Also, as an aside, I knew someone in Houston who was in city government, and it's amazing how some of these dynamics work. Basically, this change was blocked by the yellow cab lobby for the last two years, and only for the price of about $5,000 of campaign contributions per city council seat. Local politics are insane.
For folks in the loop, having easy transportation to/from bars, for instance, makes Uber pretty attractive.
Shell and BP have both built huge new campuses in West Houston. BP even claims to have built the world's largest commercial research supercomputer in their Westlake campus.
BUT because the oil companies are moving their operations west (BP and others) and north (Exxon) people are also migrating those directions.
You would think this would mean that real-estate prices in the donut between the loop and the beltway would be pushed downward but it's not happening. The population seems to be growing faster than the "city" expands so prices are going up everywhere.
Edit: The base fare is $1.90 and $0.19/min, $1.48/mi - minimum $5.70. Compare to NYC where it's $3 base fare, $0.40/min and $2.15/mi with an $8 minimum. That's quite a difference.
My guess would be that the reason for this decision not being controversial is that the supply of taxis in Houston isn't strongly limited the way it is in NYC and SF (some Googling didn't turn up much evidence either for or against this hypothesis). Which of course, again, would mean that Uber/Lyft would be competing on a level playing field and not just be scooping up heaps of customers who hate the entrenched taxi firms with a vengeance.