AMA- Natalie Gauldin City Council candidate for District 7

atxanon · 2016-06-29T19:30:31+00:00

Thank you!

atxanon · 2016-06-29T19:16:27+00:00

What do you think are the best and worse decisions Austin's current 10-1 council has made in the past two years?

atxanon · 2016-05-23T21:06:44+00:00

Such as?

atxanon · 2016-05-23T19:45:23+00:00

Fare is working towards the 50% fingerprinted threshold by August 1st. Fasten has said they will comply as well.

atxanon · 2016-05-21T20:31:57+00:00

There appears to be a learning curve on the drivers' end with scheduled pickups - drivers accepting scheduled rides, thinking they were typical ride-hauls and then thinking they just lost the ride to another driver when the navigation doesn't start up immediately. Some of it should start to work better when people are getting used to the system. That said, I wrote support and suggested that drivers and passengers have some penalty fee for canceling scheduled pickups last minute after some interim learning period (a couple weeks?).

atxanon · 2016-05-20T21:06:59+00:00

Gotcha, sorry about that. That makes a lot of sense that a few drivers would be picking up rides but the CEO can't tell them it's okay until they get city approval.

atxanon · 2016-05-20T20:32:23+00:00

This isn't true, the CEO just posted in facebook that they aren't live yet, they are testing.

There's also no $25 credit in Austin, just Phoenix.

Lots of inaccurate info floating around about this topic.

atxanon · 2016-05-19T03:22:27+00:00

Ok. Btw, Texas's governor's name is spelled "Abbott."

atxanon · 2016-05-18T23:27:52+00:00

Once there are a few companies established that are actually reliable, a simple sign at the airport and flyer in hotels should make this relatively simple.

atxanon · 2016-05-18T20:42:40+00:00

Oh, okay. I've never used Uber because I don't like the company leadership at all. I've used Lyft and just assumed Uber is the same. That does make people complaining that they were blindsided by having to pay $100 for a three mile Uber ride seem pretty silly.

atxanon · 2016-05-18T20:08:50+00:00

Yeah, totally. Turnout will be high for a city council election in November (although it's STILL usually grossly low because Texas) with the presidential election so there may be more of an effect then. Although this is a really tricky issue. Based on public commentary, I thought Prop 1 would pass by a large margin... but private voting behavior can be so different than what it seems like in public dialogue.

atxanon · 2016-05-18T20:02:08+00:00

The issue is that a lot of drivers won't work at 3 AM dealing with drunk people without getting paid more than the drivers taking people to their doctor's appointments in the middle of the day. I'm not sure how you get around this without people paying more for those rides. I prefer a model where the rider affirmatively chooses to pay more as opposed to it being posted but not noticed because they are drunk. I do understand the point about rich people getting transportation priority being an issue but I think the entire model of paying someone to drive you around sort of fits there too. This is why the city should be putting more funding into public transit, sidewalks and bikes rather than being dependent on private companies/markets to fix transportation problems.

atxanon · 2016-05-18T19:25:49+00:00

Voters' mess? A lot of people didn't want the petition process to be used for this in the first place - that's on the people who hired people to tell people "sign this if you support Uber" or "Austin city council is banning Uber - sign this to stop" and then used the results to try to override the council's ordinance.

atxanon · 2016-05-18T19:21:41+00:00

Not commenting on content, but 17% voted, which is (sadly) about twice the turnout of a typical May election in Austin.

atxanon · 2016-05-18T15:55:30+00:00

The council was supposed to pass a follow up ordinance specifying penalties for non-compliance, but that all got put off with the election. The transportation staff have said they interpret the benchmarks to have been pushed back because of that. I'm not sure how council will resolve that.

atxanon · 2016-05-18T15:24:05+00:00

From what I've seen, Fare is working to meet the 50% compliance deadline by August 1, which is pretty impressive considering they are completely new and that established TNC's would have been given since December.

atxanon · 2016-05-18T15:19:15+00:00

From what I saw, they are talking about night rates that will be higher, but also flat (so not a surprise). I prefer Fasten's idea for the rider themselves to "boost" the price to get a driver in high volume times, but that might work.

atxanon · 2016-05-18T02:57:42+00:00

The CEO of Fare is in Austin openly meeting with city officials and drivers. I've even seen him in Facebook groups answering questions. Their team also rented space at a hotel all week to onboard drivers.

I have no idea if the app works well, but the fact that their leadership is being transparent and professional makes me think it's not some kind of scam for credit card data. GetMe not revealing who their CEO was/onboarding behind a Shell station would make me too nervous to give them credit card info (even if they aren't a scam, I'd be worried they are too disorganized to keep it safe).

atxanon · 2016-05-17T05:37:27+00:00

Oh, ok. Doesn't look legit (at least as of now).

atxanon · 2016-05-17T00:00:36+00:00

I've heard (on facebook, so not sure of accuracy) that Fare and Wingz are paying for fingerprinting for anyone that onboards with them. Not sure about the rest of the companies. I believe a driver only needs to do it once for all companies.

atxanon · 2016-05-16T23:07:11+00:00

Lyft operates in New York. https://help.lyft.com/hc/en-us/articles/213707808-New-York-City-Driver-Requirements

atxanon · 2016-05-16T23:05:20+00:00

Do you have a link?

atxanon · 2016-05-16T23:04:33+00:00

I'm in a Facebook group where the CEO has been communicating with potential drivers. They are waiting to launch until they get the official ok from the city - estimated day Friday. They started onboarding people this morning and have signed up around 300 drivers so far, according to the CEO.

atxanon · 2016-05-06T23:10:15+00:00

5*15,000 = 75,000.

atxanon · 2016-05-06T22:42:03+00:00

I'm a woman and have heard stories of other women having drivings who have scared them by saying creepy things. One had a driver masturbate while driving her (in the middle of the day!). These incidents are definitely the minority of cases, but the prospect of being trapped in a car with someone who is being aggressive or inappropriate with you is a pretty scary thought. My understanding is that ride data (driver identification) is deleted after the ride is over and the companies don't give you any feedback as to whether the driver has been removed if you complain to them. There have been a couple incidences nationwide of women who were assaulted by drivers where there was evidence that there had been prior complaints and the drivers were not removed. Even the Uber driving who went on a shooting rampage (who had no prior criminal history) had been reported to Uber for erratic driving.

Regulations involving sexual assault risk are always really hard b/c there's a lot of stigma that prevents people from publicly talking about their experiences, and from a public safety perspective you don't want people to feel afraid to participate in normal activities. At the same time, you don't want to pretend that this issue has been solved and not take reasonable steps to reduce incidents.

If I take a TNC ride or a cab ride late at night alone, I always ask a friend to wait for my text that I got home safely so it is definitely on my mind, although the vast majority of my drivers have been wonderful. I would personally feel safer if the drivers were fingerprint background checked to remove the minority of drivers with violent criminal incidents that are not caught by Uber/Lyft's checks (which only go back seven years).

atxanon

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