Four ride-hailing companies, two nationally established and two start-ups, are looking at Corpus Christi market. The big guys have demands, the little guys are feeling growing pains. Illustration by Roland Chiapoco
After Austin voters turned down a proposition that would have accommodated transportation network companies Uber and Lyft, Corpus Christi city council members may be rethinking their own upcoming vote. A move to approve an ordinance that would do away with fingerprint background checks — the issue TNCs hate the most — may be abandoned when the council meets this afternoon, May 10. In fact, the council has two unexpected items on today’s agenda: one from city staff and one from a citizens’ group.
Uber and Lyft left other communities over the fingerprint requirement, including San Antonio, Galveston and now Austin. Uber may soon leave Houston for the same reason. Houston is one of only two cities the companies now serve that require the more thorough criminal background checks based on fingerprints. New York City is the other.
The companies left Austin hours after voters overwhelming turned down a TNC-backed proposition. Uber and Lyft combined spent more than $9 million in support of Proposition 1 in Austin, which failed by more than 12 percentage points during the May 7 election.
Uber and Lyft left Corpus Christi in March after the city council approved an ordinance requiring the background checks. A boisterous public outcry over the exit caused the council to rethink the issue. The ordinance was not published and therefore has not gone into effect. That was March.
In April, Corpus Christi city council members told city staff to come back by May 17 with an ordinance that did not require the fingerprint checks. In the meantime, the council held information gathering sessions at council meetings. Today’s meeting, May 10, was supposed to be the last of those before a May 17 vote.
That changed after the Austin election results came in. Now two new items have been put on the May 10 agenda. The change also comes as a fairly new company, GetMe, began speaking to the council — specifically Mayor Nelda Martinez — about coming into the Coastal Bend market. Another fairly new company, Tride, spoke to Corpus Christi Business News recently about also working in the region.
GetMe, a start-up based in Dallas, has 10,000 drivers in four cities: Dallas, Austin, Houston and Las Vegas. Within two days of the vote, some 1,600 new drivers applied to work with the 270-day-old company in the Austin market.
“Being pushed into the spotlight as a startup is never a comfortable feeling,” GetMe posted on its Facebook page Tuesday morning. “You are typically under scrutiny from users that have been utilizing other companies’ technology that has been well established, had millions of dollars and millions of work hours behind it.”
GetMe presented a “can-do” spirit in the post — lengthly for Facebook — stating that it had many new ideas for providing female to female only rides and vehicles lined up for transporting the disabled, providing delivery and courier services and more.
“We don’t mind,” the post said referring to the extra scrutiny and likely growing pains. “GetMe continues to improve, listen and learn. Thank you to everyone that’s joining us on this journey. Welcome to our party!”
Mack Park, founder of Tride, a TNC based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, told Corpus Christi Business recently that his company is just the right size for the Coastal Bend.
“We’re smaller, so we’re able to work with the smaller communities,” Park said. “We’re the little guy local grocery store versus Walmart.”
Both Tride and GetMe welcome fingerprint background checks. Tride also said they would most likely open an office in the city and would give back to the community by offering free rides to unemployed persons and military veterans going to job interviews. Tride also does not have surge pricing during high demand periods like Uber and Lyft do.
In Corpus Christi, Mayor Martinez reported she wants a vote on today’s agenda items. She has long supported fingerprint background checks, which she said are necessary for rider safety.
The two items on the agenda include a city staff written ordinance which may or may not include fingerprint background checks. City Councilwoman Colleen McIntyre stated publicly that if the requirement is removed for TNCs, it should also be removed for taxi companies, so the new ordinance could include that.
A second item comes from a citizen’s group formed to bring Uber and Lyft back into the community. According to rules, the city council will have until June 24 to vote on the citizen proposal. If the council rejects it in the May 10 meeting, the paperwork needed to get an initiative on the November ballot will be available at the meeting.
