Chicago approves looser rules on ride-hailing services

Ride-hailing company Uber says it supports allowing New Jersey’s attorney general to decide what type of background checks its drivers should have to use. The ordinance, promoted by the taxicab industry, has subjected Uber and Lyft drivers to some of the same regulations for cab drivers, including fingerprinting, drug tests and city debt checks, Xinhua news agency quoted Chicago Tribune as saying on Saturday.

That’s because ride-hailing companies, including the two mentioned above, might catch a break at this week’s City Council meeting vote after an alderman backed off several tougher proposed regulations of the industry, including the biggest sticking point in negotiations over the proposal. Now, drivers who follow the airport’s new policy can do both. Emanuel has repeatedly asserted in recent months that the roughly 90,000 registered Uber and Lyft drivers in the city give Chicagoans more options, promote competition and make it easier for residents to find rides in predominantly minority neighborhoods where it has been hard to persuade cabdrivers to make pickups.

A spokesman for the attorney general’s office said the bill is under review and didn’t say if the office has a position on whether fingerprints should be required. Both companies suspended services in Austin, Texas, last month after voters decided against overturning city requirements that include fingerprinting the drivers.

Rahm Emmanuel is an unlikely ally to Uber and Lyft. That’s not true. The ride-share companies have had two years.

Villarreal and other former Lyft and Uber drivers said demand for rides is similar to that for Lyft and Uber before their departure. Anthony Beale (9th) said the proposed regulations are meant to ensure that ride-hailing “services are safe and accountable”.

Last year, Uber and Lyft supported a bill in MA proposed by Gov. Charlie Baker that largely borrowed from the model legislation, though it included a second, state-run background check on drivers.

Uber issued a statement thanking lawmakers for passing the bill. Get Me has also promised to avoid surge pricing. That law, in turn, said all ride-hailing companies (which have to pay a base 1 percent of annual revenue fee) would have to pay an additional 1 percent unless they participating in that safety assurance program. “We are not OK with it”, Arnold said.

The companies see the added driver certification as a threat to their business model, because they think prospective drivers will be less likely to get behind the wheel if they need to jump through more regulatory hoops – the same reason they oppose fingerprinting.