The Slatest

Uber Strikes Deal With New York City to Avoid Cap on Ride-Hailing Vehicles in City

Is Uber making New York City traffic worse?

Photo by DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images

Uber and New York City struck a conciliatory tone, agreeing to a deal that would avoid the city capping the number of Uber drivers on city streets. The agreement softens a New York City Council bill that aimed at curtailing the ride-hailing service’s growth over concerns about increasing congestion on city streets caused by ride-hailing services.

Under the terms of the new agreement, New York will conduct a four-month study on the traffic impact of Uber and others, but will not limit the companies’ growth during that period as originally mandated by the bill. The deal also requires Uber to fork over data to the city, officials told the New York Times. Uber has typically been prickly about handing over mass amounts of data to regulators and is currently in a dust up with regulators in California over how much data it must share.

“Anthony E. Shorris, the city’s first deputy mayor, said the city would [-] undertake a sprawling review of the entire car service industry, with an eye toward raising revenue for mass transit and making improvements for disabled passengers, among other things,” the New York Times reports. “Since 2011, the year Uber debuted in the city, the number of for-hire vehicles has grown by more than 60 percent, to more than 63,000. About 20,000 of the vehicles are Uber’s, according to the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission.”

The deal ends a contentious period where New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, both Democrats, came down on different sides of the bill. De Blasio has been critical of Uber’s expansion into the city citing safety, congestion, and working conditions concerns. He told reporters on Monday: “Uber is a multibillion dollar corporation, and they’re acting like one.”