Uber and Lyft left Austin at the beginning of the year over fingerprinting rules. Since then, there has been an explosion of smaller ride sharing companies: Far

Uber and Lyft left Austin at the beginning of the year over fingerprinting rules. Since then, there has been an explosion of smaller ride sharing companies: Fare, Fasten, GetMe, and, most interestingly, RideAustin, which is a local non profit started by Austin tech luminaries. The apps were certainly much buggier than Uber or Lyft when they started, but I recently took a Ride Austin, and the app is so similar to Uber (as was the experience), that I wonder if Ride Austin will eventually branch out into other cities, at least by licensing their tech. The Texas lege will likely override Austin's local regulations next year, so it will be interesting to see what happens when the fingerprinting requirements go away and Uber and Lyft come back.