I've got an entire city of people (Vancouver, BC) who are desperately waiting for Uber to come and save us from the ridiculous taxi situation in this city. Five more minutes? You're lucky. If you can get an Taxi in 2 hours downtown this month, you're lucky. If you can get a cab to drive you to a suburb, good luck. And we have plenty of people interested in driving for Uber when it comes here.
I welcome as much regulation as necessary to ensure that Uber is safe for consumers but beyond that I say let the tech industry come.
We have a medallion system and those medallions cost a lot of money. The taxi lobby keeps the number of medallions issued low to protect their investment. In addition, there are a number of stupid regulations and artificial boundaries that make the situation worse for everyone.
Unfortunately the government has created a situation where they've made owning a taxi medallion a huge investment and simply allowing Uber would destroy that investment overnight. The taxi industry, knowing now that they're at the mercy of the government, have started "donating" much more aggressively. At this point, the government is just trying to avoid dealing with the issue for as long as possible.
The taxi companies here in Vancouver did that themselves (ostensibly to show they weren't behind technologically in contrast with Uber). However, that in itself doesn't solve any problems. If you can't get a cab by calling dispatch, you can't get a cab using an app.
I welcome as much regulation as necessary to ensure that Uber is safe for consumers but beyond that I say let the tech industry come.