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Brazil's Biggest City Wants To Charge Fees For Uber Rides (engadget.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the pay-to-play dept.

An anonymous reader sends word that Sao Paulo's city hall has proposed levying fees on Uber to operate in the city. Engadget reports: "Many cities try to limit or ban ridesharing services like Uber, but Sao Paulo is trying an uncommon strategy to keep the companies in check: skimming a little off the top. The major Brazilian city has proposed a requirement these services have to buy government credits to cover their distance traveled, with rates changing based on when and where the trip takes place. App makers would also have to support a service that picks up multiple passengers headed in the same direction, although that won't be hard when options like UberPool already exist."

1 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. Paulistano here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The guy is supposedly a left-wing one (from the Laborers' Party - "PT"). He's young and has been doing an unconventional government -- he installed a lot of bike lanes (ciclovias) in an attempt to make people use bikes, but we lack the culture to use them these days and São Paulo has a harsh relief -- in some places it could be negotiated with an electric bike, but these are costly and too irresistible for thieves.

    All in all, I don't think he's the worse we had, but some people simply hate his party for the insanely expensive and numerous cases of corruption (although it seems he's not involved).

    He also reduced our city max speed to 50kmph mostly everywhere (that's about 31mph). Mind you, this is an international tendence and we have such terrible traffic jams that make us go even slower. But people find such speed too slow. Again, from what I've read here and elsewhere going slower probably reduces jams. Then again Brazilians simply love to speed. One of the alleged advantages is a reduction in accidents.

    Now, given this panorama, I guess he would allow Uber without any tax whatsoever. And this is what has happened till now.

    But conventional taxi drivers would rather start a revolution than have that. There's been a lot of protests and I guess the mayor is trying to come up with some kind of compromise like "See, they're paying, too!" Oh, well...