The Jitney Case Solution

The average driver wastes 375 liters of gasoline a year, which adds up to $1160 per year in rush hour traffic. In today’s world, these statistics are not only outrageous, but also unacceptable. Even in the early twentieth century people had begun to figure out what was necessary in order to increase the efficiency of traffic flow throughout large cities, such as New York, Atlanta, and Los Angeles, which were the main cities first exposed to the Jitney Bus. The first “Jitney”, created by L.P. Draper in Los Angeles, was at first a simple offer from one man to another for a five cent ride to go a short distance. In less than a year, the business took off nationwide, with 62,000 Jitneys being driven every day (Mitchell). The influence of the Jitney …show more content…
As previously mentioned, a few businesses have created applications for smartphones that provide quick and easy methods of transportation by car or SUV. Like the Jitney, governments attempted to regulate Uber when it was first released. Case writes, “There were lawsuits and regulatory challenges in nearly a dozen states” (Case 161). In France, Uber employees were arrested and charged with illegally operating a taxi company (Case). The difference with Uber compared to the other solutions is that Uber intends to have zero help from the government. If the government assists Uber, the company will suffer from extra regulations that would not benefit the consumers in the long run. Uber, like the other new smartphone companies, desires to find a way to efficiently get “a lot more people in a lot fewer cars” (TED). With the launch of UberPool in Los Angeles, 7.9 million miles were taken off the roads in just one year, and the beginning of the new age of carpooling was upon the …show more content…
Since the first train in the early 1800s, entrepreneurs and businesses around the world have worked to improve the worlds methods of transportation. It has overall been a success, but throughout the years too many individuals have switched to personal cars, and there has ended up being almost as many cars as there are people in the United States. Governments must sacrifice regulations on certain businesses in order to allow them to increase their services to more citizens throughout the country and, in turn, increase the number of shared cars per day. The government must be careful to not do to Uber what it did to the Jitney or the country may never fix the problem that is plaguing highly populated cities, and instead “defer to the judgment of consumers and let the marketplace determine who survives, or side with existing firms and trap newcomers in a tangle of crippling regulations. The short life and death of the jitney in its earlier incarnation shows what happens when policymakers interfere with innovation”