ALBANY — More than 50,000 applicants have signaled they want to participate as drivers in upstate New York for Uber Technologies, a ride-hailing company, according to a spokeswoman for the firm.

Uber, Lyft and similar companies that compete with the taxi industry to provide rides are preparing to launch their operations across upstate June 29, based on the assumption that Gov. Andrew Cuomo will soon sign legislation authorizing them to begin picking up riders that day.

Representatives of the taxi industry, greatly outspent by the ride-hailing companies in the fight over legislation extending the services to upstate, have met with state Department of Motor Vehicles officials in hopes that the vehicles used by the firms would be required to have special markings.

But John Tomassi, president of the Upstate Transportation Association, which represents taxi companies, said that when he met with DMV officials recently, he detected little interest from the bureaucrats in embracing the idea of requiring markers on the vehicles.

“Our biggest concern is public safety,” Tomassi said in an interview Thursday. “There is no finger-printing requirement, which we think is crazy. They are going to be relying on the TNCs (transportation network companies) to do their own background checks.”

A DMV spokesman, Rich Meddaugh, said he had no immediate information regarding the discussions with Tomassi.

Alix Anfang, a New York-based spokeswoman for Uber, said the background checks of driver applicants will be conducted by a third party lined up and paid for by Uber.

Anfang said more than 5,000 people have indicated they want to be Uber drivers in Niagara and Erie counties. She said no numerical breakdown of applicants is available for the North Country, the Oneonta region or other areas of New York.

‘People across the state have been clamoring for this for years, and people are really excited for this to become available,” Anfang said of ride-hailing services.

The deputy Clinton County administrator, Rodney Brown, said he and his wife, Sarah, used Uber nearly 10 times during a recent five-day trip to Washington, D.C., and came away impressed by the convenience and relatively low cost of the service.

“We never had to wait more than three to five minutes for our ride,” said Brown, noting it remains to be seen whether many people will want to drive for Uber or Lyft in the North Country.

He predicted that the impact on the local public bus system, the Plattsburgh-based Clinton County Area Transit, will be “minimal.”

“I’m very much in favor of this (ride hailing) because it gives people more options,” Brown said.

Reached in Cooperstown, one of upstate New York’s most popular tourism destinations, the owner of a livery service, Jim Donley of Doubleday Drivers, said local innkeepers appear to be enthusiastic about the advent of ride hailing in their region, as visitors often lack sufficient transportation options.

Donley said one of his services is to chauffeur his clients in their own cars to stops along the Cooperstown Beverage Trail, one of the Leatherstocking Region’s big draws. That is not a service offered by the app-based companies, which specialize in point-to-point rides, rather than have drivers wait for their fares to complete a tour and then ferry them to their next destination.

“I think one of the challenges for the ride-hailing services in this area will be the weakness of the cell phone service here,” he said. Meanwhile, Donley said, he is contemplating becoming part of the network of drivers for Uber or Lyft to give his business a new sideline.

The legislation authorizing the ride-hailing services in upstate New York has soured advocates for people requiring wheelchairs or having other disabilities because the companies were not required to accommodate people with such disabilities.

“They can deny you a ride if you have crutches or use a walker or a wheelchair — so how can anyone get excited about this?” said Douglas Usiak, executive director of Western New York Independent Living, a nonprofit that assists those with disabilities.

He added: “They are allowing individuals to do business with the public, and those individuals can exclude the public based on any discriminatory elements they want.”

Taxi drivers and bus companies, on the other hand, must accommodate people with disabilities, he pointed out.

The representatives of the ride-hailing companies have been in discussions with upstate airport operators and sporting arenas to develop relationships with those venues.

Helen Tederous, a spokeswoman for the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, which operates a public transit system as well as the Buffalo Niagara Airport and the Niagara Falls Airport, said the agency has had talks with company representatives about access to its facilities.

“We’re working with them to incorporate them into our overall plan,” Tederous said of Lyft.

At the Albany County International Airport, spokesman Doug Myers said plans are in the works to install an automated system that charges the ride-hailing vehicles $2 every time they enter the facility.

An Albany taxi company that has an exclusivity deal at the airport gets charged just shy of $1.50 for its trips to the airport, but that is expected to match the $2 rate as well, Myers said.

Joe Mahoney covers the New York Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at jmahoney@cnhi.com

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