Transportation services are a hot topic dominating the news today. With the introduction and proliferation of services like Zipcar, Uber, Sidecar, and car2go, the average city dweller has reaped the benefits of a more robust urban transportation infrastructure. But not all the responses were positive. The conflict began in 2010, a year after Uber was founded, when the company received cease-and-desist letters from the San Francisco Metro Transit Authority, alleging that Uber was operating an unlicensed car dispatch service. By then, Uber was establishing itself as an innovative company that capitalized on supply and demand. Uber argued that it was not actually a car service, but rather a simple medium between driver and passenger that did not fall under any current regulations. City governments have no standard answer for how to approach the new service, and some are still considering how to respond. Today there is no single standard for regulation, but why is this a surprise? The concept of peer-to-peer ridesharing is not new. In fact, much of the hostile reaction to Uber, Lyft, Gett, and Sidecar is actually a familiar tune. Some people hide behind the same arguments that have been around for more than 100 years. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayA Brief History of Technology in TransportationHenry Ford had a truly brilliant idea when he introduced the first Model T in 1908: to make the auto business more efficient and personal transportation more accessible with a low-priced car. Little did he know that it would pave the way for the shared transportation economy of 2014. In fact, everything changed just six years later with the introduction of the jitney concept. At the time, electric streetcars were the predominant source of public transportation in crowded cities. city. Streetcars ran up and down a busy street on a fixed route, but became so popular that lines ran along the street and around the block. On July 1, 1914, a boy in a Model T stopped at the streetcar line and offered to take people to their destination for a penny, the same price as the streetcar. People got excited and more and more drivers started doing the same, offering a faster and more direct route as cars could drive on side streets while trams couldn't. And thus the peer-to-peer jitney service was born. Uber, Lyft, Sidecar and Gett use many of the same principles as early 20th century jitney providers: identifying holes in the system and using modern technology – in today's world. case, smartphone technology – to bring pilot and driver together more efficiently. It's a classic case of supply and demand, and any entrepreneur can understand it. When Jitneys were introduced, they spread like wildfire due to demand among the young urban professionals of 1914. Sound familiar? The large private companies that operate the trams, however, have seen their ridership begin to decline. They used their networks and deep pockets to argue that jitneys were unsafe and not good for the city. Because jitney drivers didn't pay to enter the city, city officials sided with the streetcar owners and squashed the innovative transit system. Leveling the playing field for anyone who follows all the transportation news in cities like San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Seattle, this story will sound quite familiar because history is repeating itself. Licensed taxi companies are rightly claiming that Sidecar, Lyft, and UberX are “unsafe” and “bad for the city,” but.