As of Wednesday, ATX Co-op Taxi is in business. If you see a bright green taxi shuttling around the city this weekend, that's a car from the co-op. Nega Taddesse, a representative from the Taxi Drivers Association of Austin, which spearheaded efforts to get a co-op up and running in the city, said that initial deployment should be 30 cabs, with another 150 going online in October, and potentially 400 by December.
Auto body painters around the city should get busy.
The co-op's implementation into the city's transportation framework means that Austin will carry four taxi franchises for the first time since the Nineties; this comes during an era in which the cab business is in trouble. Though Austin's citizens rooted out Lyft and Uber in May (or however the two companies would like to spin it), the wealth of transportation network companies that have popped up locally since the two behemoths' departures indicates a civic shift toward the new options.
Read the rest at The Austin Chronicle
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