There are issues on a number of levels. One is "public safety" which is essentially the licensing issue. Another is externalities like traffic, which aren't about licensing for safety but more about regulating for other impacts. Then, there are the economic / labor issues, which deserve their own consideration.
My point is that your content (though intersting) does not live up to your ambitious (and generic) title, "A Solution to the Uber Problems".
Talking about "real time data sharing" with mayor of NYC is interesting but the "congestion" problem, which could be perceived or real, is not what comes to mind when people discuss "Uber problems." Traffic congestion caused by Uber is a relatively minor debate so far in relation to other problems it has.
The following google search for "Uber congestion" is 504,000 hits:
https://www.google.com/search?q=uber+congestion
The following searc for "Uber labor" is 11,100,000 hits:
What is the recurring theme in all those angry posts?
It is not about people wondering about trust. The nastiness is all about economic unfairness.
"Trust" is orthogonal to "Economics".
The authors essay is not a "solution" to the issues people are actually debating. Also, the specific issue with DiBlasio was congestion and vehicle caps and not "trust".
The mismatch is that his article's content (which is ok) underdelivers on the title which it oversold as "a solution to Uber's problems".
In other words, I'm not asking for his article to solve all of Uber's issues and solve world hunger. I also have no desire to discuss Uber labor. My point is that the article doesn't match the title. A more accurate title could have been, "A solution to let NYC monitor freelance driving services". (Admittedly, that type of title wouldn't attract as many clicks.)
However, analyzing that aspect misses the point.
The heated issues around Uber is economics and how the pieces of the pie are cut up. Explaining how new technologies allow a different trust model to emerge is irrelevant to the French taxi driver throwing bricks at Uber cars or DiBlasio's proposed cap to curb congestion.
In other words, this essay is more relevant to a potential passenger of Uber who wonders how he/she can trust a car that doesn't have a government medallion.
One needs to write a totally different type of essay to appeal to angry taxi drivers and angry politicians.