Uber NYC closes five offices over data sharing squabble
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Version 0 of 1. Uber has accepted a partial suspension in New York in an effort to avoid having to hand over ride data requested by the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission. The company has been forced by court order to suspend operations in five of its six dispatch offices, after failing to comply with a new regulation from the TLC which requires it to hand over information about where and when passengers are picked up. But due to a quirk of New York laws, the company is still able to provide a service in the city through its sixth dispatch office. The regulations require companies offering taxi services to maintain their dispatch centres as separate, individually legally limited companies, with each car and driver registered to a specific centre. But the company is allowed to carry on running cars link to the suspended offices by routing them through the remaining base, the Wall Street Journal reports. “When Uber initially came into this market, they enthusiastically committed to providing this data, and it is unfortunate that they have reneged on that commitment,” a TLC spokesperson told the paper. The five offices re-opened the following day after Uber filed an appeal with the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, allowing them to continue doing business on a temporary basis until the appeal is decided, according to Newsweek. The company’s reluctance to share the data has attracted criticism, with long-time Uber critics Pando Daily arguing that it will prevent the city from improving its own services. “Transportation planners would have a field day with the data, which would reveal in real-time how people move around the city,” Pando’s David Holmes writes. “And… the payment information would reveal precisely how much Uber drivers make, providing a good picture of the economic trade-off of giving so much of the city’s transportation market to just one company.” Uber’s frequent regulatory woes have become almost as well known as the company itself. There are few cities it operates in where it hasn’t had some sort of squabble over applicability of local taxi laws. In London, for instance, the firm’s technology led to a high court challenge against Transport to London from the city’s black-cab drivers, which accused Uber of effectively installing taxi-meters, a privilege reserved for black cabs only. • Uber taxis face legal battles from London black-cab drivers |