After several weeks of back-and-forth with the Clark County Commission, which oversees Nevada’s Las Vegas McCarran Airport, UberX drivers this week finally got clearance to begin passenger pick-ups at the airport effective immediately.
Competitor Lyft had reached agreement with regulators earlier, and began to serve the airport last month.
Some Uber drivers apparently took matters into their own hands before the agreement was reached, according to the Las Vegas Sun; the newspaper said that by December 1, airport authorities had issued some 1,600 tickets to Uber drivers for unauthorized rides at McCarran.
It’s another big win in airport access for the ride-sharing apps, which are steadily adding more legal authority to pick up arriving passengers. Last month, they started pick-ups at Chicago’s busy O’Hare and Midway airports.
At Raleigh-Durham International Airport, officials are expected to formally approve an agreement next week that will permit ride-sharing pick-ups, although according to the Triangle Business Journal, those drivers have already started making pick-ups there, using special zones dedicated to their services.
In Atlanta, an Uber official told local station WABE that the company has started car-pool pickups at Hartsfield-Jackson International — a service it calls uberPOOL — even though the airport still does not allow any Uber pick-ups there. Uber will also offer the uberPOOL service in downtown Atlanta, Midtown, and Buckhead.
In other news, the Washington Post reports that Uber has started testing a new feature in the Seattle market: a colored light in the windshield that will help passengers find the Uber car that has come to pick them up. An enhanced app lets the passenger select a color while he’s waiting for pick-up and the approaching driver activates the light in the windshield to glow in that same color, making it easy to spot in areas with lots of traffic.
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