I think enforcing by legislative means the profit-sharing system traditional players have with the airports is completely unreasonable. They go out as far as to call it a safety issue.
Yes, the playing field is not level, but that's what competition means: the sharing companies have found a way to go around the onerous taxes imposed by airports and there is almost nothing the airport can do to stop a private individual drop a car in it's short term parking lot for another individual. There's no safety or congestion issue, it's the entire point of the short time parking spaces.
For a completely private airport that builds its own road and transit infrastructure, sure. Most real airports have massive public investment and infrastructure and enjoy a strong local monopoly - with the specific purpose of acting like a public transportation hub.
Therefore, any charge that moves from services provided, on a needs basis, to an indiscriminate tax, on a per person basis, can be seen as onerous in light of the public investment.
But if there's a precedent that people landing in the airport and renting cars pay a tax why should some companies be able to avoid it and not others. This argument is nonsensical.
Maybe a sane government would simply decide what level of income/property tax is required to provide whatever level of service rather than passing 192 other individual taxes such that a given consumer doesn't even know the exact figure they paid this year without an accountant and a spreadsheet.
Because the new players don't need the services airports provide. Which turns into a tax or a monopoly rent, there is a long a list of such "precedents" that the market and regulators shut down.
If they don't need the service the airport provides they can meet people arriving on planes somewhere that's not an airport. Otherwise it seems to me that they need the service the airport provides.
The service the airport provides is the fact that lots of people are there. In other news if I meet you in starbucks to buy a laptop from craigslist they aren't getting a cut.
If they meet the car at Walmart do we expect the walton family to get a cut? If they drop the car off at their home do we expect the HOA to get a cut?
At some point we could acknowledge that the airport isn't a party to the transaction.
> In other news if I meet you in starbucks to buy a laptop from craigslist they aren't getting a cut.
Starbucks has decided that a fairly open access policy for non-customers conducting other business is a net positive for their business. Many businesses have different policies because they have different actual or perceived business dynamics. Also note that most Starbucks do place limits on this, as people who mistake them for zero-cost unlimited co-working space tend to discover.
Yes, if you set up a commercial for-profit business selling things, or delivering rental cars, in a Starbucks or Walmart parking lot they would certainly expect a cut, or otherwise stop you from doing it. This concept is spectacularly non confusing.
Meanwhile in reality people seem to be dealing drugs regularly in walmart parking lots and I bought my Craigslist laptop in a coffee shop. I didn't give the coffee shop a cut and I'm pretty sure the shady characters meeting in the walmart parking lot aren't giving the waltons a cut.
There are to reasons airports need to charge rental companies if we ignore 'they are abusing their local monopoly'.
The first is congestion due to the pick-up process. Clearly, this affects both the new players and the old players.
The second reason is land-use by the parking lots in which available cars are stored. This doesn't affect the new players.
Now, airports might be charging for both, and simply be afraid that the cash-cow of charging reasonably for the land-use of parking lots is going to disappear.
For a real answer, you'd need to actually compare the difference in cost between congestion and land-use.
Frequently, the rental car facilities are some distance from the airport, and the airport is just gatekeeping a bus service to the off-site rental facility. I don't think that land that facility lies on is a very scarce resource.
Having a driver meet you with a car at the terminal is a much better experience IMO, whether it's a taxi, a Lyft, or a rental. If the pickup area is too congested, the airport should address that problem directly with a toll to access that area. A targeted ban that happens to help incumbents in a particular industry doesn't seem like the best way.
Yes, the playing field is not level, but that's what competition means: the sharing companies have found a way to go around the onerous taxes imposed by airports and there is almost nothing the airport can do to stop a private individual drop a car in it's short term parking lot for another individual. There's no safety or congestion issue, it's the entire point of the short time parking spaces.