Uber’s hardly been quiet about its lust for Portland—ardor that was reciprocated this week when several business leaders sent a letter to city council demanding a refreshing of the city’s taxi rules so the ride-sharing business could swoop in without risking fines and punishment.
The city’s transportation bureau, meanwhile, hasn’t been so hot to trot. Same for the city’s transportation commissioner Steve Novick.
Reports are coming in, citing Uber officials, that the company is forcing the issue—launching its service in Portland over the objections of city officials. In a statement issued a few minutes ago, the Portland Bureau of Transportation reacted to those reports, by accusing Uber of preparing to “start offering taxi service in Portland illegally on Friday night.” And Novick, in that statement, has promised to level “civil and criminal penalties against Uber and its drivers for operating without required permits and inspections.” (The Oregonian‘s Joseph Rose has taken credit for breaking the news about Uber’s insurgency to city hall.)
He also cast some aspersions at Uber’s business model, which it’s already taken to the city’s suburbs in a bid to make its arrival here seem inevitable. Uber, based in San Francisco, offers an app that allows people looking for rides to connect with private drivers looking to provide rides.
It promises efficiency—and it’s become a popular part of the growing (and wealthy-favoring) “sharing economy,” alongside outfits like Airbnb. But it’s also intensely controversial.
Uber’s prices “surge” during peak hours, which can sometimes surprise riders (like a woman who paid almost $400 for a ride on Halloween). Their drivers also are largely unregulated, at least compared to taxis and licensed towncar operators. The company’s also battling labor and PR issues.
“There’s nothing sharing about this so-called ‘sharing economy’ company: They want to profit in Portland without playing by the same rules as existing cab companies,” Novick said. “People who pick up passengers for Uber in Portland should know that they are operating illegally and could be subject to penalties. Public safety, fairness among competitors and customer service are our top priorities. Unlike permitted drivers, Uber drivers do not carry commercial insurance, putting Portland customers at great risk.”
PBOT’s statement goes on to highlight the fines any Uber drivers operating illegally in Portland might face.
The bureau’s in the midst of studying the city’s taxi regulations, in part because of the clamor for services like Uber. A recent study detailed by the Oregonian showed Portland’s demand for taxis spiking on weekends and going unfulfilled. The city’s typically been reticent to flood the market with permits. It took a battle and a lengthy study, back in 2012, for newcomer cab outfit Union Cab to win permission to operate in Portland.
Commissioner Novick is convening a task force to reexamine existing taxi regulations and see if those regulations should be restructured while protecting consumers and drivers.
“We have told Uber and Lyft that they are welcome to offer ideas for regulatory changes,” Novick said. “Uber has chosen instead to break the law.”
KGW is reporting that the app went live at 5 pm, citing regional manager Brooke Steger.
Uber’s regional manager Brooke Steger said the app began working at 5 p.m. and drivers were able to immediately begin offering rides.
The City of Portland, which previously said it wouldn’t change its regulations to allow Uber to operate like cabs, has not yet altered the rules. Uber launched anyhow.
“I don’t think we’re going against the city’s wishes,” Steger said. “We hope the city embraces this and listens to their constituents, the people of Portland and drivers partnering with us.”
The O‘s report says Mayor Charlie Hales almost immediately called Uber after Rose called for comment the ride-sharing company’s plans.
Within minutes, Mayor Charlie Hales had David Plouffe, one of President Barack Obama’s most high-profile campaign operatives and now an Uber vice president in charge of strategy, on a speaker phone, Novick said. “I told him that if they’re just going to come in and flagrantly violate the law, we’ll throw the book at them.”
Brooke Steger, Uber Northwest general manager, said the city’s threats shouldn’t dissuade its hundreds of local drivers from trying to make a living. “We are 100 percent behind the drivers and we support them every step of the way,” Steger said. “We hope the city doesn’t take that kind of action.
Read PBOT’s full statement after the jump.
The Portland Bureau of Transportation has learned that transportation company Uber has said it will start offering taxi service in Portland illegally on Friday night.
City Commissioner Steve Novick, who oversees PBOT, said the City is prepared to issue civil and criminal penalties against Uber and its drivers for operating without required permits and inspections. The City of Portland requires permits for drivers and companies that offer taxi or executive sedan service within the city limits.
“There’s nothing sharing about this so-called ‘sharing economy’ company: They want to profit in Portland without playing by the same rules as existing cab companies,” Novick said. “People who pick up passengers for Uber in Portland should know that they are operating illegally and could be subject to penalties. Public safety, fairness among competitors and customer service are our top priorities. Unlike permitted drivers, Uber drivers do not carry commercial insurance, putting Portland customers at great risk.”
