Friends,
Today, Houston City Council approved a new jitney ordinance that increased the minimum amount of seats required for a jitney from four to nine. As you know, both of our REV Eco-Shuttles have six seats. Those two vehicles will continue to operate as normal, but currently, our fleet cannot expand.
This is not the outcome we hoped for, but we remain confident that the city's Green Ordinance - scheduled to come to a vote in mid-September - will include a provision including a new classification of "green vehicles" specifically tailored to allow REV Eco-Shuttle to obtain new permits for new vehicles on new routes.
This is what we have been promised by a number of elected officials and members of the city's bureaucracy, and we are hopeful the Green Ordinance will pass in a timely manner and that it will contain provisions that will allow our company to grow.
My goal has been, since I started this company two years ago, to give Houstonians an environmentally-friendly alternative to transportation. Though our company is small, we have created jobs and we have reduced the load of cars and trucks on streets in Downtown, Midtown and along Washington Avenue.
We hope that we can bring more shuttles to the streets of Houston soon. For now, we will remain focused on helping craft the Green Ordinance and continue our work of informing the stakeholders involved in these discussions - along with the public at large - about our company's struggle against confusing and convoluted regulations.
We wish to thank Councilmembers C.O. Bradford, Jolanda Jones and Jarvis Johnson for voting against today's jitney ordinance.
And most importantly, we'd like to thank those of you that recently showed up to a hearing with us, sent emails, made phone calls or commented on news websites.
This is not over.
Sincerely yours,
Erik Ibarra, Founder
REV Eco-Shuttle
