"So what started as really a mystery shopper experience has actually become something I use more often, as part of the transport I use to get around the city." "Politics and my personal life collided today": Penny Sharpe. Credit:Wolter Peeters In almost every city where it operates, the ride-sharing service UberX has provoked arguments and confrontations. The taxi industry has fumed that the service – in which regular drivers offer lifts in regular cars – undermines their business model and exposes their overheads. Concerns have been raised about Uber's reliance on a precarious subcontractor workforce. Lawmakers have anguished over a regulatory response. But people have used it. In Sydney, more often than not, the official response has manifested as farce. There are laws against ride-sharing – "I need to send a reminder at this time that ride-sharing is in breach of the Passenger Transport Act," NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance said on Thursday – but the government has been unable to secure even one prosecution, bungling its recent case against 24 UberX drivers.

At that same press conference, Constance outlined the difficulty faced by officers trying to catch drivers in breach of the act. "RMS [Roads and Maritime Services] have actually been going onto the application and ordering an UberX vehicle, and that person is obviously in breach," said Constance. "In doing so, you can only use the SIM card once; obviously it is identifiable and that's it." In the meantime the taxi industry has grown increasingly frustrated, and the take-up of the service has continued to deepen. Even as Constance weighs up the government's response to Uber, his parliamentary colleagues seem to suspect the world is moving on regardless. "I haven't used UberX, but I'm absolutely open to the idea," says Liberal MP for Hornsby Matt Kean, who uses Uber's regular hire-car and taxi booking features. "It's already locked in – you've got young professionals in particular using Uber every day of the week, it's now their preferred method of transport," says Kean.

Without the government's slow-burn response, however, UberX may have spread even more rapidly in Sydney. By conventional standards, UberX has already moved like wildfire in the 16 months it has been available in the city. The company boasts that 350,000 people have taken more than a million rides, while the number of drivers has doubled to 4000 in six months. (UberX is distinct from the company's Uber app, which allows users to book regular taxis.) But Uber's ambitions go much further, and in particular involve widening its geographical reach. "Uber is very much an inner-city service," says Daniel Mookhey, another politician happy to risk the ire of the taxi industry by outing himself as a regular UberX user. "Particularly to get between functions during the day, when you have to jump between different parts of the city, it's quick and convenient to be able to grab an Uber and be able to move through the city," says Mookhey, himself a former Transport Workers Union official responsible for organising taxi drivers. "But I think when you're in places like Parramatta, where I am at often, it's just not as prevalent there as it is on the inner west and in the eastern side of our city."

Uber acknowledges the point. "As we've spread out, frankly the only reason we are not in every corner of Sydney is because the government hasn't endorsed Uber – yet," says David Rohrsheim, the general manager of Uber Australia and New Zealand. "What's holding us back is getting more drivers on the platform," says Rohrsheim. "We're struggling to keep up with the demand in the inner parts of the city at the moment, and of course the drivers drive where they are wanted most, and at the moment that brings them into the city." Uber has a deserved reputation as an aggressive upstart. It is, for instance, challenging an Australian Taxation Office ruling that its drivers (Uber calls them "partners") collect GST like regular cab operators. And Rohrsheim certainly talks a big game. If Uber now has 4000 regular drivers now, Rohrsheim states he would like a million. "Why not? One way of looking at it is the city of Sydney has somewhere around four million cars, and I would say at least a million of them are in good nick with a responsible driver. I would like to see all of those million cars on the platform," says Rohrsheim.

"We are very, very keen to get out into the suburbs, and what that looks like is more of a behavioural change," he says. The change could include commuters opting against using their own car, sharing lifts using the soon-to-come UberPool, or using Uber to connect to train stations. "Cities are planning to spend a few billion dollars on roads and tunnels; how exciting would it be if we could just reduce the number of cars going on the roads," he says. In the next three months, Constance will receive a report from former senior public servants Gary Sturgess and Tom Parry. The report is to consider both the taxi industry and ride-sharing services. There is no indication as yet from Sturgess or Parry on which way the inquiry will break. But it just might be that Constance feels the ground is shifting. "Consumers are voting with their feet, the uptake of this product is significant," the minister said on Thursday after earlier warning about the illegality of UberX. "Every taxi driver in this city you talk to is telling you Uber is undercutting them, which goes to show that consumers are saying we want change and we are embracing it," he said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story for a time incorrectly said the passenger in an UberX vehicle was breaking the law. The driver of an UberX vehicle is in breach of the Passenger Transport Act, not the passenger.