this thing knows where everything is through your phone. Dalton said that it knows everything and when I asked what it was he said whatever Uber is attached to.

Dalton said that there is something bigger than Uber just picking up people and dropping them off.

Isn’t this exactly what Uber’s CEO has been claiming all along?

The New Spooks

Dalton then told us that he is not a killer and he knows that he has killed.

Let’s go out on a limb here and assume that the Uber app did not make Dalton shoot all those people. He did it himself. He was bonkers, and confronted with the horror of what he himself had done, he rejected his own actions and blamed them on the conveniently available construct, the “app.” Which we all know to be an uncanny, and untrustworthy, interloper in our social relations. Jason Dalton thought he was being controlled by the app, but, in truth, he had split himself in two—one half a helpless puppet, haplessly looking on while the other half, the ghost in the machine, wrought mayhem.

Or maybe it wasn't Dalton who split himself in two. The very working of the app involves the tracking and profiling of a "data double," a spectral data-Dalton corresponding to the human Dalton, and through which the human Dalton can be tracked, profiled, and manipulated. And Dalton isn’t the only person having trouble telling where his own actions end, and algorithmic controls begin.

Apps like Uber (and Google, Instagram, etc.), through which algorithms massage us, are popular because we embrace the controls they exert on human interactions. They really do seem to know everything, or at least a lot of things. They promise us great new powers, at a (Faustian) bargain. In Uber’s case, the app provides a preprogrammed set of social roles—driver, passenger—into which actual humans can be plugged-in, interchangeably. The app promises freedom, while delivering stress, exploitation, and constant surveillance. Both YouTube and the news are full of videos of drivers having "Uber meltdowns" in which they quit the job, often spectacularly—though thankfully, not as bloodily as Dalton did.

Dalton's tale opens up all kinds of hauntological questions about the dawning algorithmic era. To what extent was it all his own paranoid delusion, and to what extent the new experience of app-enabled alienation? Haunted by our data shadows, all of our senses of individuality and identity, of agency and responsibility, may be scrambled and shuffled by the rollout of socially mediating algorithms. Will we recognize the future that is created as our own doing, or attribute it to the grotesque ideas of an algorithmic brain?

San Francisco's Early Jitneys

The story of San Francisco's early jitneys is a lot more complicated, and interesting, than the Free-Market fables that are being told about them.

On Fillmore at Sutter in 1920, a jitney driver waits for passengers to cross the street.
Detail of SFMTA photo U06961. SFMTA Photo | sfmta.com/photo

As I wrote last week, San Francisco’s famous jitney tradition may have just come to an end after a little over 100 years. The timing is ironic: jitneys are being claimed as inspiration by a whole host of new “disruptive” app-enabled transportation companies. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick even proclaimed  his own company as the modern equivalent of the jitneys, which he believes were “regulated completely out of existence” by over-regulation soon after they started. The message: don’t regulate Uber!

The real history of the jitneys is a good deal more complicated than this. It does not fit conveniently into the fantasies of deregulation enthusiasts like Kalanick, but instead illustrates how both regulatory systems and markets (“free” or otherwise) are produced through power struggles between competing interests. Here are a few inconvenient facts about jitney history:

• Jitneys helped promote the automobilization of city streets.
• The numbers of early jitneys were unsustainable.
• Jitneys survived because their drivers unionized. 
• In an important sense, Uber is more like the old streetcar monopoly, than like the jitney.

We can get a glimpse of this history in some beautiful photographs of early San Francisco jitneys from the SFMTA Photo Archive.

One of the most fascinating things about most of the photos in the MTA's archive is how utterly boring their intended subject matter would be to anyone but the wonkiest transport historian. In most images, the focus is on streetcar tracks before, during, or after repair work.

Streetcar tracks at 18th and Castro. SFMTA Photo | sfmta.com/photo

But the sides of the frame are filled with the life of the city, captured unintentionally. This photo of a summer afternoon at 18^th and Castro in 1915 includes pedestrians, window shoppers, horse-drawn carts, an approaching streetcar, and newsboys hawking papers. This accidental richness reveals the lively street life of the economically diverse, and very pedestrian, city that streetcars, cable cars, and early jitneys served. Most interesting for our purposes is the line of jitneys busily loading passengers:

Jitneys at 18th and Castro, July 1915. Detail of photo U04909 at SFMTA archive.

SFMTA Photo | sfmta.com/photo

“Jitneys,” named after the slang term for a nickel, got their start in late 1914 in Los Angeles, where down-on-their-luck auto owners first got the idea of driving along street car routes, giving rides for the same 5-cent price as the streetcar. The idea caught on quickly due to a rise in unemployment that came with the beginning of World War One. Automobile ownership had been expanding rapidly in the previous years, and among the ranks of the first jitney drivers were many recent auto buyers who, having lost their jobs, had to find a way to put their “Can’t af-Fords” to work. Jitneys were on the streets of San Francisco by December 1914, and the idea spread like wildfire through the cities of the West.

