Momentum Beats Control: Ground Transportation • NYC Taxi & Limo / Matthew Daus

Momentum Beats Control

What really happened when Uber disrupted the taxi industry?

In this episode of unNatural Selection, host Nic Encina sits down with Matthew W. Daus – the longest-serving Chair of the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission and one of the world’s leading experts on transportation regulation and mobility technology.

This conversation goes far beyond taxis.

Together, they unpack how Uber and app-based mobility fundamentally changed transportation, regulation, labor, politics, and consumer expectations – and why the disruption succeeded so rapidly. From immigrant-built taxi fleets and medallion economics to Silicon Valley strategy, generational shifts, lobbying, AI, driverless vehicles, and the future of mobility, this episode reveals the deeper evolutionary forces shaping modern industries.

A masterclass on disruption, regulation, innovation, and what happens when technology moves faster than society can adapt.

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• 📃 Read the full transcript with Matt

  Nic (00:00)

  Matt, welcome to a natural selection.

  Matt (00:02)

  Good to be here.

  Nic (00:04)

  It's I'm really eager for it. And I love your background too, right? It makes it very active.

  Matt (00:06)

  was very natural to be here.

  Yeah, it's a let's get so new and old at the same time something that we're gonna talk about today, right?

  Nic (00:18)

  And I mean, yeah, to your point, I mean, the old is obviously it's something that was a drastic disruption that happened in society just within our lifetimes, but it has huge implications for where society is going with disruption, technology, innovation, and so on. So I think there are a lot of gems that can come out of this conversation. So thank you very much for being here. I'm just going to start with a signature question to give. I give every guest the opportunity to just kind of tell us from their perspective what motivates them.

  So could you please tell us Matt, what need or impact drives your work?

  Matt (00:50)

  Well, it's not just about the money for me. It never really was. For me, it's about making change and tackling difficult issues and bringing people together to do that in a collaborative setting. And the various hats I wear now allow me to do that. And even when I was working for the government, I went to the government to help people. I worked there for 20 years. ⁓ Didn't start out that way. I ⁓ had no interest in transportation when I was growing up. mean, yes, I played with trains.

  I played, you know, ⁓ you know, I had a bike, I had a scooter, but there's a lot of people in my field that are like, they're living and breathing it like this is what they wanted to do when they were a kid, right? Yeah. It wasn't like that for me at all. I was a musician who wanted to end up going to law school when my band didn't get signed and ⁓ I had long hair spandex. I was, you know, opening some big acts and it fell apart and

  I went to law school, become an entertainment lawyer, came out and realized I didn't want to do that because it was not that it was just too hard. It wasn't what I wanted to do. They were all agents. So I pivoted. did some medical malpractice and some personal injury work and I hated it. And then I ended up working and pivoting to go into the civil rights field, you know, working for the government, became a human rights prosecutor. And ⁓ I kind of backdoored my way into transportation, had no desire to get into it at all. I was working for

  a lady, McGrath McKinney, who was my boss. She was commissioner of an anti-poverty agency. So I went from human rights. I got a background in employment law. ⁓ I have a degree from NYU Law in that area. And I was going to basically do that type of work. then when I met her, I was working for her as her general counsel. And she became the taxi commissioner and brought me with her. So that's how I ended up where I am. ⁓ before that, I had some experience

  helping to get the mafia out of organized crime out of private sanitation, you right before I went to TLC, working for Randy Mastro, who was just at a stint as the first deputy mayor. So long story short, it grew on me. Like I didn't go into this, I kind of followed the leader. I followed a person I liked working for and I was a government lawyer. And it's amazing how when I became commissioner of the agency,

  using my management skills and my legal skills for as the longest serving taxi and limousine commissioner after my boss retired and I was appointed. ⁓ We went into a lot of different areas I never thought we'd get into and I ended up loving it because we were building things. We're making changes to an industry and which we could have done a lot more honestly if it wasn't for government bureaucracy, right? It's a very political position. So people who don't understand the world of being a transportation regulator, it's all about

  politics and people and management and pushing the envelope and getting them accustomed to reform. It's an industry like, and there's a lot of industries and transportation out there. could argue that the bus industry, the taxi industry need to be disrupted because they just got set in their ways. And when I was at the helm, we were doing things that are unlike what's happening now. We were just doing basic stuff. I mean, I was basically told, you know, we're protesting you. want you to resign because we don't want to put credit cards in the camps.

  So think about that. I mean, we're not talking about driverless cars back then. We're not talking about Uber. We're not talking about AI. We're talking about doing simple things. And everything was a battle because the transportation industry on the full higher side, black cars, limousines, taxis, and even buses, it's shrouded in all these regulations that kind of make divisions between subgroups and sub modes. And I really relished getting things done and making big changes.

  and getting people on board to make those changes. It's an art form. And then you have to deal with the private sector and the government, which is a whole other animal. And then the politics and the media layered on top of that made it a very challenging position. Remember, like the taxi and limousine commissioner gets an outsized ⁓ public relations portfolio. I was on TV and in the press as much as the fire and the police commissioner, which shouldn't be the case when I was back in the day, but it was because taxis are a human story.

  They're always crashing into something or some human interest story happens. Someone returns lost property or the drivers are complaining that they're not getting enough money. ⁓ bringing technology into that industry was one of the things that really excited me. And my team did that in the early days before Uber. And then I was part of the disruption battle representing all the taxi commissioners around the world ⁓ and the industry at the time, which was aligned with

  regulators for the first time ever after I left government 16 years ago. So it was one of these things that I got excited and knowledgeable about many years later. It wasn't something that I was born with. I remember like yesterday riding my big wheel. Look, there were ways to get around. I didn't really think much about it and get passionate about it until I actually was kind of back-ended into it and loved the people.

  these immigrant businesses, a lot of them are people who came to this country with not a dime in their pocket and built something, whether it's the medallion system or these startups that are out there. It became very exciting after I left TLC actually, because that's when Uber was brought into the marketplace. But I was involved in it because I was representing the IETR, the International Association of Transport Regulators, which is a group of taxi and ride-hill commissioners and now robotaxi commissioners all over the world.

  So I got thrust into that battle ⁓ after leading an incompetent industry where we put the television screens and GPS and data and credit cards into the cabs for the first time. Back then in the late 90s and early 2000s, even when I was experimenting with telematics in the vehicles and the cameras, it was revolutionary back then. But then when Uber came along, they with their disruption movement changed everything in mobility.

  because they were the first ones to land a lot of private sector money to say there's something here. And they originally wanted, I think, the data. You know, it was originally about the data. Bezos and others invested in these companies because they wanted to get the data that the smartphone could collect. Now you can get the data from anywhere. But back in the day, that was the original reason why a lot of these companies had these big investments. But that fueled everything else that followed. Every single startup that's out there that's doing things like VIA and the shared mobility,

  they're doing with their shared rides and the algorithms. We tried to do that during the transit strike and we shared rides mandatorily when I was working for the city for Mayor Bloomberg. ⁓ Now it's a business model that they use technology to do that. You have software platforms that are a dime a dozen, non-emergency medical transportation, dispatch systems. Uber and the disruption created got so many private equity people and investors interested in this space, they never were before. And that

  really is what makes it exciting. So to this day, it's not the same. No one's trying to replicate what Uber did anymore. It's kind of like settle down now, right? So there's different business models here and there with apps around the world, but now they're moving into other areas, but investors know the industry now and Silicon Valley, and they understand when they're investing that transportation is a growth industry. And that has fueled a lot of the changes. So that's what makes it exciting since I left.

  It's actually even more exciting because I could say what I want. I'm not scripted by government speak or being a talking head, as David Byrne would say. But it was a wild time when I was there. And what's nice is that I have these different perspectives now, Nick. I'm a business person. I'm a lawyer, represent the companies. I'm an academic. I'm transportation technology chair at the City University of New York. I put out several reports every year on anything from the airport or the future, the insurance crisis.

  drug and alcohol testing from the mundane to the lively stuff like the automated vehicle stuff that we're doing now. I have a workforce development program that we do for Waymo at the university. the thing that excites me about regulation these days is ⁓ I'm leading the regulators around the world and educating them through the ITR. we have a lot of reports and best practices out there. And a lot of people would take the taxi job

  in government years ago as a dead end street. There was no place to go after it. There's no job opportunity. It was usually a punishment. If you did something wrong, okay, we'll make you the taxi director. there weren't, but now after Uber, there's all these young kids that want to make a career as transportation wonks working as regulators of the ground transportation industry. So interest in this field was elevated. All the ships rising we spoke about,

  All the ships rose when Uber disrupted the marketplace. And, know, I was public enemy number one back then. Now we're very friendly because there's a different leadership, but there really was no other way they could have done it. You know, they, they, they, there was so much regulation that we would not be here where we are today with all these investments and all these different companies if they didn't violate the law. And if I was a man of law and order, I'm a lawyer, a former regulator. And I kind of, and it's amazing how in the early parts of these battles, Nick,

  They were saying, well, you're in bed with the industry, all this other stuff, fighting technology innovation. was like, are you kidding me? Did you ever look and see? would constantly, regulators always battling with the industry. The taxing industry hated me at the time. They respected me, but they hated me because ⁓ I'm a regulator. They don't want to be regulated and they do. They want regulation to protect them, but they don't want stuff that's going to cost them money.

  parts of the industry don't need to be regulated, Nick, as much as others. Like limousine industry is a high-end industry. If they're not on top of their game with good insurance, good ⁓ high rates that entertainers and corporate execs are willing to pay, you almost don't need regulation as much there. You need the regulation when it comes to the retail services that are the profit margins are very, very thin. Taxis, liveries, some smaller companies. ⁓

  You know, those are the companies that need regulation, need to be watched, but there's been over regulation. When I was a regulator, I never thought that. But when I got out, when I started doing studies and representing the industry, I realized that, you know what, for technology and innovation to advance, we really need to have the right regulation. Not too much. It needs to be smart. There needs to be guardrails there. Shouldn't favor any one company. And even more so now, like the governance problem is a big issue. Like in my world.