Portland and Vancouver, Wash. are the only cities in the metropolitan area that regulate taxi companies. Uber recently started operating in Vancouver without permits and in other area cities that do not regulate taxis.
Since the City Council moved taxi regulation from the Revenue Bureau to PBOT, effective July 1, Commissioner Novick and transportation officials started a top-to-bottom review intended to update the City’s taxi and executive sedan regulations.
Commissioner Novick is convening a task force to reexamine existing taxi regulations and see if those regulations should be restructured while protecting consumers and drivers.
“We have told Uber and Lyft that they are welcome to offer ideas for regulatory changes,” Novick said. “Uber has chosen instead to break the law.”
It is illegal for motorists to pick up passengers for a fee in the Portland city limits without proper permits. Taxis that pick up passengers outside of Portland may drop off those passengers in Portland without a permit.
Anyone in Portland can use the smartphone app Curb to call taxis from Broadway and Radio Cab, which are two of the largest permitted taxi companies in the city.
The three most common violations of City Code that city enforcement officers find, and which Uber and its drivers may be in violation of, are:
The Limited Passenger Transportation and Taxi Driver Permit requirements ensure the public that drivers have passed annual City-required annual background checks.
The Taxi Company Permit requirement ensures the public that licensed companies have appropriate commercial insurance that will cover passengers in the event of a crash, and that the companies’ drivers have annual City-required background checks and inspected vehicles.
The Taxiplate display requirement calls for posting of a metal plate on the vehicle with an identification number. It helps customers and enforcement officers identify permitted operators.
I don’t always support Novick, but I back him on this. They think they can roll us like they did Seattle? We’ll see!
Uber is douchey, but the taxi cartel here has been taking advantage of Portlanders for years. It’s time for a shakeup. It doesn’t seem like it would be hard to craft regulation to solve all of the problems that Novick et al. noted. Require commercial insurance, background checks, etc. of Uber drivers – seems reasonable. But the cap on the number of drivers is nuts. Imagine if the government capped the number of permits to be a hair stylist, or doctor, or nurse, or whatever by law. It would suddenly get very expensive to get their services, and those who lucked into / pulled strings to get a Hair Stylist Permit would be able to give horrible service and still get business. Unsurprisingly, that’s exactly what’s happened with Portland’s taxi industry.
Portland has a tiny number of cabs per thousand residents, and we pay high prices for it. http://daily.sightline.org/2011/08/05/free…
But the service is really the worst thing. I refuse to take a cab to the airport anymore after being stood up twice. I’ll take TriMet, which takes twice as long, because I have more faith that they’ll actually show up.
This is a fight the city can’t afford. Uber has millions. Uber has lawyers prepping the arguments in every state. They have test cases ready to go and drivers trained to read a particular statements to city enforcement investigators. They’ll make it a federal restraint of trade case/interstate commerce case with a single ride to Vancouver and the city won’t be able to justify their current ordinances.
They’ll have databases of names of city employees and cops to avoid stings. They’ll have terms of service in their app usage contract that will mean the city will end up paying them in the event of failed city enforcement actions or falsifications of ride agreements. And most importantly, any enforcement action will make Portlanders aware of the bizarre taxi regs and the guild-like structure of the current taxi system. This city government can’t manage to have cops hand out business cards without getting sued (and losing), much less regulate a new sharing-economy transportation industry.
In response to Alex Reed’s comment above, the link you site indicating that Portland lags behind other cities in per capita taxi service is obsolete and irrelevant. Portland expanded its taxi fleet by 20% in early 2013 after Mayor Adams caved to the influence of the CWA union. (This is where Union Cab came from). And the apples-to-oranges comparison to taxi service in Chicago or San Francisco denies relevant city planning and transportation issues such as urban growth boundaries, population density, mass transit infrastructure, bike lanes, climate and terrain, etc. It’s difficult to gauge actual demand for taxi services, but the notion that Portland has fewer taxis than Atlanta or Las Vegas is probably a good thing. It means we’ve cultivated a smarter, more efficient means of managing mobility.
I drove cab over a twenty year period in Seattle and Portland and served as Portland’s taxi driver representative in 2011 and 2012. I left when Mayor Adams glutted the market with new taxis and made it impossible for honest workers to make a living in that industry. The facts are that there are 168 hours in a week and you should be able to get a taxi anywhere in Portland within ten minutes during 150 of those hours. The exceptions occur during peak demand on Friday and Saturday nights and sometimes during rush hour. The relative isolation of the St. John’s neighborhood also makes this a slow response area. Unfortunately, the economics of the taxi industry mean that you can’t establish a peak-demand fleet and expect it to operate profitably during those other 150 hours. Uber’s presence will do nothing to alter this fundamental economic reality. And the fact that they are an out-of-state corporate behemoth assures that they have no interest in respecting the local Portland community.
