St. Paul adopts regulations for ridesharing services

St. Paul officially entered the realm of the ridesharing world Wednesday as the City Council approved new regulations for companies such as Lyft and Uber that compete for customers with traditional taxis.

The regulations — actually an entirely new chapter in the city's legislative code — dictate licensing and insurance for so-called transportation network companies (TNCs), inspections of the vehicles used, distinctive car signage for easy identification, and standards for drivers.

The council also approved a $35,000 licensing fee for transportation network companies that do business in the city.

The regulations are similar in most respects to those passed this summer in Minneapolis, where city officials believed that ridesharing drivers and vehicles needed to be licensed and inspected from the start.

That wasn't true in St. Paul, where vehicles without meters (such as those in TNCs) aren't classified as taxis and therefore didn't need licensing.

But concerns had been expressed about the public accountability of such businesses, as well as ensuring a competitive playing field for the highly regulated taxi industry. For instance, Uber didn't want drivers' information to be shared publicly, for fear of losing them to other companies.

Unlike taxis, TNCs use smartphone apps to connect riders with private citizens who are willing to drive them to their destinations. Lyft has been offering service in St. Paul for more than a year.

Ricardo Cervantes, director of the city's Safety and Inspections department, acknowledged that taxis and TNCs will come under different rules. While cabbies are required to have individual licenses, only TNCs will have to be licensed.

Rather than checking the backgrounds of each TNC driver and inspecting every vehicle, the city will require the companies to do that and then audit them periodically to make sure they're following through.

"Our goal here is to provide another level of transportation for all of our citizens," Cervantes said.

Council President Kathy Lantry, who championed the measure, said that TNCs have a built-in incentive to provide good service. "These are companies that want to expand, so they want to have a good reputation," she said.

But the two council members who voted against the regulations, Dan Bostrom and Dave Thune, said they didn't adequately protect the public. Both said that TNCs will be able to collect all sorts of information on passengers without having to share information on their drivers with the city, as cab companies must do.

Thune added that he worried TNCs will pick and choose which customers to pick up and which parts of the city to service, leaving people of color and low-income neighborhoods at a disadvantage.

Council Member Chris Tolbert supported the regulations, saying that they can be tweaked if they don't prove tough enough.

"I think this is something that's good for the city overall," he said.