Just getting the thread back to Uber/Lyft and what happened in Austin.
There are dozens of stories on the web about what happened in Austin with Uber/Lyft and dozens of viewpoints on who was right or wrong. I live in Austin and below is a link from the WSJ which I think is pretty fair in describing what happened.
Basically, each city in Texas has it's own city ordinance on how to regulate taxis, not all the ordinances are the same in each city. In Austin, the ordinance requires taxi drivers to submit fingerprints along with their application data as part of the background check process. Uber/Lyft consider themselves as "ride-sharing" services and not taxi companies, and they do not require fingerprints as part of their background check. The article goes over the two systems and why Uber/Lyft do not want to go to the fingerprint system. (Although they do use the fingerprint system in New York, which is also covered in the article).
http://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-capit ... 1462796972At first the Austin city council did not allow Uber/Lyft to operate here because they did not follow the city ordinance for taxis. However, they then decided to allow Uber/Lyft to operate here temporarily, until they could reach a compromise and come up with a permanent decision. The negotiations went back and forth for quite some time, but eventually broke down. In December the city council passed an permanent city ordinance that required Uber/Lyft and other "ride sharing" companies to follow the same rules as the taxi companies and start to require fingerprints as part of the background checks for drivers
Uber/Lyft then gathered enough signatures (actually way more than enough) to force a city wide vote to change the ordinance. You can read the details of what happened in the city wide vote in the link, but basically Uber/Lyft lost the vote and the ordinance remained in place.
Uber/Lyft then pulled out of Austin. They can always come back if they want, but they would have to change how they do their background checks to match the city ordinance. The last I heard is that Uber/Lyft has contacted state legislators (from cities in Texas that do not require finger print checks) to see if they can get a bill introduced at the next legislative session that would not require finger print checks. If this bill passed, it would override any city ordinance.