Tap the app, click the car, pick the driver and rate him or her after. Customers can ride in an UberX vehicle in more than 50 major U.S. cities, but Gainesville is not among them.
Citizen-driven UberX is one type of ride service offered by the San Francisco-based transportation company Uber, which failed to jump the legislative hurdles necessary to operate in Florida last week.
The company wanted its Uber Black luxury line to operate without adhering to minimum fare requirements, accusing the state of charging inflated rates that dissuade competition.
“Florida residents and visitors should not have to pay arbitrarily inflated fares for sedan rides that are up to 28 times the minimum fare of a taxi, even for a ride that is only 10 minutes long,” the company wrote on its website.
Rep. James Grant and Sen. Jeff Brandes attempted to change this by sponsoring House Bill 1389 and Senate Bill 1618, respectively, but both bills died on May 2.
The service is operating in Jacksonville, however.
All vehicle-for-hire regulations are enforced on a local level, so if Uber wants, it can go to each city individually and ask for permission to subvert the standing regulations, as it did in Jacksonville.
In Jacksonville, New York City, San Francisco and more than 50 other cities, Uber drivers pick up their customers based on GPS location services from their smartphones, whereas taxis require a phone call and a specific address.
But many taxi drivers and limo operators, who make up most of the opposition to new legislation that would enable Uber to expand throughout Florida, find it unfair that Uber, which doesn’t require drivers insurance or a minimum fare, should not have to adhere to the same regulations as they do.
“They only want to cherry-pick the good fares and the good cities,” said Roger Chapin, a Mears Transportation Group executive and a member of the Florida Taxicab Association Board. “They would like to change the rules to their benefit.”
Because the company has to go to each city hall to ask for permission, Chapin doesn’t think Uber will make its way to Gainesville.
Twenty-year-old UF philosophy junior Tomas Barron wishes it would.
“I used it in New York and D.C.,” he said. “It’s really user-friendly, and it’s really easy to set up.”
He said it costs the same or slightly more than a regular taxi, and he liked having the option to rate the drivers and request certain drivers.
If Uber did make its way to Alachua County, Barron said he thinks taxicabs would still do OK because mostly young people use Uber.
“Not a lot of older people know about it,” he said. “But at the same time, it’s definitely giving taxis big competition.”
[A version of this story ran on page 1 on 5/15/2014 under the headline "Uber fails in its attempt to expand through Florida"]
