Can someone explain to me why City of Toronto can't apply the taxi license fee and taxi inspection regulations to Uber. It seems fundamentally unfair to me that a taxi service is operating without having these regulations applied to them.
Although I believe some rules are needed -- I must point out that the taxi regime was created for a yesterday's era.
It's easy to become a Uber driver today.
You just sign up. Then after some basic vetting by Uber,
all you need to do is install the "
UberPartner" app.
That's it.
The driver's phone GPS puts their car symbol on the user's phone Uber map. The app software handles the payments for both of them. The app notifies you when someone wants a ride and automatically displays a GPS map leading to your pickup.
No other equipment
No cash machines
No fare tracking machines.
No credit card readers
No in-person transactions, no cash
The driver only has an app
The customer only has an app
Uber simply mails you a check once in a while.
This doesn't fit with 19th century taxi regulations.
Yes, we need rules. Maybe more vetting, yes. BUT the existing rules is like using a shotgun to kill a fly, full stop.
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...And let's seriously consider 30 years from now, we'll have driverless cars -- imagine "DIAL-A-BUS" (reborn) type services that carpools users to the nearest mass-transit station. Micro transit services as last mile connectors. Run by parties like Hertz, ZipCar, Beck, Uber, TTC, GO, Toyota. Or all of them. Large numbers to the point that it takes less than 2-3 minutes for a suburbanite to hail a public microtransit carpooled dynamic minibus via a Uber-style app released by TTC or Uber or Hertz. There's no difference between a taxi, a minibus, a carpool, a rented car, a carsharing service, if they are all driverless and driving for you anyway. And apps can facilitate quick carpools that scales up to shuttlebus levels. It is possible taxi drivers will be obsolete in 50 years. From this perspective, it seems stupid to apply existing taxi laws to DIAL-A-BUS type services that could fluorish and improve our road's capacity and efficiency. More than over 100x (one hundred) as many "taxi" licenses may be needed to be active concurrently within 50 years to accomodate such a shared-vehicle-economy transition away from single-occupant vehicles -- when drivereless carpooled taxi becomes part of public transit. Given the pace of innovation, I strongly seriously suggest that's a fallacy of an idea to use existing onerous taxi rules without first modifying the outdated rules.
...In 30 to 50 years from now, taxi drivers (except for higher end chauffering) may be extinct and we could have fleets of driverless cars/minibuses/transit that's controlled by uber-like and uberPOOL-like apps. Maybe owned by GO or TTC as last-mile connectors like DIAL-A-BUS but massively more efficient, cheaper, faster, more availability of vehicles, and more efficient, more-people-per-vehicle (unless you pay more to go solo), where even distant suburbs is as easy to hail as a New York City street. With so many hailable vehicles, you can instantly hail an existing already-enroute carpool whose existing GPS route overlaps your waiting location.
Heck, unused owned driverless cars could be opted-in to automatically join the TCC/GO/Uber/Beck/Whatever "DIAL-A-BUS" fleet to reduce the car owner's monthly bill (automakers are now aware of this potential. But now imagine driverless cars! Imagine letting your owned driverless car temporarily join TTC automatically while it's unused, in exchange for a free citywide transit pass for the whole family, if you lost your job and want to eliminate the car bill for a while!).
Now you understand how stupid the taxi rules look, when we look at tomorrow's driverless ridesharing economy, potentially operated municipally, provincially, and privately. In tomorrow more-average-people-per-car driverless era where there is no difference between a taxi, a rental car, a carshare car, somebody else's carpool car, a dial-a-bus vehicle, etc. To help taxi drivers, give them a transition schedule (10 or 20 years) with progressive rules that prevent perpetuating undesirable status quo. Fresh ideas are needed. The slow transition has begun, thanks to the likes of Zipcar, AutoShare, Car2Go, Uber, UberPOOL, Lyft, Ford automobile company's "eliminate your car bill by letting others borrow your car" initiative, etc, etc, etc. Be forewarned, other cities are going to rabbit ahead of Toronto in the next few decades unless we fix the lobbyist-enforced junk of taxi regulations, while admirably served its purpose, doesn't make sense in the coming years without serious amendments for the public good.
The transition is not going to stop, especially if all of these services (i.e. ZipCar, Car2Go, and eventually driverless Uber/Hertz/Avis vehicles) eventually become more taxilike with robocars. And super easy one-button carpool hailing when you want to pay less fare and get a vehicle almost instantly because a quarter to a half of all cars on the road are hailable carpools. Boom. Why hail taxi?
