Toronto riders of Uber, Lyft and other ride-sharing services could be waiting longer and paying more during the holiday season and beyond.
In the biggest shakeup of the taxi alternative industry since the city legalized and regulated it in 2016, companies face the prospect of a shrinking supply of drivers using their own vehicles to transport customers listening to apps.
The number of active drivers had already been drastically reduced, with a modest rebound during the pandemic that brought the current number of hail drivers to only about half of 2019 levels.
The latest development, a city-mandated freeze of new driver licenses, could have a huge impact on businesses and their local customers, even as relaxed pandemic restrictions cause people to rediscover the need to blend in and work outside of their homes. homes.
“It is deeply concerning that hundreds of thousands of Torontoners may have reduced access to a safe and reliable ride home during the holidays, especially during a time when TTC services are declining,” Uber said in a statement after the Wednesday city council meeting.
Councilors voted 21-2 to stop issuing licenses for new drivers of hail cars, limos and taxis until a council-mandated pandemic-delayed driver training course is operational. Applications received by the city from ride-sharing companies beginning Nov. 10 at 4:30 p.m. M. Will be processed, those received later will be subject to freezing.
With a bidding process to choose who develops and executes the training program that won’t close until December 10, trucking companies face a lengthy period where new drivers can’t join their platforms, but new drivers are unable to join their platforms. current drivers may resign. Currently, the city receives just over 6,000 requests from drivers a month.
In a letter to councilors, Uber warned that the move would deprive potential cash-strapped drivers of a “critical safety net” and that “stopping licensing would likely lead to higher wait times and higher prices in the city of Toronto “.
In 2019, the council ordered city staff to develop the course after 28-year-old Uber passenger Nicholas Cameron died following a 2018 accident on the Gardiner Expressway.
Abdihared Bishar Mussa, on his fourth day as an Uber driver, had stopped on the shoulder of the road to retrieve a dropped cell phone. It slowly returned to speeding traffic, causing a collision that broke Cameron’s neck.
The tragedy triggered training calls to replace a mandatory taxi driver program that the council had eliminated in 2016, at the request of trucking companies, as part of a new framework to legalize the increasingly popular but later illicit service.
Coun. Kristyn Wong-Tam said Wednesday that councilors must send a message to city staff and industry that training is vital to ensuring safety on Toronto’s streets. Mayor John Tory, who has openly supported private travel as a major transportation innovation, supported Wong-Tam’s motion for the freeze.
Carleton Grant, head of the city’s licensing department that oversees taxi and ride-sharing regulations, told the Star that the freeze comes after a severe decline in the number of active drivers from Uber, Lyft, and some transportation services. More smalls.
The roughly 90,000 drivers in 2019 had dwindled to around 29,000 by early 2020, he said, picking up a bit to 48,195 during the pandemic.
“There’s a lot of movement” in that industry, Grant said. “People are leaving to do other things and people are joining who may have lost their jobs and seeking to supplement their income.”
Data on the number of passengers that transportation companies must share with the city showed that the reduction in the number of private vehicles carrying passengers had an impact, he added.
“There have been longer wait times for passengers,” said Grant, who did not have specific data on how much longer passengers had to cool their heels.
When asked what impact he hopes the council-mandated freeze will have, Grant said, “I guess the impact would be more people starting to return to work and fewer vehicles on the road to meet consumer demand.”
Regarding the delay in implementing the training, Grant noted that the city’s original RFP did not return any bids that met the city’s criteria. When the pandemic struck, his staff took care of their duties, including carrying out provincial orders against the pandemic.
“That is a reason, not an excuse. It stopped, ”he said about the job in driver training.
Uber, which Lyft says supports the training requirement, told the Star on Thursday that it needs more, not fewer, drivers to log into the platform.
“There are fewer licensed rideshare drivers today due to the pandemic,” Uber Canada spokesman Zaitoon Murji said in an email.
“As the economy has reopened, more drivers are needed to help meet demand. We just hope that the demand will grow as we approach the busy Christmas season, especially at a time when we approach the winter season and TTC services have also been reduced ”, due to the suspension of TTC of non-drivers. vaccinated.
Murji said that Uber’s online registration feature also serves other municipalities, so it continues to operate even if the names cannot yet be submitted to Toronto for registration, allowing them to start operating here.
In addition, he said, “there are a number of steps in the process to register for our application that can continue (ie, background checks) unrelated to the City’s licensing regime.”
Lyft, which announced in 2017 it would be moving to Toronto after Uber successfully lobbied the city on legalization regulations, said in a statement that its drivers “go through rigorous security checks before being approved to drive on the road. Lyft platform, and we are supporting Toronto’s efforts to improve public safety.
“However, it is important that we do so in a way that does not jeopardize income opportunities for people at a time when many are still recovering from the economic devastation of COVID-19.”
The break also applies to taxis.
Kristine Hubbard, operations manager for Beck Taxi, objected that the company’s taxi drivers have been carrying out the necessary training requirements for years, but that the new rule was a “step in the right direction” nonetheless.
Cameron’s mother Cheryl Hawkes, who lobbied the city to reintroduce the training, welcomed the freeze but was skeptical that the driving courses are comprehensive enough to make the roads safe for passengers and others. drivers.
“I feel like Uber has had a free ride in city hall since the statute was changed,” legalizing it, he said, noting that the industry massive lobbying effort at city hall, including opposition to mandatory car testing of prospective drivers.
The city’s rules appeared to be “crafted in accordance with Uber’s business model,” Hawkes said.
“It has to be a rigorous course,” he said of the new training, adding that the hiatus in new hail drivers should become a permanent cap on their numbers.
“It would be healthy for the city in terms of congestion and security to severely limit it.”
Reference-www.thestar.com