  There's no super agency like London's TFL or Singapore's LTA or DeVizor TTA. The closest thing we have to that is San Francisco's ⁓ transit agency where they have mostly everything except for ride handling under their repertoire. The system is broken when it comes to who's in charge of regulating in the United States. There are agencies that regulate public transit and my members of ITR, the people that do what TLC does, it could be anything from the Chicago Consumer Affairs Commission.

  the Department of Motor Vehicles in a particular state, the Public Utilities Commission, the police department in Atlanta. And some of these people don't have the political power that I had when I was commissioner. ⁓ I had the biggest agency, the most enforcement of anybody else in the country. had ⁓ my own political connections, so I was able to get things done that other people couldn't get done. ⁓ So it's been a wild ride, but what fuels me is making change and seeing that change

  have concrete benefits, whether it's saving people money, making lives better for drivers and small business owners, and more importantly, saving lives. I walked away from TLC knowing that the things that we did saved lives. So if I were to pass away tomorrow or leave this earth somehow, I kind of feel like I've already done a lot of stuff working. I did my time working for the government, helping save lives through a lot of the reforms that we did, but there's still many more lives to save. Car crashes still occur.

  They kill a lot of people every year. The driverless car concept ⁓ needs to be managed well because there's benefits, but there's also challenges there with the workforce and politics. ⁓ And technology has already transformed things in the last 20 years. And I think it's going to revolutionize things moving forward in this industry. That's what gets me out of bed in the morning. It's not all about the money. It's certainly not. ⁓ I just like being in the middle of making positive change. And over the last 16 years since leaving,

  I kind of feel like I've been more impactful honestly than when I was in the government because in the government you got your hands tied half the time. You can't do this, you can't do that. It's reelection ⁓ year. And it's one of the most difficult jobs. Even my successors and predecessors would all agree at TLC. It's not just being a policy wonk and understanding and getting data to understand the industry. You're managing people that all are in competition with each other. There's a lot of different sub industries. It's like peeling an onion.

  And then all those industries have drivers and rental companies and all these different, it's a maze. And balancing that politically involves balancing and understanding human capital and politics. And I've been on transition teams for the mayor. told this incoming mayor's transition people, pick somebody, and I'm glad they did. They picked Midori, who is great, who's gonna take my old job. ⁓ They pick someone who can talk to people even if they disagree with them.

  You don't want to pick someone who's got a particular interest that's too pro this, too pro that. A regulator has to be like a parent with a bunch of children and treats them all equally ⁓ and allows them to do their own thing, but doesn't get in the way. And that's the philosophy that I've developed over the years. And that's the recipe for success. But it's a world that a lot of people don't know and understand. And the job is a lot more difficult than people think it is.

  Nic (15:05)

  Well, I mean, it sounds like it. And this is, mean, you said so many things in the intro that I'm like, whoa, whoa, really? No kidding. mean, yeah, I mean, we could unpack so much of that. mean, so first of all, I would have guessed that as commissioner of this regulatory body, you'd be more in a position of like setting rules and defining laws. It sounds to me like you are much more of like a referee.

  Matt (15:15)

  Are we done yet?

  Nic (15:33)

  Like you stood between competing forces, the drivers and regulators and companies and so on. And you were charged with trying to find like a common ground where everybody could agree on something that maybe or maybe not had a commonality. And so you were, you know, it a very political space, very much focused on trying to find common ground and trying to kind of pave a way for, you know, society to keep moving forward. But you weren't necessarily coming in with like a hammer and saying like, this is how it's done. Is that

  Matt (16:03)

  Well, in the early days, we did kind of have a hammer. So let me unpack that. You know, I mean, it's a big difference being the boss and being, you know, an advocate, right? So when I was lawyer, it was very different. The commissioner that I was working for was coming in with a hammer. And sometimes, you know, if they had an enemy in the industry, they wouldn't talk to them. I had a very different management style than that. But I was on the side of

  of being the lawyer for the hammer coming down in the 90s when we had the big taxi strikes and we put real important reforms that have made elevated New York City's industry to heights of safety and professionals when we haven't seen ever before. mean, when I took over as commissioner, it was a very different ⁓ dynamic and I kind of brought my own ⁓ political and management experiences to the table. But at that time in the 90s, know, the drivers were running amok.

  there were lot of recidivists. There were people that were committing havoc and the people that were working at the TLC were very left leaning road driver. mean, they were letting criminals out on the road when I first took over his council. I mean, they were just felt bad for everybody. And we went in the other direction because my boss and the administration was like, we want unsafe drivers off the road. And we had to reform that whole process by which people...

  who have committed serious crimes or arrested for them could be suspended or convicted and have their licenses revoked. We also put mandatory drug testing in place, a point system to capture all those. And there was only maybe about 10 or 20,000 drivers, maybe 10,000 drivers at the time that were out of control. There was no repercussions for them if they blew red lights, if they harassed passengers. I think the fine for bribery was $100.

  That's what the fine was. DWI was $150 fine if you didn't get arrested for it. Like there was crazy stuff and we fixed all that and there was a huge taxi strike. We were sued by everybody and we came out of it. We won all the lawsuits and the industry thanked us years later for doing that. Now when I took over it was different. The industry was running like

  Nic (18:12)

  So

  the taxi industry was they sued you because you were doing the right thing. I mean, it sounds to me like trying to penalize people driving drunk and committing these crimes. It's the right thing to do to change that and make it a little bit stricter. But you got sued because the taxi companies didn't like that.

  Matt (18:29)

  Yeah, they don't like change. mean, it's not even just the taxing. was all the, was the livery companies, the limousine. Everybody ganged up on me. Like this happens every once in a while. Like ⁓ I call it in my classes with my students, the perfect storm. You know, it was the perfect storm and we were able to get the reforms done because there was a media, a lot of media attention being focused on it. There was a very high profile crash between two cabs on Lexington Avenue where

  a woman had her legs severed and a baby went into a coma in a stroller. It was the tipping point. And this happens from time to time. You'll see every once in a while, there's a big public tragedy or a crash or people reach their breaking point on an issue, whether it's the border and immigration with the last election. There's usually something like big that happens in the media fuels that that happened in this industry ⁓ in the 90s, in the late 90s, where New Yorkers that had enough, the drivers are out of control. They're not listening. They're

  driving like maniacs, no one's doing anything about it. And then we had this crash and a New York Times reporter and Scott Stringer, who used to be the controller and an assemblyman, put out a report that crashes are on the rise and I call it the perfect storm. He got attention for that report. And then, you know, we had this media that was doing selective reporting. Every crash of every cab was reported every day, making it look a lot worse than it actually was. But that gave

  the mayor and the TLC and my former boss an opportunity to go in there and make changes at once because we had the winded our sails from a public relations standpoint. All four editorial boards, I challenged you, well, we had four editorial boards back there. I think it was like the Sun, the Post, the Daily News and the Times. All four editorial boards supported what we did with all these tough reforms. And that rarely happens in government or politics. So my instructions were,

  come up with as many reforms from City Hall as you could, and let's put them all at once and throw everything against the wall and see what sticks. I came up with 13 reforms that my boss put forward, and 12 of the 13 passed. The other one was a surety bond thing, which I still don't fully understand, but there was like, we raised the insurance, we did drug testing, raised the fines for serious offenses, put a point system in place, mandatory drug testing, mandatory defensive driving.

  We elevated and fixed the industry overnight, but the industry never had changed before like this ever. They weren't used to it. So their natural knee jerk reaction of a regulated entity is everything's working well for me now. I got my profit margins. Let's not upset the apple cart. And that's their knee jerk reaction. And it hasn't changed that much. Now it's like the new entrance that have not dominating the market like Uber and Lyft. They're quick to sue when something happens now that they took over, but that's like kind of the.

  the backdrop to what happened before I took over. Because when I took over the industry, honestly, we were in autopilot. We had fixed a lot of these problems. And when Bloomberg, when I first got appointed and when Bloomberg reappointed me, we had the luxury of actually bringing the industry to the next level, you know, giving drivers a living wage, putting hybrids on the road, putting the technology in the cabs, getting our first data. I can't tell you, what the conversations used to be like in my office when the industry wanted a fair increase. Nobody had any data.

  The taxi owners had their data, the drivers had their data or their claims that they weren't making enough. ⁓ The owners would say that the drivers are making plenty and the TLCs in the middle, but didn't have any data. So now with the GPS that I put into the cabs in the early 2000s, it's almost like that debate has gone away. We have the data, we know who's making what. Now we could make those decisions ⁓ more thoughtfully. So that was a big, big change.

  So, and the data has assisted in investigations, it's helped the regulator understand the industry better. And that data is so important because in the future, if we really want this industry to operate as a solution and not a problem, because there's a lot of anti-car sentiment out there by people who are big policy makers and decision makers from the USDOT on down. You know, a lot of these big cities are anti-car.

  I'm a big believer that we should not be anti-car. Maybe we should have less cars, they should be cleaner, maybe they should be safer, but they're not gonna go anywhere. They're like, you know, it's like the cockroaches are gonna be here after you and I are gone, Nick. Okay, I don't wanna compare it to a cockroach, because I love cars. But there's a way by which they develop and work in an ecosystem and the data is the key to that. When the government has a data platform, like I helped put into place with LADOT with the MDS specification.

  where they're able to track in real time the scooters and the bikes and the taxis in LA. Other countries have been doing this for years. Dubai has everything that moves on a screen in their office. And that's the only way that you can make meaningful connections. Because the future is you have a phone, you have a card or a chip, and everything's going to be connected, public and private. The way things have developed in the US in particular is that public transit is funded by the government. And anything that's public

  is separated from the private industry. The private industry was out in Iran. Now these worlds need to come together. And I think that's the exciting thing that's happening these days is that the future is about the data and the platforms and all the different modes plugging in what we call mobility as a service. There are some experiments out there, you know, where everything your trip from the beginning to the end is all on your phone. You can choose to take a walk to a bike to the subway and then take a taxi when you get off the subway.

