Since our launch over a year ago, Uber has made great strides in creating a convenient, efficient, and classy transportation alternative in Chicago. As a licensed Chicago business, we have improved transportation options for tens of thousands of Chicagoans, and have helped grow the small businesses of hundreds of our driver partners.

Unfortunately, Chicago’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection (“BACP”) has proposed regulations that would prohibit Uber’s Black car service from operating in Chicago. We need your help in the next 5 days to prevent these regulations from taking effect!

Proposed BACP regulations:

Outlaw any electronic measurement device
Section 1.10.a “…PPV licensees may not use any device, including, but not limited to, mechanical, electronic, or digital meters/equipment to measure and calculate passenger fares based on distance and/or time traveled.”

Prohibit the use of time or distance charges
Section 1.10.c “The Department will consider a PPV that advertises or charges its passenger fares by measuring distance and/or time traveled as an unlicensed taxicab…”

Uber’s shorthand response: Limo companies throughout Chicago already charge by time and distance. Uber’s technology simply makes those calculations more streamlined, more transparent, and more accurate.

Collectively, these provisions are designed to prevent Uber’s technology from being used in Chicago limos. Their adoption would end Uber’s ability to offer the streamlined arrangement of limo transportation and ease of payment that you’ve come to expect and love. Consumer choice and accountability would be reduced and the incomes of the more than 1,000 Chicago drivers that depend on Uber would be significantly and negatively impacted.