LVRJ: Legislature must let Uber operate in Nevada

(LVRJ) – If Nevada lawmakers are serious about attracting more high-tech companies to the state, about lifting the state’s entrepreneurial profile and appealing to the 21st-century workforce they claim they want to create, they’ll pass legislation that allows one of the country’s most innovative industries to operate here.

Last year, Nevada made national headlines when it became the first state to shut down ride-sharing service Uber, a better, more competitive, more responsive taxi service for the smartphone era.

Using an app-based platform, Uber and similar companies connect drivers to passengers, generally in less time and for less money than taxis. Uber is used in cities around the world by educated people who are accustomed to gaining new, cost-saving conveniences through technology — the kind of people the Las Vegas tourism industry covets as customers, the kind of people the region’s economic development officials want as workers. But when the Nevada Transportation Authority did the bidding of the taxicab industry and treated Uber drivers like wanted fugitives, it sent a powerful message outside the state: Nevada doesn’t like competition, and it doesn’t like change.

There was no getting around state taxi regulations. It would take a new state law to re-activate Uber in Nevada.

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