Uber offers carpool option
Passengers pay less, drivers earn more in Toronto
Toronto’s City Council voted last week to crack down on Uber drivers, but that isn’t stopping the ride service from expanding its offerings to include a new carpooling option during the Pan Am Games.
Maybe it was the guy caught using mannequins to get around the three-passenger rule in the city’s high-occupancy-vehicle lanes, or maybe it was the people offering to sit in people’s cars for a fee during their commute, but Uber Technologies Inc. said Monday it realized there was no better time to try out its UberPool service in Toronto — despite ongoing political wrangling about its future.
“We saw a unique case with the Pan Am Games, when the city was at its busiest and roads were at their most congested,” Ian Black, general manager of Uber Toronto, said in an interview.
“We’llseehowthisgoes,we’llhave a look at the data and the results and then at the end be able to make an assessment as to if this makes sense for Toronto in the long term.”
UberPool lets passengers share their ride — and its cost — with another rider who is taking a similar route. Black said a typical shared ride would be about 60 per cent of the cost of the company’s UberX service, meaning passengers save money while drivers make more.
The option already exists in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Texas and Paris. It will be available in Toronto until July 26, and Uber is offering it for free during Tuesday’s morning and evening rush hour.
The move comes after Toronto City Council voted to overhaul the city’s taxi bylaws to include new entrants like Uber, but also approved a crackdown on Uber drivers in the meantime. The votes followed an Ontario Superior Court ruling that rejected the city’s application for an injunction against Uber and found the company is not violating local law.
Black said he’s not worried about how the city will respond because he believes its interests align with UberPool’s business model.
“This is an attempt to help solve the traffic congestion in the city right now,” he said.
“The City of Toronto and the Province of Ontario have big campaigns underway to promote carpooling, to promote congestion reduction, so we see this as doing our part to help.”
City spokeswoman Valerie Cassells said Toronto “encourages carpooling in an effort to mitigate traffic congestion” but pointed out that Ontario defines carpooling as “incidental to the driver’s purpose for the trip, the driver does not take passengers on more than one trip per day, and where no fee is charged or paid except to reimburse the expenses on a non-profit basis.”
“Unfortunately, without knowing the specific manner in which UberPool is operating, it is difficult to comment on its operations,” she added in an email.