Ride-sharing eroding taxi use in city

Results also suggest public’s use of taxis has dropped

Calgary is starting to see a shift toward use of ride-share companies as the number of people taking taxis declines, a report going before a city advisory committee shows.

A recent telephone survey indicates that while significantly more Calgarians are still using taxis compared to ride-share services, or transportation-network companies, fewer residents are taking cabs and more are turning to services such as Uber. This year, 55 per cent of survey respondents said they used taxi services in the past 12 months, compared to 62 per cent in 2016. One in six, or 17 per cent, of Calgarians surveyed said they have used the services of transportation-network companies in the past year, up from six per cent in 2016.

Coun. Evan Woolley said he’s not surprised by the numbers. He described transportation-network companies as just “one tool in the mobility tool box.”

“Our job as a city is to enable transportation choice and to ensure that those transportation choices are safe,” he said.

Use of ride-share services is expected to continue to rise. The 2017 telephone survey on use and satisfaction with taxi and limousine services in Calgary suggests that 26 per cent of Calgarians are likely to use ride-share services in the next year, while 51 per cent are likely to use taxi services in the next 12 months.

The survey report is scheduled to go before the Livery Transport Advisory Committee on Wednesday.

Woolley noted there isn’t an option to flag down an Uber car on the street, and said there remains “a whole demographic of people” who prefer to call a taxi company for a ride.

“There will remain a healthy taxi industry, I think, for the future in this city, and I think that there is a rebalancing that will be a part of that,” he said.

Survey respondents’ satisfaction with taxi services was 88 per cent, while satisfaction with the services of transportation-network companies was 98 per cent.

The survey included 583 people and was conducted by Leger for the City of Calgary between May 24 and June 5. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points 19 times out of 20, or plus or minus 5.5 percentage points among taxi users.

According to a separate report on fleet utilization, which is scheduled to go before the same committee this week, taxi trips are down from 571,428 in May 2016 to 525,070 last month. Wheelchairaccessible taxi trips have increased from 1,412 in January to 1,732 last month.

Ride-share use has increased from 66,181 trips in December to 158,355 in May.

Uber relaunched in Calgary in December after city council passed amendments to a ride-share bylaw. The company initially launched in October 2015, before the city had a regulatory framework in place, but it stopped operating less than two months later after a judge granted the city a temporary injunction.