Good morning. It's Thursday. We'll look at a first in Albany and a defeat for Gov. Kathy Hochul by her fellow Democrats, a little more than two months after they helped elect her to her first full term. We'll also look at why ride-share drivers say they are struggling. |
 | | Cindy Schultz for The New York Times |
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Well, that was a first, but maybe not a complete surprise: Gov. Kathy Hochul's choice to be New York State's top judge was rejected by the State Senate committee that gives judicial nominees a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. |
The vote against the nominee, Justice Hector LaSalle, a state appellate judge whom Hochul wanted to elevate to chief judge of the Court of Appeals, was 10 to 9. All 10 votes against him came from Democrats — members of Hochul's own party who had worked to elect her to a full term only 11 weeks ago. On Wednesday, they rebuffed a governor's choice for chief judge for the first time. |
For all the fireworks, the vote did not necessarily signal the end of the brawl over LaSalle, a former prosecutor chosen by Hochul to succeed Janet DiFiore, whom many Democrats scorned for what they saw as the court's conservative turn. DiFiore resigned last year. |
Hochul continued to stand by LaSalle after the committee vote, saying in a statement that LaSalle had "demonstrated exactly why he is the right person for this role." She did not rule out taking legal action to force a vote by the full State Senate. That could bring on a high-stakes political showdown with constitutional overtones. |
The vote came after a combative hearing. Nomination proceedings in Albany usually plod along. Not this time. LaSalle faced an uphill battle after his nomination was opposed by several unions, reproductive rights groups and community organizations that cited cases he had handled as anti-union and anti-abortion. |
LaSalle denied that, saying he "did not recognize the person" his opponents had portrayed him to be. |
He argued that the rulings his opponents had singled out turned on procedural questions and did not necessarily reflect his views on issues. "When you talk about labor," he said at one point, "those are the people that raised me." He said that he "agreed full heartedly with the concept that big business should not be using litigation to chill the voices of organized labor." |
He also affirmed his belief in a woman's right to abortion services. "I do not want my daughter to have fewer rights than her mother," he said. |
Expect rain, with temperatures steady in the low to mid-40s. The evening will be mostly rainy. |
In effect until Saturday (Lunar New Year's Eve). |
 | | Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times |
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Ride-share drivers say they are struggling |
 | | Todd Heisler/The New York Times |
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Uber and Lyft drivers say they are struggling, especially now that they won't get a raise they were counting on. Last week we also learned — from data from the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission, which regulates ride-share cars and taxis — that ride-share passengers are relatively stingy with tips. |
In recent weeks, drivers have organized two strikes and have urged customers to boycott Uber. The company sued the taxi commission last month to block a raise for drivers and won. |
I asked Winnie Hu, who, with our colleague Ana Ley, reported on the earnings picture for drivers, to explain. |
This is essentially a story about drivers and their earnings. Where do the figures come from? |
The taxi commission collects data on taxi drivers and on Uber and Lyft drivers. |
For those of us who are not data whizzes, the commission put a new search feature on its data hub just last week, so now anybody can see how much taxi drivers earned in any month going back to January 2011. The data on ride-share drivers goes back to February 2019. |
It's worth noting that the for-hire industry is nearly back to what it was before the pandemic. Uber and Lyft have rebounded faster than taxis, but lately they've all been seeing more trips. Citywide, Uber and Lyft provided an average of 592,221 daily trips last September compared with 666,485 trips for the same month in 2019, according to city data. Yellow taxis have also rebounded, but less quickly, rising to 103,752 daily trips from 216,027 trips during the same earlier period. |
Those numbers are interesting because they show the ride-share industry has rebounded more quickly than taxis. But ride-share drivers say they, too, are still struggling despite the rebound. |
Hasn't inflation put more pressure on drivers? Don't drivers say that higher fares will benefit Uber more than them? |
They do say that, just as they say inflation takes a bigger cut out of their earnings because they have to take care of their own cars — oil changes, even carwashes to keep the cars clean. Everything adds up, and when expenses go up, they feel the squeeze even more. |
When ride sharing started in 2011, some drivers here saw it as a part-time gig, as it was in other places. But in New York City, you had full-time drivers trying to make a gig into a living. We all know it's expensive to live and work in New York City, and it's more expensive to own a car. |
Doesn't the city have minimum pay standards for app services? |
Yes. That's why the earnings have increased since 2018. The City Council passed a bill, and the taxi commission has since raised the minimum pay standard for drivers. |
Drivers are making more across the board than they used to. The question is, is it enough to live on? What some Uber and Lyft drivers found out even before the pandemic was that it was not. That's why many of them have gone heavily into debt or are behind on the rent or are struggling to pay for groceries. |
Are there too many for-hire drivers, which would mean that none makes a decent living? |
Some transportation experts say there are too many drivers in New York City and the business is spread too thin because drivers would like to have more trips. |
The taxi commission points out that the number of licensed for-hire drivers who can drive either taxis or ride-share cars shrank from 204,000 before the pandemic to 173,000 currently. The number of vehicles also shrank. |
Samuel Schwartz, a transportation consultant who drove a taxi in the late 1960s and early 1970s, said the taxi industry faced a similar surplus of drivers and cars in the 1930s before the city established a medallion system that limited the number of taxis. "Too many cars on the street is like too many cooks in the kitchen," he told me. "Everybody bumps into each other." |
What about taxi drivers who switched to Uber and Lyft. How are they doing? |
We heard from a number of former taxi drivers who made the switch and now regret the decision. They invested in new cars to drive for Uber and Lyft and still owe thousands on the loans they took out. |
It's not as if the taxi industry is doing well. The taxi industry is also struggling. But some drivers thought that they had escaped the hardships of the taxi industry by jumping to Uber and Lyft. |
While working from home with the windows open one day last summer, I was having a Zoom meeting with a co-worker, Paul, whom I was seeing for the first time. |
I live in Manhattan, but my company is based in Boston, so most of my colleagues live there. |
Paul looked like he was working from home too, and midway through the meeting, I heard the telltale sound of an ambulance siren in the background. |
"Are you in New York?" I asked. |
"Yeah," he said. "Chelsea. Where in New York are you?" |
"Washington Heights," I said. "How'd you know?" |
"I heard the Mr. Softee truck." |
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. |
| Melissa Guerrero, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Jesse McKinley, Steven Moity and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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