[Vancity-]

""" Mary Polak ‏@MaryPolakMLA Passenger Transportation Board is an independent decision maker so gov’t does not influence decision. #bcpoli #UberVanLove """

This makes sense, actually. At first I was angry because there was no system in place for the public to complain/appeal this, but this has nothing to do with public services. If it had to do with buses or other forms of public transportation, then there would be a way to publicly appeal.

However, this is a matter dealing with private companies- as such it makes sense that the PTB is outside the public domain. Unfortunately, this makes it much harder for anyone outside an UBER rep to affect things one way or another.

A cursory glance at http://www.ptboard.bc.ca/ confirms this- the appeals appear to be for the user/company directly, and the only contact to the PTB appears to be snailmail, which nobody on HN is going to use for any reason.

As for the actual rates information itself: http://www.th.gov.bc.ca/ptb/documents/rule_limo-min-rates.pd...

Best they could do is $75 * .15 discount, not enough to be viable.

UBER can appeal for the board to approve company specific rates, but I'm not sure exactly how they'd justify it or what's involved in the process. Worst case scenario is waiting until the rules end date comes (June 30, 2013) and see if a campaign to rewrite it is within the public domain.

[opendna]

For those still following, it turns out that Uber has nothing to appeal because they never submitted an application to the PTB. The PTB did not reject a request by Uber.

It now appears that the PTB barely knew that Uber existed until they started getting hate-mail from angry users.

(The same is true, incidentally of the City of Vancouver. Uber doesn't have the business licenses required to sell bicycle courier services in Vancouver, never mind limousine services.)

The limo drivers and companies who worked with Uber, however, are being hit with fines and other enforcement actions.