Committee votes to shut down city’s taxi advisory board

A council committee voted Tuesday in favour of disbanding the city’s taxi advisory board, as the transport industry quickly evolves.

The vote to fold the Livery Transport Advisory Committee (LTAC) occurred exactly one year after ride-share giant Uber relaunched on city streets. The matter will now go to council as a whole for final say.

Comprising members of the public, drivers, brokers, industry representatives and city administration, LTAC acts as an advisory committee to council on issues relating to Calgary’s vehicle-for-hire industry, incorporating input from both companies and citizens.

Only councillors Sean Chu and Ray Jones opposed dissolving the 18-person committee that meets monthly. “What I’m afraid of is if we … have no advisory committee, we end up going back in time,” Jones said.

But several industry members criticized the existing LTAC model and told councillors it’s simply not working. “From my perspective, LTAC is inefficient and isn’t meeting today’s needs,” Kurt Enders, president of Checker Yellow Cabs, said at Tuesday’s committee meeting.

“Over the years, I’ve found that not much is getting accomplished … the meetings have become very repetitive and at the end of each meeting, I ask myself, ‘What did we accomplish?’ and quite often it’s nothing.”

In a report about the matter, Carmen Hindson with the city wrote that “LTAC’s effectiveness as a stakeholder engagement forum has diminished over the years,” noting the recent introduction of so-called Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) into Calgary’s livery industry has “further diversified the perspectives within the committee.”

Len Bellingham, owner of Mayfair Taxi, told the committee he’s been in the industry since 1969 and the company was established by his parents in 1953.

Bellingham called two of the four years he spent as a member of LTAC “the most frustrating years of my entire life.”

“In my opinion, industry representation on the committee is not even considered,” he said. “It’s just basically been a joke.”

The proposal to disband LTAC was made following an independent governance review by Hara Associates.

Ward 5 Coun. George Chahal said the presentations that the committee heard Tuesday made it clear the existing system wasn’t working, though he emphasized it’s still important taxi drivers have a forum in which they can speak out and are listened to. “We really need to rethink our engagement policy with the industry, particularly the drivers,” said Chahal.