Uber has reached an agreement with Moscow transport officials that will see the e-taxi app formally given the green light to operate in the Russian capital.
The news comes a little over a month after the Moscow Department of Transport (DoT) threatened to ban the app unless the American company agreed to use officially registered taxi drivers, as well as share travel data with authorities.
There was never much doubt that Uber would put pen to paper on the deal as it was originally expected to agree the previous year, however, it's delayed proceedings until now. The long and short of this news is that unlike in most other cities around the world, Uber won’t be open for business to any Tom, Dick, or Harry to sign up as drivers — only those with DoT-licensed cars will be able to use the app.
Speaking to local Govorit Moskva radio station the previous month, DoT head Maxim Liksutov explained why it needs this extra measure: “Unfortunately, federal legislation doesn’t clearly regulate the work of online taxi services. We must sign an additional agreement with the companies,” he said. In other words, it’s using its existing legislation and applying it to all taxi-centric companies, irrespective of the technology they use. Other online cab firms in the region, including Gett and Russia’s very own Yandex, have already signed this agreement so it seems that authorities aren’t singling out Uber.
Concerning sharing travel data with authorities, well, this is something Uber has already done in other cities, including Boston where it kicked off a big-data initiative with city planners the previous year. Given that Uber holds a plethora of location-focused information, cities can harness this data for the greater good and can be used to relieve traffic congestion, expand public transportation, manage urban growth, and reduce pollution.
“Moscow has one of the highest rates of car ownership in the world and suffers from chronic congestion as a result,” explained Dmitri Izmailov, general manager of Uber Russia, in a statement. “According to a study by TomTom, bad traffic means that Muscovites spend twice as long as they should in their cars. And with Russia set to become Europe’s largest car market by 2020, this issue will only get worse overtime,”