PHOTO: Georgia Popplewell. Last weekend here in Trinidad, the Caribbean branch of Uber Technologies Inc., the company behind the ride-hailing smartphone app you’d have to have been living in a severely media-deprived environment not to have heard of, held on-boarding meetings at a Port of Spain hotel for potential “partners”, as the drivers who form the core of the service are called. Digital-only news site LoopTT, the only media outlet that seems to be taking the news seriously, has carried stories about the response from indigenous competitors and an interview piece with the regional representative. Loop also reported that Uber was yet to meet with the minister of transport, and that the company was seeking a meeting with said minister. An article posted on October 12 reported that the local association of insurance companies was concerned about the legality of the service. For Uber, this is probably business as usual. The company didn’t become a household name by kotowing to local transport regulations and playing by the rules. In many, if not most of the markets into which it’s swash-buckled its way, Uber has incurred the wrath of municipal governments, taxi drivers, and their unions. I’ve travelled in more than one taxi that had an anti-Uber sticker on its window. Trinidadians speculating on whether Uber will be bold enough to flout local laws regarding the use of privately licensed cars may not know that the company deployed a category of service for “non-professional” drivers called UberPop in highly regulated European markets, and almost got away with it. At an Uber protest in Portland, Oregon in 2015, organizers pressed for city leaders to make ride-sharing companies play by the same rules as cabs and Town cars by occupying a square. PHOTO: Aaron Parecki (CC BY 2.0) We should also pay attention to Uber Caribbean GM Juan Andion’s slick characterisation of the company’s business model. According to Andion, Uber is simply a peer-to-peer service that “…matches riders with drivers…. I have my own car and I want to give a ride to someone else… imagine you are driving your mom to the airport.“ In a country where many taxi drivers own their vehicles, it is also possible, of course, that they too could sign on as Uber partners. There’s another thing to note: unless I’m misreading Uber’s list of locations, Trinidad will not only be Uber’s point of entry into the English-speaking Caribbean, but also the smallest country into which the company has ever ventured. There are cities on Uber’s list larger than the whole of Trinidad and Tobago, with its population of 1.4 million. I’ve used Uber several times in various countries, but I don’t always feel great about using the service. But like Amazon, that other behemoth many of us would prefer not to patronise, Uber is often the path of least resistance: it’s already on my phone; it works in several countries; and it doesn't scorn my Trinidad and Tobago credit card. A screenshot from Uber's Port of Spain web page. And on a number of occasions, Uber has saved my skin. One icy winter evening in Buenos Aires, thanks to Uber, I was able to avoid the mad scramble of Argentines jostling in the rain for rush-hour taxis and wait instead in a warm lobby, tracking the progress of the black car-shaped icon representing Mauro’s Chevy on the screen of my phone and timing my dash out of the building to coincide with its arrival at the curb. On a layover in London, having missed the last train back to Heathrow from an outlying Underground station, it was an Uber car that whisked me to King’s Cross station, not only in record time, but for a fraction of the cost of a London black cab. On an upcoming trip to Mexico City, where security is a concern, you can bet I’ll be using Uber. But the aforementioned cities are huge. How will Uber fare in tiny Trinidad and Tobago? Will it “change life”, as the headline of one article has suggested, in this country where crime and security are a genuine worry; where gas—now US$2/gallon after the partial removal last year of the government subsidy—is still relatively inexpensive; and where car ownership was made more attainable some years ago by the arrival on the market of cheap Japanese used vehicles? And how is Uber going to play with the local public transportation system, on which, in spite of the abundance of private cars, many people still depend? Trinidad and Tobago’s public transportation comprises a constellation of services that have operated more or less the same way for decades. A traffic jam in Port of Spain, Trinidad in 2012.