Spanish taxi drivers blocked major city streets including Barcelona’s Gran Via and Madrid’s Castellana in a protest to pressure the government to curb licenses to online ride-hailing services such as Uber.
A taxi driver sleeps in a tent during an indefinite strike in Madrid, Spain
Madrid:
Union representatives were due to meet officials of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government later in the day to try to resolve the dispute, in which taxi drivers have choked main roads and snarled airports, bus and train stations since Saturday.
Along with counterparts in many other European countries, Spain’s taxi drivers say that ride-hailing apps have made it impossible to compete.
“Uber and Cabify are putting the viability of the taxi sector and 130,000 jobs at risk...The union considers this unfair competition intolerable,” the UGT union said in a statement.
Union representatives say the current law of one ride-hailing license for every 30 taxi licenses is not being respected and want an end to the practice of transferring ride-hailing permits between drivers.
With backers including Goldman Sachs and BlackRock and valued at more than $70 billion, Uber has faced protests, bans and restrictions around the world as it challenges traditional taxi operators, angering some unions.
London cab drivers are examining the possibility of bringing a class action suit against Uber after the mobile app was granted a temporary license renewal to operate in the British capital.
Decision, milestone
Uber has stopped developing self-driving trucks and instead will refocus on its autonomous car programme as the truck business was no longer viable in the freight shipping industry, the company announced. Uber said it wants to rejuvenate the self-driving car programme which was halted following a crash in which an Uber autonomous car killed a pedestrian in Arizona in March, said media reports. “We recently took the important step of returning to public roads in Pittsburgh and as we look to continue that momentum. We believe having our entire team’s energy and expertise focused on this effort is the best path forward,” Eric Meyhofer, head of Uber Advanced Technologies Group, was quoted as saying. Employees in the San Francisco-based self-driving truck division will be relocated to other internal units, including the Pittsburgh-based self-driving car programme. Despite the shutdown, Uber Freight will not be affected. Incidentally, Uber claimed making one billion trips in S Asia, mainly in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in five years. “Uber hit a milestone in the South Asia region with the one billion mark.