Beck, Co-op, Scarborough City jointly recommend VFH changes

Ten recommendations for a healthy, well-functioning Vehicle-for-Hire sector

Managers responsible for three of Toronto’s largest Taxi brokerages have worked together to create a set of ten recommendations to Toronto’s Vehicle for Hire (VFH) Review. City staff are expected to report to City Council on vehicles-for-hire by the end of 2024. The report is part of an ongoing comprehensive review of the framework and bylaw and will respond to several outstanding Council directives from 2021 to 2023.

Abdul Mohamoud, CEO of Co-op Cabs; Kristine Hubbard, General Manager of Beck Taxi; and Gurjeet Dhillon, Vice President of Scarborough City Taxi and Toronto1 Taxi have worked together over a period of weeks to create a set of joint recommendations, which were forwarded to the City of Toronto on July 18th, 2024.

“We are pleased that the City is updating the Vehicle-for-Hire Bylaw and developing a framework that balances customer service, economic impacts on drivers, impacts on public transit and congestion, and equity and accessibility. Regulating the vehicle-for-hire sector has long been a challenge and we appreciate that MLS is addressing it,” the joint letter opens.

“When the City last developed its own vision, it aimed for a highly regulated and controlled sector, with stringent rules for providing equitable accessible service and emission reductions. However, ride-hailing apps disrupted the market leading to deregulation that allowed anyone to drive, relied on mobile apps for customer communications, and reduced passenger wait times at the cost of causing severe congestion by adding thousands of cars to city streets.”

“Data clearly shows this deregulation created new and serious problems, including traffic congestion and emissions, plummeting driver income, and millions of trips diverted from public transit to private cars. Additionally, the ride-hailing business model has privatized public transportation in several cities and undercut labor standards in the industry. We believe there is a better, more regulated approach that works for passengers, drivers, and other road users,” reads the letter, which is summarized by its authors in the ten principles listed below:

1. Healthy competition under fair conditions should be an explicit regulatory goal.

2. Private Transportation Companies (PTCs) as well as Taxis should be subject to City-established limits on licensed Vehicle for Hire (VFH) drivers to ensure a viable, diverse industry. Well-designed license limits will also help ensure inactive plates can be brought back into service.

3. Extrapolating from past practice, no more than 16,650 full-time equivalent licensed VFH (Taxi and PTC drivers) should be needed to meet Toronto’s ground transportation needs once all available Taxi licenses are in active use.

4. Improving Accessible on-demand Taxi service must be a key priority. The industry supports staff’s proposals to create a city-run centralized dispatch service, and institute operational as well as vehicle subsidies, though actual subsidy levels must reflect actual costs. Ensuring overall industry viability is also necessary to retain and recruit accessible on-demand drivers.

6. Requirements for vehicle insurance should be comparable between Taxis and PTCs; for PTCs, the City should directly oversee proof of commercial insurance and proof that personal insurers have been notified of ride-hailing activities.

7. To prevent price- and pay- gouging, the City must institute minimum time and distance fares for PTCs as well as Taxis and require providers to fully disclose information about rates and fees to both drivers and passengers.

8. PTC vehicles must be distinctly and clearly identified while operating commercially to protect customers and other road users and facilitate enforcement efforts.

9. The City should resume in-car defensive driving instruction and in-person testing to improve the rigour of current driver training and combat cheating. Current training providers must be carefully reviewed.

10. Universal smart meters should be implemented to facilitate data collection from all industry participants and provide operational data directly to the City.