http://www.dailynews.com/business/20140224/amid-increased-enforcement-lax-police-issue-citations-to-uberblack-and-ubersuv-drivers
By Brian Sumers, February 24, 2014
Police at Los Angeles International Airport have begun to enforce
little-known rules that make it more difficult for two of the most
popular ride-sharing services — UberBlack and UberSUV — to pick up
passengers at terminals.
Los Angeles World Airports police have
issued about a dozen citations to drivers for UberBlack and UberSUV in
the past two weeks, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Drivers are being cited for not producing to police detailed information
about their passengers required by airport rules and regulations.
The citations have not affected services, and both UberBlack and
UberSUV continue to make LAX pickups, according to a company spokesman.
The
services, which have revolutionized the livery industry with their
mobile phone-based dispatch systems, were thought to be in compliance
with airport guidelines. But some of the UberBlack and UberSUV drivers
apparently have been tripped up by a relatively minor bureaucratic
hurdle.
The problem is what’s called a “waybill” — information
carried by the driver that shows some key information about the
passenger and the driving assignment. According to Sgt. Karla Ortiz of
Los Angeles World Airports police, drivers must know and be able to
produce the name of the customer, the terminal pickup location, the
arrival time of the customer, the airline flight number, the date the
ride was arranged and the destination.
But the phone application isn’t set up to receive nearly that
much information. Drivers don’t learn the destination from the phone
app. And it doesn’t ask for the passenger’s flight number.
Andrew
Noyes, a spokesman for Uber, said in an email that the company is
familiar with the waybill requirement and said that drivers, who are
essentially independent contractors, should compile passenger
information.
“We communicated previously to UberBlack and UberSUV partners that
drivers should call the rider as soon as they accept a request from LAX
to record all fields that are incomplete on their electronic waybill,”
Noyes said.
Airport officials say the waybill system ensures that only
drivers with a need to be at the airport are there waiting for pickups.
Ride-sharing drivers have far more freedom to operate elsewhere in the
Los Angeles region than they do at LAX, where they are heavily
regulated.
“This is just part of the enforcement to always look
at the waybill,” Ortiz said. “This is the only way we can make sure that
people who are conducting business at the airport are doing it
properly.”
Drivers for UberBlack and UberSUV have generally not run afoul of airport police.
Unlike drivers for other services, such as Lyft, UberX and
Sidecar, who are often driving their personal cars and are not
registered as commercial drivers with state regulators, drivers for
UberBlack and UberSUV usually have proper permits from the state to
allow them to make airport pickups. Drivers for UberBlack and UberSUV
also generally pay LAX a $4 fee per ride, a fee that nonprofessional
drivers dispatched by ride-sharing companies like Lyft do not pay.
Most of the recent enforcement action at LAX has focused on casual drivers for Lyft, UberX and Sidecar services.
At the time, Noyes said customers should instead take UberSUV and
UberBlack, which the company said were in compliance with airport rules
and regulations.
Alex Darbahani, president of KLS Transportation
Services in Beverly Hills, said his drivers, who are not part of any
ride-sharing applications, have been dealing with the waybill issue for
years. He said compliance is not that difficult, so long as drivers have
access to the data. His drivers record the pertinent information on a
yellow sheet of paper.
“If the cops pull you over and you don’t have a waybill, you’re
going to get cited,” Darbahani said. “You have to have in writing the
customer’s name what airline they are arriving on and what time they are
arriving.”
During a recent two-month crackdown against drivers for the three
services, officers gave out 200 citations. In January, as a result of
the crackdown, UberX — the most popular of those services, and part of
the same company as UberSUV and UberBlack — said it would no longer
facilitate LAX pickups.
The "3-foot rule" seems
quite modest. A yard's worth of pavement between a cruising car or truck
and a cyclist, pumping uphill or holding on for dear life on a downward
slope, is hardly excessive. Fines are paltry as moving violations go —
$35. The law doesn't even take effect until this fall, giving drivers
plenty of time to get used to the idea and cyclists and state officials
plenty of time to educate them.
But Brown had vetoed two earlier versions of the bill, leaving the impression that California was stuck in a postwar baby boom world in which streets were meant for automobiles alone. The governor's turnabout, after his concerns regarding potential state liability were addressed, was a big deal for cyclists, and perhaps a bit irksome to motorists in a state where car culture enjoyed its blissful adolescence and aggressive young adulthood.
VIDEO: Do you drive in L.A.? Watch this to see what scares cyclists.
As the bill was being signed, The Times editorial writers were beginning RoadshareLA, an online exploration of the seemingly sudden arrival of cyclists as not just a cultural but a political force in California. Bicycle advocates, for example, helped promote and pass a law — at just about the time the first 3-foot bill was being run off the road — that requires cities and counties to re-imagine their streets as transportation arteries that accommodate the increasing number of cyclists and pedestrians and de-emphasize cars. The law was designed in part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in part to improve road safety, in part to enhance the quality of life in neighborhoods where streets had become commuting-hour freeways, and in part, some argue, to reduce obesity. And, others insist, to keep cities here in competition for young professionals who reject their parents' car-oriented outlook and want to live and work in cities that accommodate their car-free lifestyles.