  And it all could be managed from your app. It's a theoretical concept. It's being tested, but that's what the future is going to be. And driverless cars are probably going to be a part of that also. So these are exciting times. think the changes, Nick, that we're going through here in the last 10 years, in the next 10 to 20 years are as, as game changing as, know, when rail was first built or when the Model T was introduced, that's what's happening as soon as a revolution. So I got sucked into it it's exciting. And there's something new every day. Like in my law practice, we got like,

  one new company after another with a new idea and it's still exciting. There's still startups and people that are doing things with technology that's very exciting. And I think we're going to see more of that, whether it's driverless cars also and flying taxis, these things are real and they're happening. And it's moving at such a fast pace that it's almost like the regulators are and the industry are used to it by now. know, so things have changed. The perspective has changed.

  Nic (25:03)

  That's interesting. So if I I pick on that a little bit, ⁓ it is interesting that a lot of these organizations do see cars antagonistically. I mean, I live in Boston and ⁓ I'm split because I see them making new roads and sometimes I'll put like a bus only lane and bike only lanes and they'll diminish the amount of space that cars have. And it really like on the one side, I'm like, OK, great, because they promote public transportation and biking. But at the same time, like now I have congestion.

  and I'm stuck in traffic and there's a perfectly open lane that nobody's using and then people just end up violating the law and just driving on it because it's like I'm not going to sit in traffic when there's an open lane. ⁓ But it's interesting to see how much you've embraced this disruption, right? Because I would imagine your perspective was very different when you started seeing Uber kind of

  breaking out into the scene and starting to make its way into New York City. And by that point, you probably had seen it already, right? Because you were seeing what was happening in San Francisco, seeing what was happening in the West Coast. And now you're seeing it coming to New York. Was your perspective differently? And was the city's perspective and obviously the tax, know, what was kind of like that transition like when it first hit the scene? Obviously, like 20 years have passed and now you see it very differently. But when it first transitioned, what was it like back then?

  Matt (26:26)

  Well, yeah, it's a great question, Nick. And I could give you a couple of war stories about that. I think I wasn't ready for it mentally or well, maybe physically I was, but mentally I didn't see it at first. What was happening? I think I saw it evolving before the industry did. The industry did not see this coming, did not take it seriously at first. They got so accustomed to.

  having relationships with the regulators in all the cities and getting involved in politics that they thought that they could prevent somebody with a deeper pocket from coming in with an army of lobbyists from unending their world. And when all their friends were called at the last minute, the mayors that they've supported in campaigns for years, they turned their back on them because I call it again, this is a perfect storm of disruption that occurred. I call it a disruption of democracy at the time, but these are loaded words. ⁓ I was gonna write a book about that and then, ⁓

  the guy who wrote Super Pump beat me to it for the New York Times. But I never wrote the book, but I could write a whole book on what happened here. And it has a lot to do with the industry having been very comfortable with the regulatory scheme that they had that protected them and the regulators and their political connections. They weren't ready for number one, millions and millions of dollars in driver and customer subsidies being pumped into a startup like Uber. They weren't ready for the fact that politicians

  with millennials coming of age having elected ⁓ Barack Obama and being brought up with technology for the first time, ⁓ having a Robin Hood complex, which started with Occupy Wall Street. I saw this with my students at the time after I left the TLC and started teaching a lot of these younger folks. And it became a philosophy for them. And that whole generational thing, the people in Silicon Valley understood. Travis,

  my arch nemesis, the founder of Uber, and all of the folks that were there making these investments knew how the millennials were thinking. There's tons of marketing research and reports on what they want. And at the time, unlike now, these tech companies were not a dirty ⁓ word. Right now they are. And that's because of a lot of changes that happened with the progressives and the socialist movements.

  you know, painting the tech company as evil giants, right? That wasn't the case at the time. It was when I asked my students, class after class, Nick, I would ask the same question every semester. We're all getting to know each other. I said, you know, how do get around? What do you think of bikes? What do you think of taxis? What do you think of Uber? And everybody hated cars. Most of the people didn't have cars except that they lived on Staten Island. And they would come to my class and I would ask them, well, how do you...

  How many of you went to occupy Wall Street? Like 75%. You know, couldn't find a job when they get out of school and they were all protesting, right? And mad at the banks, mad at the world. And I said, okay, so how do you get around? Well, I don't own a car, but I use Uber. I'm like, okay. Do you know who owns Uber? Do you know who invests in it? Yeah, but they are taking care of us. I said, what do mean by that? Well, they're giving us jobs. They're like, in their, the mentality of the millennia was like, this is our time.

  Nic (29:17)

  You

  Matt (29:43)

  Now it's different with Gen Z. We see what's happening right now politically. It's gone in very different direction. But at that time, it was about the millennials coming of age with technology. And this is a good thing. Taxis think they take too long. They can't get them on time. They don't show up. Here's something that works for me and I'm used to my smartphone. So this has been something that revolutionized things. the people that I know in the industry, they're all on Facebook.

  Okay, they're not on Instagram like this. Like depending on what your age is, and a lot of these companies are owned by older people that, you know, these are family owned businesses that have been passed down through generations. They just weren't ready for the tech disruption. And by the time they got their app together, they could have stopped this early on if they got one app for the industry. And it took them seven years to do it. And by then it was too late and everybody was trying to divide and conquer. That was part of the problem too.

  The industry, everybody had their own app and everybody, every taxi company wanted to have an exclusive deal with that app. That's what destroyed and allowed Uber to go right through that defense on the ball field. And it was a wake up call for me because for the first two years when this started happening, I was given an offer. mean, Travis Kalanick tried to hire me. I turned him down several times. ⁓ I don't regret it. ⁓

  because I don't think I would have lasted long because I was one of, I never would have gone into or bought into that disruption thing where you violate the law. So I ended up representing and helping the incumbent industry, which was, they didn't trust me at first. Remember I was a regulator and the regulators against the new entrance because we felt that we played out of roadmap for them and model regulations I put together when they first came on the marketplace. And I said, look, someone's got to be licensed here.

  You can't just claim that you're a platform. You either have to partner with someone who has a license or you need to get a license yourself. In New York City, because my successors stopped them in their tracks, they were forced to get a license. Everywhere else, they were either operating without a license or they got the state law changed to have their business model fit like a glove and to make everybody who's a competitor not be able to benefit from the transportation network company model, which is a self-regulation model.

  So when Uber came on the scene, when Uber and Lyft finally got organized and they started just disrupting markets, they finally got an army of lobbyists and lawyers to go and change the laws at the state level and take up the power away from the local regulators, but allowed the local regulators to continue to regulate taxis. And to this day, they're still overly regulated and there's less regulation for them. So they got a competitive advantage from the laws. And now it became a huge mess because then years later, they want to work with the taxi industry.

  And when they tried these partnerships with curb and with a flywheel where you can get a taxi on the Uber app now, they were calling me saying, well, these laws are standing in the way. But the one, I'll never forget this one incident. I was in New Jersey with one of my associates who's a millennial, ⁓ really good lawyer ⁓ who was going to all the conferences with me. And I just didn't understand how

  the politicians and the legislators were all turning their back on the industry and we're just, everything is all about these TNCs and the ride handling and whatever they want. It's great because they were able to, the guy who took my package, made a lot of money, Brad Tusk. He ended up working for Uber and architecting this entire disruption movement. They were able to use the political tools that he used to get Mayor Bloomberg elected.

  the data to turn the constituents against the politicians if they kicked Uber out of the city. So it became this thing where they launched, people loved it. And if the regulators came in and tried to regulate them, they would say, I'm pulling out of the city. And they would get all of these thousands of people to write letters to politicians. That's what I call the disruption of democracy. ⁓ They basically used the democratic process

  to get the politicians to do what the TNCs wanted them to do, the right handling companies. And then eventually later on, years later returned with Amazon getting big in the pandemic and the progressive movement going anti-Silicon Valley, the bigger the company like Uber and these others, the more evil they are, right? So things have changed dramatically and it's gone in the other direction, but at the time they could do no wrong. I never forget, I came back from this conference, I gave a speech in New Jersey, I'm in the car with.

  with my associate and I said, let me ask you something off the record. You're a millennial, you're much younger than me. What the hell is going on here? mean, she's like, this is, and she basically kind of like validated what I thought that this was all about, like I believe, like a generational thing. It was a generational change and Uber is symbiotically aligned with.

  the millennial generation and them coming of age politically in the business world. And it was fueled by all of this private equity investment, Nick. And that's what happened back then. Now it's a different story. It's going in a different direction. To say that students are not radicalized and brainwashed in universities is ignorant. They are. I was,

  I was, I think I entered the university as a Republican, came out a Democrat. You know, I was in a political science major and philosophy major. They were always biased and now they're more biased than ever before. In my world, there's an anti-car bias. There's just no question about it. So the people that go to engineering schools and planning schools, the teachers all are anti-car, pro-bike. I think they've taken it to a point where it's completely unrealistic. You know, there needs balance in that philosophy.

  But the books, the textbooks, the things they learn, they come out and they get jobs in the private sector and the public sector now with an anti-car mentality. We're going to save the planet, save the world. And I would raise the issue, well, what if it's an EV? Well, it's still causing congestion and has all the externalities. There's an excuse for everything, but it's, I had one associate who works with me said, describe himself in an introduction that I was doing this and I was radicalized. mean, I'm radicalized into transportation policy.

  It's kind of radical. Look what happened in the streets of New York City. And the Bloomberg administration made a lot of those changes. But if you go to these conferences that I go to, a lot of people like to invite me to speak because I have a contrary opinion on a lot of stuff. I think bikes and scooters and all this stuff with e-cargo bikes is great. However, it needs to be balanced. ⁓ There needs to be a role for the car. It's not going anywhere. It can be clean. It can be safe. It could be part of the ecosystem.

