On January 19, the car-staches will be gone. Lyft, the ridesharing startup, has announced that it will “pause” its Columbus operations for the time being, offering its local drivers an opportunity to work in Cincinnati instead. The reason for the “pause” as stated in Lyft’s email to its drivers is that “as the Lyft community has grown in Columbus, we’ve encountered mounting legal pressure from local regulators.”

When Columbus Underground asked Columbus Public Safety Assistant Director Amanda Ford about the legal pressure that she and other local regulators were apparently mounting against Lyft, she had no examples to give.

“The License Section has licensed nearly 900 peer-to-peer drivers, most claiming they work for Uber and Lyft,” said Ford. “Nothing in the legislation has changed, so I’m not certain what is making things more difficult for them at this time.”

Uber, Lyft’s only competition in the city, issued similar complaints about Columbus’ “onerous” regulations on driver permitting and licensing. Yet Uber intends to remain in Columbus, comply with local regulators and will work “with city officials who are interested in modernizing the rules for ridesharing in Columbus so that more Ohioans can do the same,” according to Uber Columbus General Manager James Ondrey,

So Uber can take the heat but Lyft can’t. That’s just business, but Lyft’s parting shot at the city requires more than just a grain of salt. One cannot claim modern Columbus is anti-business with a straight face.

Lyft’s email indignantly states that, “City officials have moved forward with onerous ridesharing requirements that essentially treat Lyft the same as a taxi.” Lyft apparently doesn’t understand that anyone who wants to transport strangers from one place to another will naturally need to jump through a few hoops.

Of course, Lyft and Uber both have internal safety measures and standards for their drivers, but the public has no control over those measures. Luckily, the public has actually created their own safety measure, an entity known as the City of Columbus. Yes, the public’s desire for safety can sometimes be “onerous,” to use Lyft and Uber’s favorite word, but most enterprises that are regulated (that is to say all of them) can handle it. Uber can handle it. If Lyft can’t, that hardly seems like the city’s fault.

When you hire a person to drive you places, you expect a certain amount of assurance that no harm will come to you. No company, not even a hip startup like Lyft, can hire itself out as a public transport system and not wait in a few lines at a government building. If Lyft expects hand holding and special treatment from local governments and regulators, it can go ahead and try its luck in Cincinnati.

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