The provincial government’s ride-hailing road show remains largely stuck in neutral.
It shifted gears somewhat with the release of Hara Associates’ Modernizing Taxi Regulation report and a subsequent commitment to expand B.C.’s taxi fleet. Supply, as the report notes, is at the heart of taxi service concerns in the province. But the real challenge is efficient deployment of that supply.
Adding 500 taxis is guaranteed to dilute cab licence values, but, if the current system of area monopolies for cab companies remains, that addition is no guarantee of improving car availability. Regional taxi licensing that allows drivers to pick up anyone in any municipality at any time should therefore be instituted along with the new licences.
Under the current system, cab companies have exclusive rights to service fares in designated municipalities. That transportation fiefdom approach might serve the needs of taxi companies by conferring market value to their licences, but it does not effectively service ride demand, especially during peak hours in urban cores during major sporting or other events.
Regional taxi licensing is not a new idea, nor is the push to institute it, even from within the Lower Mainland taxi industry.
For example, 30 years or so ago, North Vancouver’s Sunshine Cabs Ltd. pressed long and hard on the taxi regionalization button.
But in the end the push to replace municipal taxi monopolies with a competitive regional system ran down the same blind alley it always does. Downtown taxi companies and those servicing the airport don’t want to share the lucrative markets they’ve been allocated, even if they can’t always adequately service them.
However, Uber inevitability and the arrival of other Transportation Network Companies will force taxi companies to compete head-on with rivals – something that many have not had to do in Metro’s municipal monopoly marketplace. Regional licensing would be the first step in opening the door to that competition and providing Metro Vancouver residents with the benefits of an open vehicle-for-hire marketplace.
