■ MORE DETAILS BY THE NUMBERS
Rob Shaw offers some details:
1. Ride-hailing services aren’t coming to B.C. until at least September 2019. That’s when the government expects companies like Uber and Lyft will start applying for licences under a new, yet-to-be-written legislative regime. The NDP campaigned in the last election on having a plan to get ride-hailing into operation in 2017. After taking power, the party pushed it to the end of 2018. The new fall 2019 deadline means the NDP is two years behind the timeline it first promised voters.
2. Three hundred new taxis are coming to the Lower Mainland to reduce waiting times. This is part of a one-time, 15 per cent increase to taxi licences recommended in a government-commissioned report on modernizing the taxi industry by expert Dan Hara that government said it will immediately authorize. It will also mean 200 new taxis in the rest of the province.
3. You’ll soon get a cheaper rate on your taxi if you order by smartphone app. Government will allow taxi companies to offer discounted meter fares if a cab is booked using an app, in an attempt to help traditional taxi firms boost the use of their own technology in advance of competition from Uber, Lyft and other ride-hailing companies.
4. Many of the taxi report’s suggestions are still being considered by government. This includes putting additional per-trip fees on new licences to fund more accessible taxi vans for people with disabilities, delegating provincial power for taxi approval to regional governments to avoid overlapping jurisdictional confusion, and creating a new per-kilometre insurance system for taxis.
5. Allowing existing taxi companies to have a monopoly on a single app to hail rides is “risky and unnecessary,” Hara concludes in his report. The Vancouver Taxi Association has a tentative deal to develop a ride-for-hire app called Kater, which it wants to be the exclusive made-in-B.C. solution, locking out Uber, Lyft and other app-based companies. That’s not a good plan for customers, writes Hara. However, he writes that the general idea of the existing taxi industry co-operating on one or more apps, with government financial support, would be positive.