Uber Will Continue To Operate In London Following Ban

This is good news!

I think Transport for London were right in refusing the renewal and challenging Uber to make changes. It's good to see they took this seriously and will be monitored closely for the next 15 months. I'm sure other cities were taking note at what London did, and this should help change Uber's disregard for local laws. Ultimately this is good for drivers and passengers.

Unrelated but Amex won the rights to issue an Amazon small biz card (over Chase & potentially others)

@ David

+1

Uber admitted during the proceedings that it had not been a “fit and proper” company (and paid all of the regulator’s costs, too).

Those fan-boy commenters on OMAAT who a year ago attacked the London regulator in an evidence-free defence of their favourite car service should now be eating huge helpings of humble pie. Some were even suggesting it was all a union-inspired attack, and that the mayor was in the pocket of mysterious left-wing conspirators...

TfL (and its predecessors) has been a pretty good regulator for more than a century. This court settlement is a reasonable outcome.

@The nice Paul
+1 for you also.

It's worth looking at Uber's skeleton legal arguments. The opening paragraph states:

"This appeal is not an attack on TfL’s Decision. ULL now fully accepts that the Decision was justified. There was insufficient evidence before TfL at that time to satisfy it that ULL had identified and accepted its past mistakes, and done enough to address TfL’s proper consequential doubts as to ULL’s fitness and propriety. ULL (and the wider Uber group) have since acknowledged and apologised for their past mistakes and made far-reaching changes to address them."

So Uber admitted their mistakes. Importantly the judge, who described Uber as adopting a gung ho attitude in the past, based her decision upon how Uber are acting now not at the time the original decision was made. This was important to Uber because they have made improvements since the original decision.

Finally normally the losing party pays all the costs but in this case Uber are paying TfL's costs. That is a clear message that TfL's original decision was not wrong.

Slapping a ban on Uber isn’t necessary to turn people away. I was in London 2 weeks ago and tried hailing an Uber. Was the service operating then? Wasn’t it? Who knows since the app kept telling me to move closer to some random pickup point near my location and, once there, said no cars were available. After wandering the neighborhood aimlessly for some time thanks to the app, I ended up taking the tube. If Uber can’t tell customers whether or not its service is running or say whether or not any cars are available before sending you on a wild goose chase, I don’t need a ban to look elsewhere.

Why do you illustrate this feature with a dismal autumnal shot of a famously renowned cruising area?

Lilly Ming- Whats a cruising area?