The earliest jitney drivers simply put signboards in their windshields indicating a route (in the above photo, “Castro — Ferry”). They followed this route picking up and dropping off passengers along the way. Unlike the streetcar, stuck on its rails, jitney drivers could make detours, go off route to take passengers to their doors, or turn around and reverse direction at will to maximize business. Just like empty taxicabs do today, they mostly followed established streetcar lines, trying to entice waiting passengers. This antagonized the streetcar companies, which complained that they were losing money because jitneys were poaching their riders.

Valencia-Street jitney at Front and Market, 1915. Detail of photo U04980 at SFMTA archive. 

SFMTA Photo | sfmta.com/photo

The conflict with streetcars was not the only controversy that assailed the early jitney. As viewers of the famous 1906 film shot from a Market Street cable car can attest, urban street traffic was very different before the ascendancy of the automobile (and even in the 1906 film the number of automobiles is exaggerated by the fact that the same half-dozen or so keep circling the camera). Pedestrians—like this Sam Spade-looking character stepping out across Market in front of a jitney in 1915—shared the streets with vehicles on a much more equal basis than today. To such urban walkers, jitneys could be a menace. Though autos had been on the city streets for over a decade, jitneys brought them out in force, travelling en masse down crowded streets. Jitneys were blamed for a wave of collisions with pedestrians and other vehicles, as a natural consequence of the rising numbers of automobiles on the streets, with a lot of inexperienced, amateur drivers at the wheel.

(A few seconds of footage of jitneys driving on Market in 1915 can be seen in the film "Mabel and Fatty Viewing the World's Fair at San Francisco," starting at 5:21).

Jitneys in traffic at 6th and Market, 1916. Detail of photo U05299 at SFMTA archive. 

SFMTA Photo | sfmta.com/photo

Jitneys were just as popular with riders, however, as they were dangerous for pedestrians. For the same price as a streetcar, you could get a much faster and more comfortable ride. For many riders, this was their first experience riding in an automobile, which had formerly been a privilege of the rich. Jitneys were said to spread the automobile bug—after all, anyone could join the ranks of auto owners by buying a used car and driving it as a jitney!

Jitneys helped promote the automobilization of city streets. Like TNCs today, they competed directly with fixed-route transit, and possibly even with walking, by making short, quick trips by auto convenient and cheap. They spread the desire for automobiles, and helped normalize the image of city streets filled with cars, heralding the day when urban pedestrians would be relegated to sidewalks, or derided as “jaywalkers.”

Like modern TNCs, the ad-hoc character of jitneys could cause confusion. Remember all the stories about people jumping into a random Prius on the assumption it was the Uber they ordered? This Popular Mechanics story from 1915 will sound familiar:

"Not A Jitney" placards. From Popular Mechanics, June 1915.

San Francisco has become so thoroughly infested with “jitney busses” that drivers of private cars are continually having to explain to would-be passengers that their machines are not for hire. Hundreds of these cars competing with the traction lines are plying the streets of the city. Several motor-car owners, tiring of being frequently mistaken for “jitney” drivers, have labeled their machines with signs reading, “NOT a Jitney,” the “not” being emphasized by an encircling ring. This placard is placed on the windshield, or in some other position where it is plainly visible to the jitney-hunting public. (Popular Mechanics Magazine, 23:6, June 1915, p. 839).

(And as if on cue, here is a new story about someone getting into the wrong car...)

The numbers of early jitneys were unsustainable. Wave after wave of drivers swarmed onto the streets with dreams of making money with jitneys, only to be driven out of business by the oversupply of drivers and the unexpected costs of driving a personal vehicle as a bus. This is eerily similar to Uber’s labor situation today (though it is doubtful that early jitney drivers ever commuted from Stockton or slept in the Safeway parking lot). For a while, each new wave of jitney drivers going out of business was replaced by new drivers jumping into the game, but this couldn’t continue forever.

Economic pressures led drivers to defer maintenance, and to speed and compete in the quest for passengers. These in turn led to a decline in the reputation of the jitney. This might already be implied in Charlie Chaplin's 1915 film A Jitney Elopement, filmed in San Francisco. The little two-seater Chaplin drives in the film would have been no use as a jitney, but it does need to be kick-started a few times, and tears through the city in a high-speed chase.

New regulations put restrictions on jitneys, in part to protect the streetcar industry, but also to protect the safety of passengers and pedestrians. Accused of overcrowding Market street, and undermining the profitability of streetcar lines, the jitneys were pushed off Market to Mission. The results were lauded by the San Francisco Call, but the Jitney Weekly, a trade publication of the Jitney Bus Operators’ Union, portrayed it as class warfare:

Cartoon protesting the limitation of jitneys to Mission Street. Jitney Weekly, September 9, 1916.

