Power to the smartphones! The High Court has ruled in favour of Uber this morning after Transport for London and the taxi lobby asked it to clarify whether smartphones in private hire vehicles counted as taximeters. In the ruling, Mr Justice Ouseley said that the drivers’ app may be essential for calculating the fare but that did not make it the device ‘for’ calculating in the fare — which would have put Uber in breach of taximeter laws:
‘A taximeter, for the purposes of Section 11 of the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998, is not a device which receives GPS signals in the course of a journey, and forwards GPS data to a server located outside of the vehicle, which calculates a fare that is partially or wholly determined by reference to distance travelled and time taken, and sends the fare information back to the device.’
Londoners will be rejoicing that they are able to continue using Uber, which offers a cheaper and frequently better service than traditional black cabs. But the battle to smash the cabbies’ monopoly is not yet over: City Hall is still proposing a compulsory five-minute wait period on Uber rides as well as a ban on ride sharing — both of which would threaten Uber’s business model. Jo Bertram, Uber’s regional manager for the UK, welcomed the ruling as a ‘victory for common sense’:
‘Now the High Court has ruled in favour of new technology, we hope Transport for London will think again on their bureaucratic proposals for apps like Uber. Compulsory five-minute waits and banning ride-sharing would be bad for riders and drivers. These plans make no sense. That’s why 130,000 people have already signed our petition against these proposals. We hope TfL will listen to Londoners and let Uber keep London moving.’
Uber have handily found themselves a new champion in Zac Goldsmith, the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London. In an interview with City AM, Goldsmith said City Hall’s proposals are ‘misguided’: ‘Things like the five-minute pause, I don’t think any customers going to understand why there is a cab hanging around nearby and they have to wait five minutes’. London’s thousands of passengers drivers now have a reason to Back Zac in next year’s mayoral election — his rival Sadiq Khan said at a hustings he is ‘on the side of the back cab driver’.
Comments