As Jacksonville has remained parked about how to regulate ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft, other cities recently have moved ahead with varying results.
Over the weekend, Austin, Texas, voters upheld stricter regulations its City Council passed in December.
According to The Austin Statesman, the ridesharing companies spent close to $9 million on a campaign to pull back rules that included fingerprinting drivers.
Austin voters kept those rules with 56 percent of the vote. As of Monday, the companies suspended service within city limits.
Miami-Dade’s City Council went a different direction this month.
It passed a measure that “dismantles” regulation of the ride-sharing and taxi industries, according to The Miami Herald.
The paper reports some of those requirements included drivers undergoing county-run customer service training for etiquette and learning about popular tourist attractions.
Locally, hopes the Legislature would take care of the issue died when state lawmakers couldn’t come to an agreement the past two sessions.
All the while, the companies have continued to operate business as usual despite not following the laws on the books.
A council Vehicles for Hire Special Committee for months has regularly met, but members disagree on how to properly regulate — or deregulate — companies that make profits transporting people.
“I was hoping this would get done a lot quicker,” said council member Matt Schellenberg, the committee’s chair.
Given the results in Austin, though, committee member John Crescimbeni said he was “intrigued” about the idea of having voters decide the issue.
It’s been 16 years since Crescimbeni has worked on a ballot initiative to change the city’s charter.
“I’m starting to get the itch,” he said.
Such a charter change would lock in the regulatory mechanism for the companies, with Crescimbeni saying after the meeting he favored ideas like driver background checks and vehicle inspections being handled by the city.
He also favors those background checks requiring fingerprinting, a contentious issue cropping up in other cities across the U.S.
Schellenberg doesn’t share the same opinion.
He thinks the industry has been consumer-driven and riders take responsibility on themselves to do what’s best.
As for background checks and vehicle inspections, Schellenberg believes they’re best handled through the companies when city requirements are established and audits can be performed.
On Monday, the committee bypassed the topic of background checks altogether.
Schellenberg said with the recent news in Austin, he wanted to save that debate for another meeting. But when it happens in a couple of weeks, he will recommend fingerprinting not be a part of any background check and calls it “overboard.”
The group did make some progress on vehicle inspections. It asked city’s fleet management to review 20 criteria for inspections to fine-tune what needs to be required. However, whether the city or companies should be responsible for those inspections will be discussed another day.
The one issue the committee seems to have agreed upon is insurance parameters for ridesharing companies.
Required levels depend on timing — when a driver is logged into the app but not connected to a rider, it is $50,000 for bodily injury, $100,000 per accident and $25,000 for property damage.
Once that connection is made with riders, a $1 million policy kicks in.
The other option is companies can maintain $100,000/$300,000/$50,000 at all times, commercial insurance like taxi companies are required by the state.
Brad Braddock, Checker Cab & Shuttle general manager, pointed out the disparity between the taxi and ridesharing insurance requirements on such a tiered system, but commercial vehicles are regulated the state. Any changes will have to go through the state, said Schellenberg.
The committee plans to meet again in two weeks with the goal of moving forward on some of the issues.
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