Uber has not been in East Lansing for even a full year yet, but the ride-sharing company has already left a big impression on the city and across the state.

Uber came to the East Lansing area late last July, and as its first year begins to wind down, there are many opinions throughout the state about the ride-sharing service and how it should be handled.

“It is something that has increasingly become available in cities all across the country, that many folks, especially, say MSU students who are coming to the area from elsewhere, have become accustomed to having available, so I thought it was something that was positive for our community,” East Lansing Mayor Nathan Triplett said.

Easy Lansing City Clerk Marie E. Wicks said Uber has been great in the area by giving jobs to people who need them and giving people another transportation option.

Need for Regulation

While many in the state, from legislators to city officials and even some taxicab companies, believe Uber is a good thing for Michigan, they all believe that Network Transportation Companies should have stricter regulations for operating in Michigan.

Vartan Muradov, the owner of Royal Express Taxi said that he is frustrated about the lack of regulations in place for Uber and believes that there needs to be a stricter set of regulations for Uber drivers.

“It’s no secret — we all know they are doing the same job that cabs do in a different platform,” Muradov said. “There should be something, I’m not saying they need to be completely regulated as a cab, but there needs to be some kind of regulation, form of identification, some form of requirements.

“I understand that they need to be a little bit adjusted accordingly, like limousine service has their own set of rules and regulations and cabs have their own rules and regulations, but generally they are all standardized and similar.”

East Lansing Mayor Nathan Triplett said that when Uber was brought to East Lansing and Lansing last year, they agreed in principle to a set of regulationst hat they would voluntarily abide by, but that the city currently has no real power to enforce them.

The regulations, which were adopted jointly by Lansing and East Lansing will go into effect once the Greater Lansing Taxi Authority officially takes over the responsibility and licensing of taxicabs and ride-sharing services like Uber within the next couple months.

The regulations would require Uber drivers to have minimum insurance requirements, background checks and zero tolerance for drugs and alcohol use. Triplett said the requirements are similar but not identical to taxicabs.

“We did not try to shove the square peg of transportation network companies into the round hole of taxi regulation,” Triplett said. “Instead, we adopted a list of rules that were appropriate to transportation network companies.”

Local Approach

Triplett is concerned, however, about a current five-bill package of legislation in the Michigan House of Representatives, HB 4637-4641, which would void all local regulations for Network Transportation Companies and place state-wide regulations for services such as Uber.

“What I oppose about the house bill is the fact that it will intrude on the ability of local units of government, like East Lansing, who have spent a great deal of time working with transportation network companies to develop a local approachthat is appropriate to our community, and will say that that is no longer permissible,” Triplett said.

Wicks said one reason local control would be a benefit is that it would give local governments the ability to make sure things such as background checks, vehicle inspections and all other aspects of the regulations set by the city are handled properly by Uber and their drivers and deal with those issues accordingly if they were not.

Triplett said local governments need to have control over these regulations because state officials might not take such violations by Uber and its drivers as seriously as individual communities might.

“This is a high priority issue for us to make sure that these drivers are operating safely in our community and in compliance with the rules and regulations that have been adopted,” Triplett said. “Whereas if it’s up to the state they obviously have a number of competing priorities that this might not be as high of a priority as it is for a community like East Lansing where we have a university student population.”

Wicks said that while she understands that Uber does not want to have to comply with a patchwork of different local regulations, she feels the communities in the state have done a good job of making their policies on such services similar.

Triplett noted that many of the policies and regulations they have set up for companies like Uber were taken from the regulations Detroit put in place fore the ride-sharing company when they first entered Michigan through Detroit in 2013.

Triplett said that while he hopes regulation ultimately left at the local level, he feels that Uber will continue to grow and be a valuable asset to the city either way.

House Bills 4637-4641 all passed the full House of Representatives and have been referred to the Senate Regulatory Reform Committee.