It’s how they get back that’s the question.
The ride-hailing company Uber may return to the state’s capital despite leaving Austin in May after a bruising fight with the city over regulation of the industry, according to Trevor Theunissen, the company’s public affairs lead.
“We are willing to negotiate, and we are willing to participate [with the city council] in a discussion on how to move forward. We want to come back here,” Theunissen said at an Austin event Thursday night.
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Theunissen said that since leaving, Uber associates have been on “listening tours” throughout the city to address the concerns of the community. However, he said he hopes the company can return to Austin in the near future.
“We want to be back in Austin and I think it’s a city Uber needs to be in,” said Theunissen. “I’m hopeful that there is a path forward, but there’s a lot of work to do. I’m hoping to get back to the city before the [legislative] session or after the session.”
But former Austin City Council member Laura Morrison said Uber needs to use fingerprint background checks in vetting their drivers if they want to operate in Austin. Speaking on behalf of Our City, Our Safety, Our Choice, Morrison also said that the alternate background check methods Uber uses “are prone to critical errors.”
“Certainly, Uber is welcome to re-enter the Austin market if they are willing to operate under these rules, which all our other ride-hailing services abide by,” said Morrison. “It’s the law here, a law that the council enacted and a public safety standard that the people of Austin support. Uber operates in Houston and New York City and both require fingerprint background checks for Uber’s drivers. It’s a fair question to ask: Why does Uber think that Austinites should be subject to a lower public safety standard?”
In a statement sent to The Texas Tribune before the event, a spokesman for Austin Mayor Steve Adler said both companies would be welcome back to Austin “with open arms.” He added that there’s nothing stopping either company from returning.
“The mayor has always said that there is nothing in the ordinance preventing Uber and Lyft from choosing to return to Austin where they would be welcomed with open arms,” said Jason Stanford, the communications director for Adler’s office. “In the meantime, he’s also always said that he would be happy to sit down with them to work this out but will not comment on whether these conversations exist to create a safe space in which they could occur.”
There are a couple of ways to look at this. It seems likely that a statewide ridesharing bill will be passed, which will undo the requirement for fingerprint checks that Uber found to be line-in-the-sand-worthy in Austin and to an as-yet-unexecuted extent in Houston. Viewed in that light, this may be simply the initial overtures of someone trying to get back into the good graces of an ex after a breakup. But such overtures necessarily come with a helping of regret over past actions, and I think Uber really does regret leaving Austin; I think one reason why it never did follow through on its threat to pull out of Houston was because of that regret. Austin is a perfect market for Uber, but when they do come back, whether via legislative fiat or mutual agreement with Austin’s City Council, they will face a lot more competition than they had before. It may well be that they will sweep in an reclaim a dominant position in the Austin rideshare scene, but for the past six months their customers have learned to live without them, and some of them will carry a grudge over it. One way or the other, however they get back (and they will), it won’t quite be the same.
I used Ride Austin (the nonprofit created by the city) works just like Uber and had roughly same wait times. Plus all the drivers were ex Uber or Lyft ones and they said it was no different working for Ride Austin except now they get higher pay outs. My question, why does COH and others not just get the App from Austin pay a licensing fee and have their own nonprofit to run it? Unless the city (like some have hinted) is in the pockets of the cab companies, seems like a no brainer for Houston to do
At the state legislature level-you need to make it against state law for any city to place limits of entry on any vehicle for hire- including and especially Taxi’s and especially so Mayor Turner can’t keep riding Houstonians and out of town visitors for an additional 30% right to labor fee that the citizens don’t want to pay.like California, Texas needs to put a statewide ban on taxi medallions -kill the taxi medallion and #freehouston #1termturner #freetexas