Not that it's an easy thing to solve, but it seems like limiting it around it's current level would have made more sense than downsizing other services enough to make them unreliable/useless i.e. stop them taking over the world until we get a better sense of the potential negative impact. This is just protecting the people who make buggy whips, inevitably they do not have a rosy future and while it makes sense to give them time to adapt, it doesn't make sense to try and preserve.

In the future, car-hire services of any kind, even taxis, will only be available to wearers of Google Glass.

I was surprised that a Shuttle Express Town Car to the airport is only about $20 more than a taxi.

I hope UberX can get around this via state legislation as they did in Cali.

Uber sent out an email today urging their users to contact certain council members.

In the email they claim that in "just under a year uberX has created almost 1,000 jobs for Seattle’s immigrant and driver community.

Would love to know how they define "job".

There's an interesting piece in the New York Times Magazine which suggests Uber's ultimate aim is to run school bus systems, etc and become the Sodexo of logistics/transportation.

If they were genuinely concerned about the fairness to the owners of the legacy taxi licenses they could have simply refunded the license owners and created a simpler universal license for everyone. These taxi licenses have been bought and sold like large drug deals anyway. Then let all these drivers can choose which brand to work for Yellow Cab, Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, or even do it on their own! Yes, this means that the Yellow Cab model would likely go out of business because of their shockingly bad service, boohoo. The taxi model can join Blockbuster, long distance phone service providers, and the laserdisc in the annals of bygone industries. The drivers would simply continue working for all the better alternatives.

Nope. The Council instead chose to reward the taxi cartel. Is Francis Underwood involved in this somehow?

I would be curious what the public comment ratio was on this issue... 10 to 1? 20 to 1? in support of TNC's? Will they even release that information? Since the taxi cartels bribes obviously worked, I think the citizens should put forth a city initiative that forces City Councilmembers to only use taxis for ALL their commuting and ban whatever option they are using now (which ironically is probably a better car service of some sort). It would be fun to see them on hold on Saturday night with Puget Sound Dispatch for 15 minutes to reserve a taxi that may or may not come in an hour.

We would only need 21,900 signatures which is less than the number of people the have already signed the petition supporting TNC's. The taxi industry would support this too because it would save them from having to deliver bribes to Council offices. They could just leave the crusty dollar bills on the back floor of the cab for Councilmembers to scrounge for. Everyone is better served! well... except the citizens, but hey, that is not what City Council is for.

Vote these guys out of office then

If Uber and their poor customer service are upset, then I'm happy.

@10 there is no way any sane person can suggest that Uber has poor customer service compared to Yellow Cab. Even Council accepted the overwhelming FACT that all the TNC's provide much better reliability and customer service than taxi's. So you must be:

1. Not a regular Uber user or the exception that proves the rule. Look at ANY independent rating of customer service between Uber and Yellow Cab.

2. A Yellow Cab license owner

3. A troll

Admittedly, I use Uber a lot since I do not own a car so I am biased, but my bias is sustained by facts.

Did they outlaw those ugly muddy pink hipster mustaches?

@13 :-) That's hilarious... I always wondered how those drivers are supposed to keep those 'staches clean.

More drunks on the streets, yay!

What defines success, I wonder.

Legitimate question... Can someone answer whether taxis are also capped at 150 drivers on their system at a time? do they have any caps? What about Taxi Magic?

How many of the comments on the internet in favor of deregulating car service in Seattle are paid for?

@18: I believe there is a cap of 700 taxi licenses currently, some portion of which are King County not Seattle (meaning they can only pick up outside Seattle, but can drop in Seattle), some are all of King County.

#19 I've wondered the same. There does seem to be an awful lot of turf around here.

It sounds like the cut the baby in half.

@21 Silicon valley venture capitalists would never manipulate social media, would they?

Excellent: less of the decent service and no improvement on the crappy service. WELL DONE!!!

This is all about kickbacks and protecting archaic cab companies. If you believe it's anything else, I have a bridge to sell you. If the Mayor actually signs this into law within the next 10 days, we'll all know who's back pocket HE'S in, because initially he said he was in favor of NO CAPS. Way to kill innovation and completely fuck the citizens of your city, Seattle.

If the Mayor actually signs this into law within the next 10 days, we'll all know who's back pocket HE'S in, because initially he said he was in favor of NO CAPS.

I'm as appalled by this as anyone, but I'm not going to hold it against Murray if he signs it. Rasmussen/Bagshaw/Burgess went along with this to get the undecideds, Godden+Clark to break from the even worse restrictions the four hard-core taxi protectionists wanted. Refusing to sign would be merely symbolic and would undermine the work those on the right side here did to prevent this from being even worse.

Does anyone know if a city ballot initiative can be run to remove the caps?

@ 23 - Excellent point! All anyone has to do is read about Uber/Lyft/Sidecar's efforts in Paris, France, and in other cities in the U.S. i.e, Chicago, to get an inkling of their marketing strategy. They descend on a city and overpay drivers to entice them away from the existing cab companies. (This is an illegal practice called 'dumping' in regulatory parlance.) They basically call themselves anything but a taxi company, but that is exactly the service they provide, in order to try and avoid licensing and insurance. (Rideshare Service, Transportation Network Company, Taxi, it's all the same.) They blatantly refuse to pay for commercial insurance or acquire required licenses, because that breaks their profit model. (Read the stories by drivers being pressed to join these companies. They're told during job fairs it is their personal insurance they must rely on as primary coverage, without being told that breaks their personal coverage contract. Basically leaving them and their fares without insurance coverage, should they be in an accident.) And, they flood the social media with negativity related to taxi companies and positive messages about their companies. (Think about it. 6 months to a year ago were there tons of media attention on the topic of taxi services?) No, no one was talking about it, nor was anyone complaining about it. It was non-issue until Uber/Lyft/Sidecar hit town.

@30: That would be an insightful analysis if you had your facts right.

- In the Seattle I live in, everyone has complained about taxis for years. It got a little better once the insane/corrupt Stita airport contract changed. But it's still really bad. Even if your conspiracy is real... so what? Nobody complained about commuting on horses until cars came around. And if car manufacturers marketed negativity towards horses... is that so bad?

- You're out of date on the insurance issue. It used to be that way, but most/all of the companies now offer commercial insurance to some degree. Still not good enough, but if that's the problem... why not legislate that issue directly?

- Uber and Lyft are very different. You're thinking of UberX, which is closer to Lyft, operated by Uber, integrated into the same app... but a different business and business model.

- "Dumping" refers to selling a product below cost and I am not aware of any cases, ever, where dumping regulations were applied to services rather than products.

Seattle is an intensely dumb city with politicians who are for sale to highest bidder. This stupid regulation will last for a year or two, and then Uber and friends will buy the next election and not only reverse these regulations but implement crippling anti-taxi regulations. And folks like @30 will yell and scream about how unfair that was with no sense of irony.

Well, I'm sure that capping the number of competitors to the incumbent taxi service at 150 will do wonders for their quality of service.

It's not often that as a resident of California I get to point and laugh at anything that happens in Washington State, but today I am Nelson Muntz: HAW-haw!

@15 Any business that does not accept cash is intrinsically biased against the poor.

Does anyone know about these aggressive people in front of my grocery store with a ballot measure for rideshare? They say it is to save the uber cars and they are arguing with people and being extremely aggressive in trying to get people to sign the petition. I told her I did not want to sign and she followed me and argued with me off the curb. If this is how UBER does business, I dont want any part of it.