Uber’s Vegas invasion sparks conflict, needs compromise

Is it a new era in transportation for Southern Nevada or a great techie idea that’s going to be squashed like a bug by the state’s regulatory regime?

There have been indications for months that Uber, the San Francisco-based ride-sharing company, was going to try to find its way onto Las Vegans’ smartphones to be used here.

We got an indication that Uber’s time was drawing near when the company’s corporate mark, a gigantic U, was seen smiling out from ads in the Review-Journal and Las Vegas Business Press. The publication of that U was like Commissioner Gordon summoning Batman with the bat signal — mysterious but effective.

As has been its pattern worldwide, Uber launched here on a Friday afternoon. Just as quickly, the state moved to close it down with a temporary order from a Carson City judge. And on Saturday, Uber’s attorney said he challenged the order, and Uber drivers were still working in Las Vegas.

What happens next has been the subject of speculation by transportation insiders as well as road warriors like us.

Uber backers see all good and no wrong with the service, partially because their heavily millennial legions are all-trusting that the person offering the ride is probably a good guy and, worst case, better than most cabdrivers. They relish the idea of Uber taking it to the taxi man.

Uber haters, meanwhile, can’t wait to say “I told you so” when an Uber driver takes a passenger on a high-speed chase (it happened in Virginia), attacks a rider with a hammer (it happened in San Francisco) or runs over and kills a child (it also happened in San Francisco).

As Brent Bell, president of Whittlesea Bell Transportation, a company that owns several taxi and limousine companies statewide, told me, “If Uber does what they say they’re going to do, they’ll be breaking all kinds of state laws.”

And those are state laws that Whittlesea Bell and other transportation companies have to live with every day. How fair is that for a competitor to come in and operate under its own set of rules?

I’ve been asked on numerous occasions what I think is going to happen.

I think the local transportation industry isn’t going to go quietly, and hopefully that doesn’t mean that cabdrivers attempt to take matters into their own hands when they see an Uber driver out in the community.

People do strange things when their livelihoods are threatened.

I expect transportation regulators to do their best to catch and cite Uber drivers, but they will be overwhelmed by the task.

I expect Uber to put a ton of money into trying to defend its business model, including lobbying state lawmakers to change the rules to let them operate legally under a new set of rules.

That will be a fascinating battle considering how entrenched the taxi industry is in our state.

The Uber technology is a great idea. Nevadans and the state’s millions of tourists deserve to be able to use it.

NEW YORK-STYLE PARKING

Maybe it was an effort by the El Cortez to make New Yorkers feel at home, but did you see the price tag on the hotel’s valet parking service this weekend?

Forty bucks a day.

Operators obviously were trying to make a little money as a result of the property’s proximity to the Life Is Beautiful festival in downtown Las Vegas.

I’m wondering how many Life Is Beautiful festival-goers tacked on a little tip for the valet guy when they forked over their $40?

POINTLESS STOP SIGN

Warrior reader Regan has a beef about a stop sign that doesn’t appear to do anything but aggravate neighborhood motorists:

I live in Mountain’s Edge and every day I come to a stop at the most pointless stop sign located at West Mountain’s Edge Parkway and Rainbow Boulevard.

This is a T-intersection where Rainbow dead-ends and Mountain’s Edge Parkway continues maybe 100 feet beyond Rainbow until it dead-ends. There is no traffic that can cross the intersection from south of Rainbow (it’s just a dirt lot where potential houses will be built) and there is no traffic that crosses the intersection from the east of Mountain’s Edge Parkway as the railroad tracks are there and the road dead-ends.

However, there is a stop sign on Mountain’s Edge Parkway that affects all traffic traveling east on Mountain’s Edge Parkway before they turn left to travel north on Rainbow. What is the point of this stop sign?

This is certainly one of those you’re-not-going-to-like-the-answer answers. Per Clark County’s Dan Kulin, there is a Southern Nevada Water District facility at the T-intersection on the east side of Rainbow and every once in a while maintenance vehicles might exit from that area. Because of the potential for conflict, the stop sign was left in place.

Neighborhood residents have a valid point: Why stop hundreds of daily commuters using Mountain’s Edge and Rainbow when the only conflict seems to come infrequently from the Water District facility?

Clip this item out of your newspaper and send it to the appropriate Clark County commissioner.

For District F, the area in question, that would be Susan Brager.

Maybe she can persuade the right people to make a change that would help out the neighborhood.

Questions and comments should be sent to roadwarrior@reviewjournal.com. Please include your phone number. Follow the Road Warrior on Twitter @RJroadwarrior.