Saturday, July 04, 2009

 

They can't even regulate tricycles...

Years ago the city of Charleston passed laws to regulate pedicabs. Right from the start, when they used the name rickshaws to describe these vehicles, they got it wrong--a rickshaw is a two-wheeled vehicle pulled by hand; what they were regulating was a 3-wheeled tricycle, a pedicab. Naturally, rather than allow the FREE market to determine the number of cabs, the city put a limit of 15 cabs and then created a bureaucracy to enforce the rules. For a time none of this really matter since no one from the city seemed to know what was going on with the pedicabs or didn't care or where too lazy to do anything about it. In this unregulated vacuum the free market did its thing and pedicabs became part of the landscape. The number of bikes on the street fluctuated based on demand for the service. Even in the busiest of times it was rare to wait over 10 minutes for a cab. Everyone was happy: the hotels, the cab companies, the riders and especially the customers---tax payers.

Wouldn't you know it? Since everything was working great the city decides to get back involved by enforcing the law regarding the number of cabs on the street. Probably caused by the new guy from the city charged with pedicab harassment--I'll bet the family farm this guy has never even been for a ride in a pedicab. Of course, they pulled this stunt at the worst possible time...the start of Spoletto. Waiting on a cab went to 30 minutes or more and in some cases NEVER. Now we have a system where there are cabs in the barn, kids eager to ride the cabs and customers wanting to ride and a big fat bureaucracy parked on it's ass right in the middle of the free market. Anyone out there surprised?

Comments:
Not surprised at all. It's to the point now that anything that ain't broke, the government will fix. It's no surprise we're in this economic hole that government has dug.
 
jim wallace,

what is your e-mail address? I have a few questions for you...
 
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