Uber Pays Costa Rica’s Red Taxis While Their Law Lags

80% of Costa Ricans have used mobility apps, according to a study Uber ran with CID Gallup, and nine in ten of those asked said the apps improve family life. The same week that poll was briefed, a committee in the Asamblea Legislativa sent Bill 23,736 back to the floor with an airport lock written for about 100 orange concession taxis.

Riders are the chorus. The people who collect, or lose, the fares are taxi guilds, platform drivers, and the airport cars that still own the curb at Juan Santamaría.

The Poll Uber Ran With CID Gallup Speaks for Riders

CID Gallup and Uber put almost 700 people on the record in the Greater Metropolitan Area plus Pérez Zeledón, Limón, and Liberia. Laura Santillán, Uber’s general manager for Costa Rica, Panama, and the Caribbean, treated the reach figure as the line that should settle the argument.

The most convincing piece of data from the study is that 80% of Costa Ricans use or have used platforms at some point. It is very powerful data because we understand the reach and economic impact that platforms have in the country.

Laura Santillán, general manager, Uber Costa Rica, Panama, and the Caribbean

She has used the study to put riders into a debate that, until now, has been run by unions, platforms, and ministries. The numbers do show a daily habit, not a novelty.

THE UBER-CID GALLUP CUT

• Daily use: 45% of those asked take a platform to work, 39% for shopping, and 33% for other errands.
• Taxi holdouts: 3 in 10 still use a taxi, and 65% of that group hail one on the street at stands, parks, malls, or the airport.
• The ask on taxis: 9 in 10 said they would use red taxis more if they could book them in an app, and 70% named price uncertainty as the barrier.
• The political gap: 70% have heard of Bill 23,736, 10% feel well informed, and 60% feel user views are ignored.

Four in ten also said they would take a taxi if they could see the driver first. Forty percent want that service on a digital platform. Santillán folded those answers into Uber’s pitch that taxis should live inside the same app that already has 82% of respondents viewing the company favorably.

Seven in ten know someone who earns, or has earned, on a platform. Sixty percent said the apps help national transit. Those lines travel well in a hearing room. They do not write the clauses.

Red Taxis Back the Bill, Platform Drivers Do Not

Taxi groups have spent eleven years watching an unlicensed product take work they still pay to hold. Gilberth Ureña, who speaks for the Foro Nacional de Taxistas, says concessions have fallen from 13,500 to about 9,000, and he called the bill balanced because platform drivers would finally need a state permit. Canatrans, Fenecotaxi, Multitaxi, Asotranstur, and the same forum put that support in a joint note in June 2026.

The people actually driving for Uber and DiDi lined up on the other side. Aprimotec, the private association for platform mobility, asked deputies to stop the file, saying it would turn a private ride into a taxi service and hit the income of 35,000 families. Alfredo Román, the group’s president, has said since 2023 that drivers were missing from the Casa Presidencial photo when the government, the platforms, and the taxi unions unveiled the idea.

The Cámara de Comercio de Costa Rica, which has counted around 35,000 people making their main living on platforms, close to 40,000 earning some income that way, and about two million users, asked the Assembly in July to pause. Its warning was that the new motions would shift costs onto riders, shrink platform income, and cut mobility options. ANFE, the free-market group, went further in mid-July and called on deputies to reject expediente 23.736, arguing the job is to free taxis from old rules, not to turn apps into a modern taxi.

WHO IS PUSHING BILL 23,736

Sofía Fallas Barquero, then transport vice minister, said the ministry would keep working the file already in the Assembly rather than start over. Officialismo deputies have described the project as leveling the field with taxistas. That is a taxi sentence. It is not a rider sentence.

About 100 Orange Taxis Hold the Airport

One of the nine motions the Comisión de Gobierno y Administración approved in late July shuts platform drivers out of airports, ports, docks, and international maritime terminals unless the authority that runs the place gives express permission. At Juan Santamaría that authority sits with the orange airport concession. There are about 100 of those cars.

If that clause survives a floor vote, a legal pickup at SJO is an orange taxi. Platform cars could not legally load or unload there. The official orange taxi desks at SJO already sell that ride as the airport product. Uber’s workaround, started as a pilot in June 2026, is to put those same orange cars inside its own passenger app, so the traveler still taps a phone and an orange taxi still takes the fare.

That is why the airport fight is not a safety pamphlet. It is a concession. Tourism arrivals are the one place where a few dozen medallions still beat two million app users. The Chamber’s user count does not open the curb. The orange paint does.

Travelers who want a platform car have, for years, walked past the orange rank, crossed into the garage, and waited on a pin. Under the committee text that walk would not be a grey-zone habit. It would be a banned pickup unless the airport signs off. Uber, on its own SJO page, still tells arrivals they can request an airport taxi in the Uber app and even book a ride to SJO up to 90 days ahead. The bill would make that product depend on the concession, not on the app.

Uber Is Recruiting the Taxis It Spent a Decade Undercutting

On 14 July 2026 Uber opened Uber Taxi registration to red-taxi drivers, after the orange-airport pilot. Santillán called it a step toward full integration and invited the red fleet in so drivers could raise earnings and use the app’s safety tools. The passenger button was still being wired. The driver pipeline was not.

The checks Uber wrote to get those plates onto the platform are small, specific, and timed for the bill fight.

WHAT UBER OFFERED RED TAXIS

• Sign-on: ₡20,000 for activating an Uber Taxi account.
• Early trips: up to ₡50,000 for at least 20 trips in the first two months.
• Referrals: ₡30,000 for each red-taxi driver referred who completes 50 trips in the first month.

