Ithink you have to try Uber to know what you’re missing. But once you try it, you know what you’re missing.
After hailing Uber recently in Toronto, I now know what I’m missing.
Getting a ride around Canada’s biggest city is as easy as this:
1) You text your location and your destination to the Uber app.
2) The app sends you a list of drivers in the neighbourhood and the cost of the ride.
3) You select the driver, and voila. Ride happens.
4) There’s even a little tracker that shows your driver’s progress toward you, so you never have to wonder when the car will arrive.
5) If you want to add an incentive for the driver, you can rate the ride and add a tip.
Of course, none of this happens in Canada’s third largest city. Ours, that is.
Here you call a taxi and hope for the best.
And despite election promises to the contrary, the earliest we can expect the NDP government to allow services such as Uber and Lyft is late 2019. By the looks of it, this grudging adoption will come with restrictions that virtually guarantee, uh, less than optimal service. Restrictions such as geographic boundaries and limits to the number of cars. Restrictions that conveniently benefit the existing taxi industry, apparently (and inextricably) beloved by the party in power.
This fealty to an obsolete technology is unusual these days. No government is stepping forward to protect the print newspaper business, for example, in the face of a daunting challenge from online competition. I understand. As much as I enjoy sitting down with a paper paper and a cup of coffee, I’m certainly not going to depend on day-old news when I can just dial up real time on my phone.
That would be ridiculous.
But that’s what’s happening in B.C. with the taxi industry and Uber. There are hundreds of other examples; old technology gives way to new technology; jobs are lost and jobs are created as technology relentlessly makes life more convenient. But for some reason, the taxi industry warrants protection.
The real shame is that ridesharing services could be the answer to the North Shore transportation prayer. Thanks to the exigencies of geography, implementing rapid transit around here is difficult and expensive. (Not to mention that the North Shore is out of sight/out of mind when it comes to transit priorities.)
While the politicians dither, we could enlist a squadron of eager-beaver entrepreneurs who are ready, willing and able to take us anywhere we’d like to go, whenever we’d like to go there.
I know, I’ve heard the stories about the various abuses committed by ridesharing drivers, but my Toronto hosts chuckled amiably and basically called them fake news. It’s a big grid; there are millions of rides; the odd abuse occurs. When they compare the slick technology of ridesharing to the inadequacies of the taxi industry, ridesharing wins hands down, as far as they’re concerned.
As far as you’re concerned too, by the looks of it. According to Michael van Hemmen, Uber’s general manager of cities for Western Canada, polls show that 91 per cent of respondents want to see ridesharing approved in B.C.
Then there’s the little, albeit unscientific, poll underway right now on the North Shore News site: as I write, 77 per cent of 304 visitors favour ridesharing “within the next 20 minutes if possible. I’m waiting for a bus.”
The thing is, to get elected, John Horgan promised to adopt ridesharing in 2017. Arguably that promise was as important a factor at getting him elected as removing the tolls on the Port Mann Bridge. It didn’t take him long to remove the tolls, but ridesharing? His government has decided to add 500 more taxis instead!
We keep hearing that the taxi lobby is powerful. It must be. The previous Liberal government wasn’t moving any faster on ridesharing. And now, we’re the last city in North America without it.
And as the current government continues to ride around in circles, we may stay that way.
Maybe we should just give up and congratulate the Metro Vancouver taxi lobby on being the most effective lobbying group ever. Now if only they could turn that power to improving the experience and lowering the price.
That would make us yell “Taxi!” once again. As a term of endearment, not a four-letter word.
What are your thoughts? Send us a letter via email by clicking here or post a comment below.
