Uber Voluntarily Suspends Service In A US City For The First Time Ever, Says Report
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Uber has agreed to stop operating in Portland, Oregon, for three months while city officials create new regulations for taxis, the Willamette Week reports.
This is the first time Uber has ever stopped its services voluntarily in a US city.
Uber told Portland Mayor Charlie Hales it will stop services on the evening of December 21. Mayor Hales said there will be new taxi regulations by April 9, 2015.
If there aren’t, on-demand car service startups like Uber will be temporarily allowed to start operating again on that date regardless.
“The city and Uber started off on the wrong foot, but this agreement resets the clock. We will work with Uber moving forward, and we thank other sharing-economy companies, like Lyft, for working with the city to bring our policies up-to-date,” Hales told the Willamette Week.
Willamette Week reports the deal was reached on Thursday at 1 pm. Prior to this, Uber and Portland’s city government were engaged in a “nearly two-week standoff” starting on December 5, when Uber launched its services in the city illegally. An Uber spokesperson told the paper, “We will be back.”
We’ve reached out to Uber for comment on this story and will update this post when we hear back.
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