Taxi driver takes issue with my Uber column

Several months ago, I wrote a column about how my oldest son and some of his buddies had gone to San Francisco and Chicago for Grateful Dead concerts and been marooned/ abandoned/deserted — whatever — by several conventional taxicab drivers and companies.

I wrote that, as a result, they’d done what millions of others around the world had done before them and signed on with Uber, the “alternative” people-mover we’ve all heard about and some of us have used.

I said I wasn’t taking a position on the controversy, but what I’d written was a slice of life and my son and his friends had been impressed.

I get lots of email about my columns and one I received shortly after caught my eye. It was from Peter Grosz, a taxi driver in the GTA. I phoned him up.

He doesn’t think much of Uber (what a surprise, eh?), but what amazes him most is that people climb into Uber cars without doing a stitch of homework. If they did, he insists, they might think twice before going for a ride.

“People who use Uber are taking a big chance because they aren’t insured in case of an accident,” he said. “People don’t realize that. You’re in an Uber car and you get hurt, you’re on your own. You ride with me (in a legal taxi) and you’re covered.”

It wasn’t only insurance that bothered Grosz.

“Anybody who has a car can work with Uber,” he said. “They don’t have the same standards.” I asked him to explain, please. “A car is limited to seven years as a taxi,” he said.

“This is legislation. The car is new and is a taxi and seven years later it can’t be a taxi any more. There’s nothing like that for Uber.”

Grosz, who came to Canada in 1988 from Romania via Israel (he’s 70 now) and has always been a taxi driver, said cabbies have other, sometimes enormous, costs.

“My insurance costs $5,200 a year,” he said. “Only one company will insure taxis so they have a monopoly and can charge what they want. I rent my plate, which can run from $300 to $700 a month. (This “plate” allows the car to be used as a taxi; it is not a taxi licence, which also must be renewed each year and costs $150 and up, depending on the municipality).

“I have to get a criminal clearance from the police and this includes fingerprinting and that costs $175 and up.

“If I belong to a taxi company, that costs $550 a month and up. I have to install extras in my taxi — radio, meter, roof sign, emergency light, antenna — and that costs $2,000. If I want Wi-Fi — and the passengers want it — that is $25 a month.”

Grosz owns his own taxi so he has oil, gasoline and maintenance and repair costs. Many drivers rent their cabs from companies or plate owners and that can run them as much as $250 a week (and up, again depending on the municipality; Toronto is the most expensive), but other than their gasoline, many of the other costs are included in the rental fee.

Grosz says $250 might not seem like a lot, but looks can be deceiving. You have to get that out of the way before you start to earn money to, first, pay for gasoline (when drivers pick up their rented cabs, the fuel tank is full; it must be returned full) and second, pay yourself.

Grosz understands why people might be attracted to Uber and suspects the service is probably here to stay. He says he has ideas that could level the competition.

“It costs a lot of money (for the public) to take a cab but there are relatively easy changes that could be made that would result in legal taxi services at much lower prices,” he said.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have much influence with municipal governments.”

As was the case with my son, this has been a slice of life. Same story; second side. nmcdonald@thestar.ca