Lindsay Toler
Edward Domain and Jim McKelvey outside the Metropolitan Taxicab Commission meeting. Neither was allowed to speak at the meeting on allowing ridesharing in St. Louis.
Jim McKelvey got to Wednesday’s big meeting about the future of ride-sharing in St. Louis too late to sign up to speak.
McKelvey is a St. Louis native and a well-known name in the world of tech. He co-founded Square, the ubiquitous mobile payment company, as well as LaunchCode, a nonprofit that provides computer-programming apprenticeships and uses ride-share companies while traveling all over the world. As he left the meeting with his young son, McKelvey was thinking about how he’d wanted to tell the commission that barring Uber from operating its ride-sharing services in his hometown is creating “a significant drag on the city.”
“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,” McKelvey told SLM. “Five years ago, you could kind of get away with it. These days, you can’t.”
For more on Wednesday's meeting, read our story: Mayor’s Office Asks St. Louis Taxi Commission to Postpone Vote on UberX
Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, who is a regular Uber user in D.C., offered a similar analogy at the meeting: It’s like the buggy whip industry trying to block Henry Ford from unleashing his new “horseless carriages.”
“The problem is, St. Louis is no longer a leader,” McKelvey says, explaining that as Uber negotiates for less oversight and reduced safety regulations, St. Louis doesn’t have the leverage to force the company’s hand. “New York can do that. San Francisco can do that. Markets where Uber has to be have that luxury. At this point, we’re a follower.”
The doors slammed as Edward Domain—another local tech entrepreneur, an Arch Grants winner, and a leading voice calling for reform of the taxi commission—stormed out of the meeting.
“That didn’t go well,” he said, smiling through his seething frustration. He walked up to McKelvey in the lobby of the St. Louis Community College theater, where officials had moved the meeting to accommodate about 100 people in the audience.
Lindsay Toler
Edward Domain joins Jim McKelvey on a bench outside the meeting as reporters and police look on.
“What happened?” McKelvey asked.
“They wouldn’t let me speak,” Domain explained. “They cut off the speaking, so I just yelled at him and called him a coward publicly, and he said I could excuse myself from the auditorium.”
“Proud to be out in the hall with you,” McKelvey responded with sympathy.
“Right on,” Domain said.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch beautifully captured the moment when Domain, who was not one of the registered speakers chosen by the commission to speak during the less than 30 minutes of public comment, hurled his insult at the stage:
This video from KMOX reveals the aftermath:
Domain has been advocating to bring UberX to St. Louis since he published an open letter to area officials about how he nearly died in a car accident while riding in a St. Louis taxi. Issues with the cab company’s insurance broker turned what should have been a straightforward pay claim into a nightmare for Domain.
“Harris Cab [Company] stole my health, ruined my credit, made it nearly impossible to run my business as I went through periods of intense pain and lethargy from said pain stopping me from being effective everyday,” Domain writes in the open letter.
Domain says he joined the pro-Uber fight to stop companies like Harris Cab from potentially hurting others. He’s asking St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger to replace the taxi commission’s chair, and he'd like a state audit of the commission’s investigation into his case with Harris Cab.
After Wednesday’s meeting, where officials from the mayor’s and county executive’s offices delayed voting on ride-sharing in St. Louis, Domain took to Twitter to ask for changes.
Contact Lindsay Toler by an email at LToler@stlmag.com or on Twitter @StLouisLindsay. For more from St. Louis Magazine, subscribe or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
