(Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post) - The new service Uber provides town cars and quick pickup like a limo company, but charges by the mile and minute like a taxi company, falling into a gray area in the District’s regulations.
The D.C. Taxicab Commission has wasted no time showing Uber, a new hybrid taxi-limousine service, who’s boss.
An Uber car was impounded and its driver ticketed Friday as part of a sting operation, said Ron Linton, the commission’s chairman. The action comes two days after Linton said in a commission meeting that he considered the service to be operating illegally.
Linton played a key role in the morning sting, hailing a car using Uber’s smartphone app then directing it to the Mayflower Hotel, where city hack inspectors were waiting. The driver, identified as Ridha Ben-Amara of Virginia, was ticketed for four violations — not holding a chauffeur license, driving an unlicensed vehicle, not having proof of insurance and charging an improper fare. The violations carry combined fines of $1,650.
“It kind of serves as a message to the others that are doing this, they’re not going to be immune,” Linton said. Ben-Amara, 48, could not be reached Friday to comment.
Uber does not directly own cars or employ drivers. Customers use its smartphone-based system to summon cars owned by limousine companies that contract with Uber.
The improper-fare violation, Linton said, is based on a city law that says limousine trips must have a fare set in advance. Uber’s system uses time-and-distance metering, and Linton said that Ben-Amara refused to give him the fare price before the trip began.
“What they’re trying to do is be both a taxi and a limousine,” Linton said. “Under the way the law is written, it just can’t be done.”
Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, said neither Linton nor other commission officials have responded to the company’s request for more information on which laws and regulations the service is violating.
“We haven’t gotten any specifics about anything we’re doing wrong,” Kalanick said. That includes the practice of using a metered fare for limousine rides, which he maintains is not prohibited: “We can’t find any statute anywhere that says anything about how limo companies can charge for rides.”
Uber will continue operating, he said.
The bust does not implicate Uber itself, but instead the limousine companies it contracts with and their drivers. Linton said Friday that he’s seeking advice on taking direct action against Uber from the District’s attorney general.
Ben-Amara, he said, will have an opportunity to appeal his tickets.
Kalanick said he has been in touch with Ben-Amara, who is “surprised and really shocked about the situation” and pledged to pay Ben-Amara’s fines and any other costs incurred by the sting. The offer stands, he said, if other Uber drivers are cited.
“We’re going to do everything in our power to make sure these guys aren’t prohibited from making a living,” Kalanick said.
The question now appears to be whether Uber can do anything to clear up its regulatory landscape.
Mary M. Cheh, the D.C. Council member with oversight of transportation affairs, acknowledged that Uber appears to be operating in a “regulatory no man’s land,” but she said she did not know enough about the particulars of the situation to comment.
Cheh (D-Ward 3) encouraged Uber, as well as its supporters and detractors, to testify at a Jan. 30 hearing on a taxi reform bill.
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