It could soon be really easy to get a ride in San Antonio.
City Council is considering drastically raising or even eliminating the current cap on the number of taxi cabs that could be operated in the city, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
It's in response to the arrival of Uber, Lyft, and other Transportation Network Company vehicles, which, since they are privately owned, are not covered by any restrictions.
Steve Baum, the Assistant Director of the San Antonio Police Department, who is the point person on this issue, told City Council that only a handful of cities have done this, and when San Diego made the move, the result was startling.
"When we spoke to San Diego, they said they were flooded with individual owner operator permits the first year," Baum said. "They said they added between 300 and 500 cars in the first year."
Currently, only 886 taxi permits are allowed in the city, a number that hasn't risen in more than a decade.
The proposal to lift or eliminate the cap is part of sweeping revisions being considered in the rules that govern transportation companies. The city is also considering allowing owner operated taxis, currently all taxi drivers have to be employees of one of the 22 licensed cab companies operating in the city.
Baum says there would be challenges to lifting the caps on taxi permits.
"There's only sixty cab stands in downtown San Antonio," he said. "If we add another 22 cabs, we feel we will have some challenges with the cab stands overloading."
He said there is also limited space for taxis to line up at the airport, and an increase in cabs could prompt airport officials to make changes in the way cabs pick up passengers.
The discussion came as the Texas Senate passed and sent to Gov. Abbott a bill that would strip San Antonio of its ability to regulate Transportation Network Companies like Uber. The bill imposes statewide regulations, which officials say makes more sense, and will help overcome challenges like in Austin, where the major firms stopped operations in the city due to the imposition of what they considered to be onerous regulations.