Let Uber, Lyft and taxis be unfettered in Fort Worth?

Under City Council instructions, professionals at City Hall have worked for 17 months to streamline Fort Worth’s vehicle-for-hire ordinance, spurred by new ride-booking services like Uber and Lyft and aimed to ensure rider safety while allowing entrepreneurial ventures to thrive.

If Tuesday’s council discussion holds, they’re about to streamline that ordinance right out of existence.

“It really is a sign that we’re beginning to start to think about why we do things,” said Councilman W.B. “Zim” Zimmerman.

From Mayor Betsy Price: “The city doesn’t really need to regulate a lot of this.”

Most council members want, at most, a very slim ordinance governing taxicabs, limousines and the likes of Uber and Lyft, letting competition and the free market set any limits on their operations.

That’s all good. Nobody wants to, as Councilwoman Gyna Bivens put it, “penalize creativity.”

But nobody wants chaos, either.

It’s time to go back over that 17 months of staff work to see if any city requirements need to be salvaged.

The long process birthed the idea that the city need not be the front-line enforcer of its requirements. City Hall could set the standards and let the transportation companies certify that each driver and vehicle meets them.

A plan for driver background checks conducted by the city faded in favor of company-conducted checks. But there were minimum standards — no driver with a previous conviction for sexual assault, for example, no felonies in the last seven years and no misdemeanors within three years.

Vehicle safety inspections were dropped in favor of accepting state inspections. But city staffers suggested requiring that all windows and doors be in working condition and all seats be equipped with safety belts.

The staff also suggested no vehicles with salvage titles due to flooding — they sometimes have unpredictable electrical problems.

Minimum insurance requirements were part of the staff discussions.

Uber and Lyft were to have market-driven fares, but there would still be government-set fare rates for taxicabs. Cabs are “hailable,” while Uber and Lyft only accept customers who have signed up through their mobile device apps.

Regulated rates for hailable vehicles avoid curbside haggling over prices and drivers bidding for riders.

This story was originally published May 6, 2016 at 6:04 PM with the headline "Let Uber, Lyft and taxis be unfettered in Fort Worth?."