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Solve that problem for consumers and you can turn a city into fawning devotees: At a speech at a Canadian Club of Toronto luncheon Tuesday, Mr. Black asked the audience how many had travelled via Uber that very day; roughly half there raised their hands.

And Uber has expanded at a frantic pace, now in 260 cities worldwide, but the road has hit major bumps in public and government relations.

On Monday, the French government said UberPop — similar to UberX, which allows non-professional drivers to shuttle passengers around in their own cars — would be banned on Jan. 1. It was the company’s latest setback.

And Uber’s use of surge pricing this week during the hostage crisis in Sydney, Australia — during which a supply shortage had it charging four times the normal fare as people tried to flee the business district — “can’t happen” again, Mr. Black said.

“We need to be more vigilant in making sure we prevent those errors,” he said.

“As we grow we need to be a more humble company, we need to communicate better and most importantly we need to engage more with policy-makers and politicians to ensure we’re part of our community.”

Getting conciliatory with regulators is also part of an apparent strategy to bend regulatory reform in ways that favour Uber, and block its similarly ambitious competitor, Lyft.

But Mr. Black is determined to get out ahead of the requested Toronto court injunction, which has been delayed until May 2015.

“The May timeline is important, because we have a real opportunity as a city and a province to say we’re not going to let this be solved by an injunction, we’re going to be more positive and put our stamp on things,” he said, adding that he has several meetings scheduled with city councillors before and after the holidays.