Jonathan D. Miller
I got caught in the inevitable traffic congestion coming back into the city from the airport in morning rush hour last week. I say inevitable because the roads are always congested and rush hour has become almost every hour of the day and week possibly except for early on Saturday and Sunday mornings, at least in New York. Simply wherever you go in big city urban America and environs traffic has a tightening stranglehold, eating into time, creating costly inefficiency, and increasing the stress levels in already stressful lives.
To distract myself on this stop-and-go yellow cab ride, I started counting “T” cars, T for private Lyft and Uber cars. For a while it seemed like every other car. Then you add in all the traditional yellow cabs. The streets are congested, congested with taxis. Meanwhile, we read about the meltdown of yellow cab medallion values, impoverished cabbies, and cabby suicides. Uber and Lyft drivers protest against meager earnings and absent benefits. The companies' IPOs, to put it mildly, have been less than stellar. And what have they wrought—so far unprofitable businesses, too many taxis clogging roads, and drivers unable to make a decent living in a survival of the fittest race to the bottom. And their long-term strategy is to operate driverless vehicles—so much for the drivers.
All the congestion has led New York to finally enact a congestion pricing zone for half of Manhattan and now other cities, including Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington DC are at least exploring a similar move—and of course Lyft and Uber protest. The cities need to raise money desperately not only to pay for mass transit alternatives to help relieve the mounting gridlock, but also just to maintain ageing road systems, strained by overuse.
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Jonathan D. Miller
A marketing communication strategist who turned to real estate analysis, Jonathan D. Miller is a foremost interpreter of 21st citistate futures – cities and suburbs alike – seen through the lens of lifestyles and market realities. For more than 20 years (1992-2013), Miller authored Emerging Trends in Real Estate, the leading commercial real estate industry outlook report, published annually by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Land Institute (ULI). He has lectures frequently on trends in real estate, including the future of America's major 24-hour urban centers and sprawling suburbs. He also has been author of ULI’s annual forecasts on infrastructure and its What’s Next? series of forecasts. On a weekly basis, he writes the Trendczar blog for GlobeStreet.com, the real estate news website. Outside his published forecasting work, Miller is a prominent communications/institutional investor-marketing strategist and partner in Miller Ryan LLC, helping corporate clients develop and execute branding and communications programs. He led the re-branding of GMAC Commercial Mortgage to Capmark Financial Group Inc. and he was part of the management team that helped build Equitable Real Estate Investment Management, Inc. (subsequently Lend Lease Real Estate Investments, Inc.) into the leading real estate advisor to pension funds and other real institutional investors. He joined the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the U.S. in 1981, moving to Equitable Real Estate in 1984 as head of Corporate/Marketing Communications. In the 1980's he managed relations for several of the country's most prominent real estate developments including New York's Trump Tower and the Equitable Center. Earlier in his career, Miller was a reporter for Gannett Newspapers. He is a member of the Citistates Group and a board member of NYC Outward Bound Schools and the Center for Employment Opportunities.
