Uber’s road back
Calls for sit-down after London ban
Uber wants to know how it can get back in business in London.
“We’d like to know what we can do . . . to sit down and work together to get this right,” Tom Elvidge, Uber’s general manager in the city, told The Sunday Times of London.
Uber’s operating license was stripped Friday after the newspaper revealed that the head of the Metropolitan Police’s taxi unit had accused the ride-hailing service of failing to report “serious crimes” by drivers, including sex attacks, to avoid “damaging [its] reputation.”
Transport for London (TfL), the agency overseeing the city’s transit, cited Uber’s “approach to reporting serious criminal offences” as a key reason for declaring the company “not fit and proper” to hold a license.
Uber is London’s biggest taxi operator with 40,000 drivers.
TfL and other local officials warned Saturday that Uber had plans to “flood” the British capital with cars licensed by surrounding communities to get around the ban.
Uber declined to confirm or deny the claim.
Elvidge’s tone changed from Fri- day, when he promised immediate legal action and said London Mayor Sadiq Khan had “caved in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice.”
Elvidge also told the paper that the regulators had refused over several months to talk substantively about the licence renewal or to specify what, if any, reforms it wanted from the company before relicensing it.
Among Uber’s possible concessions were giving its drivers employment benefits and imposing limits on drivers’ hours to address road-safety concerns, as it does in New York.
Nearly 600,000 people have signed an online petition sponsored by the company to “Save Your Uber in London.”
In an official response posted on the petition site, Khan backed the license removal.
“I have every sympathy with Uber drivers and customers affected by this decision, but their anger really should be directed at Uber,” Khan said. “They have let down their drivers and customers.”