  And I think that's something that I think the students are not getting exposure to that and the policymakers are. you know, it was the generational thing was like hit me like a hammer on the head. And once I realized that I knew what I was dealing with and I realized how smart the Silicon Valley people were and the research they did about who's going to sign up for these apps. And they also were very careful in setting up a business model that made it easier to onboard drivers.

  The business model would have failed if they didn't have their supplemental insurance, if they didn't have the high licensing fees and they didn't have the churn of the drivers where they could self-regulate them. Because the biggest issue in the industry is it takes forever to get a license, and you have to do background checks. by streamlining that process, were able to bring a lot, they were able to expand the pie with there being more customers, because people are now, it was easy to use, but they also brought more of the labor force in there until

  the business model imploded, which I had predicted it would happen, because you want to get the ride handling vehicles there as fast as you can. And to do that, you need more vehicles than are appropriate. know, there used to be years ago in the old days, there used to be studies on what are the right number of taxi cabs for a city. There was a whole cottage industry of consultants that made a living on this that completely evaporated when Uber came on the scene, because it's real time, you know, on demand.

  ⁓ you know, on demand ⁓ connections that you're making, which you couldn't do that in the old days without the technology. So when it comes to the ride hailing apps, ⁓ it all kind of started crumbling down when in New York City, they just got too big. You know, there was efforts to put a cap into place. The cap was put into place. ⁓

  You could argue that, you know, there's a debate that you could have whether you should ever have a cap or not. There's a lot of different ways that regulator can look at these things. But a lot of cities have had caps on taxis, but not on the right of vehicles. That's why companies like Uber and Lyft had a different approach to different markets. But the only market that they ended up having a different business approach outside of Europe and London was New York City, because they had the Jews to stop them in their tracks. Everywhere else, they got the laws changed to their benefit. But in New York City,

  They had a play ball on an equal playing field with everybody else to some extent. And I think the lesson learned there is that, you know, it got too big with too many drivers to the point where the drivers are making so much money at the beginning because of the surge pricing and, the double and the triple fares during rush hour that people got so intoxicated with having a car show up in less than a minute that you needed more cars to do that. But then simple economics, supply and demand.

  got too many, then the drivers earn less. And that's kind of what happened in New York and it's happened in different cities. So we're kind of back to square one where we were in the great depression. You know, when we first capped the number of taxi medallions, because everybody was out of work and the Haas Act was passed at which from the 1930s up until, you know, ⁓ 1990s, the number of cabs was exactly the same. It was frozen in time. So these are the issues that, that regulators deal with. This is our world and knowing

  to balance all those interests is not just math and it's not just understanding politics, generations, media. It's understanding people. think I was successfully able to get a lot of things done when I was there because ⁓ I was able to sit down with people and they would respect me after a meeting because if we were making a change and we disagree with what the industry was doing, if there's one or two groups, I would have a conversation with them and treat them like

  with respect that they deserve as business owners being regulated. Sometimes when government plays their cards close to the vest, they don't want anybody to know about what they're doing. They just announce stuff, make it up in their own little ivory towers and put it out there. And then realize after they proposed it, it's a disaster. It's not going to work. When you're regulating someone, they should be part of the decision-making process. I used to have advisory boards. I used to bring people in and unless I was told not to by City Hall, would basically, you

  talked to them before we made the policy and after we made our decisions. And I think that's the key to success in terms of managing a system where there's all these people fighting with each other, all competing for the same book of business with different types of licenses and drivers and ⁓ cross pollination. everybody, the mindset of the industry is that they don't want anybody of confederates getting an unfair advantage. And then they're fine with like, but also they don't want.

  fees and prices to go up so that it eats into their profit margins. But as a regulator, your job is not only to make the right decision, but to be successful, to be able to convey that publicly, which I was very good at in the media, to make the sale and to deal with the opposition. But more importantly, and this is why the people in the industry respect me and hearted me years later, is because ⁓ even though we disagreed and we had battles to the point where some of my...

  Clients now actually looking to get me fired back in the day because it was in their best interest. Believe it or not, some of the people from Uber who made millions and millions of dollars, I could have made $40 million, but I lost it all to my friend, Brad Tusk, who signed the deal. know, all these people, the biggest compliment is they came to my office and hired me to work for them after they made money on Uber. So I feel like, you it doesn't have to be personal. And I think in this today's environment politically,

  It's very easy to make it personal and to get on your high horse and say, this is my philosophy and you don't agree with my philosophy then to hell with you, I'm going to cancel you and you're dead to me. That's not how the real world, if you want to make positive change in any industry that's regulated, you need to be able to make sure that everybody's voice is heard. And there's no reason why you can't have a con, even if it's a difficult conversation, you're not going to get the fair increase that you asked for. And here's why, but we might be able to work on it.

  People appreciate that. And we're taking the humanity out of things with text messages and with people in government having a wall that they're afraid to talk to anybody. This has created a problem where they're concerned that they're going to be accused of something or get in trouble for something. The procurement rules for giving out contracts has been so cumbersome that it makes it impossible for you to even pick the right person, let alone the length of time it takes to do a rulemaking at the federal government or to give out contracts.

  I think we need, like Michigan has done recently, we need like an economic development arm. for regulated industries, I feel very strongly about this. You need like an entity that's quasi-governmental that can operate like the private sector does and understand them. And economic development corporations all around the country in different cities, they do that. They don't have all the same procurement rules. They don't have the same restrictions. They can have a meeting with somebody and cut a deal.

  but also due to due diligence like a private company would and reach out to people. I think that's what we need in the future of regulation of transportation, especially this industry, not, you know, bureaucratic agencies that don't talk to each other. And that was a big takeaway for me. I feel that we got a lot of, I could have gotten a lot more stuff done if it wasn't for politics, but I feel like we got a lot done during my tenure because of that philosophy of openness and collaboration and listening to the industry.

  before, during, and after rulemaking proceeding. ⁓ you know, and lawsuits happen. You can't take them personally. You know, I've been sued a million times, you

  Nic (44:32)

  It like you brought people along in the process, You allow them to have a voice in the final decision, whether they like the final decision or not, they still were a part of that process versus you just delivering the outcome and saying, live with it. Exactly. Right. And so like you were much more into managing human relations than you were in just coming up with policy. ⁓ But it's interesting when you, you you mentioned a couple of things there. You mentioned a lot of things that really interesting, but ⁓ Uber, they,

  optimized relentlessly and removing friction from the system. And I remember, I mean, I'm old enough to remember taxi cabs and riding that and it wasn't the best experience. That what the taxi cabs had going for them at the time was it was essentially a monopoly. There was no alternative. If you wanted to get from point A to point B, you had to call a cab and then you had to deal with like the inefficiencies. You have to call a phone number. They may or may not show up. The person may or may not be kind.

  Matt (45:23)

  It's still like that by the way, Nick, in some cities. don't, don't, it's still like that.

  Nic (45:27)

  But you know, my perspective is like, you know, nobody, don't think anybody misses, you know, taxi cabs, you know, from the way it was back in like the nineties and early two thousands. And so I think that industry was ripe for disruption. What Uber did was they they innovated fiercely, rapidly across multiple vectors, right? They innovated across like

  ⁓ a brand, the customer experience, the process, the structure, the network. And so it made it actually almost impossible for the taxi industry to be able to compete because even if you could keep up on one of these vectors, you're being attacked on four or five at the same time, leveraging technology. And like you said, approaching a demographic of people that were ready to embrace technology and get rid of this friction.

  And another thing that they did from my perspective is they also, they enlisted kind of like, they lobbied the consumer. They're like, if we take over the market fast enough and people are like, just they're clamoring for our technology, regulators won't be able to take it away. Like if we're big enough or we're penetrated deep enough, then like good luck trying to get rid of us. Like it's just not gonna happen at that point because more of a conversation. you know, first of all, does this resonate like my perspective again, from the outside in,

  I'm taking just a naive approach and this is how I see it, but obviously you have much more depth in what actually happened during the time.

  Matt (46:53)

  Well, most of what you said resonates. So the one thing I do want to do is now it's I guess it's time for me to defend the taxi industry. Yeah. You know, I think, you know, I love the taxi industry. ⁓ You know, what I love about it. ⁓ It was the job for immigrants who came to the city to build something in the United States and the medallion system was not a bad thing. You know, it just it was mismanaged at some point. And that's what led to a lot of the problems that

  we had in New York after I had left, well after I had left. But ⁓ the system was working for many, many years. And what was nice is that you have people from different countries. And I used to get cab rides with people who were doctors in India and surgeons and lawyers in different countries. And it's nothing new. The family members of mine were mayors and lawyers in Italy. And they came to work here. And I had to work on the docs in the 40s and the 50s because I had the same opportunities.

  initially. And that's what the cab industry was, a place to go, safe place where the immigrant communities, they come and you can always follow the immigration trends. In the early days, was the Jews, the Irish and the Italians. And then as the immigration patterns changed, we got a lot of Southeast Asians and people from the Caribbean and Haitians and ⁓ people from all other parts of the world. They became ⁓ part of the community. And what's beautiful about it, and it's a great New York, but great USA story, is that

  You what you come to this country and you need a job, what are you going to do? You're to go to your friends that are in the industry and they'll set you up in an apartment. You can go work with them and you make money. And then either you go on and do something else or it was the regulator's job. I thought to kind of give them a path to stay in the industry because you want experienced drivers. You want people that make, it's a lot of people take the job as you know, they, my father actually now that I'm thinking about it, he had a, he had a cab license. He never used it, but he had to show off his license and he used to show it to me.

  You know, when I was in his bedroom, I used to try to get him to quit smoking. So I go to his top drawer and try to find his cigarettes. And one day I found his license. I'm like, what is this? He's like, oh, that's my chauffeur's license in case I ever get laid off. And cops were actually behind the wheel in the 70s when crime was high and moonlighting as part of a program. People, if they got laid off, would use the taxi industry to get a job. People came to this country. It's a stepping stone to something else. But a lot of people decided to stay for whatever reason.

