Austin sends decision on Uber, Lyft to voters

Corrections and clarifications: An earlier version of this story misstated the fee on local revenue voted on by Austin City Council. It would be 1%.

SAN FRANCISCO – Voters in Austin, Texas will get the chance to decide in May whether drivers for ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft must be fingerprinted and pay higher fees to the city than previously.

After a sometimes rancorous petition drive over the past few months, the Austin City Council effectively punted the decision to the electorate in a vote Thursday.

How to regulate ride-hailing services has been an on-going issue in Austin.

In 2014 the City Council approved a temporary ordinance that said the ride-hailing services could operate in the city.

In December the council approved a new ordinance that  included optional fingerprint-based criminal background checks for some drivers with what it termed transportation network companies, as well as a 1% fee on local revenue to be paid to Austin, said Austin Mayor Steve Adler's communications director Jason Stanford.

The new rules are set to go into effect at the end of February.

An organization created by Uber, Lyft and other Austin-area organizations called Ridesharing Works for Austin circulated a petition in January and February asking the City Council to roll back the rules to their 2014 version.

The group gathered 65,103 signatures in 21 days, it said.

Google self-driving cars heading to Austin

A long line of speakers gathered to tell council members their thoughts at Thursday's vote.

“You’re giving Austin a bad name by saying that the only way to prove Austin drivers are not dangerous is by fingerprinting,” Austin resident Louise Stritzinger said during public comment before the council on Thursday.

Others said such measures were necessary to protect riders.

Late Thursday, the council voted 8 to 2 to send the decision to voters on May 7.

In a statement. Uber said that the city council had missed an opportunity to listen to the voices of Austinites who had signed the petition and had thus prevent a costly election, but that it was optimistic that the voters would support it during the May 7 referendum.

“The Mayor worked hard with Uber and Lyft to find a safety solution that would work for all concerned, but the Council decided that it wanted an election," said Stanford.

Austin is also where Google began tests of its autonomous cars this summer, which could eventually meld with ride-hailing services.

Automating the task of driving is becoming a key effort by both technology and auto companies alike in the past few years. Ride-hailing company Uber is busy staffing up its self-driving car division, while Ford, Audi and others are growing the teams tasked with adding autonomous-car features into new models.