science environment

New Portland Audit Looks At Taxi Regulators In The Age Of Uber

By Kieran Hanrahan (OPB)
Portland Oct. 13, 2016 7:45 p.m.
Traditional taxi companies have been slow to meet the data-sharing requirements that the Portland City Council imposed on the industry last December.

Traditional taxi companies have been slow to meet the data-sharing requirements that the Portland City Council imposed on the industry last December.

Thomas Hawk / Flickr

The Portland Bureau of Transportation isn't doing enough to monitor the quality of service offered by ride-for-hire companies, according to a new report by the City Auditor's Office.

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It’s PBOT’s job to make sure taxi companies and ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft operate safely and offer equitable service to all Portland neighborhoods and riders. The City Auditor's Office says PBOT is doing fine regulating ride safety but could be doing more to make sure that riders with service dogs and wheelchairs, for example, are being treated fairly.

The auditor’s report found two problems. The first is that PBOT didn’t have the staff to analyze the mountains of data it collects from ride-for-hire companies. PBOT says it has already hired additional staff to analyze and draw conclusions from the data it collects. It’s also implementing new software to help make that easier.

The second problem is more complicated. Many ride-for-hire companies simply aren’t giving PBOT all the information they’re required to provide.

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When you use Uber or Lyft to get home after a night out or call a traditional taxi company to take you to the airport, your ride generates a slew of data. City rules require ride-for-hire companies to track everything from the mileage of your trip to the length of time you had to wait for your ride. Those companies have to share that information with PBOT.

Uber and Lyft do everything digitally and don’t have a problem collecting and sharing that data. But traditional taxi companies do. They’ve been slow to meet the data-sharing requirements that the City Council imposed on the industry last December. PBOT says it’s working with those companies to bring them into compliance with reporting requirements.

Here’s the hitch: Ride-for-hire companies are willing to share that data with PBOT, but they don’t want it to be publicly available, says Director of Audit Services Drummond Kahn.

“One of the data concerns we raised in the report is, because the industry designated some data as confidential, that makes it difficult for the city to publicly report it,” Kahn says.

If you read the Auditor’s report looking for the number of drivers ride-for-hire companies employ or the number of rides they give, you’ll only find lines and graphs blacked out at the companies’ request. They consider that data a trade secret. Uber and Lyft go as far as to require that the city not release information on the crashes its drivers are involved in.

The Multnomah County District Attorney ordered PBOT to release some of that data at the petition of The Oregonian in September. But Lyft and Uber filed temporary restraining orders to stop that from happening. Spokespeople from the two companies say that making the data public would give their competition an unfair advantage.

Uber did the same thing in Seattle after a similar public records request last year. A King County judge ruled against the company in January and forced it to release the information.

A judge will decide the Portland case in November.

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