  And the regulator's job, I think, is to kind of make there be a path. And the medallion system and the leasing system had a step process in the taxi industry where you can go from renting for $12 shifts to owning the car and renting the medallion for six months, making more money. And the ultimate goal is to buy the medallion, have other people work for you and build fleets. All these fleet owners that are out there, which is the beautiful American story, are people that were immigrants and they're

  grandfathers and great grandfathers and grandmothers were the ones that built the companies and passed it along to the kids. The downside to that is that when you have a family-run business, the parents usually try to get in the way and the kids want to make changes with technology and the parents don't let them do it until they're completely out. And they're never really completely out. I've seen family disputes all over the world with taxi companies. So I love the small business immigrant aspect of the taxi industry. And did they get comfortable? Did they get used to things the way they were? Yes.

  But they were outgunned and out-renewvered by the money. They couldn't compete with the ride-hailing companies and the billion. The turning point was the 250 million that Travis raised back in the day to basically change all the laws. And they were outnumbered and their hands were tied. The laws that the ride-hailing companies are breaking with impunity in the early days, the tax industry to their credit would not break the law.

  The law was what it was, but those laws tied their hands. They couldn't do a smartphone app to compete with the right alien companies, even if they wanted to. They were stuck and they were outnumbered. So it was the money, it was a moment in time that doesn't exist anymore. And just like I said, like when we had the perfect storm that led to reforms that made the industry better, this was a perfect storm that was created by the millennial generation, private equity investment, a new product, a new idea.

  some technology and outdated regulations that were not cut out for this new thing. And the regulations and the regulatory ⁓ paradigm being changed to basically pit one entity against the other. And look, if I was them, you know, I was working for the right on campus, I'd do the same thing. Let's go after the competition. But the taxi industry has a special place in my heart because they're still alive and kicking. They have been able to migrate to doing airport work. ⁓

  in most cities and do non-emergency medical transportation, Medicaid trips. ⁓ And that's what prompted Uber to partner with them, you because they weren't able to, with their business model, get the wheelchair accessible vehicles. So the taxi industry did it. In Seattle, for instance, the right-hill companies even paid the mayor a fund that they put together to have their competitors put the taxi industry ⁓ vehicles on the road with wheelchair ramps, because they didn't want to do it.

  When Uber and Lyft started going after that business too, they realized they needed the taxi industry. And that's where the partnerships that we had were started. wasn't just, it was a European thing also. It all started in Europe because Europe, unlike the US, shut down the ride-in companies. Very pro-labor, very pro-socialist. ⁓ And they had no other way to operate, but to work with the taxi industry. And rather than work with them directly, they worked with the taxi dispatch companies.

  the software companies that work with all the taxi industry. There's a company called AutoCab that they partnered with back then. That set the stage with all of this non-emergency medical transit, money and business opportunity being out there with Uber Health and other products. So that started the partnership and now they're on the platform working with Uber. So you could make this stuff up. I never in my wildest days would have thought Uber and all this stuff would have happened. And then years later, I never ever thought that they would be working together. But, ⁓

  Yeah, look, it's not all their fault. Maybe they could have been ahead of the curve and developed this themselves, but it's easier said than done. I just ask people to think about, put yourself in their shoes. You're a driver. You're working all these hours. You're a fleet owner. It's go and sit in a taxi fleet and see how it runs day to day. Cars coming in, coming out. The operational aspects of running a small business like that. Take up all your time. You don't have time to sit down.

  our money or resources, because the margins are so thin, to have a think tank and dream up a new app. And we're going to do this and we're going to... It just didn't exist. And when investors started to invest, they were more comfortable investing in a startup that would disrupt things than a legacy company that they don't trust is going to change anything, because their mindset is not change. They got accustomed to change with regulators started by New York, and they're still kind of accustomed to changes slowly. But

  That was what the, was a mindset issue. It was the way that these companies are structured, there's small amount of pop operations mostly. There are very few exceptions where big companies like Transdev and MV and big companies came in and started buying these companies. And even then when Transdev, a French company came in and started buying up all these companies in the taxi world before Uber was created, they didn't even brand it as Transdev. They told the company, we're going to buy you out. We're going to give you resources to do bids. We're going to.

  give you ⁓ resources to make your company better, but we want you to keep your local brand. And they would hire the person who sold the company as a consultant for years on end and never really changed anything because people are accustomed to their local taxi company. Maybe it was a mistake. I don't know. Now Ztrip is out there, which kind of like Bill George kind of, you know, bought some of what was left of those companies. And he's trying to do that same thing and reinvent the taxi industry right now. And there's like really good operators out there, but it's like a big resetting moment for the industry.

  redefining itself. And I think the non-emergency medical transit work and the airport work kept them alive. ⁓ And now we have the driverless car thing, which is another big disruption thing, which how it plays out, this is the next big storm that we're going to be facing. And it's starting to happen.

  Nic (55:23)

  Well, I'm glad you took it there because most of us that only experience this as a consumer, we saw this as a technological disruption. We saw this as a startup. We saw this as ⁓ Silicon Valley kind of eating up something that had a lot of friction, was inefficient. But you've actually turned it into a human story, right? There were real families. There were real individuals. There were real immigrants that were making a living out of this that were disrupted entire careers, entire livelihoods, entire

  retirement funds just disappeared effectively overnight for people that were by and large just doing what effectively the American dream was, right? Like coming here, working really hard because it's not like these taxi drivers who were sitting around and just kind of like being lazy. I mean, they'd be driving all hours of the night, potentially risking, you know, their, you know, safety as well because you just don't know who's going to get in your car. And so there's a real, ⁓ a human story.

  to this that we tend to overlook. And that happens in a lot of places where you think about disruption and Blockbuster or Kodak and in other places. At the end of the day, they're real people behind this. And so this is a really good transition because now regulation works at the pace of like civic evolution. ⁓ Innovation works at the pace of technological evolution.

  Like those two velocities are very different. And I often wonder like how can regulators possibly stay ahead of technology? Like by the time that you can sit around, have a conversation, maybe draft a law, that technology has already moved ahead light years, right? You can never stay ahead of that. So I don't think the solution is to throw a regulation out the window and say like, well, know, break things and move fast. ⁓

  And I think in some places it's easier to manage because like you might be able to break things and fix them and move fast and like let's say with Uber, but you can't do it in healthcare. You know, and I think companies like Theranos and others have learned the hard way. Like you can't do it in certain areas because you just can't break human health and then think you're going to fix it. ⁓ But that said, you know, we think about beyond Uber, I've heard about everything from the Uber model for

  flights and helicopters. I've also, obviously you mentioned a few times, ⁓ driverless cars, you so that now potentially disrupts the sharing economy because now you have cars, automated cars, you're removing further friction from the system because now the friction is humanity. You you have people now that need to take breaks and they have to have insurance or they need to, ⁓ you know, sleep and so on. You can now replace that with robots.

  So now if we take it back to the human side as well, first of all, I think there are a couple of things here. Number one is from a regulatory standpoint, how do you stay relevant with industry and technology that's consistently and constantly innovating at a pace that you just can't stay up, you can't keep up to, but you should because we can't throw safety out the window. And also we shouldn't throw people's livelihoods out the window. But how do you do it in such a way that you also don't restrain innovation because

  One of the things we need to realize is, let's say for example, AI, you might be able to say, we're gonna put regulation so that AI companies don't displace human beings in the process here in the US. And that's all well and good. But then now if you think about the US's competitiveness with respect to China or other countries that might not have those same policies, then in the long run, you're also putting the US at a disadvantage with respect to its competitiveness internationally.

  And I'm asking this question again from a naive perspective. I don't know what the answer is, but it's like there has to be some kind of middle ground where you can still protect the human aspect without hindering innovation or the U.S.'s competitiveness with other countries. And I don't know what that solution looks like. But what do you think about that perspective with respect to how regulators stay involved but enable innovation to still flourish?

  Matt (59:36)

  That's a great question. I think I'd like to quote Jurassic Park on this one, the phrase, life will find a way. ⁓ It's kind of the same thing, think, irrespective of regulation and politics and different forces in the marketplace. The American capitalistic spirit infects a lot of people at every level of this industry. And I've seen with my own eyes, the most successful folks are the ones that pivot.

  and are able to see what's coming two or three steps ahead of them and not be buried in their business plan with their head in the sand. And I see this all the time with my clients. one client that had one business model, the pandemic happened, and some of the best entrepreneurs are the ones who say, okay, we have this, it's not working, we have this, and let's do something different. I had an intercity bus company that everything just dried up, so they pivoted to doing shuttles for corporations. had a... ⁓

  delivery company I was representing with e-bikes that wanted to do a bike share, the city shut them down. They ended up doing delivery ⁓ worker rides and it's thriving in New York City after reaching a settlement with the city. those are the things that kind of happen on their own. look, I think Uber and Lyft, have also all of these diverse people working for them. mean, there's a lot of the same people, the immigrant community that work for the taxi industry also work in the limo industry, which is an

  incredibly diverse industry. And some of those same people work for Uber and Lyft. The problem is, that if you're, if you're one of the right heel drivers, there's not like a path for you to own something. Whereas in the taxi industry, there was a path to own something. And in the limo industry, there is a path to open your own company and own something. And that's the predominant model. There's like 10 or 12 big, big companies. And most of the industry are these small mom, pa shops with Uber and Lyft drivers, some of whom

  we're riding over black and said, I'm going to open my own company with five cars and they'll take some Uber and Lyft trips or they'll take some trips from, from Carrie and empire and some of the, and RMA and some of the big companies that what we call do affiliate work because all the limousine industry is probably the most, ⁓ successful, ⁓ most organized organic industries that devolved on its own, where there's an interstitial network of companies that all share business with each other on platforms, you know, cause every

  Every company is not in every city, but your clients expect that of you. And it's an incredible way that they've done that. So I almost feel like if regulators get out of the way to some extent, or even if they have regulations, people who are looking at these things who want to make a buck will always figure out a way to do it. And so even though there's no medallions, if you're working for Uber, there's a whole bunch of people in New York city who are making a lot of money opening their own rental companies.