MOPT answered the June airport pilot by reminding everyone that platform transport still has no law, so the new button sits under the old rules. Red-taxi representatives also objected, on the ground that Uber was still running without the statute they have been demanding. The company is trying to own both queues before deputies decide who is legal at the terminal.

For riders, 9 in 10 already said they would use a red taxi more if it lived in an app. For the guilds, joining Uber without a law looks like surrender. For Uber, a taxi skin inside the app is how it keeps the booking even if the floor vote hands the airport to orange paint. The poll’s 80% is the consumer wallpaper on that move.

What Bill 23,736 Would Demand From Drivers

The file, titled Ley de transporte remunerado no colectivo de personas y plataformas digitales, was presented on 3 May 2023 by the Chaves Robles government. It treats platform rides as an economic service of general interest: market prices, state rules. Cosevi would run authorizations, vehicle and driver registries, and enforcement. Micitt would opine on computer security and data privacy.

Platforms would need a Costa Rican company, tax compliance, VAT withholding, and a quarterly dump to Cosevi of drivers, cars, drop-offs, and trip counts. Each permit would run ten years, renewable. A firm caught operating without one would get a month to fix it, and maybe a second month. Blocking payments would take a judge. Fines would run from one to ten base salaries. In the worst cases Cosevi could shut a platform out, or bar a driver from affiliating again for one to five years.

Fees, affiliations, and fines would feed a Mobility Fund for roads, transport upgrades, and the new policing. Carpooling, waiting at bus stops, jumping a bus to grab its passengers, or cruising for street hails would count as a very serious offense, because those moves compete with regular bus routes.

THE DRIVER CHECKLIST IN THE COMMITTEE TEXT

• License and course: a license held at least one year, plus a Cosevi-approved course.
• Paper: taxpayer status, Caja independent-worker registration where it applies, an annual criminal-record sheet, insurance, and no unpaid traffic fines.
• The car: yearly technical inspection, current marchamo, an age cap set later, mandatory insurance plus a voluntary liability policy, and a windshield sticker.
• The cabin: a seven-person maximum; anyone under 15 rides with an adult; extra rules later for ages 15 to 17.
• First-year fee: ₡25,000 (about $55) per affiliated driver; Cosevi gets six months to set a temporary fee for the platform companies.

Riders would get, on paper, the price, the driver’s identity, and the car before they sit down, cash or electronic pay, and a receipt. Those are the safety items Santillán says users already like in the app. The bill writes them into statute and hangs them on Cosevi paper.

Grey-zone driving is already a ticket. Fines start at ₡122,597 (about $270) and can end with plates pulled or the car impounded. The new list trades that fog for a stack of annual filings. A separate track already exists in the labor courts: on 26 August 2025 the Tribunal de Apelación de Trabajo in San José issued resolution 01146-2025, a labor ruling that treated a driver as staff of Uber-linked firms rather than a free partner. The bill still talks about affiliation. The courts have started talking about a job.

A Per-Kilometer Floor Reset Every February and August

The committee text does not fix the passenger’s fare. It forces every trip to clear a minimum gross return per kilometer for the driver, set by the state. The platform may quote the whole price up front, or the driver and rider may agree before they move. Either way, the kilometer floor sits underneath.

MOPT would build that number from fuel, repairs, typical mileage, a minimum profit per trip, insurance, and Caja payments. The executive would refresh it every six months, in February and August, by decree. Nothing in the text caps what the rider pays. The Cámara de Comercio still reads the floor as price control that would make trips cost more, which is the same kilometer floor that could lift fares riders already fear when they hear “regulation.”

Santillán has warned that a mandated minimum profitability rate could raise trip prices and, if demand falls, cut driver-partner earnings. Aprimotec has wanted a ceiling on what platforms keep, not a state floor on the kilometer. Those are opposite tools. The committee chose the floor.

In mid-June the officialista substitute on the table had each affiliated driver paying ₡50,000 in year one. By the time the commission finished 282 floor motions and approved nine of them, that figure was ₡25,000. The airport ban and the kilometer floor both survived that cut. So did the windshield sticker.

First Debate Is Still Unscheduled

The commission returned the updated text to the plenary for a first debate after it closed those 282 motions in late July 2026. Deputies can still file reiteración motions and try to revive ideas the committee killed, so the airport lock and the floor can still move. No first-debate vote has been recorded since the text came back.

HOW 23,736 GOT TO THE FLOOR

1. 3 May 2023: The executive files the law on paid non-collective transport and digital platforms.
2. June 2026: Orange airport taxis appear as a pilot option in Uber at Juan Santamaría.
3. 24 June 2026: Officialista deputies on the commission adopt a substitute that includes a ₡50,000 first-year driver fee.
4. 14 July 2026: Uber opens Uber Taxi registration to red-taxi drivers.
5. Late July 2026: The commission finishes 282 floor motions, approves nine, cuts the first-year fee to ₡25,000, keeps the airport lock and the kilometer floor, and sends the file back to plenary.

More than 2,000 taxis came off the road in July 2026 when concession deadlines passed, and the taxi union asked for six more months of paperwork time. That squeeze is why the guilds want a vote. It is also why a poll about rider safety is a thin brief for a statute that assigns the airport, the kilometer, and the permit.

Users told CID Gallup they want stricter safety, clear prices, and driver checks. The committee wrote a Cosevi registry, a sticker, a Caja number, and a floor. It also wrote a closed curb for about 100 orange cars. The 80% who already live in the apps will ride whatever is legal when the plenary finally calls the file. The people counting that 80% out loud are not the ones who need the orange paint to keep paying.