Mobile’s decision to let Uber operate legally within city limits was the right call, and it is one that should have come even sooner. Last month, the Mobile City Council voted unanimously to authorize the ride-hailing company to pick up and drop off passengers inside the city, ending months of uncertainty for drivers and riders who had been navigating a legal gray area.
The vote did not come without resistance. At least one council member raised concerns on the dais about passenger safety and the reliability of contract drivers who are not held to the same licensing standards as traditional taxi operators. Those are fair questions to ask of any new industry moving into a city. But anyone who has actually had to rely on Mobile’s taxi service over the years knows the bar was not exactly high to clear.
Uber’s arrival in the mainstream American market has followed a familiar pattern in city after city: a company builds a following among riders frustrated with the status quo, local governments push back to protect entrenched taxi interests, and eventually most of those governments come around once it becomes clear the public wants the option. Mobile followed that same arc, just a little behind some of its peer cities.
The company’s ambitions were evident years before it reached Mobile. Uber’s model started as a black-car service, offering rides in Lincoln Town Cars and SUVs at a premium price point well above a standard taxi fare. What it lacked in affordability early on, it made up for in reliability, arriving on time and doing away with the guesswork that has long plagued cab service in many American cities, Mobile included.
Turning that promise into a citywide service required clearing the same bureaucratic hurdles Uber has faced in city halls across the country, where taxi companies and their allies on local councils have often been reluctant to open the door to competition. Mobile’s council debate over the summer echoed disputes that played out earlier in Washington, D.C., and dozens of other cities before local officials ultimately concluded they could not hold back rider demand for long.
For residents of Mobile, the practical case for Uber is straightforward. The city’s airport sits roughly 13 miles from downtown, meaning a round trip to the Battle House Hotel and back can run close to $100 by taxi. Riders have long complained of drivers taking longer, more expensive routes, cabs that take over an hour to arrive, and other frustrations that have made hailing a ride in Mobile feel more like a gamble than a service.
The safety argument cuts in Uber’s favor as well. Students at the University of South Alabama have for years faced the challenge of getting from the bars on Dauphin Street back to campus safely late at night. More than a decade ago, the university explored using student fees to fund a voucher-based transportation system for exactly that purpose, but the effort was eventually scrapped after running into abuse of the program. A reliable ride-hailing option fills much of that gap without requiring a university subsidy.
Research on ride-hailing’s public safety impact has generally found that cities allowing services like Uber to operate see measurable reductions in drunk driving arrests, as riders who might otherwise have gotten behind the wheel instead have an easy, inexpensive alternative readily available on their phones. That alone is a meaningful public benefit for a city the size of Mobile.
None of this means Uber is a perfect substitute for a stronger public transit system, or that the concerns raised by council members about oversight and driver accountability should be dismissed outright. But rather than treating ride-hailing companies as a threat to be managed or restricted, city leaders would do well to think of them as a tool that can be used to make Mobile more attractive to visitors, residents and the business community alike, much the same way local governments have long used tax incentives to lure manufacturers and other employers to the region.
Mobile’s decision to allow Uber to operate is not likely to move the needle much on its own for the city’s broader economy. But it costs the city very little to permit, and it stands to make daily life easier for the residents, students and visitors who depend on getting around a city that has never quite solved its transportation problem on its own.