Councillor hopes to ‘level playing field’ for ride-hailing firms, cabs
A Calgary councillor wants to cut fees for taxis, while hiking fees and slapping new regulations on ridehailing companies such as Uber, in a bid to “level the playing field” for cab drivers feeling the squeeze.
Coun. George Chahal took aim at Calgary’s rapidly growing ridehailing industry with a slew of proposals tentatively approved at a council committee Wednesday.
“I think we have a huge disparity within the livery industry with taxis and TNCs (transportation network companies) right now,” Chahal said. “The taxi industry is bearing the brunt of expenses, (their) drivers are paying a lot more than TNC drivers.
“What I tried to do today was level the playing field, just to make it a little bit more fair.”
Among the changes proposed Wednesday was eliminating a $141 setup fee charged to taxi drivers for the inspection of meters, along with an increase to the amount of money that cabbies can recoup from patrons who make a mess in a taxi from the current $100 charge to $250.
For taxi drivers who are “barely making ends meet, it’s a lot of money,” Chahal told fellow councillors, pointing out that drivers can lose a day’s wages getting their car cleaned.
Another proposal debated at the meeting targeted fees for ride-hailing companies.
Councillors elected to hike a minimum licensing fee for TNC drivers by roughly 20 per cent, from $220 per driver to $265.
Chahal said he also plans to introduce stiffer regulations for ridehailing companies at the April 23 council meeting.
His proposal could require ridehailing companies to comply with rules already applied to taxis that would require the installation of security cameras. The Ward 5 councillor said he’d also like to see TNC drivers complete training that would meet Calgary livery inspector standards.
Coun. Jeromy Farkas argued against a hike in fees for ridehailing companies.
“I think that the way that we should be going about levelling the playing field is not by increasing any of these fees,” Farkas said.
“We should not be taking in more money from an industry than it actually costs us to regulate.”
A spokesman for Uber declined to comment on the specifics of the proposed changes, but pointed out that a City of Calgary-commissioned survey shows customers are highly satisfied with the services provided by ride-hailing companies.
“Instead of putting taxi rules on TNCs, council should consider ways to reduce regulatory requirements on taxis,” said JeanChristophe de Le Rue in an email to Postmedia.
Ride-hailing companies are thriving in Calgary, accounting for a total of 2,282,276 trips taken in 2017. Taxi use, meanwhile, continues to decline, with 6,650,069 trips logged in the year, down from a total of 7,022,090 taxi trips in 2016, and 8,404,108 rides in 2014.
Chahal said he’s just trying to address disparity he sees in Calgary ’s livery system.
“We need to have a fair playing field. We can’t pick winners and losers and give somebody a leg up. Right now, TNCs have a huge leg up on the taxi industry.”