Think back to your first day of college. It probably consisted of meeting a bunch of people (and not remembering a single one of their names), watching your mom go through a box of tissues, and determining whether your new roommate would be your best friend or worst nightmare. All across the nation, timid 18 year olds are facing this very situation right now as well as many new situations they've never had to face before. Some might be figuring out how to put a fitted sheet on a bed. Others might be stressing out about which buttons to press on the laundry machine. But most will be discovering a brand new city where they will be spending the next four years of their lives.
Unfortunately for one city, these students will be facing a new challenge that didn't even exist a few years ago: how to get around without the modern conveniences of ride sharing services like Uber. That city is St. Louis.
Over the past year, national media outlets haven't painted a great picture of St. Louis. Most of this has been because of the racial tensions that erupted after the death of Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO. Though the events that have unfolded since then have been tragic, another injustice has been largely overlooked. The battle between the Metropolitan Taxicab Commission (MTC) and what seems like the rest of St. Louis has been a long and heated one in the fight to bring ride sharing services to the city. St. Louis is now the largest city in the United States without Uber. However the longer the fight continues, the more damage it will do to the St. Louis economy. Not only does the corruption and politics of the MTC prevent St. Louis from experiencing the many benefits of these services, it also casts a negative light on the city, and students are taking notice.
"The longer the fight continues, the more damage it will do to the St. Louis economy."
Despite the bad press, St. Louis has seen some success in recent years. Just last week St. Louis saw 41 of it's companies highlighted in the Inc. 5000 list of the fast-growing private companies in the United States. And one industry was particularly prevalent on the list - technology. As the entrepreneurial ecosystem has blossomed in St. Louis over the past few years, so has the recurrence of buzzwords such as edtech, fintech, or biotech. It's hard to attend any entrepreneurship event in St. Louis without hearing one of these words, but as the technology industry explodes, it will face a severe bottleneck - talent.
Place yourself back into the shoes of a college student, but this time you're a senior in Computer Science at Washington University in St. Louis. You have a decent GPA in a highly sought after degree program. Because of this you've received some job offers at local tech companies, as well as others in a handful of different cities around the US. You say to yourself, "how can I justify taking a job offer with a tech company in St. Louis when the city continues to stifle innovation with one of the hottest tech companies in America?" Understandably, you decide to take a job offer in Minneapolis.
The effort to keep Uber out is now reversing any perceived progress the city has made to foster innovation. Take Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square. Though he has actively tried to grow the tech community in St. Louis with a program called LaunchCode, he was recently featured in an Inc.com article detailing the struggles St. Louis has had with Uber. "To be the only major city in the United States that doesn't have ride-sharing is like being the only hotel in town that doesn't have WiFi," he said. Instead of championing the growing tech community in St. Louis, national media outlets are giving the city a black eye. What college graduate would read an article like this and feel compelled to move there? But as the technology industry grows, it will need a surge of young talent to help it keep up. As more Americans are exposed to Uber and the conveniences that come with it, St. Louis continues to move backwards by staying stationary. St. Louis needs to stop dragging it's feet and approve ride sharing services to operate, or it will be cutting itself off at the knees.
