“Right now, I have very, very little trust in Uber and Lyft”, DiGirolamo said. So far, Uber has not said when they would plan to leave the city if the proposition is voted down.
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Ronald Blount, head of the Taxi Workers Alliance of Pennsylvania, said the bill “omits needed language for limiting the number of Transportation Network Companies drivers operating in Phila to avoid market saturation, and also fair living wages”. “We are more than happy to work with them to maybe speed up that process, maybe get more drivers out there licensed, as long as it doesn’t compromise public safety”, said Lara Cottingham, with the City of Houston Administration and Regulatory Affairs department.
Voting for Prop 1 means keeping standardized criminal background checks and not implementing fingerprinting. “Uber and Lyft come in and it just appears that they haven’t been following any of the rules and regulations”.
Under current laws, both Uber and Lyft operate illegally in Philadelphia, the only county out of 67 in the state that hampers the service.
But aside from merely overlooking a crime through fingerprinting, as well as the earlier Texas-only checks, there are other ways some of those 53 rejected drivers might have had city-issued chauffeur’s permits.
Residents of the Texas capital will decide on whether or not to ride alongside ridesharing companies, or side with the city in a 7 May special election on Prop 1.
For its part, Uber says its system, which uses a private company to conduct name-based background checks in the US, is standard, comprehensive and at least as safe as those used by taxi companies.
Voters who clicked on the pink “Go Vote” button were redirected to the website of “Ridesharing Works for Austin”, the PAC funded by Uber and Lyft, where they could read about why they should vote in favor of Prop 1, as well as plug in their address to find the closest place to do so.
The other 34 were rejected by Uber for lesser transgressions such as having too many moving violations or a ticket for reckless driving, Uber said Monday. The petition garnered more than 25,000 certified signatures and the city council voted in February to put the issue before voters. The PPA, charged with regulating taxi companies and ride-sharing services in the city, has responded by impounding vehicles driven by Uber and Lyft drivers.
“We can’t believe anything that Uber says about numbers without some kind of completely verifiable foundation”, Morrison said.
But, state Rep. Eli Evankovich, R-54, Westmoreland County, said technology “marches on” and leaves outdated methods behind, just as MP3 players replaced compact discs, which replaced cassettes and tractors replaced horse-drawn plows.
The county commissioner also said the county attorney, the PTC’s attorney and his personal attorney have all told him that there is no conflict of interest.
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Lawyers for Melissa Cubria, an Austin-area activist who filed the class-action suit, argue that Uber violated their customers’ privacy by using their phone numbers to send messages for political purposes.
