OLI
SCARFF/GETTY IMAGES
The Uber application, which allows users to summon an
independent driver, is opposed by taxi unions, who say it does not comply with
the regulations that taxi drivers face.
LONDON — In
the battle between Europe’s taxi drivers and the ride-sharing service Uber, score
one for Uber.
On Thursday,
London’s transport regulator said that Uber, the West Coast technology startup
that has faced protests in major cities across Europe from London to Madrid,
can legally operate in the British capital.
The decision
by Transport for London to allow Uber to continue operating in London is
centered on the technology that powers the startup’s service.
Under
London’s taxi rules, only licensed black taxis can use meters in their vehicles
to charge customers based on distance and time. The city’s licensed taxi
drivers argued that Uber’s technology, which uses a smartphone-based technology
to charge customers at the end of the journey based on the length of their
trip, broke this regulation.
Transport
for London, however, disagreed.
“Smartphones
that transmit location information between vehicles and operators have no
operational or physical connection with the vehicles,” the regulator said
Thursday in a statement. The phones are “not taximeters within the meaning of
the legislation,” it said.
The decision
follows a regionwide protest by thousands of taxi drivers in Europe, who say
they believe that Uber — which allows people to book taxis through a smartphone
application — does not comply with local regulations and does not pay enough
taxes in the cities where it operates. Earlier this week, cabbies in Milan and
Barcelona again took to the streets to protest Uber’s presence, although the
service has yet to expand to the Spanish capital.
Uber has
faced challenges locally as well, according to recent Globe reports. Taxi
drivers from Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline staged a rolling
protest outside Uber’s Boston offices in May, and more recently, a Boston labor
lawyer filed a lawsuit against the service, saying that exploits drivers.
Cambridge
officials are considering regulations to restrict ride-sharing services, a move
that outraged supporters of new system.
In London,
the ruling by the regulator is not the final green light for Uber. To clarify
whether Uber’s technology can be considered a meter, Transport for London said
it was asking a British court to make a final ruling.
That
decision must now wait until legal cases brought by a London taxi union against
six individual Uber drivers is completed, the regulator added.
“Using a
meter in a private vehicle is a criminal matter,” said Steve McNamara, general
secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association, who added that the cases
against the Uber drivers would probably be heard in the autumn.
Uber
welcomed the London regulator’s decision Thursday.
“Today is a
victory for common sense,” Jo Bertram, Uber’s general manager for Britain and
Ireland, said Thursday in a statement. “Uber on, London.”
