巴黎司機運動 出租車監管是個世界難題

They are taking to the streets in Paris. They have secured a ban in Brussels. They have gone to court in Berlin. Taxi drivers across Europe are united against Uber – a Silicon Valley start-up, backed by Google and Goldman Sachs, whose app-based car service is being rolled out internationally.

在巴黎，出租車司機走上了街頭。在布魯塞爾，他們成功迫使當局通過了一項禁令。在柏林，他們告上了法庭。全歐洲的出租車司機已經聯合起來，反對基於移動應用的叫車服務提供商優步(Uber)。這家硅谷(Silicon Valley)初創公司得到了谷歌(Google)和高盛(Goldman Sachs)的注資，正在向全世界推廣它的叫車服務。

The regulation of taxi services arouses emotions. My local French driver asked recently: “What do London cabbies do when they retire?” He explained that his colleagues rely on the onward sale of taxi licences to fund their pensions. In New York, the value of a taxi medallion now exceeds $1m. London, however, issues licences freely to anyone who passes “The Knowledge”, the demanding test of London’s geography required of drivers of the distinctive black cabs.

出租車服務的監管是個容易讓人激動的話題。最近在法國搭出租車時，司機問我：“倫敦的出租車司機退休時會怎麼做？”他解釋說，他的同事的退休金，部分來自轉售自己的出租車牌照所得。在紐約，如今一塊出租車牌照的價值已超過100萬美元。但在倫敦，任何通過“知識”(The Knowledge)考試的人都可免費獲發出租車牌照。這是一項很難的考試，考試內容是出租車司機必須掌握的倫敦地理知識。倫敦的出租車別具特色，外觀是黑色的。

Some regulation of taxis is necessary. The nature of the service they provide means that many of its users are vulnerable. They are disabled, or women who need a safe trip home late at night, or foreign tourists who have no idea what is a reasonable fare from the airport to the city. Beware Budapest, where taxis are unregulated, and Oslo, where even the metered fare will max out your credit card.

一定程度的出租車監管是必要的。出租車服務的性質決定了，它的很多乘客處於弱勢地位，比如殘疾人、在深夜需要安全歸家的女性、或是不清楚從機場打車到城裏的合理費用水平的外國遊客。在布達佩斯要當心，那裏的出租車是不受監管的；還有奧斯陸，在那裏即便打表，打車費用也會刷爆你的信用卡。

Taxi licensing illustrates regulatory capture, the phenomenon by which regulation intended to serve the public is hijacked by industry interests. As every passenger knows, drivers are voluble, and enjoy a certain solidarity; their clients, however, are diffuse and diverse. In 1978 a protest by cab drivers brought central Dublin to a halt. The Irish government responded by agreeing to freeze the number of taxis on the streets of the city. Over the next two decades the Irish economy grew strongly and Dublin became notorious for taxi queues. There was even a serious proposal to erect taxi shelters across the city, so that waiting citizens could shelter from the Irish rain.

出租車牌照制反映出了“監管俘獲”(regulatory capture)現象，即原本旨在服務公衆的監管卻被行業利益所劫持。每一名出租車乘客都知道，出租車司機很健談，並且在某種程度上團結在一起，而他們的客戶卻是分散化和多樣化的。1978年，出租車司機舉行的抗議導致都柏林市中心停擺。爲應對這場抗議，愛爾蘭政府答應凍結都柏林的運營出租車數量。過去20年，愛爾蘭經濟強勁增長，都柏林各處排隊打車的景象也逐漸聞名於世。甚至有人嚴肅提議在都柏林各處設立出租車候車亭，讓等待打車的市民有地方躲雨——愛爾蘭的雨可是說下就下。

The regular Christmas chaos – taxis were unavailable at times of peak demand – became a political issue. But Prime Minister Bertie Ahern stood firm in defence of the status quo. It was left to the Irish courts to declare the restrictions on numbers unlawful. Within two years, the number of cab licences in Dublin had increased more than threefold.

