I can see why Uber works and has such wide appeal, but why don’t municipalities regulate Uber as a taxi service? As I understand it, most cities require taxi licenses that can be quite expensive, and the companies and drivers must meet certain standards.
Does Uber just say it’s not a taxi service and cities accept it? Seems odd that the bureaucracy would be willing to forgo the revenue and the opportunity to regulate.
In New York City at least, taxis (yellow cabs) can be hailed on the street, while livery services can’t but can only pick people up by prior arrangement (calling the company to arrange a ride). I think Uber is more like the latter than the former.
And, of course, no one in NYC has ever had a be-suited livery driver mutter, “Need a car?”
All that said, Uber drivers in NYC must be licensed with the Taxi & Limousine Commission, so they are regulated. It was the compromise so that Uber could operate in NYC.
St. Louis does not allow Uber or Lyft to operate within the city limits. Its position is that the services are “vehicles for hire” which need to be regulated like taxis.
Negotiations continue.
Many cities (and countries) ban unlicensed taxi services. Mainly to try to keep criminals from picking up unsuspecting victims so they can rob/rape/murder/abduct them. If Uber does a decent job screening its drivers, it could probably qualify as a taxi service, but I’ll bet they don’t want to pay the fees involved.
About a year ago in Austin a few Uber/Lyft were stopped and had their cars impounded by the police - I’m not sure if things have been completely worked out between the companies and the city yet.
They just started Uber here in Portland, and it’s really hurting the taxi companies.
Basically, there’s three answers:
The first is Uber Black (the original luxury version) and UberTAXI (a regular cab signed up with Uber) are all fully licensed normal livery/taxi drivers. There’s no regulatory issues with this service.
The second is that municipalities do regulate UberX (the low cost one) as a taxi service. The level of enforcement varies from city to city. Uber’s position is is that they themselves don’t provide transportation and thus aren’t covered by such laws. Uber tends to operate anyway unless the local government cracks down hard enough.
The third is that some muncipalities have (IMO reluctantly) created a third category of service called a TNC (transportation network company) that covers UberX-like activities.
That would be one of the cities really likely to embrace it.
Uggh. In my view (and from my understanding of the facts), this is the bad sort of regulation. Uber drivers might not know the city layouts as well as professional taxi drivers, but mediocre navigation skills doesn’t seem like something the government needs to protect consumers from (especially with modern GPS). Is there any evidence that Uber drivers are more dangerous, either from a traffic perspective, or in terms of criminal behavior? Why do Uber drivers need to be regulated? Doesn’t the public and society benefit from a low-cost alternative to taxis?
We kicked them out of Nevada because they refused to play by the rules.
Because it would be difficult to write a regulation that still allows me to pick up someone from the airport and charge them gas money while not being a “taxi service”.
In what way are they “a low-cost alternative to taxis” such that they are not, in fact, taxis? 
I’ll answer for you: Uber cars are taxis.
And since they are taxis, why should they be free to operate without regulation when taxi companies that call themselves taxi companies are not free to operate without regulation?
I think insurance is the biggest issue. Not the threat of being kidnapped or robbed. Uber drivers are operating a for profit business out of their cars without the overhead of commercial licenses, bonds and insurance.
Uber and Lyft are just the latest manifestation of “tech works for evvabody.” Something that a tech-ween can dream up (and our oldest spent six months on a similar idea just as all these services were being rolled out on the zeitgeist) and that works among the tech-kings in the back yard of San Francisco or San Jose or Seattle just has to work for everyone, right?
Sure. Until it doesn’t, spectacularly and badly, for reasons that everyone except blinkered tech-weens could see coming.
To connect this to another example, I’ll give tentative approval to self-driving cars when Google drops one off that can get me to the local post office and back. We don’t have curbs. We don’t have straight streets. We don’t have 21st-century-grade road markers and signs. We have potholes and frost heaves and indifferent maintenance, and curves and intersections and forks that worked okay in the horse-and-buggy days. In other words, we’re not the industrial park or subdivision built ten years ago in San Jose, where Google cars work just unbelievably well.
How long before an Uber or Lyft driver with a bent synapse sees an excellent predator opportunity?
Uber is NOT a taxi company. It is a booking company. All of the risk in Uber is borne by the vehicle owner and the passengers. That is what is scary-one accident and the driver can lose all of his assets (Uber only provides a $50,000 insurance policy). Someday, there will be a major scandal over this.
Uber has a million-dollar-per-incident liability policy now, but it’s not entirely clear what it covers.
But it’s the empowered people, gosh darn it, taking back their own need to get from place to place with the 21st century equivalent of hitchhiking, and showing those nasty monopolistic t*xi companies some what-for.
It never occurs to any of them that the taxi industry is exactly what it’s been shaped to be by almost a century of matching needs to realities to economics. UberLyfters don’t need all those rules and regulations and insurance and medallions and vehicle inspections and background checks and… you know, bureaucratic oppression.
Until one stupid, drunk, suicidal or predatory driver lights up all the holes in the idea - the holes left by assuming that everyone involved is just as tech-savvy, tech-worshiping, young, energetic, honest and good people darn it as they are.
ETA: It’s bad enough when this tech-religious nonsense stays on the internet. The intersection of this mindset and physical/mechanical/human reality has the potential to create truly horrifying disasters.