It has been a long three days for Deputy City Manager Tony St. Romaine.

On Tuesday morning, officials from ride-sharing service Uber called his office and told him the company was making its Columbia debut Thursday morning. Drivers officially began offering rides at 10 a.m.

Uber, which allows people to book rides using a smartphone application, blurs the line between taxicab and technology companies, leaving city officials scrambling to design regulations that police it appropriately.

Because Uber has not applied for a city business license or the permits required of taxicab companies, St. Romaine asked officials to offer the service free for 30 days so it would not be operating illegally.

This interim period would give him and city staff some time to patch together a temporary agreement with the company that would address some of their concerns about how the business operates. The company agreed to offer free service for one week and then check in with the status of the agreement with the city. Uber has been quietly planning an expansion into Columbia for more than three months.

�I told them upfront; I told them, as a consumer I have been very impressed with their service on a personal level, but I do not understand why this has been their M.O. in the past,� St. Romaine said. �It�s going to create a lot of negativity right from the outset. These types of things we�re talking about could have been worked out well in advance.�

The Columbia City Council will need to approve any agreement with the company, and the earliest it could do that is at its Oct. 20 regular meeting. If Uber starts charging for rides before then, St. Romaine said, the company will be operating as an illegal business and the city will have to crack down, likely in the form of ticketing drivers.

St. Romaine said he is not sure how the city will categorize the business. It might even mean designing a new class of businesses that some cities have categorized as transportation network companies.

�To me, this is another example of our existing laws, regulations and policies not being able to keep up with rapid advances in ingenuity made possible by technology,� St. Romaine said. �So to put Uber in the same class as a taxi company is very, very problematic.�

St. Romaine said the city wants to make sure the insurance Uber has for its drivers covers them when they are engaged in any Uber-related activity. Currently, Uber has commercial liability insurance for its drivers that kicks in once they have agreed to accept a ride and ends when they drop off a passenger.

Columbia is the latest city in Uber�s effort to expand into college towns. Pooneet Kant, Uber�s general manager overseeing the company�s Midwest expansion, said the company started looking at expansion into Columbia more than three months ago. He would not disclose how many drivers have signed up for the company�s UberX service but said college towns have lots of people interested in the service.

�Consumers love it,� he said. �Students love it, both as riders and drivers.�

Jeremy Elson signed up as an Uber driver about two months ago. He graduated from the University of Missouri two years ago and now works as a graphic designer for MFA Oil. Because Uber drivers do not have set schedules, he sees Uber as a chance to work on paying off his student loans without some of the stress that can come with working a second job. �I�m pretty excited about it, really,� he said. �Just the opportunity to be able to make some extra cash and not worrying about someone telling me when I have to do it is really awesome. I can put as many hours as I want or as few as I want.