According to a new report from CBC News, Vancouver councillors say that the city is not willing to open up their streets to more taxi competition, including ride-sharing services like Uber.
The decision comes at a time when city councillors have been complaining that Vancouver is short on cabs. After an overwhelming push back from the existing taxi industry, the city failed to end the moratorium on licences. Councillor Melissa De Genova said:
“I don’t want to say [the staff report] was rejected. It just makes no sense to me that we would move forward with 38 suburban cabs, and not with the 58 accessible cabs that are so needed.”
In the end councillors decided to reject parts of the staff report that urged the city to let outside cab companies to help out with the weekend rush. The city has decided to leave the moratorium on new licences in place for another yet.
Uber Canada public policy manager Michael Van Hemmen said that even if the city opens up the streets to ride-sharing services, business would not decrease for traditional taxi services.
“Fears of ride-sharing services like Uber have Canadian cab companies raising red flags about allowing Uber on the streets.
“It’s not push back from us. It’s about making a proper living,” said Carolyn Bauer, general manager of Yellow Cabs, who pointed out that Uber has not even made a formal application to operate in Vancouver.
“You have to play on a level playing field here.”
The decision by Vancouver councillors followed a city staff report that aimed to increase the number of taxi cabs in Vancouver. The report notes that Vancouver lags behind other Canadian cities when it comes to taxi service.
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I accept the mistake on this headline.
Thank you for your exception
I thought they deferred the matter to the BC government & the Department of Transportation. At least that’s what I saw on Global TV.
It’s not that the Vancouver area had good taxi like service to begin with.
It’s just straight up embarrassing now that Vancouver is the last remaining decent sized city in North America where an Uber like service (in any form) is not available.
Most cities have taxi services that range between great and awful service. Even within the same company some cars with some drivers will be exceptional, and other cars with other drivers will be garbage. An app that allows normal car-owning drivers to offer pre-arranged rides to fellow city dwellers, creating utter chaos in the existing paid-fare transportation market, is great fun to watch for the business case of it all.
UberX is an interesting side show attracting a lot of attention.
The embarrassment is the absence of a Uber Select/Black service. One that I can hail an insured and qualified driver with an app, know where the driver is, know they won’t bail and grab another fare, take me where I want to go (without angst), no fuss with credit cards, provide receipts, no haggling with tips and allow me to rate them so others may benefit.
… and do so in a free market where the number of drivers and fares are not controlled by a municipal government.
No fun city