San Angelo's Battle Over Ride Sharing and Lyft

SAN ANGELO, TX — Lyft, a ride-sharing system powered by a mobile phone app, opened in San Angelo on March 30. Anyone living in San Angelo can apply online to offer rides in their vehicle. Lyft, a San Francisco-based tech company, vets the applicant by conducting a background check and vehicle insurance validation check. Approved Lyft drivers are then given access to the “driver” functionality on the app.

Riders wanting Lyft can download the mobile app, enter their credit card, and use the app to call for a Lyft. When the rider hails a ride, the Lyft driver is notified via a push notification. The driver has 15 seconds to accept or decline the ride. Likewise, the person requesting the ride then has the opportunity to accept or reject the ride after being notified of the assigned driver and the driver’s five-star rating.

Lyft drivers and riders rate one another using a five-star rating system. If a Lyft driver’s rating drops below 4.3 stars, the driver may be kicked off the system, according to comments in a Lyft drivers’ forum on Reddit.com.

Officials at the City of San Angelo are unsure about the safety of Lyft. Police Chief Frank Carter explained that his vision is to make sure any citizen will be comfortable allowing their daughter hail a Lyft. To do that, Carter said he wants to know who these drivers are. “There are things a Lyft-required background check doesn’t reveal about a driver,” Carter maintained.

Carter’s point man on ride-sharing policy is Assistant Police Chief Robert Martinez. "The San Angelo Police Department wants to make sure the driver is a reasonable person. We want to check the criminal history to include how many citations the applicant has had over a given period, are there any convictions, are there any criminal charges pending, their driving history, any at-fault crashes, and are there any outstanding warrants,” Martinez explained..

To do that, the police department is relying on the existing taxicab ordinance. The City requires Lyft drivers to pay a $25 first year application and licensing fee and to present to the SAPD records division a Texas DPS background check that requires fingerprinting. After a year, renewals are $10 annually and an additional, updated background check is required.

The SAPD’s approved vendor to obtain the background check is Identogo, located at 917 S. Abe St. Suite A-3. Martinez said, "the product a prospective Lyft driver must purchase, is the state background check with fingerprinting. Identogo charges $25 for this."

When asked about the process, Identogo said that the processing of the background check and fingerprints can take up to three weeks. The results are then mailed to the applicant.

With the Identogo paperwork in hand, one must fill out a taxi application obtained at the SAPD records division. Applicants have to get the application notarized, so you cannot fill out the paperwork at the police station.

Once the notarized application and Identogo paperwork are turned in, Martinez said it will take about 24 hours to obtain a taxi permit from the SAPD. For further questions on this process, please call the SAPD records division at (325) 657-4246.

Martinez warned that the police department has no moratorium on enforcement of violations of the City ordinance for Lyft drivers. “No moratorium. If someone complains we have to act on it,” Martinez said. Martinez guesses that the first incident involving a Lyft driver may be when one is involved in a crash.

Martinez said to date, there have been no reported incidents involving police and Lyft. The ride-sharing company has been operating in San Angelo since March 30.

The City of Laredo’s City council recently addressed ride sharing by deregulating both taxicabs and Lyft. Lyft went operational in Laredo at about the same time they introduced themselves to San Angelo. 

“City staff had been working on either adding a classification of ride sharing to our city ordnance or modifying taxicab regulations to accommodate them since late 2016,” said City of Laredo Assistant City Manager Robert Eads. 

“Then Lyft just showed up one day, declaring that our ordinances do not apply to them,” Eads said.

At first Eads and his staff were a little put off by the audacity of the ride-sharing company to barge into the Laredo market without finishing the process he had spearheaded to officially legalize ride-sharing. Eads said he had been in contact with Uber and Lyft since November 2016.

Lyft’s actions required the City of Laredo to call a special city council meeting to address ride sharing.

Laredo has a 70-page taxicab ordinance, Eads added. 

At the special meeting, the city council listened to arguments for proponents and the opponents of ride sharing. The local Mothers Against Drunk Driving spokesperson was a vocal advocate for allowing ride sharing to exist unencumbered by government regulations. On the other side, the taxi drivers were livid that ride sharing was going to cut into their market share, Eads said.

The council decided to completely deregulate taxis and ride sharing, Eads said. He said the move surprises him. In one meeting, the council threw out the 70-page regulation on taxicab operations and declared Laredo an unregulated, open market for taxis and ride sharing.

“But here’s the interesting thing,” Eads said, “a few days after the council deregulated taxis, the taxi drivers were complaining they wanted the regulations back in place.” The City provides protected taxicab stands and access to the plaza in Laredo that were taken away when the ordinance was dropped.

At the next meeting, at the taxi drivers’ request, council reinstated all ordinances for just the taxicabs, Eads said. Ride sharing—and Lyft—remains unregulated, however. 

“We are working with the taxicab drivers to see how we can modify the ordinance—take out some of the more arduous rules, like the dress code—and then we’ll present the suggested modifications back to council in the near future,” Eads said.

Eads said since working on the ride sharing project, he has discovered that taxis and Lyft complement one another. Taxis are primarily working the international bridge and driving shoppers downtown. Lyft is more of a system for driving a passenger on longer hauls, from point A to B, such as from the airport, which is five miles out of town.

Eads said that the City of Laredo has a commercial account with Uber, another ride-sharing company, to accommodate city officials on out-of-town trips. “We use the service ourselves,” he said.

Eads describes the elected City council in Laredo as young and very progressive. He was surprised they went for complete deregulation of ride sharing. Four of the members, including the mayor, are local attorneys. He said the average age of council members is high-30s to mid-40s. 

Laredo has a population of 275,000. “But we have Nuevo Laredo across the border with another 400,000 people living there. On any given day there are 500,000 people within the city limits,” Eads said.

Eads said there have been no issues in Laredo as a result of allowing unregulated ride sharing, and the taxicabs seem for the most part satisfied to have their taxi stands and the plaza back for their use.

Back in San Angelo, Martinez said he has a contact with Lyft but she has not returned his calls. 

We asked Lyft about the regulations in San Angelo, Lyft gave us a short response. “We’ve reached out to the City and are hoping to begin conversations around preserving modern transportation options for people in San Angelo,” said Lyft’s Senior Policy Communications Manager Chelsea Harrison in an email on Friday.

Lyft is a local advertising partner with San Angelo LIVE!