Assembly Bill 1358, known as the Complete Streets Bill, brought to California a nationwide revolution in how we think about our streets, how they're engineered and how they're ultimately used. Los Angeles has begun to notice some of the effects of that law, not just in the number of bike lanes and cyclists who use them but in "road diets" that remove automobile lanes.
Those lane changes may enhance some communities and protect the safety of cyclists. But they also affect the commuting patterns — and needs — of a city laid out for drivers. Consider the 2nd Street tunnel, an east-west passage between downtown and the rest of the city, and an iconic location featured in countless Hollywood chase scenes and car commercials. It's now in part a bike path, with one less car lane in each direction. Has that change added five or 10 minutes — and untold spewing pollutants from idling cars — to the twice-daily downtown commute? How well are we thinking through such changes? Are cyclists and drivers sharing the road, or are they locked in a struggle for street hegemony?
VIDEO: Do you bike in L.A.? Watch this to see what concerns all those drivers.
Until now, cycling advocates and transportation planners have responded to complaints about road diets and slower car traffic by pointing out that restriping is relatively cheap. "It's just paint," they said, and can be scraped off if the new traffic patterns prove undesirable.
But Los Angeles is now preparing its first truly "complete street," on Figueroa, creating bike lanes separated from car traffic by concrete curbs. Road diets will no longer be temporary. It's no longer just paint.
RoadshareLA looked at how other cities handle the interaction between cyclists and drivers, including London and New York. This week RoadshareLA concludes with a look back at lessons learned from the discussion, and forward, seeking an agenda for divvying up the asphalt. Readers can follow and join the conversation at latimes.com/roadshare and #roadshareLA. And they can view two videos — one each from the cyclists' and drivers' point of view — that present the challenges facing all Angelenos who try to share the road.
This is part of an ongoing conversation to explore how the city’s cyclists, drivers and pedestrians share and compete for road space, and to consider policy choices that keep people safe and traffic flowing. For more: latimes.com/roadshare and #roadshareLA.
But Brown had vetoed two earlier versions of the bill, leaving the impression that California was stuck in a postwar baby boom world in which streets were meant for automobiles alone. The governor's turnabout, after his concerns regarding potential state liability were addressed, was a big deal for cyclists, and perhaps a bit irksome to motorists in a state where car culture enjoyed its blissful adolescence and aggressive young adulthood.
VIDEO: Do you drive in L.A.? Watch this to see what scares cyclists.
As the bill was being signed, The Times editorial writers were beginning RoadshareLA, an online exploration of the seemingly sudden arrival of cyclists as not just a cultural but a political force in California. Bicycle advocates, for example, helped promote and pass a law — at just about the time the first 3-foot bill was being run off the road — that requires cities and counties to re-imagine their streets as transportation arteries that accommodate the increasing number of cyclists and pedestrians and de-emphasize cars. The law was designed in part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in part to improve road safety, in part to enhance the quality of life in neighborhoods where streets had become commuting-hour freeways, and in part, some argue, to reduce obesity. And, others insist, to keep cities here in competition for young professionals who reject their parents' car-oriented outlook and want to live and work in cities that accommodate their car-free lifestyles.
Assembly Bill 1358, known as the Complete Streets Bill, brought to California a nationwide revolution in how we think about our streets, how they're engineered and how they're ultimately used. Los Angeles has begun to notice some of the effects of that law, not just in the number of bike lanes and cyclists who use them but in "road diets" that remove automobile lanes.
Those lane changes may enhance some communities and protect the safety of cyclists. But they also affect the commuting patterns — and needs — of a city laid out for drivers. Consider the 2nd Street tunnel, an east-west passage between downtown and the rest of the city, and an iconic location featured in countless Hollywood chase scenes and car commercials. It's now in part a bike path, with one less car lane in each direction. Has that change added five or 10 minutes — and untold spewing pollutants from idling cars — to the twice-daily downtown commute? How well are we thinking through such changes? Are cyclists and drivers sharing the road, or are they locked in a struggle for street hegemony?
VIDEO: Do you bike in L.A.? Watch this to see what concerns all those drivers.
Until now, cycling advocates and transportation planners have responded to complaints about road diets and slower car traffic by pointing out that restriping is relatively cheap. "It's just paint," they said, and can be scraped off if the new traffic patterns prove undesirable.
But Los Angeles is now preparing its first truly "complete street," on Figueroa, creating bike lanes separated from car traffic by concrete curbs. Road diets will no longer be temporary. It's no longer just paint.
RoadshareLA looked at how other cities handle the interaction between cyclists and drivers, including London and New York. This week RoadshareLA concludes with a look back at lessons learned from the discussion, and forward, seeking an agenda for divvying up the asphalt. Readers can follow and join the conversation at latimes.com/roadshare and #roadshareLA. And they can view two videos — one each from the cyclists' and drivers' point of view — that present the challenges facing all Angelenos who try to share the road.
This is part of an ongoing conversation to explore how the city’s cyclists, drivers and pedestrians share and compete for road space, and to consider policy choices that keep people safe and traffic flowing. For more: latimes.com/roadshare and #roadshareLA.
