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Taxis and ride-sharing in Toronto

I think we need to get rid of the cab size rule. Many of the cabs in Vancouver are Priuses and they seem big enough. There's no need for everyone to drive around Crown Vics. Cabs might be cheaper if they didn't get 15 mpg.
 
unimaginative2 said:
I think we need to get rid of the cab size rule. Many of the cabs in Vancouver are Priuses and they seem big enough. There's no need for everyone to drive around Crown Vics. Cabs might be cheaper if they didn't get 15 mpg.
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+1

I love the London Taxis. We have a few in Ottawa. Small, yet able to carry cargo. Agile. Good on gas. And now available in hybrid....we need more of these kinds of vehicles.

Beez, your ideas make sense...which is why Toronto will never implement them. We can't have those hard working taxi drivers make a good living and delivering improved service now can we.
 
cacruden said:
Maybe they should just have a GPS terminal (with keyboard) in the taxi - type in destination - and whala (could also allow alterations by taxi central for changes in traffic conditions based on GPS tracing of other rides :rolleyes:). It has got to still be cheaper than buying one of those black cabs :eek:
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I thought cabs already had those? At least the cabs I'm in seem to...
 
unimaginative2 said:
I think we need to get rid of the cab size rule. Many of the cabs in Vancouver are Priuses and they seem big enough. There's no need for everyone to drive around Crown Vics. Cabs might be cheaper if they didn't get 15 mpg.
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a couple things:

1) we have Prius cabs here. I passed one just the other day.

2) Crown Vics are chosen because they're cheap and plentiful to repair. You'll see fewer and fewer of them from here on out though. This plays more to the cheapness than anything else since...

3) Most cabs run on cleaner burning (and cheaper) liquid propane.
 
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Eric Reguly wrote a piece on the taxi glut in Dublin.
Shout “Taxi!” in Dublin and you might have to wait 0.3 seconds for your car to arrive. That's because the Irish capital probably has the biggest taxi glut in Europe.

The most visible sign of the Irish recession is not the endless “For Sale” or “Price Reduced” signs that line residential and business streets; it is the sheer number of idle taxis. At some taxi stands in central Dublin, the cars are lined up a two dozen deep, their drivers bored rigid behind the wheel.


No wonder: There are about 16,000 licensed taxis in Dublin, up from about 2,800 in the late 1990s. That's a lot of taxis. New York City, which is 7 or 8 times bigger than Dublin (population 1.2-million), has about 13,000 licensed cabs.


A decade ago, Dubliners complained about having to wait an hour or longer for a cab. So the city deregulated the licensing process. Almost anyone could get in the taxi game and the numbers grew enormously. Dublin was growing too, with foreign companies from Google to Hewlett-Packard setting up their European beachheads in the country that would become known as the Celtic Tiger.

For a while, taxi drivers lived well.The Tiger is out of puff, the recession has hit and drivers are getting desperate. Dublin could do with half the number of taxis. Fare poaching is routine. When I called a cab from my hotel in Dublin, a driver entered the lobby, asked if I was the guy who had ordered a cab, grabbed my bag and we were off to the airport. About 10 minutes later, my mobile phone rang. It was the driver I had booked. He was patiently waiting outside the hotel.


The ease of getting a taxi licence has not backfired for every driver. A few years ago Michael O'Leary, the famously aggressive and impatient boss of Ryanair, Europe's biggest discount airline, paid about 6,000 Euros for a taxi licence for his private Mercedes and equipped it with a meter and roof-top taxi lights. He wasn't moonlighting. He just wanted access to the city's bus-and-taxi-only lanes to speed up his drive to work.
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I gotta say, I think I prefer Dublin's idea to Beez's. Wanting cabbies to have a decent life is well and good, but if it just screws the consumer then less people will use cabs -> less cabbies. I would like to see a less archane registration system (no quotas) on cabbies. It makes no sense to artificially limit competition. It implicitly encourages private automobile usage. We should also allow 'share' taxis (minibuses) and more generally lower regulation burden (basic safety standards) on cabs. I've never understood why we view cabs and buses/metro as separate. They are both 'public transit' and should be viewed more as different sides of the same coin. (we should also consider cabs adopting a kind of smart card system, assuming that ever happens on the TTC).

EDIT: Ohh, this has probably been said already, but we should also deal with cabs on a 'regional' basis. It really is senseless that 416 cabs can't service Pearson.
 