每逢聖誕節就會出現的混亂場面（需求高峯時段根本打不到車）成了個政治問題。但當時的愛爾蘭總理伯蒂•埃亨(Bertie Ahern)卻堅決維護現狀。最終是愛爾蘭法院出面，宣佈限制出租車牌照數量是違法的。隨後不到兩年，都柏林的出租車牌照數量就增加了兩倍多。

So long as regulation ensures that vehicles are safe and drivers honest, it is difficult to see how the public interest could ever be served by restrictions on numbers. Britain’s Office of Fair Trading reached this conclusion in 2003 (although there are no such restrictions in London, many other local authorities impose limits). But the lobbyists prevailed; the parliamentary transport committee issued an extraordinary attack on the OFT report, and the government decided to do nothing. The Law Commission reiterated the OFT’s finding in 2012, but by the following year had modified its advice and suggested that there might be a case for restricting supply, although it gave little guidance as to what that case was.

只要監管確保車輛安全無虞、司機誠實可靠，就很難理解爲何限制出租車數量會有利於公衆利益。英國公平交易辦公室(OFT)在2003年得出的結論也提出了同樣的質疑。（儘管倫敦對出租車數量沒有限制，但英國許多其他地方當局有這樣的限制。）但遊說勢力佔了上風；國會的交通委員會(transport committee)罕見地抨擊了OFT的報告，政府決定不採取任何行動。法律委員會(Law Commission)在2012年得出了與OFT相同的結論，但在次年修改了自己的建議，提出限制供給或許是有道理的，儘管它沒有明確說明這個道理是什麼。

In Paris, cab numbers are tightly controlled and there are virtually no private hire vehicles. Taxis are mainly used by business people and journeys per head are less than a third of what they are in London or New York. Lower socioeconomic groups rarely use cabs in France – in London and New York they do, extensively – and there are large areas of Paris where a taxi service is in effect unavailable. That elitist outcome is strikingly similar to the experience of another regulated industry, civil aviation, where service was confined for many years to business travellers and the affluent, until deregulation and the internet made the emergence of low-cost airlines first possible and then inevitable. The parallels with the development of Uber are clear.

在巴黎，出租車數量受到嚴格控制，而且幾乎不存在“約租車”(private hire vehicles)。出租車的主要客戶是商務人士，人均乘坐里程不到倫敦或紐約的三分之一。在法國，中低收入階層很少打車，不像在倫敦和紐約，那裏的中低收入階層經常打車；此外，巴黎還有大片區域事實上打不到車。這種“高端化”的結果與另一個受監管行業的經歷驚人的相似，那就是民航業，後者在許多年裏也曾僅爲商務旅客和富裕階層服務，直到去監管化和互聯網使得廉價航空公司的興起先是成爲可能、而後變得不可阻擋。這顯然爲優步的發展提供了參照。

But the problem of the French driver’s pension remains. The American economist Gordon Tullock described “the transitional gains trap”: the policy of restricting numbers is foolish but cannot be abandoned without wiping out the hard-earned savings of drivers. One might have less sympathy for investors; most New York cabbies rent rather than own licences. In Dublin, the Irish government established a hardship fund to help compensate drivers who had been counting on the value of the licence to supplement their retirement income, or had recently taken out a loan to purchase a licence. Politicians should beware of policies that are easy to implement and costly to reverse.

但法國出租車司機的退休金問題依然存在。美國經濟學家戈登•塔洛克(Gordon Tullock)描述了“暫時性收益陷阱”(transitional gains trap)：限制數量的政策是愚蠢的，但無法在不使司機辛苦攢下的積蓄化爲烏有的前提下拋棄這一政策。人們對投資者或許就沒這麼多同情心了；紐約的出租車司機大多租用牌照，而不持有牌照。在都柏林，愛爾蘭政府成立了一個扶困基金，爲那些原本依靠牌照價值來補充退休收入、或剛爲購買牌照而貸了一筆款的司機提供經濟上的幫助。政界人士應提防那些容易執行、但要付出高昂成本才能撤銷的政策。