In the biggest blow yet to ride sharing in the U.S., the Seattle City Council voted today to limit the number of drivers available on Uber, Lyft, SideCar, and other on-demand transportation services available in the city.
GeekWire has a pretty good live blog of what happened at the meeting, but the end result was that the city council sided with the taxi industry rather than allow newer transportation services to compete on their own merits.
By ensuring that companies like Lyft and Uber can have no more than 150 drivers on each platform, the vote essentially kills any competition to the city’s existing taxi regime. It also will render services like Uber and Lyft relatively useless, by ensuring that they won’t be able to keep up with demand.
In places like San Francisco and Seattle, these new transportation services have offered an alternative to taxis, which are limited by…
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