By Matt Mackowiak
Advocates for ridesharing companies (known as Transportation Network Companies, or TNCs) warned about the apocalypse that would hit Austin without TNCs and we finally saw that unfold this weekend.
Austin’s special rules received their first real stress test when Notre Dame came to town for a nationally televised game and we can finally see that the emperor has no clothes. It was undeniably an unmitigated disaster.
My wife and I tried to get a ride from the Mueller area to campus four hours before the game, and three new startup apps, RideAustin, Fasten, and Wingz, not only had no available drivers, but their apps could not handle demand and failed. And that was at 2pm. After an hour of waiting and hoping, we texted a friend, a former Uber/Lyft driver, who came and picked us up and drove us in for $20.
By the time the game began, more than 102,000 people filed in to Darrell K. Royal Memorial Stadium. By game’s end, many thousands of attendees were stranded when the final whistle blew. I’m sure we have all heard the same thing. It was total chaos when the game ended at 10:30pm when thousands of people tried to find a ride home.
Everyone now knows the ballot initiative had nothing to do with safety. If it did, the city would have required fingerprinting from day one. It had everything to do with local political operatives demonstrating THEY control local Austin politics. It was muscle flexing for the political class at its worst. Can anyone honestly tell us that we are safer?
What did the Austin political machine actually deliver to the people of Austin? A less livable city, longer wait times for pickups (if they happen at all), more drunk drivers on the road, less ability for people to earn extra cash and tens of thousands of fans and visitors to our city wandering downtown streets at 11pm on the Sunday night of a three day weekend. A friend of mine waited for a taxi downtown at 1am for more than an hour on Sunday night. Because of this situation, many Austinites will rightly feel that our downtown streets are as unsafe as they have ever been.
Last week the Texas A&M Transportation Institute informed the legislature of the success that 35 states already have been regulating this industry for background checks, insurance and other elements for success for consumers and drivers. This same information was available to the Mayor and the Austin City Council and they chose to ignore best practices and take the road less traveled with no consideration for the quality of service being provided to our city. It’s objectively failing.
With each passing day, this problem will exacerbate itself. I really appreciate Andy Tryba, of RideAustin, for his honesty and transparency about their challenges relating to scale. This weekend they did over 17,000 rides, a new record, but they were simultaneously unable to service over 2,500 rides because demand was outpacing the drivers on the road. It would be valuable to know when those rides were being requested, because midnight is a lot different than 2pm. Think about 2,500 people walking around looking for a safe ride!
Here’s what really struck me. Andy said that “the more friction you put on driver signup (whether that be government instituted or company driven), the longer it takes drivers to (get) on board and many drop out of the funnel.”
I think this is where the rubber meets the road. RideAustin, with all of their deep relationships at city hall and their pursuit of ‘saving rideshare in Austin’, is waving the warning flag. Getting drivers signed up and driving is a big concern.
The rest of Texas is getting it done. Dallas and Fort Worth get it. San Antonio gets it. El Paso, San Marcos and Midland get it. Their citizens are benefitting from ridesharing every day and every weekend.
Can we just get back to the table and find a path out of this embarrassing mess? It was better before and it’s about to get worse, with four more home football games, Formula One, two weekends of ACL Festival all this fall, and then three weeks of SXSW in March.
Austin was safer before the city needlessly forced Uber and Lyft to leave our city.
The city wants to you believe there are more options on the table and that it’s better. Clearly that isn’t the case.
Consumers should be able to choose who they want to ride with. This past weekend was totally unacceptable.
Do you feel safer?
Matt Mackowiak is syndicated columnist, an Austin-based Republican consultant, and a former Capitol Hill and Bush administration aide.