  There's a cottage industry of rental companies where drivers bought permits from the TLC and they rent them out to all the drivers that drive for Uber and Lyft. And there's like five or six companies and even smaller ones where a driver has five cars that they own, like these mini fleets. And drivers have been able to make money. it's almost like life finds a way, like people are always gonna find a way to make money whether regulation is there or not.

  And then the problem is, that if people are relying on certain regulations to make a buck, if you change those regulations for some other reason, they get upset and they sue. This is the problem with having too many regulations and it's unavoidable. But the mindset and the political system where government regulates, it's never going to change in my opinion. It can be made a little bit better. The problem with technology and innovation and bringing it to driverless cars and flying taxis,

  Just like Howard Hughes, you if you watch the movie The Aviator, which is somewhat historically accurate, ⁓ there's a lot of crashes that occur, you know, when he was when they were experimenting with planes, like everybody's forgotten about that. But it was front page news all the time. And and you have to take one step forward and ten steps back whenever there's a driverless car crash or a scooter crash or something happens. The media tends to pile on and make it 20 times worse. And then the person who's regulating gets fired.

  And that's what is standing in the way is the political accountability is a good thing, but it's also a bad thing when, so government is petrified at moving because they move at a slower pace in general. But if they're always thinking in their mind, how do I not lose my job? That is, it's usually not nine out of 10 times, not a conspiracy. It's not corruption, even though it happens. It's usually CYA covering your assets, right? And I think that is the problem with regulation in every industry, but in particular in this industry,

  You know, the regulators, when Uber and Lyft came on the scene, were in a catch-22 situation. They were concerned that if they wanted their bosses, right, like the governor and the mayor, were supportive of them, right, and they wanted them to operate, but at the same time, they knew if they allowed them to come in too quick, the regulators that worked for these politicians would be fired on the spot if they opposed these companies coming in or...

  if they allowed them to come in and they killed somebody. So that's kind of the mindset. There was a catch-22 at the beginning of this movement where the low-level bureaucrats didn't know what to do. They didn't know whether to shut the right-hailing companies down or to allow them to come in. Either way, they were screwed. Like they felt that if they shut them down, the lobbyists would get to their boss, and this has happened multiple times. There are regulators who have been fired because they refused to allow these companies to come in with breaking the law.

  And the millennials were the ones that were behind this in many ways. I don't mean to besperse millennials. ⁓ But the millennials are the ones that do all the work. OK, politicians have staff. The staff is usually much younger. All the people that I talked about previously, that were enthralled with all this stuff, those are the people that have the ears of the senators, the congress members, the mayors. I saw it with my own eyes. I was in a meeting with the mayor of Miami and the chief of staff.

  You know, it was outside the door listening to everything. And he kept mentioning, well, my chief of staff said this and he said that. And we went to D.C. and it was great. So they get in the ears and the heads of. So so don't underestimate Gen Z, because the same thing is happening now with the progressives, the Green New Deal, ⁓ you know, giving driver wages, fighting the autonomous vehicle movement. These are the things that are playing out right now. And and we're going to have these crashes.

  and we're going to have selective reporting and we're going to have political accountability, which ties a lot of people's hands. But among that, there's always going to be a will and a way for the industry to find its own way despite the regulations. And there's also going to be some leaders that emerge. And we've seen that in Arizona, in Texas, in Florida. There are people that have embraced the innovation, have put the right amount of regulations in place.

  And it's a balancing act. have to balance not creating too many regulations to create unfair advantages or to weigh the industry down, but not having nothing. Because when everything hits the fan, you need to have accountability, whether it's on the crashes, preventing them, making sure that the technology is working. And this is playing out now in real time, because you'll see that the only things they report is not how wonderful things are, is, okay, so this autonomous vehicle got stuck in traffic. This one, you know, hit, had this big crash.

  this flying taxi just crashed in the river. Those are the things that garner all the attention. And then there's a reactionary element that comes from government politics, which is incapable of being fixed. It's always going to be there. It always was. If you look at the history of transportation, there's a common trend, and this applies outside this industry as well, of there's a big crash, a big tragedy. This is never going to happen again. Let's create a new agency. Let's create new regulations.

  And then 20 years later, the same thing happens again. And in New York City, the Human Resources Administration has been built up and dismantled like four times over the last 50 years. So it's like, it's always the political moment. We're gonna do something about this. We're gonna respond to this. We need thinkers that work for the government that can see beyond that and take the risks and are willing to take a calculated risk. And I think there's two things we need to do to fix this and have a chance for success in the United States. We need to have

  better coordination and governance of transportation. Each governor and mayor, or probably at the governor level, needs to have one person who's empowered that has real authority over fine dancing and funding and overseeing and coordinating with all levels of government, the counties, the cities on transportation issues. This is a problem in California big time. The public utilities commission regulates ride hailing. The cities have ride hailing vehicles over the street, but have no power to do anything to them.

  Maybe they can give a parking summons. But outside of that, there's no coordination. Why? It was set up that way by design. Now we're in a different time. We need to fix that system. We're never going to be able to get rid of all these agencies and create super agencies politically. It never happened. You know, we're not going to create a transport for London in every city. It's just you're going to have to dismantle people who've been doing work in different agencies, departments of motor vehicles and so forth for years. And it's more difficult, but it's a lot easier.

  to create an executive order, right? Or a piece of legislation where you have a transportation czar that is accountable to the person who's in charge of that state and that they will coordinate the funding and the regulation and work with all the different agencies, even if they don't report to them. That's what was envisioned by the ICE-T law that was passed when Daniel Petramornyan was around. And it went into a completely different functionality where these... ⁓

  ⁓ The money that's sent out from the federal government goes through these, ⁓ what we call NIMTEC or these community ⁓ groups ⁓ with this infrastructure to get input, which ends up being political anyway. And I think number two, look at the Michigan EDC model. ⁓ Michigan, which is great because it's where the auto industry was. ⁓ Michigan has an economic development corporation which

  is not a typical bureaucratic entity. They're meeting without reservations with industry people, like a private company would, and we need to strike a balance between the public and the private and solve that governance problem to some extent. And once we do that, that will solve probably half the problems, because then you have the ability to engage in a meaningful way and coordinate all the different modes together. ⁓ But still, the problem remains. You're never going to prevent

  that driverless car crash or that scooter crash or the bus crash or the catastrophic event that dominates the airwaves. And everybody points fingers afterwards. Who, who did that? The NTSB comes in. This is never going to change. Right. But some other things can change to make it more palatable for businesses to be able to innovate a lot more quickly. But we can't just throw the baby out with the bathwater and just tell people you can write your own rules. ⁓ self-regulation could work. I mean,

  You could argue that the Federal Motor Vehicle Carry Administration has been allowing self-regulation of buses and trucks for years with the drug testing, sort of like you and me paying our taxes, right? We pay our taxes. If we don't do what we do and we get audited, we're in trouble. But there's a mechanism to audit and it's worked. And that's kind of what exists with the ride-hailing industry now at the state level. It doesn't exist for taxis and limos. And all of these industries are now facing an insurance crisis.

  They're facing the threat or the opportunity from driverless cars, depending on who you talk to. ⁓ And there's a lot of cross pollination and people coming together to work with government and partner with transit agencies. That's kind of the future. And the growth industries right now, aside from the problems they're facing with insurance, are airport work, ⁓ doing shuttles and school buses, and also getting work from the accessible community and non-emergency medical transit.

  Those are growth areas. And of course, an area that has been the only profitable form of transportation, in my opinion, is luxury limousine ground transportation. That's an area that Uber and Lyft have not been able to break into on the upper echelon, though they've broken into this ground transportation business travel to some large part. The large limo companies that feed the small limo companies I spoke about, they're the ones that has their hooks into

  that type of work because it's going to be very hard to convince the CEO of Goldman Sachs that they should get into a small driverless car as opposed to having a chauffeur that carries the luggage and opens the door for them. know, people are spoiled and that type of transportation will exist. The driverless cars are probably going to eat into the taxi and the ride hailing industry before anything else. They've already they haven't. It's been a very slow methodical scaling at this point. ⁓ But that is the big disruption that's happening now.

  ⁓ And, you know, it's interesting to see how it's evolving. But, you I always say follow the money. you, Bloomberg has great charts out there that I always use to put in my presentations that show where the money has gone in the transportation industry. And the money and the investors were investing heavily in OEMs and ride hailing and data platforms, right? So the answer is always follow where the investment dollars are going and you can figure out what the next step is.

  ⁓ And I think people that are a message for the small owners of taxi and limo companies and the little guy, it's important, especially with the progressives that are out there. We have a new mayor who's, know, he was on a hunger strike for the taxi industry years ago. I mean, I respect that, ⁓ you know, and their heart's in the right place, but we have to balance that against, you know, not destroying industries, right? Like we want to support the drivers, but a regulator's job is not.

  necessarily to pick the drivers over the owners, right? Some of the drivers are the owners, first of all. Secondly, you have to balance everybody's interests, right? So it's never good to have, say that I'm a regulator and I'm an advocate for the drivers. That's like inappropriate. Like that's something that I have a problem with. You're an advocate for public safety, for accessibility, for affordability, for... ⁓

  you know, whatever you want to define what your policy terms are, and then you make it happen from there. And once you say I'm in favor of the drivers and everything, nothing else matters, you've made your job more difficult in terms of helping the drivers. Because now everyone who's suspicious of you that you're not there. Yeah. If you take the fairness out of regulation, or if somebody says you're in someone's pocket, you can't regulate properly. Yeah. This is a problem. And I think

  being above the fray is really, important. But let's bear in mind, I had a very unique position. Okay, the Taxi Commission is empowered. We have resources, we have money, we have enforcement, we have political chutes. We reported directly to the Deputy Mayor or to the Mayor. In most cities, the person regulating those vehicles is a mid-level director, 10 steps away from the Mayor who has no ability to raise alarm bells or have a conversation.

  with the people at the top of the food chain in an agency that has 20 things that they're doing. The Public Utilities Commission is regulating, you know, gas and rates and electricity. And they're like, why am I dealing with taxis and ride hailing, right? So it becomes lost in the shuffle. And that's my world. And that makes it even more difficult to regulate when you're dealing with that situation. So I think these are all good lessons learned, you know, for the next round of disruption.

