London taxi drivers given more time to pay plate fees

Lfpress.com
Oct. 30, 2016
Randy Richmond

A potential showdown Monday between London taxi drivers and city hall has been defused by a bit of compromise by both sides.

London taxi drivers had vowed to refuse to pay their annual city hall plate fees by the Oct. 31 deadline in the dispute over what they see as lax rules applied by the city againt rival Uber drivers.

City hall was expecting drivers to renew their plates and put the usual $337,500 into the city bank account.

“The city has come to what we believe is a good compromise for us,” Roger Caranci, spokesperson for the London Taxi Association, said.

Instead of paying the full $750 per plate by Oct. 31, drivers can wait a month and if they want, pay only $250 to take them to March 1, 2017, when a new vehicle for hire bylaw covering cabs, limousines and Uber vehicles is expected to be in place.

“We allowed some flexibility because of the uncertainty in the industry,” Orest Katolyk, the city’s chief bylaw enforcement officer, said.

But there’s still a lot of work to do before anyone in the dispute, include Uber drivers, can rest easy.

Besides the renewal fees and deadlines for existing drivers and owners, the matter of security cameras inside vehicles dominated much of the discussion at a public meeting last week on the proposed bylaw, Katolyk said.

The bylaw would force taxi drivers, but not Uber drivers, to pay for and install cameras in their vehicles.

Taxi drivers say that rule is unfair.

“They (city officials) are going to do some refinements, we hope, to the bylaw,” Caranci said on the weekend.

“Hopefully, they will change some things we want changed.”

City hall might be changing its stand on the cameras for cabs only.

“With the recent incidents in private vehicles for hire, one has to ask one self, could cameras prevent these incidents?” Katolyk said, noting the arrest of an Uber driver in Washington, D.C., on charges of kidnapping and assaulting a female passenger.

“Certainly, cameras can’t eliminate these types of alleged illegal activities in these vehicles, but certainly common sense suggests it would reduce the opportunity,” Katolyk said.

Caranci expressed more faith in city hall to listen to all concerns than Uber drivers to follow any new rules.

“At the end of the day, I have doubts if they will want any kind of regulations,” Caranci said.

Based in San Francisco, digital ride-hailing colossus Uber arrived in Southwestern Ontario in 2015. Uber uses a smartphone app that matches people needing rides with drivers using their personal vehicles.

Payment is made through the app using a credit card only.

Uber considers itself a tech company, not a traditional taxi company operating under traditional regulations.

Canadian cities heavily regulate the traditional taxi business — everything from how many licences are in ciruclation, to how much passengers can be charged and safety and insurance requirements for drivers and companies. Uber does not face the same rules and overhead, critics contend.

With Uber’s arrival in many Canadian markets turning those rules on their head, protests, court cases and scrambles by civic authorities to rewrite traditional taxi bylaws have often resulted.

A spokesperson for Uber could not immediately be reached for comment about the London situation.