Midnight on the sidewalk outside the Ryman Auditorium is a bustling scene after a recent Marty Stuart show. Most of the locals I speak with have chosen not to drive for the evening — either to avoid parking, or to get home safely after drinking. And most prefer booking a ride with an app like Uber or Lyft, citing price and convenience.
I ask one person if they considered taking a taxi.
“No, I would never call a cab today. Period.” says Nashville native Hooper Inman. “They’re obsolete now.”
Listen to the full episode on This Is Nashville: Nashville’s ride ecosystem
Another Nashvillian, Franchesa Kirkpatrick, who’s been waiting for an Uber on 5th Avenue, expresses some frustration.
“It keeps saying, one minute, two minutes, one minute, two minutes.” She tells me she relies on Uber, but does experience “hiccups” with the service. “Sometimes they can’t find you or there’s a spot where they’re supposed to be. And I can’t walk very well sometimes. And so I really need them to come and be right when they say they will be.”
She says she sometimes takes taxis, “but then there’s all sorts of problems with that system. There’s people that will pick you up, that you don’t really know who they are and they will try to ask you for extra money.”
Within an hour of the end of the concert, hundreds of attendees have found their way home. The ride bonanza is over and the pavement outside of the Ryman is clear.
But this rift between ride shares and cabs has been a decade in the making. According to the Tennessean, Lyft and Uber started providing rides in Nashville in late 2013.
How did we get here?
When the ride share companies hit the streets, Tennessee cities had to decide what to do with this new platform. Memphis said Uber and Lyft couldn’t operate until they acquired permits, while Nashville took a different approach. In a statement provided to WPLN by Nashville’s Transportation Licensing Commission, public information officer Cortnye Stone says the city worked with Uber and Lyft “for more than a year” to develop regulations that included background checks and car standards, and that “it would have been one of the first regulatory systems for them, with our airport [regulations] being some of the first in the country.” Nashville went as far as to amend the Metro Code.
But those regulations were soon superseded by the state. In 2015, Republican Senator Bo Watson from Chattanooga sponsored HB992/SB907 which carved out Transportation Network Companies — ride share apps like Lyft and Uber — as a distinct category that cannot be regulated by cities or the Department of Safety. On the House floor, in advance of the vote, Watson called the apps a game changer.
“It is a business disruptor,” he said, holding up a smartphone. “It is a commerce disruptor, but it is the way that we are now moving forward with commerce and these two companies Lyft and Uber and others will utilize and are utilizing this tool to change the marketplace. ”
Tennessee’s legislation was praised by Lyft executive Joseph Okpaku as a ‘model bill’. It was one of many state bills that passed in 2015 and 2016, disarming local governments and handing power over these companies to the state. Cities have long regulated commercial ride services, most notably taxis. These rules are in place to protect the consumer, and regulate things like price per mile, fingerprinting for drivers, and commercial insurance requirements, to name a few. Cities also dictate the number of cabs that can operate in a city, in order to regulate supply and demand, and the flow of traffic.
During the vote on the Lyft and Uber Act, Memphis Democrat Lee Harris raised concerns he had heard from his cab-driving constituents. Pricing was at the top of their mind. Harris called having regulated taxis jockeying for fares in the same market as unregulated ride share apps “not really a competitive environment,” and even invited the room to imagine the experience of getting into a cab that could just name its own price.
“And so the question is,” he posed, “are we providing that level of oversight to these new ride providers with respect to price?”
Senator Watson quipped back that Uber and Lyft represented the “free market at its greatest moment.”
The bill passed with an overwhelming bipartisan majority.
But the scenario that Senator Harris predicted has become a reality. As tourism has continued to boom in Nashville, we see regulated taxis competing with unregulated ride share apps, and it’s created a sort of Wild West.
The real cost of a ride
Between surge pricing, and cab drivers trying to keep up by naming their own price when the regulators aren’t looking, it’s anyone’s guess how much it will cost riders to get home from a night out. Fluctuating prices for the rider also means fluctuating earnings for the driver.
Full-time Uber driver Mohamed Simon sighs when I ask him how much he makes. “It varies a lot,” he says. “It’s not an answer that you can actually pin down.”
Despite working consistent hours, he never quite knows what he’ll be making. This is because of surge-pricing — Uber and Lyft’s practice of raising rates in a busy time or location. Simon told me that surge-pricing can take his fares from $1 per mile to $30 per mile. (The average ranges between 70 cents and $2.50 per mile.)
And while it is typical for employers give raises to workers who stay with a company, Uber and Lyft have fought hard to keep their drivers classified as independent contractors. When I ask Simon about the overall trend of his income, he becomes animated. “From 2017 till now? It’s never increased,” he says. “It’s always decreased. I can say that.”
Another driver, Nashville native Jennifer Serrano, tried driving for Uber and Lyft for two and a half years back when the ride share apps were new to town. “And then it got to where you’re tearing up your car for nothing and [Uber and Lyft are] barely paying you anything,” she recalls. “So I switched to taxi.”
Still, she’s quick to rattle off a litany of expenses that driving a taxi requires.
In addition to the costs of buying a taxi and its ongoing maintenance, cab drivers are required to pay a commission, which varies by company, and to have commercial insurance, which she says is “at least $350 a month.” These expenses, including modifications to the vehicle like paint and decals, are some of the things required by the city.
Even with all of these costs and regulations, Serrano says it’s still a better deal for her than driving for Uber or Lyft. But it isn’t just the ride share companies she’s competing with.
“One big problem downtown is that you’ve got all these fake taxis,” she says. “They’re neither Lyft or Uber or a taxi. They are just down there illegally.” She’s talking about minivans that have a light on top, like a taxi, but aren’t a real taxi — meaning they aren’t associated with any of the nine cab companies licensed to do business in Davidson County.
Serrano is proud to be a taxi driver. She’s been doing this for seven years, but is concerned about the future Nashville’s cab industry.
“Taxi has slowed down tremendously, especially this year,” she says. “And I know that the recession has a lot to do with it right now. But also I know that taxi did not try to improve overall. They didn’t make an app. They haven’t tried to really do anything to move forward. And if you don’t change with the times, if you’re a business, you’re going to die.
Magnolia McKay is a multimedia producer for This Is Nashville.
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