  And ⁓ for this industry, it's not really the, I don't view it as the flying taxis. It's really the driverless cars are the next mode of disruption. we don't know which way it's going to go. We don't know if the companies are going to start working with the taxi and the limo industry and having them manage their fleets. We don't know if there's going to be the rental companies are going to do it. We don't know if they're going to continue managing them themselves. It's all over the place right now. So I think this is an exciting time, but at the same, at the same

  juncture, we have a democratic socialist movement and a progressive movement that is pro-green and that is also pro-labor. we're at a crossroads now where the labor issues and wheelchair access and these other issues, the socioeconomic issues that I've been talking about for years now are now becoming a barrier to the innovation. And the companies and the regulators need to work together to sort those things out. And the way it needs to be done is there needs to be workforce development programs,

  ⁓ not only create new jobs, but find a safe landing for the drivers somehow. And that needs to be done because I think the biggest obstacle for the driverless car movement is labor. And labor's organized and they're chomping at the bit. ⁓ And the democratic socialists and the progressives are all in their corner. And this is all going to play out like another battle right now. But what's interesting is that Uber and taxis, they're kind of like on one side of the fence and Uber's trying to figure out like,

  how to navigate this whole thing. And they're kind of playing nice with everybody. They're working with the way most of working with the taxi industry. I think the right handling industry saw driverless cars years ago as an existential threat. That's why Travis Kalanick is not there anymore. Remember all this stuff where he got ousted from the company and stepped down was all started when, when all that stuff happened with the chief engineer from, Google to work for him. That was the, that was why I I won't make any, ⁓

  I want substantiated allegations, but we all know that that is one of the things that led to Travis leaving. But if Travis, he and I never saw eye to eye. We used to have fights all the time on on air, off air. ⁓ He is single handedly responsible for all the some of the good stuff we're seeing today, too. I'll give a shout out to him in some ways, because even though I didn't agree with how we did it, if he didn't do it, we wouldn't be here where we are today. ⁓ He kind of.

  He kind of like was a pioneer that set the stage for disruption, even though I disagree with him. I can tell you that knowing all the players involved, there's no way it would have happened if he didn't do what he did. It would have taken forever. The business model would have failed. would have been, now things have settled down and they're great players. Uber and Lyft really are working with the industry. They're working with regulators. Not everybody feels the same way, but it's a different company. And now they have an existential crisis in many ways because they have to choose what's gonna.

  they're going to play this movement, right? ⁓ in the early days, they actually put ride-hailing companies in the legislation protesting AVs. think everyone, when you follow the money, everybody was looking to figure out what they're going to do. The OEMs, ⁓ know, I think the big issue for ride-hailing companies in the early part of this movement was, okay, what's preventing the OEMs from doing their own apps? And how relevant are we going to be? And I think

  The answer to that question is that there's a very, very good app that these guys have that works with a customer base. And it's easier for these companies to partner with an Uber than it is for them to do their own thing. And I think it's going to be interesting to see how that all plays out is are these OEMs and the Waymo is going to scale their apps or is it going to be more of an aggregation model where they're all working with each other? That's going to be an interesting thing to see how that plays out.

  But those rules haven't been written. The business model is much more clear now in the AV industry, though all the rules haven't been written yet. We don't know what it's gonna look like in five to 10 years. But when I first started with this AV movement in 2016, 2017, studying it and going to conferences and speaking, I now consider myself to be an expert in the regulatory area on those issues.

  It went from no business model to basically three business models. We have the robotaxi point to point Uber type model, which Waymo's doing. You have the shuttles, the shared mobility services, which move more than one person that are partnering with transit agencies. The Zooks is of the world, May Mobility, ⁓ and those are subsidized services, of course, too, because governments are partnering with them. And the third ⁓ elephant in the room is Elon Musk and what he's going to do with Tesla.

  Tesla could flip the switch and say, I want to turn this into a Toro model. You have a Tesla, I'm going to make it fully automated. So you can use your driverless car to go to work. And while you're working, you can be making money on that car, picking people up through like, just like Toro rental cars work. If he does that, which there's regulatory impediments to that, ⁓ that's a game changer in a different business model.

  And there's people that already own these Teslas, if they make the switch and they're able to install or develop cars that people are buying anyway that are virtually driverless and they go to level five really quickly, this could be something that takes off. And I think everybody's wondering what he's gonna do, when he's gonna do it, making promises to do this, that, and the other thing, what's gonna materialize, we don't know. But what I do know is that that is a big question mark.

  There could be another business model that comes after that. I don't know. But right now, I think there's a little bit more stability in terms of direction that these companies are going. And I think some of these conferences that you'd go to 10 years ago, where nobody wanted to say anything. The manufacturers are all in the room. They're all figuring out how they're going to deal with the driverless issue. And they were afraid to say anything on stage, right?

  Now they're starting to talk a little bit more because I think things are settling down a little bit more. We kind of know where we stand with EVs and petroleum fuel vehicles. We're in a better sense of what each company's got something going on, some type of partnership. It's evolving, right? But they were all like spying on each other at the beginning. And they were afraid to talk to each other. Now I think there's more collaboration that there, things are starting to settle down. ⁓ But once it scales and starts making money, and once we start seeing more of these on the road,

  there's probably going to be a lot of change that comes that we haven't foreseen just yet. But it's real, it's happening, it's on the streets, it works. People are, you know, ⁓ getting used to it. You know, when I first was in Scottsdale and ⁓ Phoenix, it was like a novelty at the time and people were afraid of it. And now it's like a way of life and people are taking it left and right. mean, people are giving birth in way most. mean, it's like it's ⁓ it's a great it's great for nightlife to avoid ⁓

  women getting raped or sexually assaulted, which has been happening, unfortunately. There's a lot of ⁓ upsides to this technology. And what seeing is believing, like you need to have them on the streets. People need to get accustomed to it. ⁓ Seeing it, even if it's already been demonstrably safe, that's part of the public acceptance process. And I think some markets like New York and other cities are a little bit more challenging. But California is an interesting example of

  of a progressive state that actually supports its own. And you would argue that why is a progressive state like California, the governor and all the politicians, they're supporting technology companies. Well, the technology companies are their constituents, right? And they believe in technology, but they're also pro labor, right? So they've been able to actually move forward innovation on many levels with delivery robots in LA and scooters and bikes.

  and bike sharing and apps and ride-hailing before anybody else, but at the same time, stay true to their progressive credentials. So you could argue that, know, the regulation doesn't get in the way and the politics doesn't get in the way. It makes for strange bedfellows, right? You the people that have the money are in San Francisco and San Jose, and those people are the ones that talk to the policymakers who are very progressive. And they tried to have it on both sides for many years until some of the companies started getting demonized, right?

  But still they were able to juggle ⁓ doing innovation in a pro-labor environment, which ⁓ I find very interesting, know, I mean, in a high tax environment as well. But yeah, we're not going to solve the world's problems today, Nick, but ⁓ I hope this gives your listeners some insight into my crazy world, which continues to be crazy, but a lot of people don't know how the sausage is made behind the scenes ⁓ and how difficult the job it is to actually manage transportation in this industry.

  It's not easy. more, in my opinion, it's more difficult than running a transit agency. You got contracts, you got like services that you're running. Here you're dealing with politics, personalities, protests, ⁓ stuff happening on the streets. It's a crazy world.

  Nic (1:25:11)

  Well, an uncertainty. know, you're dealing with technology, you're dealing with demographic changes, you're dealing with so many things that you actually, you you talk about it now about like, you the millennials. It's clear now the role they played, but I'm sure at the time it wasn't clear what the forces were that were actually affecting your day to day job. And you had to like learn that the hard way over a long period of time. And no, I think this is fascinating and it really paints an interesting picture for modern

  version of disruption. mean, we talked a little bit about AI, you know, that's disrupting everything from journalism to coders and everybody in between, eventually it's going to disrupt or it already is manufacturing, people's jobs and delivery potentially. know that ⁓ Amazon has been playing with drones, delivering packages and all kinds of stuff, right? So there's still that human element, which is like that's millions of jobs and people that have dedicated careers to doing that kind of work.

  ⁓ But it also, there's a technological part which is eliminating friction. And in automated vehicles also the friction are humans. mean, they're the ones often that cause ⁓ accidents. Sometimes it's for environmental reasons. A lot of times it's just human error that causes these accidents, right? So if you can create cars that drive themselves, in theory accidents go down. When an accident happens with an automated vehicle, obviously that's where the media is gonna jump all over that because that makes for a story, but it-

  They don't talk about the fact that it saved the thousand lives for the one that they lost. But with all of this, this has been so tremendous, Matt, ⁓ just with one closing question. And you touched upon this a little bit in the beginning, but with your breadth of knowledge and you're just you obviously like the depth of what you know and the breadth of what you know from this industry is remarkable and mind boggling. But if you project forward and you're obviously very still involved in this field as it evolves. But if you were to project forward.

  and look back across kind of the, you know, the evolution of this industry and your role that you've played in it. And obviously you're still building into that. But what would be like the best case legacy ⁓ for you personally, as you look back on this, what kind of changes in how society governs innovation would make you feel that you've achieved the full impact that you were capable of in the effect that you have in this industry that you kind of stumbled into, but you became such a dominant force and prominent force.

