The city has been fining the rideshare company $2,000 a day for operating without licenses.
BY JACOB PALMER | OB DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
The city has been fining the rideshare company $2,000 a day for operating without licenses.
Uber is going to fight the charges — which now total more than $118,000 — in a hearing, according to the Register Guard:
City rules places a number of restrictions on public passenger vehicles and companies, including setting the fares, requiring the vehicles to have commercial auto liability insurance, requiring that records of vehicle service be kept, requiring that vehicles are inspected by a commercial garage once every six months, and requiring that records of complaints are kept. The city rules define a public passenger vehicle company as “any business which operates one or more public passenger vehicles regardless of who owns the vehicles operated.”
Uber’s attorney maintains that the code does not apply to Uber, because Uber does not own or operate the vehicles. Instead, passengers use an Uber application on their cellphones to communicate with individual independent drivers, who own and operate their own vehicles. For connecting passenger to driver, Uber takes a slice of the fare.
Uber’s illegal overture into Portland has caused some unrest among the city’s taxi companies. On Tuesday, the Transportation Fairness Alliance convened in Pioneer Courthouse Square to urge city leaders to not bend to all of Uber’s demands.
Read Oregon Business’ coverage of the demonstration here.
OregonLive.com did an examination of companies like Uber that were rebuked for using Portland’s iconic sign without permission.
Portland’s finance officials are pursuing violators “pretty vigorously,” said Office of Management & Finance spokeswoman Jen Clodius.” People might not be aware that it’s a trademarked sign.”
This month, city attorneys were prepared to sue Pabst for unlicensed use of the famous sign atop the White Stag building in Old Town-Chinatown to promote the brewery’s music festival, but that spat appears to have gone flat. The City Council could discuss the potential suit on Jan. 28.
