“After the election is over, we’ll need to be at our most innovative, creative, and collaborative to simultaneously keep Uber and Lyft in town”, said Adler. The message from those who oppose Prop 1 is that Uber has accepted fingerprinting in Houston, so therefore such a requirement in Austin is reasonable and workable.
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“We have worked hard and taken extraordinary steps to help guide drivers through the current process in Houston”, Uber’s Houston manager Sarfraz Maredia told City Council in a letter delivered Wednesday afternoon.
Austinites will vote next week on how to regulate ridesharing companies in the city (early voting began Monday).
The report showed that in Q1 2014, ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft accounted for 8 per cent of ground transport spend, compared to 46 per just two years later.
Uber operates under local regulations in the Quad Cities, Cedar Rapids, Des Moines and Ames.
Uber and Lyft are revolutionising getting around in Los Angeles, a city famous for its highways where public transportation is widely criticised as inadequate.
While fans of Uber call foul, the mayor shared driver information that was discovered when the city ran fingerprint checks on drivers that had passed Uber’s background checks. “However they vote, we’re here to stay”. “A survey revealed that the regulations were too time-consuming, complex and expensive”, the company claims in an accompanying press release. Whatever the case, Uber’s Meridia said in the letter to city leaders yesterday that demand in Houston “continues to grow approximately twice as fast as our ability to onboard qualified drivers”.
Uber drivers in Windsor must follow the same rules as the 500 licensed taxi drivers in the city.
The newspaper has reported that fingerprint-based background checks are now required of Austin’s taxi, limousine, and pedicab drivers.
The Austin Monitor is reaching out to both the Ridesharing Works for Austin PAC and the group opposing Prop 1, the Our City, Our Safety, Our Choice PAC.
Legislation took effect in January that ensures California’s 228,000 state employees will be reimbursed for the cost of using sharing-economy businesses for business travel, including ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft.
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The analysis of more than 9 million USA business traveller receipts and expenses showed an increase of 4 per cent in “ride-hailing” transactions over the fourth quarter of 2015.
