Uber is suing New York City over, yet another law meant to ‘help’ Gig workers. I will let you decide if it will (or could hypothetically) affect you personally. It is all about Driving Efficiency.
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First. They want to limit how many Rideshare drivers there are. They are going to do this by not issuing any more licenses to drive. If you currently drive, you are probably (not guaranteed mind you) going to be able to continue. If you need to re-license or just get started, you are out of luck. This is the first step in bringing back Taxi Medallions. NYC controlled them, limited them and created a false market for them. This lead to organized crime and corruption that we all know is the Taxi business.
In a filing in New York state court in Manhattan, Uber also sought to void a rule banning the issuance of new licenses to for-hire vehicles through August 2020.
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Second. They will tell you it is all for YOU, the poor, poorly, driver.
“Extending the cap on the issuance of new (for-hire) vehicle licenses for at least the next year in tandem with the cap on cruising is not only legal, it will bring needed relief to congested streets and hardworking drivers,”
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They intend to put a ‘cap on cruising’. Sounds ominous so they should! Well, here is what that means to YOU.
Uber is challenging the city’s “cruising cap” rule that sets a 31% limit on how much time drivers of app-based vehicles may drive without passengers in Manhattan south of 96th Street -meaning they would have to have fares at least 69% of driving time.
Uber responds:
“The rule would threaten the viability of the ride-sharing model as it currently exists, jeopardizing the benefits this model has created for riders and drivers,” Uber said. It said that while it has “publicly and vocally supported” reducing congestion in Manhattan, the cruising cap was based on “flawed and arbitrary” economics.
Uber is correct and here is why.
Do you know how many miles you drive in total when you Rideshare? You should. Do you know how many of those miles you get paid for? You should. The industry standard is about 60/40. Sometimes you do better and sometimes not. It really depends on what fares you get, how far away they are, how long is the fare, and where you drive. The only factor that the driver can control is to stop and park immediately after dropping of a fare. These are the only miles you can control, but that may or may not make any difference! It depends. Plus, you can’t always park anywhere near where you last dropped off and having fixed designated lots increases the miles driven per car.
Do you know your driving efficiency?
I can guarantee you that you don’t. You might guess. You might think you know, but unless you do the following you don’t. And with this law (and others like it), you will be required to know. Here is how:
- How many total miles have you driven? That is from when you turn on your app(s) till you turn them off. We will call that variable M1.
- How many total miles have been paid to drive? That you can get by adding up all the miles on the fares you have driven during a shift. We will call that M2.
To get efficiency: (M2 / M1) * 100 = your driving efficiency %. The law states that this must be at least 69%
Remember: M1 (non-paid miles) includes all your time just driving around, driving to pickup new ride, goint to a parking lots, etc. Every foot you are not being paid to drive by a customer.
Driving Efficiency
Driving efficiently maximizes your income by reducing expenses (gas for unpaid miles). You should want it as small as possible. What you will find is that it varies a lot from day to day. Some days are just better than others. It is impossible to be below 60/40 over any long period of time. Just does not work out that way, but you should try. And if you do, you have had a good day driving! If we are all very efficient, theoretically, we would reduce the number of cars on the road. Maybe.
How to track your Driving Efficiency
I would recommend that you download one of our phone apps for Rideshare drivers: either iDrive for Uber or iDrive Rideshare.
By starting either app when you start driving and stopping the app when you finish, you get M1. The apps track every mile you drive automatically. As a side benefit, you now also have your Tax Deduction for standard mileage done.
But to get efficiency, you need to track the miles for each fare. We allow you to enter each fare (Income and Miles) while using the app. When all your fares are entered, you automatically are shown your driving efficiency %. You can also use the graph features to see your cumulative efficiency for each month. As a side benefit of this, you now can see how much you make per hour and per mile. Both are very interesting metrics to track. You can get even more than this and you can find those features in other posts.
The apps are free. Download one and try it out and see what your efficiency is even for only one day. Did you meet this new law? (I don’t think you will). It is a bad law.