NEW YORK CITY — Mayor Bill de Blasio had harsh words for Uber Monday after the company challenged him to a live stream debate over a city plan to cap the growth of for-hire vehicles.
"I don’t debate with private corporations," de Blasio said Monday at an unrelated Brooklyn press conference. "Let’s be clear — Uber is a multibillion dollar corporation, and they’re acting like one. They’re looking out for their corporate bottom line. They’re putting their profits over all other considerations."
The City Council is set to consider this week a bill that would cap the growth of for-hire vehicles such as Uber for a year while the city studies traffic congestion.
"What we’re talking about here is a temporary reduction in their growth," de Blasio said. "There are already many more Uber vehicles than there are yellow taxis in New York City, and that’s just happened in a few years time."
The mayor said the study would examine "unintended consequences" of Uber's growth such as "congestion and pollution" and accessibility for the disabled.
Uber has said the cap is not about traffic, but an attempt by the mayor and some City Council members to do the bidding of the yellow cab industry.
"It seems to be that the mayor's second biggest donor, the taxi industry, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars and he's paying them back," Uber New York general manager Josh Mohrer said Monday on HuffPost Live.
Mohrer said Uber has 26,000 vehicles, only 6,000 of which are on the road at any given time, a small percentage of the 2.7 million vehicles that enter the city everyday.
"My goal in requesting a transparent discussion is to show the world what this is really about," Mohrer added.
Other for-hire companies such as Lyft also oppose the legislation, but for different reasons.
"The one clear result of freezing the market in place is a blow to competition and an artificial lock in for Uber and taxi industry market positions, primarily hurting outer borough passengers and drivers," Lyft Director of Public Affairs David Mack said in a statement. "New York is on the verge of taking a big step backwards.”
Uber has launched a full scale campaign against the proposal including television ads, mailers targeting council members who support the legislation, and rallies. The company has also argued that the freeze would hurt job opportunities for minorities and low-income residents.
Last week, Uber launched a "de Blasio" feature on its app that shows a 25 minute wait time which the company says will be standard if the proposal is approved. David Plouffe, President Obama's former campaign manager, has become Uber's voice on the issue.
"With 25,000 New York City residents taking their first ride each week, the number of driver-partners needs to increase rapidly or Uber will no longer be the service people know and love," Mohrer wrote in an open letter to City Hall.
De Blasio denied that the freeze would hurt the company. He said Uber "will continue to grow, just not as exponentially" as they previously have.
"And that will give us a chance to come up with appropriate regulations," the mayor said.
