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Bleecchh. That is the sound I make any time I see a robotaxi wending its way along the streets of San Diego or on news footage of driverless vehicles causing a traffic cluster headache in the Bay Area.
It is the sound a grumpy old man makes when he sees an aspect of the future he doesn’t like or when a toddler is presented with a plate of liver and onions for dinner. Disdain has a distinct reverberation. You know it when you see it.
It is the same sound I made when ride-share operators first came on the scene. My primary concern was for the cabbies who relied on driving for a living and not just to make a few extra bucks for a vacation. What would it do to the industry and to its drivers?
Generally speaking, Uber and Lyft when they first rolled out nationwide decimated the livery game thanks in part to poor government regulation and an uneven playing field. Locally, some San Diego cabbies flocked to join the ride-share game while others without a vehicle at their disposal were left on the side of the road. But it allow more people to be part of the gig economy.
A saturated market didn’t make it easier for competing drivers to make rent and bill payments on time. And Uber and Lyft’s years-long battle against collective bargaining left most of the independent contractors powerless. Users were happy for a while because rides to A from B were marginally cheaper but over time cost-savings was negligible. And anyone ever hit by unexpected and seemingly arbitrary surge pricing might find themselves scratching their head wondering what the heck?
Now we have the emergence of a new transportation competition. While driverless taxis like Waymo are not in Chula Vista or National City, you can hear the electric passenger vehicles rumbling toward South County.
Already, Uber is reportedly laying off 10 percent of its workforce in anticipation of the hit they’ll take from robotaxis. Some of those people no doubt will be reabsorbed into the economy.
But the front-line drivers, the older folks who have been aged out of the workplace or struggling 20-somethings who can’t find a full-time job to get their life started, they may be joining the cabbies who were kicked to the curb all those years ago.
The future may be autonomous in the name of cheaper rides. It will probably leave us on our own.
