Uber Wins Right to Drive in London
The rideshare company won its license renewal appeal in London.
Illustration by Brown Bird Design
Uber's back in London! At least for the next 15 months, that is... The company won its legislative battle with Transport for London (TfL), the city's transportation agency, this afternoon, with a judge ruling that Uber could continue driving in London on a 15-month probationary license. The company will have that time to prove to local regulators that it has changed its ways under the guidance of new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. TfL refused Uber's request to renew its license to operate in the U.K. capital in September, just one month after Khosrowshahi joined the company, citing Uber's previous lack of cooperation with British regulators as grounds for denial.
The transportation board argued Uber's previous actions—hiding huge data breaches that compromised the personal info of 2.7 million Brits, using software to hide its cars within the app from local authorities, and conducting drivers' eye exams over video on the Push Doctor app—no longer made the company "fit and proper" for holding a license. Surprisingly, Uber agreed in its statement to the court earlier this week, saying that TfL was justified and that it had handled previous incidents "wholly inappropriately," the Evening Standard reports. "Inevitably such a young business has suffered a number of growing pains that hasn't been helped by the gung-ho approach [of managers]," the ruling's chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot said in court Tuesday. She found that while the TfL was right to suspend the license in September, Uber has capitulated enough in the recent months to be "fit and proper." The company now has little more than a year to prove it's ready to cooperate with regulators and play by TfL's rules, which includes reporting violent incidents to London police and submitting to an audit in six months, the Financial Times reports.
London is Uber's largest European market, The New York Times reports, with as many as 3.6 million people in London using the app in a three month period. Luckily for London's Uber riders, the license appeal process hasn't disrupted service yet and it'll continue with business as usual under the new probationary license for the next year and three months, before Uber's license status is reviewed again.
But, for those wary of Uber's past actions, there are plenty of alternatives, like using competing apps such as Gett (which offers flat fee pricing) and MyTaxi (which connects you to a black cab). Or you could go old school, hopping on a double-decker bus or the Tube with that golden ticket of an Oyster card.
This story has been updated with new information.
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