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TKTKTK said:
I thought cabs already had those? At least the cabs I'm in seem to...
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I have not been in a cab in Toronto for a while, and yes - I have seen terminals in them - but from what I can see it is not helping with getting them to a destination - but with pickup requests. They should not need a map book anymore with the tech that we have now-a-days.
 
I've never understood why we view cabs and buses/metro as separate. They are both 'public transit' and should be viewed more as different sides of the same coin.
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Which leads to another idea... why not move some cab drivers from driving taxis to driving minibuses/maxicabs/jitneys. I know that there are bans on operating private forms of public transit, but, like the street food issue, I think this ban could be eliminated over time.

Given the huge demand for transit in Toronto, and that the TTC is not always able to provide adequate service, there's a pretty big niche that taxi drivers turned jitney drivers can get into.
 
wyliepoon said:
Which leads to another idea... why not move some cab drivers from driving taxis to driving minibuses/maxicabs/jitneys. I know that there are bans on operating private forms of public transit, but, like the street food issue, I think this ban could be eliminated over time.

Given the huge demand for transit in Toronto, and that the TTC is not always able to provide adequate service, there's a pretty big niche that taxi drivers turned jitney drivers can get into.
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It's funny, but Kingston had a little bit of that in their taxi system when I grew up there. Before they use to have a ZONE based system, where the prices were really really low (in comparison). People realized that, and when Taxis picked up people at the train station - multiple people to different destinations would get in one cab and they were able to get multiple fairs. This all disappeared when they went to a metered cab system and prices more than doubled overnight....
 
Do you want to have your say about Toronto's taxis? There's a new survey at http://www.torontotaxistudy.com/www.TorontoTaxiStudy.com/Toronto_Taxi_Study.html

Here's info from the press release:
January 30, 2013

Taxicab industry review launches survey for taxicab riders

The City of Toronto has launched an online survey to gather information from taxicab passengers. The results will be used as part of an analysis of the appropriate number of taxicabs in the city.

The survey looks to gain information about how often people use taxicabs, when and where people usually get taxicabs and how long people typically wait for their ride.

The information collected will feed into Toronto’s ongoing Taxicab Industry Review.

Toronto taxicab riders are encouraged to take part in improving Toronto's taxicab industry by participating in the online survey at http://www.torontotaxistudy.com.

The survey is being conducted by Taxi Research Partners. This research firm was hired by the City to produce an independent report that will examine the appropriate number of taxicabs and its economic impacts, including the potential for changes to Toronto’s taxicab fare system.

To be kept up to date on the review and other upcoming consultation opportunities, please sign up for the Taxicab Industry Review mailing list at http://www.toronto.ca/taxireview.

Toronto is Canada's largest city and sixth largest government, and home to a diverse population of about 2.7 million people. Toronto's government is dedicated to delivering customer service excellence, creating a transparent and accountable government, reducing the size and cost of government and building a transportation city. For information on non-emergency City services and programs, Toronto residents, businesses and visitors can dial 311, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
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I'm a bit concerned that so many cab companies don't perform background checks. For someone working one on one with people in an enclosed space all day, I would think that's a given.
 
In my experience the gold standard for cabs has to be New York City, at least in Manhattan. The cabs are all (almost?) the same colour, never overly dirty, the drivers know the city like no one else, and the fares are very reasonable. My second favourite is Hong Kong's cabs, at least in 2001 and 2005.
 
I had my scariest cab ride ever in NYC. I thought I was in a movie, it was crazy. Actually, two scary rides -- one in pouring rain with the windows fogging and the driver didn't see the need to use wipers and/or defrost, and the other through Manhattan at break-neck speeds, running lights and screeching around corners.
 
I remember a great line once I heard "Every time I'm in a cab in New York City I feel like I should be hanging out the window and shooting at the car behind me". Clearly a reference to the 1970's, 80's NY when the city was a "little" gritty. I think NY has a great taxi system. They're efficient and affordable. Way better than the mess we have in Toronto.
See my post "Musings on Alternatives to Mass Transit Systems". Taxi cabs usually aren't considered when we discuss mass transit in the GTA. I think it's a resource that, if re-thought can help alleviate some of our transit needs. Toronto's taxi system is dysfunctional, the TTC is barley functioning, some bold moves that alter and unify these two disparate systems might, paradoxically, result in something that works.
 
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