In protest against new regulations, the taxi service Uber is suspending its operations in the Spanish city of Barcelona.
The company writes this in a blog post on Thursday, titled "Hasta pronto, Barcelona" - roughly "See you Barcelona"”
The rules decided by the regional government in Catalonia are to introduce a minimum waiting time of 15 minutes between a taxi booking being made and a taxi customer being picked up. So-called VTCs, taxi assignment cars, are also not allowed to pick up customers on the street between trips and must return to their base after completing the assignment.
”The obligation to wait 15 minutes to travel in a VTC does not exist anywhere in Europe and is completely incompatible with the immediacy of on-demand services, such as UberX,” the blog post states.
Furthermore, taxi companies are prohibited from informing the customer where the car in question is when the booking is made, which prevents the customer from getting to the car in question themselves.
Companies risk fines of up to 1,400 euros per suspected violation of the new rules.
Source: di.se
