When Uber Rolls Into Town, It’s War and (Yes) Please

GPS-enabled car service Uber usually gets rave reviews from passengers when it cruises into a new town, but its arrival also prompts taxi companies and city regulators to start dusting off pitchforks with equal enthusiasm. Never mind that every city where Uber has launched thus far ultimately calms down and lets Uber go on its iPhone-powered way, somehow officials and hacks can’t help themselves from initially trying to find a way to shut it down.

While the startup’s inaugural launch in San Francisco, where the company is based, elicited cheers from coder types and tech-savvy well-to-do residents, it prompted the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority to send Uber a cease-and-desist notice. The letter claimed the service was an illegal taxi operation. Then the California Public Utilities Commission piled on, calling Uber an illegal limousine service and tried to shut it down via its authority. In time, both governing bodies backed off, and today black Uber cars whisk people all over San Francisco and the Bay Area.

Shortly after Uber launched in Washington, D.C. in late 2011, the city’s taxicab commission conducted a sting operation to ticket an Uber driver and impound his car because the city also deemed Uber to be an illegal service. In order to prevent Uber from competing directly with taxis, officials proposed a bill that would require Uber’s minimum fare to be at least five times higher than the minimum cab fare of $3. It took seven months for the heat to wear off and in July, D.C. city officials ruled that Uber is legal and it doesn’t need to charge a minimum fare.

That brings us to Uber’s latest kerfuffle in Boston, where the company launched its service last fall. Boston police also used a sting operation to give an Uber driver a ticket. The reason given for the fine was Uber’s use of GPS tracking to calculate a passenger’s fare by mapping the distance of the trip, rather than relying on an odometer. Massachusetts officials said August 15 that GPS had not been certified by the Division of Standards as a commercial measure device and therefore couldn’t be used to determine taxi fare. Under those terms, Uber was an illegal service.

You know how this story ends. A day later, the State of Massachusetts reversed its stance, citing that GPS is already in the process of certification, and allowed Uber to continue service.

Even though Massachusetts officials have backed off Uber, others are still trying to fight. A press release surfaced Thursday from a Boston-area public relations firm DBMediaStrategies. The release cites lawyer Oleg Uritsky, who represents Boston-area taxi fleet owners, saying that technology companies like Uber are bypassing important regulations that keep licensed taxis safe. The release goes on to argue that unlicensed vehicles have no requirements for partitions or emergency buttons, no GPS requirements to record the exact location of a vehicle during an emergency, and no ID or consumer contact information requirements.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick responded to the release saying in an email, “All limo companies, cars, and drivers that partner with Uber are licensed and insured according to existing regulations.”

At this point Uber execs are used to the heat, and have no intention of slowing their expansion to new cities. Part of the reason for their momentum and confidence is the overwhelmingly popular response Uber gets from its customers. That, and lawyers who have no trouble it seems clearing the pitchforks out of Uber’s way.