Once upon a time, hailing a ride in California was the stuff of comedy monologues and horror movies about hitchhikers. Then technology and business innovation made it possible for someone who needed a ride to pay someone with a car, and to do it all with an app on their phones.
This was achieved without the permission of the government, which is more or less the definition of freedom.
It’s not all that easy to abolish freedom in the United States, which has a written Constitution that bars the states from arbitrarily revoking life and liberty. California is rising to the challenge with new laws and regulations that effectively require the government’s advance permission for life and liberty, or at least for everything that makes them possible.
The state’s plan to abolish freedom includes the job-destroying legislation known as Assembly Bill 5, signed last year by Gov. Gavin Newsom. This law makes it illegal for most companies to hire independent contractors as part of their workforce. Companies must put workers on the payroll as employees instead, and control their schedule and earnings.
That pretty much terminated the business model of companies such as Uber and Lyft, which enable people to drive their own cars, on their own schedules, using the companies’ apps to connect with customers and get paid.
Much legal and political wrangling is still to come before there is a final resolution on that.
But California isn’t resting for one instant in its effort to smother the ride-share business. This week, the California Air Resources Board announced in Sacramento that it is preparing per-mile greenhouse gas targets and electric-vehicle targets to limit the “emissions” from companies such as Uber and Lyft.
In December, CARB released its “SB 1014 Clean Miles Standard 2018 Base-year Emissions Inventory Report.” According to the executive summary, Senate Bill 1014, enacted in 2018, directs CARB and the California Public Utilities Commission to “develop and implement measures to reduce GHG emissions from transportation network companies (TNC).”
The fearsome CARB staff began the process of guessing, “in units of grams of CO2 per passenger-mile traveled (gCO2/PMT), inventory for the combined TNC industry by January 1, 2020.”
There are more than a few uncertainties involved in trying to calculate the gCO2/PMT of the “fleet” of TNC vehicles, especially if people are free to turn the apps on and off and work whenever they choose. You might think this is an argument for calling off an ill-advised regulatory overreach. Clearly you’re not pulling down one of those six-figure staff salaries at CARB.
“At the present time, GHG emissions from the TNC sector is small compared to the total light duty vehicle sector. Nevertheless, we anticipate growth in VMT attributable to TNCs, which necessitates formulation of immediate policies,” the CARB report states.
“VMT” stands for Vehicle Miles Traveled, which California considers an “impact” on the environment that must be “mitigated” before projects may be allowed to go forward. Now, apparently, it must be “mitigated” before people may be allowed to ride-share.
So CARB is studying “overlapping trips,” the practice of drivers running multiple apps simultaneously. It’s studying “deadheading” to see how often ride-share cars drive without a passenger. It’s studying “occupancy” to compare the GHG emissions of “pooled” vs. “non-pooled” rides.
To do this, CARB demanded trip-level data from transportation network companies for all vehicles using their services. The staff mapped the location of drivers to see where there were too many and where there were too few. They fretted over research suggesting “TNC’s may cause a net increase in VMT and a reduced use of other travel modes such as mass transit and active transport (i.e., walk, bike, and scooter).” They counted the hybrid vehicles, charted the age of the cars and made colorful charts of a “stick painting algorithm.” Regulations will follow. Compliance will be mandatory.
This story is a microcosm of how central planning destroys an economy. All it needs is a pretext and the government can quickly set up a regime that eventually requires everyone to obtain the government’s advance permission to do anything. That’s how free countries become the other kind.
©2020 The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
