City of Melbourne to discuss de-regulating vehicle for hire services

As the owner/operator of Executive Limo and Taxi, Josh Weiss makes his living picking up and dropping of passengers across Brevard County, but he says the cost of doing business in cities like Melbourne isn’t the same for everyone across the board.

“One group of people driving people around gets to do it this way and one group gets to do it this way, and their almost opposite ends of the rainbow, and people want fairness.”

Vehicle for Hire companies like his limo and taxi service have to fork over lots of money  to the city of Melbourne when you add up the cost of the application, and  paying for decals, background checks and insurance  while,  popular ride share programs like Uber and Lyft aren’t required to go through the city’s application process.

 “We have to be insured and regulated in a certain way that Uber does not have the same requirements in any town, so it can be costly and it seem like a double standard, ” Weiss said.     

Now the city of Melbourne wants to discuss de-regulating the vehicle for hire industry to level the playing field with ride share programs, something drivers like Weiss are looking forward to.

“A lot of people feel that big government is not on their side and in this case it looks like they’re doing something for the little guy,” Weiss said.    
We contacted Uber for comment on the plan but they never got back to us.