Beck Taxi wants city to enforce bylaws on Uber or put a moratorium on licensing fees

Globalnews.ca
Nov. 19, 2015
By David Shum and Adam Miller

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Beck Taxi is giving the City of Toronto an ultimatum on the taxi industry’s battle against Uber: either enforce bylaws or start putting a moratorium on licensing fees.

Those are the two options the taxi company said will help level the playing field against the popular ride-hailing service.

“These are regulations that City of Toronto taxi drivers pay for and they pay for probably some of the highest licensing fees in North America to see if their industry is properly regulated,” said Kristine Hubbard, Operations Manager at Beck Taxi.

“They follow all of the rules. If the City of Toronto doesn’t have the so-called resources to do that, I think taxi drivers should be able to save their money.”

Beck Taxi said licensing fees paid by cab drivers are for regulation and to cover the cost of bylaw enforcement.

However, the company insists they have seen “no enforcement or plan for enforcement against black-market taxi operators.”

Mayor John Tory said Thursday that the city is working hard to determine how the new rules can make it more equitable for members of the cab industry, while at the same time regulating companies like Uber in regard to issues such as safety and insurance.

“We always had it as part of that review that you’d be looking at the fees that are charged to the cab industry and seeing if those are placing an undue burden on taxis as they face different and increased competition,” he said.

“I’m willing to take a look at something we might even be able to do in the shorter term. We’re proceeding to do the work as quickly as we can to get those new regulations in front of the city council by the late winter and we’re on pace to doing that.”

In October, council voted in favour of the Licensing and Standards committee to report back with new regulations for Uber and similar services.

Recommendations will not be ready untill 2016, but in the meantime, council has asked Uber to cease operations.

Tory said licensing fees are part of the city’s review process and will be looked at to help alleviate the financial burden on taxi drivers.

Tory said the city had already shown a sign of “good faith” by approving a $1 reduction in fare costs to passengers, from $4.25 to $3.25, and said he wouldn’t rule out looking into ways to “alleviate the pressures” caused by licensing fees in the face of new competition from ride-sharing services such as Uber.

“I would hope that they might, as a gesture in return say to us that they will work very hard to make sure that the kinds of rumblings of taxi strikes and other things like that we hear about, which I think are totally counterproductive and only hurt the public and the drivers, are not something that they are going to be in any way encouraging,” he added.

“Because I think that would be better if we could just proceed to do this work as quickly as possible and find ways to make sure that ground transportation is fair and safe and equitable and that there’s fair competition.”

Tory said it was challenging to enforce the law in a city where there are 400,000 users of Uber and thousands of drivers, adding that the drop in fare price was based on research and consultations with members of the taxi industry.

A group representing cab drivers in Toronto said earlier this week it is mulling over whether a taxi strike will get the message across to the city and province.

Still, the taxi industry said Uber remains operating illegally and is urging the city for a quicker response on regulation and enforcement.

According to Licensing and Standards, since Oct. 21, there are more than 190 charges pending against UberX drivers and Uber.