Jitneys survived because their drivers unionized. To save their industry, jitney drivers formed associations and unions. In San Francisco, the Jitney Bus Operators’ Union affiliated with the Teamsters and sought to improve the jitney industry’s reputation and viability by promoting moderate regulations (insurance requirements, and limits on numbers of drivers) that would stabilize the industry and head off attempts to quash jitneys altogether.

San Francisco Values: The sign on a jitney at Sutter and Fillmore in 1920 announces that a "Union Driver" is at the wheel. Higher on the windshield, that is no "Lyft" or "Uber" sign, but the Teamsters logo. Detail of photo U06961 at SFMTA archive. SFMTA Photo | sfmta.com/photo

San Francisco was a stronghold of the labor movement, and unionizing was an obvious step for San Francisco’s jitney drivers. Being unionized was seen as a necessary sign of working-class respectability. Blue-collar jitney riders would have largely been union members and supporters, and many people made a point of not patronizing anti-union establishments. One of the reasons San Franciscans preferred jitneys to streetcars in the first place was because so many of them hated—absolutely hated—the United Railroads, which was the dominant streetcar company before the growth of Muni. The URR had a long history of bloody confrontations with workers, and had faced down a series of very public, and popularly supported, strikes. As the URR was also the jitney drivers’ strongest political opponent, unionizing was a good way for jitney drivers to gain public support and good will.

Which leads to a significant point of contrast between TNCs and jitneys: in an important sense, Uber is more like the old streetcar monopoly, than like the jitney.

Whereas jitney drivers were self-organized, Uber operates through a top-down centralized network controlling information, pricing, and access. The jitney expansion was unplanned; Uber hired teams of lawyers before a single car ever hit the street. Jitneys were peer-to-peer; Uber only pretends to be. Uber has also taken an openly anti-union stance, much like the URR of yore, and has even gone so far as to invest money in the development of driverless cars, in the hope of doing away with drivers altogether.

Could Uber drivers put together an actual peer-to-peer network that could challenge Uber on its own turf—much like the jitney drivers challenged the URR? Unfortunately, any such attempt would face massive difficulties simply because of the size of the incumbent, Uber. While the URR’s monopoly was based on the physical control of streetcar tracks, Uber’s is based on the network effect: smaller networks just can’t compete. And like the URR, Uber is willing and able to spend a lot of money trying to drive competitors out of business, and to stop unionization. Though the mechanisms by which the URR and Uber achieved monopoly are different, the effect of de facto spatial control is substantially the same.

The Jitney Matures

Through the teens there was a long struggle over just who would regulate the jitney industry, and how. Though their numbers never returned to 1915-1916 levels, San Francisco jitneys survived, owing to a good extent to the organizing efforts of the early jitney unions. They became a San Francisco institution: Jack Kerouac described his experience riding in a Mission Street jitney in On The Road:

 She let me take a shower and shave, and then I said good-by and took the bags downstairs and hailed a Frisco taxi-jitney, which was like an ordinary taxi that ran a regular route and you could hail it from any corner and ride to any corner you want for about fifteen cents, cramped in with other passengers like on a bus, but talking and telling jokes like in a private car. Mission Street that last day in Frisco was a great riot of construction work, children playing, whooping Negroes coming home from work, dust, excitement, the great buzzing and vibrating hum of what is really America’s most excited city—and overhead the pure blue sky and the joy of the foggy sea that always rolls in at night to make everybody hungry for food and further excitement. (On the Road, p. 218)

Jitney 97 in 2008. Creative Commons photo by Chris (Flickr).

As documented by the late automotive historian (and San Francisco taxi driver) Mike Sealey, San Francisco’s jitneys got bigger over the years, following a pattern seen in other cities as well (such as with Mexico City’s peseros). Long-wheelbase limousines were used for many years, followed by vans. Jesus Losa, the city’s last jitney driver, drove 23- and 25-passenger buses on his route between 4^th and Market and Caltrain. It is no accident that jitneys tend, over time, to look more and more like buses: though there was no love lost between the streetcar and the jitney, modern motorized bus systems carry the dna of both.

San Francisco’s jitney industry entered a terminal decline in the 1970s, and all but expired in the 1980s. Several culprits can be blamed: competition from BART; insurance expenses; and new laws forbidding the transferal of permits. Another contributing factor seems to have been disorganization and hostility among the city’s jitney drivers, which prevented them from uniting to protect their industry.

Until January 20, 2016, Jitney 97, piloted by Jesus Losa, carried on the tradition alone. Uber, far from picking up the torch, may have helped drive the last real jitney out of business.

Thanks to Jesus Losa for sharing his story. Thanks also to Katherine Guyon and others at the SFMTA photo archive for enthusiastic help and great work. The archive is a great resource and everyone interested in San Francisco history should check it out at sfmta.photoshelter.com.