Nobody, but nobody threatens the violent monopoly of the state!
wtf? Are you guys so incompetent that you need the government to give you permission to get into someone’s car? If you don’t like it or don’t trust your own judgement, don’t use Uber. Seems pretty simple to me!
wth? Are you guys so incompetent that you need the government to give you permission to get into someone’s car? If you don’t like it or don’t trust your own judgement, don’t use Uber. Seems pretty simple to me!
It’s like the hairdresser licenses in california. People on the inside of a business get the government to restrict entry, restricting supply and driving prices up. Anyone who is a consumer of taxis should welcome someone like uber that can bust the state-created monopoly.
Just curious. What do the taxi drivers pay the company for using their taxis.
Good question, ujfoyt. When I last drove for Broadway in 2012 I paid $450 a week for a seven-day, 12-hour day shift. The seven-day lease was the only lease you could get, and my night driver also paid the same amount. So the company was taking in $900 a week. That’s just shy of $47,000 per year to lease a used Ford Crown Vic cop cruiser that’s typically purchased at auction with 100,000 miles on it for about $3000. Multiply that by a fleet of 128 taxis plus other non-taxi vehicles such as wheelchair vans and it starts to add up rather nicely for the company. Lease rates (a.k.a. “The Kitty”) are even higher for lease drivers at Radio, but it varies. The kitty plus fuel can easily exceed $100 a day in operating expenses.
The main reason Broadway can take a $3000 car, paint it and wire it for taxi service, then charge $47,000 a year to lease it is because the city of Portland issues taxi permits to the taxi companies, not the drivers. This gives the companies a monopolized control over the permits and allows them to charge drivers whatever they can get away with. When I served as drivers’ rep, I lobbied like hell to get the permits issued to the drivers. If drivers controlled the permits, we’d have had an essential bargaining tool that would force the companies to compete for our patronage. Instead, we had to take what they offered. This study from 2012 showed that Portland taxi drivers made substantially less than minimum wage: http://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportati…
I’ve been picking up hitchhikers for years and you don’t necessarily have to pay me with money. Hope the uber cars don’t steal any my riders. ill get really lonely
to hell with novick- if you don’t support uber fine. just come up with a better reason than novicks threats. Deusche bag politicians need more intelligence instead of just threatening people to get them to comply. what is it with these portland creepy socialist politicians?
and who needs uber?- i say bypass them and the politicians. seriously if they had it their way we’d pay and apply for special licenses to drive our mom to the store.
“I don’t think we’re going against the city’s wishes,” Steger said. “We hope the city embraces this and listens to their constituents, the people of Portland and drivers partnering with us.”
Yeah!! I hope steger does save us from these socialist politicians.
@ #6- finally someone knows what the hell he’s talking about. Glad to hear it. As for all you taxi drivers on here- you are not the majority. Sorry, and hale’s little pack of rats cannot save you.
So the pimp says to the hooker,go out and turn as many tricks as possible and don’t worry if you get busted. I will bail you out and pay for your lawyer.
Red Diamond’s professional experience and industry insight just cemented in my mind why Portland needs Uber and Lyft. Novick is writing checks out tax dollars can’t cash. I don’t accept his full distraction convening task forces to address antiquated taxi regulations and YEARS of neglected updates that would have resulted in better service and experience for all. Get back to your many other neglected duties quick before the recall effort starts.
Portland’s taxicab licensing laws have a delightful loophole large enough to drive a late-model Camry through. If Uber tells its drivers that in Portland they may not allow the passenger to select the route that the driver uses to get the passenger to the destination, then the vehicles are not “taxicabs” as defined by the city code, and Uber is not a “taxicab company.” The vehicles would not require taxiplates (medallions), and Uber would not require a taxicab company license. The drivers would, however, be violating the law by driving vehicles for hire without the appropriate city license, but the city will grant unlimited numbers of for-hire driver’s licenses. It’s only the company and medallion permits that the City heavily restricts.
http://isaac.blogs.com/isaac_laquedem/2014…
Here’s something I don’t really here anyone putting out there. Maybe if Tri-Met restored its late night weekend service to somewhere closer to its former glory, this late night weekend cab shortage might not be such an issue. Oh, right, but that would require their top brass to line their pockets less obscenely. I don’t drink, or own a car, but like to go to shows. If a show goes late, I generally end up grabbing a car2go wishing I could still take a bus home. Just sayin’, the cab companies, city hall, and Uber aren’t the only ones who suck in this situation.