12 year old Taxis: how could this happen?
Toronto will do absolutely anything but admit 85,000 VFH is too many
The “bucket o’ bolts” Taxi is back.
No doubt American tourists who can’t wait to be booed and elbowed at a Blue Jay’s game are lining up to schedule their visits already. They love the rattly old Taxis.
The surprise motion that seemed to pop up from nowhere at the March 27th Toronto Council meeting allowing model years of 2014 and 2015 to remain on the roads working as Taxis this summer passed in mere moments, and BAM!! Toronto committed another unforced error and created another headache for itself and the industry.
To celebrate, Councillors voted themselves a 24 per cent raise a few minutes later.
The concept of allowing first Wheelchair Accessible Taxis and then, suddenly, all Taxis to stay on the road for ten years (double the pre-COVID age of five years) seems to have morphed out of a recommendation in the Mayor’s Economic Action Plan to Combat American Tariffs, otherwise known as the “Elbows Up” plan. Part of the plan was a motion directing staff to study “the anticipated impact of tariffs on the price and supply of automobiles that are eligible to be operated as a taxicab; and whether, due to tariff impacts on relevant automobiles, the date by which a registered taxicab with the model year 2016 or 2017 is required to be replaced should be extended beyond March 31, 2025.”
No one knew what Trump’s tariff plan would be on March 27th, but that did not prevent Toronto from making an inane decision which might trigger lawsuits.
“Toronto sent a letter to Taxi operators in January telling them they had to replace their 2017 and 2018 vehicles, and many did,” Behrouz Khamseh described to me in amazement.
“One of the guys told me his new payment is $900 per month – NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS PER MONTH!!” Khamseh exclaimed. “NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS PER MONTH!! He was one of the organized ones, he did not wait until the last minute. He ordered the vehicle, arranged the financing, took possession of it ahead of the March 31st deadline, for what? For nothing? He could have waited two years.
“The guys that waited, they have no new $900 payment to make. How is that fair?”
Under John Tory and the previous Council, Toronto willfully destroyed its own Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle on-demand program when it allowed open entry to rideshare in 2016. Toronto only very recently realized that almost all of its WAVs will age out of use this year; for this reason, Executive Committee debated and supported the idea of extending the age of all WAVs to 10 years.
Most of these customized Wheelchair Accessible Vans are worn out, rattling, bumpy, frightening “bucket-o-bolts” vehicles that both drivers and passengers hate riding in; but operators cannot afford to purchase new ones while they compete for fares with 85,000 rideshares. Keeping the wobbly old WAVs on the road for two more years seems sadly like the only option for now.
Beck Taxi operations manager Kristine Hubbard tells me that L&S Enforcement Officers at Union Station have been chirping Taxi operators for weeks, telling them that they would issue no warnings after the March 31 deadline but “we’ll hook you up and tow you away the day the deadline passes.”
Then suddenly, surprisingly, out of the blue at the March 27 Council meeting, a motion was introduced late in the evening to apply the age extension to ten years to ALL Taxis, not just the Wheelchair Accessible Taxis approved at Executive Committee.
Operators who complied with the law in a professional and organized manner are now being punished with massive payments on brand new vehicles.
Opportunists who waited to the last minute, or Fleet Owners who actually had no plan at all to ever replace existing old vehicles, are thrilled to be able to squeeze two more years out of their old beater cabs.
The idea of keeping 2014 and 2015 sedans on the road until August, and 2016 and 2017 on the road until 2028 is yet another nail in the coffin of an industry already struggling to present a positive image to the public.
Beck Taxi is having none of it: Hubbard sent out a letter on March 29th which reads in part,
“Late yesterday afternoon, Council made the unfortunate decision to extend the life of taxicabs to 10 model years (which in many cases means more than 10 active years on the road). As in so many other areas, like inspections, the City has lowered the minimum standard, putting drivers, riders and other vulnerable road users at risk. This is compounded by the removal of the municipal inspection facility. As in other areas (like the specific Beck training requirement) Beck maintains policies regarding vehicle fitness and has routinely determined that vehicles ‘allowed by the city’ do not meet our standard of fitness…
“If you own and drive a 2014 or 2015 vehicle, there is no change in the March 31, 2025 replacement deadline as previously planned. Your vehicles must be replaced immediately. If you own and drive a 2016 vehicle, it will be able to continue for the next 60 days if a vehicle has been purchased to replace it. If you own and drive a 2017 vehicle, yours will be decided on a case-by-case basis.
“All garage/fleet vehicles 2014-2017 must be replaced as originally scheduled, March 31, 2025. As a fleet, if you are actively replacing vehicles, Beck reserves the right to adjust this policy depending on any vehicle and the scheduled arrival time of its replacement.”
So Toronto can look forward to a summer of tourists complaining about the state of their Taxis, and they won’t be wrong. As Edison might have put it, “There Is no expedient to which Toronto will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking about whether it actually needs 85,000 Vehicles for Hire on its roads.”
