Taxi industry news

In-house lobbyists for Uber logged a meeting on January 20 with the TTC’s Head of Wheel-Trans, Cameron Penman and Wheel-Trans Manager, Mohammed Rashid Shaikh. The TTC’s Manager of Business Transformation also attenderd, according to Matt Elliott, publisher of “City Hall Watcher.”

Elliott notes that Wheel-Trans provides a significant portion of its service to people with disabilities via contracts with the taxi industry. They have never established any similar arrangement with PTC companies like Uber, though Uber does operate a service called UberWav in some cities that provides specialized wheelchair-accessible service.

Image: City of Ottawa City of Ottawa manager Christine Hartig said its “Equity and Inclusion Lens” handbook and the policies it contains were “not germaine” to the 2015 report written by KPMG. Hartig is testifying for the second day on

Zoom links and technology services during the first month of the Ottawa Taxi trial have been generally very reliable. Image: Google This morning at the Ottawa Taxi trial, the cross-examination of City of Ottawa’s Regulatory Services Program Manager Christine Hartig

Plaintiff’s lawyer Tim Conway suggested that the final report Brian Bourns and his KPMG team delivered to Ottawa in 2015 left out key findings presented in earlier studies.

“For example, the life savings of investment of plate owners, incremental values that had accrued, and the ethnic background of drivers were not mentioned in the conclusion to this report,” Conway proposed to Bourns. “Did you ever use Ottawa’s ‘Equity Lens’?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Bourns replied.

Uber Canada’s head office in Toronto, Ontario. Photo: Taxi News Plaintiffs’ lawyer Thomas Conway and KPMG Senior Partner Brian Bourns engaged in a tense debate on what constitutes “improved customer service” at the Ottawa Taxi trial February 1st. Conway questioned

In a stunning revelation, KPMG Senior Partner Brian Bourns admitted he never saw, or used, Ottawa’s “Equity and Inclusion Lens” handbook before designing and delivering stakeholder sessions with the Taxi industry in 2015. Bourns and his team wrote the report