The Challenges of Rideshare

Traffic congestion and automobile emissions are both getting annoying nowadays because of volume of cars and vehicles passing through the road every day. People are now thinking of many ways to reduce the everyday scenario of travelling and rideshare is one of them.

Rideshare is an act of sharing your or someone’s vehicle to other person or people. It includes carpool, vanpool, transit or public transport that use motorized equipment and engine. Obviously, bicycle is not included. Rideshare is also called as Transportation Demand Management, Alternative Transportation, Active Transportation or Mobility. 

Since rideshare is becoming popular on many areas in the United States, most of them already have some regulations such as Clean Air Act. The Internal Revenue also gave a pre-tax benefit to vanpool, transit and parking cost under Section 132(f) of the Tax Code or also known as the Commuter Tax Benefit.

Transportation Network Companies provided a service called Real-time ridesharing such as Lyft and Uber and Sidecar which arranges a one- time ride and an on demand basis that does not require sharing of the vehicle.

Rideshare has already reached different state, countries and cities including Chicago which is now facing a threat in losing this service. The City Council passed an ordinance forcing uptight licensing and background checks for drivers for months. However, the growing industry of ridesharing oppose to this ordinance and threatening to pull out the service in Chicago.

Marco McCottry, the general manager of Uber in Chicago and Vice President of Lyft Joseph Okpaku both opposes to the said ordinance and said that they cannot operate with this regulatory and will surely leave the city.

However, Ald. Anthony Beale, the leader of the council pushing for this regulation told that the claims of the executives’ were rhetorical.

On the other hand, Uber and Lyft in Austin, Texas already pulled out this month after a successful vote in requiring fingerprinting on their drivers.

As of now, there is still no vote taken on Beale’s proposal and the negotiations on an amended version of the said regulation will happen on the next couple of weeks according to the 9^th Ward alderman who also hopes to throw his vote on some version of his ordinance prior to the meeting of the City Council on June.

Meanwhile, the administration of Mayor Rahm Emanuel desired to let go criticism that is in favour of Uber over taxis by proclaiming the fact that it’s trying to ban the drivers of ride-share who has owe the city money for paying their bills. With these, Maria Guerra Lapacek, Chicago’s business affairs commissioner, said that the two ride-share company, Uber and Lyft will be receiving letters in next week or so requiring them to remove from the service about ten thousand of their drivers who has outstanding balance of debt to the city amounting to $9 million and above.

This kind of debt collection is already old as the City Council already passed an ordinance last year asking ride-share drivers to pay their debt with the city to avoid being banned from the service.

According to city spokeswoman Mika Stambaugh, as of now there are about ninety thousand drivers are registered on Uber and Lyft in Chicago. If the ten thousand of those ninety thousand drivers will pay their debt they will be removed from the banned lists of drivers and will be able to drive again. Not only that, they will also have privilege to enrol into payment plans with the city while continuing with the service.

According to Emanuel, these services such as Uber and Lyft are providing more options; provide healthy competitions and convenience in travelling for the citizen of Chicago where it has been hard to get cabdrivers to pick up passengers.