The taxi industry’s PR nightmare

Nationalpost.com
Oct. 20, 2015

By any reasonable interpretation of municipal bylaws, Toronto’s 13,000 or so UberX drivers are breaking them: they are operating unlicensed taxis and Uber, the company, is operating an unlicensed taxi brokerage, arranging some half-a-million rides a month.

By Ontario Superior Court Judge Sean Dunphy’s bizarrely literalist interpretation of those bylaws in June, however, Uber the company didn’t fall under municipal bylaws at all. Dozens of drivers have since faced charges, the potential costs of which Uber is covering; but the company itself was off the hook.

Earlier this month, Toronto’s City Council closed that loophole. It rejected staff advice that it should consider regulating UberX as a “transportation network company,” distinct from taxis and limousines, as some other cities have done. It voted instead to have staff propose new regulations that would keep all drivers-for-hire on a “level playing field.”

It was a huge victory for the city’s taxi drivers over UberX, which they claim is beggaring them with its (usually) lower fares. And there will likely be further victories to come for the cabbies. The industry wields enormous clout at City Hall. And clout aside, the overwhelmingly middle-aged and left-wing city council considers UberX an unconscionable eruption of free-market economics.

In short, the taxi industry and its employees are defending a castle that they don’t actually own. The more vicious the tactics they employ, the greater the backlash is likely to become

If staff bring back bylaws that could allow UberX to operate legally - i.e., that allow for variable demand-based fares and that don’t cap the number of cars allowed on the road or otherwise validate the UberX model - council will almost certainly maul them to death.

So, were the hundreds of taxi drivers who present at city hall happy with this position? Like fun they were. They stormed out after the vote, screaming and yelling and berating councillors. Later, a mob of them demanded to know of an anti-Uber councillor why they shouldn’t adopt militant tactics we have seen in other cities: harassing or attacking UberX drivers and their passengers, blocking streets, outright riots in the case of Paris. According to reports, UberX drivers in Montreal and Ottawa routinely ask clients to meet them away from main streets, so frightened are they of reprisals from cabbies.

Toronto’s taxi industry had demanded UberX be “banned,” which in practice would mean bylaw enforcement and police officers dropping everything else to crack down on a business that customers and employees alike enjoy, in deference to a taxi system that customers and employees alike despised before UberX came along. Customers complained, rightly, of high fares, rude and reckless drivers, drivers refusing to carry passengers on short trips and demands for cash over cards. Drivers complained, rightly, of a byzantine regulation system that privileged licence owners and middlemen over them. Now they’re fighting for the status quo. It’s absurd.

Uber is flouting the law. It shamelessly fudges answers to the question of whether its Canadian drivers have adequate insurance, which is the only serious safety and security issue in play. It is a difficult company to defend. At the same time, it is succeeding in fracturing an entrenched situation that nobody liked beforehand in a way that no one else likely could.

That’s potentially to cabbies’ benefit. And if they decide to counter by flouting the law themselves, by rights they ought to lose. They need to realize that due in no small part to their own behaviour, they are at a massive public-relations disadvantage. A City of Toronto-commissioned Ipsos Reid survey found consumers didn’t just prefer UberX to taxis on the metric of price, but also on the metrics of personal safety, safe driving behaviour, speed of pickup, vehicle cleanliness and driver courteousness - all the things the taxi industry claims it can offer and that UberX cannot.

In short, the taxi industry and its employees are defending a castle that they don’t actually own. The more vicious the tactics they employ, the greater the backlash is likely to become. If they hope to preserve their protected, privileged place in the ride-for-hire market, they should abandon any notion of warfare and clean up their own houses instead. And futile as it might be to recommend it, especially in Toronto, municipal governments should realize that if 500,000 customers a month are voting with their smart phones, they might just be right.