Category: <span>Pragmatism In Action</span>

Why vehicle living, gig work, and private-property rules eventually collide Yesterday I talked about no-trespass notices: what they mean, how corporations can apply them across properties they own or control, and how somebody can get themselves into trouble by assuming that being banned from one location has nothing to do with another location under the…

What corporate security, casino bans, and gig work can teach us about trespass notices There are certain things you learn working corporate security that most people never have much reason to think about. One of them is that when a company tells somebody they are no longer welcome on its property, that does not necessarily…

“But the plans were on display…”— The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams Arthur Dent’s problem was not that the plans didn’t exist.The problem was that the people affected by them had no practical way of knowing about them. We would prefer not to run transportation planning like the Vogons. If your rideshare or…

There is a part of rideshare safety that passengers do not hear nearly enough about: The rules apply to you too. Drivers constantly hear about the things that can get us suspended or deactivated. Unsafe driving. Harassment. Discrimination. Drugs or alcohol. Fraud. Improper behavior. What passengers may not realize is that Uber and Lyft also…

One of the things I continually hear when people talk about “the gig life” is the assumption that because an app operates somewhere, there must be enough work there for everyone who signs up. That simply isn’t how markets work. A small town does not suddenly develop the transportation demand of Boston because DoorDash, Uber,…

I have been driving rideshare in the UMass Amherst market for about three years now. And for three years, major events around the university have produced variations of the same problem. Move-in. Move-out. Graduation. Football games. Special events. Road closures. Traffic patterns get changed. Roads become one-way. Entrances get blocked. Areas that were accessible yesterday…

Massachusetts rideshare drivers now have something drivers in most of the country do not: an actual certified union sitting across the table from Uber and Lyft. That makes the App Drivers Union important. It also means the ADU deserves scrutiny. The question should not simply be whether the union gets drivers another raise. The real…

Uber sent me an interesting notification this morning. According to the company, a “system error” caused some drivers to receive communications that were not intended for them or to see temporary changes to their Driver accounts that were incorrect. That admission raises a larger issue I have been talking about for a while: Uber has…

Massachusetts created collective-bargaining rights for rideshare drivers. But when the same app moves drivers between passengers, food, and packages, the accounting and the representation need to match the actual work. The App Drivers Union has an important issue sitting right in front of it as collective bargaining begins in Massachusetts: Uber needs to clearly define…

One of the hardest parts of rideshare is that people assume every accepted trip should automatically become a completed trip. That is not how professional driving works. Sometimes the safest, most responsible, and most professional answer is no. That does not mean the driver is being rude. It does not mean the driver is discriminating.…