RIDE-HAILING IS NEEDED

Vancouver is the largest city in North America without the ride-hailing service Uber. B.C. Transportation Minister Claire Trevena is clear that it will remain so for a least another year and possibly forever.

Although legislation is supposed to be in place this fall for the Passenger Transportation Board to accept applications from ride-hailing companies to begin offering services in September 2019, Trevena said Thursday that neither Uber nor its competitor Lyft are welcome in this province. Instead, her government is “laying the foundation for a made-in-B.C. solution.”

And, as it happens, the Vancouver Taxi Association is pitching just such a solution. In an exclusive story, Province columnist Mike Smyth revealed Thursday that former NDP cabinet minister Moe Sihota has acted to bring together the VTA and Surrey businessman Monty Sikka, founder of Kater Technologies. Their plan is to introduce a new service with 200 “Kater cabs,” which would charge the same rate as VTA taxis and funnel 20 per cent of the profits to the VTA.

This would extend the taxi companies’ monopoly to what might best be described as a form of ride-hailing lite. A report commissioned by the government recommended an increase in the number of cabs and to allow discounts for bookings made through an app. But author Dan Hara did not consult either Uber or Lyft in preparing his report. The report is more a blueprint for the taxi industry to block the entry of independent ride-hailing companies.

Uber operates in 400 cites, Lyft in 350. Opposition to these services in B.C., particularly Vancouver, is more than curious. In a column last year, The Vancouver Sun’s Douglas Todd quoted Kwantlen Polytechnic University political scientist Shinder Purewal and prominent radio host Harjit Singh Gill, who argued that one of the reasons the Liberals lost all eight Metro Vancouver ridings with large South Asian populations is that many voters in those areas felt betrayed by the B.C. Liberals’ approach to the trucking and taxi industries in which South Asians are predominant. The Liberals promised before their defeat to allow Uber to operate in B.C.

But political expediency should not be the determining factor in permitting services that consumers are demanding. The NDP should quit stalling, consider the needs of the public, and move quickly to clear the way for fair competition in the taxi industry.