ride sharing Archives - SiliconHills

We can make @lyft & @uber work in San Antonio. They'll need to meet strong safety/quality standards. SA is moving fwd, not standing still.

— Mayor Julián Castro (@JulianCastro) March 28, 2014

By LAURA LOREK
Founder Silicon Hills News

Photo courtesy of Lyft

On March 21, Lyft, the riding sharing service, launched in San Antonio.

Last week, Police Chief William McManus held a press conference announcing that Lyft drivers would be arrested and issued the company a cease and desist order, according to the San Antonio Express-News.

Next, Mayor Julian Castro announced that the city should work with Lyft and other innovative startups looking to operate in San Antonio.

“We can make Lyft, Uber and similar services work in San Antonio,” Castro wrote in a post on Facebook. “They need to meet strong standards for safety and quality (insurance, driver background checks, etc.), but they should be part of the equation. Figuring that out will take some time, but we’ll get it done. San Antonio is moving forward, not standing still.”

And on Friday, another ride sharing service, Uber, launched.

“San Antonio, The road to get here has been long, and while we’re still working to break the mold of traditional ways of thinking, we’re proud and pumped to be launching in Alamo City,” according to a blog post. “As you may already know, we’re big fans of bringing innovative and efficient transportation options to the world and are thrilled that San Antonio now gets to embrace and enjoy the Uber lifestyle.”

Uber and Lyft are not available in Austin, which has banned ride sharing services. HeyRide launched in 2012 there and was shut down by the city and then acquired by Sidecar, another ride sharing app.

The taxi industry opposes the ride sharing apps because they say that they are not safe and that they do not do background checks on their drivers. But both Lyft and Uber state that they do background checks on their drivers.

But Lyft and Uber operate in dozens of cities around the country. They have been embraced by the collaborative community that sees ridesharing as a natural evolution of the transportation industry.

Photo courtesy of Lyft

Lyft, the ride sharing app, launched Friday in San Antonio, its third city in the Texas market.

Lyft is also available in Dallas and Houston. The company held a party earlier this week at the Hotel Havana downtown to celebrate its service in the San Antonio area.

“San Antonio has been a longtime supporter of tech and innovation, and has a vibrant local culture and more than 120,000 college students,” said Katie Dally, Lyft spokeswoman. “It’s also been a transportation innovator, being Texas’ first city to have a B-cycle bike share system. Lyft fills in the gaps to enable residents to get around safely, reliably and affordably without always using their own cars.”

Lyft is a ride-sharing service available through a free app on an iPhone or Android smartphone. Customers simply request a ride using the app with a tap of a button and a driver arrives within minutes to provide a ride.

Lyft has been advertising on Indeed.com and Craigslist in San Antonio for drivers, touting that they can make as much as $500 in a weekend. All of Lyft’s community drivers are background checked and interviewed before being hired by the company to provide rides.

In addition to San Antonio, Lyft is available in 26 cities nationwide.

It’s an alternative to a taxi cab ride and that doesn’t sit well with the established transportation industry in some cities. Ride sharing services like Uber, Lyft and Sidecar have met with opposition in Austin. They are currently not available there. An early ride-sharing pioneering startup, Heyride launched there more than a year ago and was served by a cease and desist order by the city. Sidecar later acquired Heyride. Even during SXSW Interactive, services like Uber, Lyft and Sidecar could not provide rides or could only provide rides to festival attendees under restrictions.

Initially, the Lfyt rides in San Antonio will be operating under the company’s Pioneer program, which offers free rides to all new users for their first two weeks. After that, the Lyft rides are calculated based on time and miles. It charges a minimum $5 per ride.

The company, based in San Francisco, has 180 employees and it was founded in 2007 and has raised $82.5 million to date, according to its Crunchbase profile.

First Lyft, Now Uber Launches in San Antonio

Ride-Sharing App Lyft Launches in San Antonio