  Matt (1:27:36)

  Well, that's great question. They'll make it be my epitaph. you know, look, I ran two New York City marathons. I kind of like when it comes to regulation factoring into that mix, what I would like to see is a new governance structure, multimodalism, where there's a commitment to have all the modes be agnostically working with each other, because that's for the best betterment of society. But when it comes to the running analogy, you know,

  when it comes to setting the regulations and governing the industry as a government official, as a regulator, it's not a marathon, it's not a sprint, it's more like a 5K. Like you need to find that balance and be mindful of the politics, but don't have your hands tied by it. So if I can impress the next generation that's in government in any way, shape or form to learn from my experiences, I would say that the way to do it is to take those measured approaches. It's like the three little bears, not too hot, not too cold, it's gotta be just right.

  and everybody's gotta be spoken to, everybody's gotta have input. You're not gonna make everybody happy, but you have to deal with the politics. The politics is really important and regulators and planners and engineers, don't fully, they loathe politics and I do too. It's a necessary evil, but stuff gets done or doesn't get done because you're able to game of Thrones or the Machiavellian and able to navigate that political course. So I would love to see ⁓

  a nice combination of policy experience, thoughtfulness, fairness, and better governance, and ⁓ political navigation be part of the next generation of regulators. And number two, on the substantive issues, I would love to see ⁓ multimodalism. Like I said, I would love to see all these modes being treated fairly and everything connected with one another with one platform, one app. It's gonna happen one day.

  I would love to see the wheelchair, the disability community finally get their justice that they deserve with fixing the system that's broken. Now, taxes have tried to help. We have wheelchair accessible vehicles, but it's still very difficult to get around. And with generations and people living older, ⁓ we need to really fix that mess that we have. ⁓ you know, and the non-emergency medical transit goes into that. So if I had to leave this planet and give it, you know, with a wish list at the end of my career, I would say,

  I would love to see there be better governance, public officials not having biases, working together to make for a seamless, affordable, safe experience for everybody. Regardless of how that happens, driving these cars, cars with drivers, we can write our future now by having those general principles and not getting involved with the bias that I think has affected our culture in the United States on social media and in the universities. I would love to see in schools

  more practitioners teaching our students, because there's mostly people that are lifetime academics and people who live inside their own mind. And I've seen too much of that. We need people to go and teach at universities that are not biased and anti-car in my world. They need to look at everything differently. And I was like, you know, I was the voice of ⁓ the devil's advocate in my classes, right? But I never, ever would tell my students that you should think a certain way or I'd grade you based upon.

  the merits. I used to see that even in my political science classes, even though my professors were all liberal in college, you know what, to their credit back in the in 80s and the 90s, it was not off the charts like it is now. My kids can't turn in a term paper if it says a certain ⁓ theory that the professor agrees that they'll get an app. And I've seen it with my own eyes. The university system has gone run amok. ⁓ And it was bad before, but now it's worse. And now you have a lot of people on social media.

  We're not educated in form, just spouting out and retweeting stuff makes it more challenging. So those are the challenges that we're facing with the new generation. ⁓ I admire the people that are in Gen Z and millennials because they actually care about something. They go into jobs ⁓ in the workforce thinking they want to save the world. I think that's a great thing, but don't take it too far. Don't take it too far. Don't be radicalized and go to the extreme because there's nothing in life that's extreme.

  And especially transportation policy is the same thing. There needs to be balance. Don't have the mindset that anything with a car with four wheels is evil. It's not. Everything has its role to play in society, like utopia, right? And I think that is the biggest thing I would like to see happen is that people come out of universities, go into these government and private sector jobs without having a bias in favor of X, Y, and Z, but still want to change the world and make it better. You know, whether it's going green or...

  making things more affordable. Those are all great things, but don't let the blinders go on and that you can't see the forest from the trees. And the same thing in private sector. Don't get into a business model where you're doing the same thing every day and you don't set aside time ⁓ to figure out ⁓ what's ahead, 10 steps from you because you're so busy with the day-to-day of running your small business. The last thing I'll leave you with is, I know you wanted to ask me questions about managing.

  And after working for government for so long, my biggest advice to people in government is not to just be a placeholder that comes in, takes credit for things and doesn't upset the status quo. I believe that ⁓ I was successful in my job at TLC when I was there because not just managing the outside politics, but managing the people from within who don't earn any money. know, a government job working for as a regulator or any government job doesn't pay well.

  People are there because of the pension benefits, the long-term future, the stability, and because they want to make a difference, right? So you need to manage that group of employees who you can't incentivize with money is the biggest challenge ever. So I would say to people that are transportation policy makers to take and spend some time on managing your agencies and doing it the right way, where you're not just someone in an ivory tower coming in, taking credit for things, putting on your resume.

  and leaving and going to work for a big 10 engineering firm. Come in and do your job and try to fix the management problems or the underlying issues in the agency to make it function better. There's not enough attention that's given to that in my world. ⁓ There's too much attention on the outside world. I used to have a program, which I'm very proud of. We used to have CompStat in New York for tracking the crime that was expanded to all these city agencies. We had a program called MAP, the Management Accountability Productivity Program.

  managers come in every week and present on their departments. It was very police department-ish, top down, telling people accountable in front of their peers. I changed that and I started a program which I'm very proud of called the HOME Program. And it's called Hands-On Management Experience. And I think any manager or CEO in a public or private entity could benefit from this experience. And some people have done it undercover. There's elements of undercover boss in there.

  ⁓ My successor, David Doe, who's leaving now, ⁓ he went undercover and started ⁓ driving as a cab driver, as a regulator. ⁓ I used to call random employees into my office as the commissioner without their bosses present. I would ask them how things are going. I said, this is the cone of silence. Anything you say here is not to be repeated. ⁓ Tell me how's it going? And I got the best ideas from the rank and file, low-paid at

  employees at the front lines than I did for my deputy commissioners. And of course, all the deputy commissioners were talking. They wanted reports if they came out of the meeting. What did you talk about with the commissioner? Did you say anything about me? Like there was all that. So I had settled the apple cart, made the deputy commissioners a little bit uncomfortable. But I had the deputy commissioners that reported to me go to and we'd have a day in each department. Adjudications. We have a court system at TLC. We went to the cashiers one day.

  We're going to go to vision adjudications. We're all going to become cashiers for the day. So the deputy commissioner for enforcement was in there processing fines and paperwork from the drivers. And the task was to number one, learn how to do their job, appreciate people in different departments. And then also on top of that, make specific recommendations on how your departments are going to work better together, scheduling the offices to come in for the hearings, for instance.

  And we would have a recap after that and we'd bring the management team together where they work together with each other, want to help each other because they're being judged. But it also lets the rank and file people who feel underappreciated that they never see the boss, okay, coming in there with the top people, making everybody on an equal playing field. So it allowed me to manage morale in an agency where I can't give out money in raises and where people have inertia.

  to make them feel part of something. And that's an art of management that can apply anywhere. And some CEOs do bits and pieces of it, but having an official program, it's not necessarily around Robin. It's a little bit of everything. That worked for me when I was there. And I would love to see a future where the federal, state, and local governments cut out taxpayer waste and do more of this management and not just come in as a placeholder, put your name on the door for like a couple of years.

  build your resume, go somewhere else, make money and leave a shambles behind. I think the best contribution you can make to society is not the policy only, but managing your government agency while making it better and having the people be inspired to do things because you will leave a lasting legacy. And a lot of the drivers still remember me. They, know, some of them hate me, some of them might like me, but they remember that I was always out there and I was always, ⁓ you know, I like to be remembered as fair. You know, someone who

  is respected, not someone who did what everybody told me to do. Most of my battles were fought inside city hall because I disagreed with what the lobbyists were lobbying the mayor on. Most of my battles were like, well, I'm not going to cave on that. And a lot of people don't have the political power to do that. A lot of them cave. I had my own political juice. I have my own political group. I had my own. So, so I had my own. I could fight battles in the administration. Unfortunately, there's a lot of people that if they don't have the right rabbi and they're not

  the right, they can't make meaningful change. So it's important to have that political power as well. But to be able to navigate internally and externally is not easy. know, people think government is a bunch of hacks and they're not. These are people that care, but it's more difficult to run a government agency than to run a private corporation. And I'll say that every day of the year, because of all these variables in private sector, you have, yes, you have accountability to the board. Yes, you have to make money.

  But in government, you never know where the knife is coming. When someone stabs you in the back, sometimes you don't even know who it is. And it could be somebody who just doesn't like the way you look. You're looking too good on TV. Let's just take this guy down. He's making us all look bad. There's weird stuff that happens in the public sector that doesn't happen. In the private sector, enemies become friends when they cut a deal and do a joint venture, right? So there's a lot of frenemies floating around where if they can make money, they'll get together. In the government, it doesn't work that way. And that's what makes it more challenging.

  So would love to see government officials that regulate and work there be mindful of these things and leave government in a better state than it is now the next hundred years from now. It's got to work differently. Something has to be fixed. And a lot of it is dealing with human beings and the mindset and understanding and navigating properly within politics and managing your agency. So that would be my word of advice. And that would be my legacy of people who 10, 20 years from now are TLC commissioner, listen to this.

  and they take a couple of nuggets and they implement it. I'll leave this planet a happy camper.

  Nic (1:39:28)

  Well, you I mean, you mentioned the word management a lot there, Matt, but more and more as you described that I just heard more and more leadership, you know, just the ability of inspiring people, doing right by them, transparency, communication, bring people together and, you know, and really just trying to make a difference in improving the domain that you have with all the different levers working for you and against you.

  With that, this has been tremendous. mean, I was curious about this topic to begin with. I'm flabbergasted and astonished at everything that I've learned. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for spending time with us.

  Matt (1:40:04)

  So

  listen to me for two hours that usually usually doesn't happen

  Nic (1:40:08)

  No, I could go on all day, but I don't know if have a timeline.

  Matt (1:40:11)

  It's like, you know, this is your life episode. ⁓ But I appreciate the time and, know, I should be doing a podcast of you. have so many more accomplishments than I do, but, ⁓ you know, this has been really great and thanks for the opportunity. And I'm looking forward to getting feedback from your listeners.

  Nic (1:40:28)

  Well, do thank you very much, Matt.

  Matt (1:40:30)

  You got it, Nick.