Is Accessible Taxi a business, or community service?
Observant PTC driver says the quiet part out loud
I don’t see any driver going for it unless there’s 100 per cent grant to converting their vehicle into an Accessible vehicle, because it takes a lot of more time that they’re not getting compensated for…there’s a lot of care, a lot of risk, dealing with people with disabilities.”
–Will, PTC driver, June 25th PTC stakeholder consultation
Is on-demand Accessible transportation a community service, or is it a business?
This question was put to Toronto’s Vehicle for Hire (VFH) stakeholder consultation session for Private Transportation Company (PTC) drivers on June 25th by driver Will.
“As far as for Accessible services, I don’t see any driver going for it unless there’s 100 per cent grant to converting their vehicle into an Accessible vehicle, because it takes a lot of more time that they’re not getting compensated for,” Will told Toronto L&S staff and facilitators from Gladki Planning.
“There’s a lot of care. There’s a lot of risk to dealing with people with disabilities. At a certain point you have to ask your question yourself as a driver, ‘Is this a community service, or is this a business?
“Because you don’t have repeat customers. You see them once; you may never see them again.”
Will went on to describe for over 100 participants on the videoconference call the scenario unprepared Vehicle for Hire drivers face when they pick up a person with a disability:
“So, if you take time out of your day to lift them in the car and everything, and then you start the trip out. You made that mistake; AFTER they’re in the car, you figure out that they’re going completely the opposite direction where you set your app to go.
“Then, you have to let them off. And it could be slippery, it could be snowy, and they didn’t expect that they would be out. Whoever dropped them off there thought they were going to be in a car, at home in 30 minutes.”
On-demand Accessible transportation in complete disarray
By asking whether on-demand Accessible transportation is a “community service or a business,” it’s possible Will identified the crisis currently facing the Toronto’s entire concept of on-demand services for persons with disabilities. These services are in complete disarray according to both providers and users of the services; Toronto’s published data indicates there will be virtually no Wheel-Chair Accessible Vans (WAVs) in service by 2025.
Image: Taxi News Data: City of Toronto https://www.toronto.ca/data/mls/ssc/V00.html
Ontario municipalities are required under the Access for Ontarians with Disabilities Act to ensure transportation services for persons with disabilities are available. Five-year plans and annual reports are required to be developed and publicly posted. Toronto’s five-year plan was adopted in December, 2019; it has not posted an annual report since 2022.
(The Toronto Transit Commission, which provides pre-planned Accessible transportation services, maintains an independent multi-year plan and reports directly to the Province of Ontario on AODA compliance.)
“Why isn’t there a dedicated consultation to Accessibility?” asked speaker Peter Athanasopoulos of Spinal Cord Injury Ontario asked the June 12th public meeting of the VHF consultation.
“The system is completely broken, and there needs to be a focus on Accessibility. We have been involved in vehicle for hire bylaws for several decades, and there seems to be never a critical focus on Accessible vehicle for hire services. Just listening to the City presentations, I can see so many holes and gaps into what was presented.”
Staff proposals for discussion during the five public stakeholder sessions have ranged from promising (a per-trip fee bonus for drivers and funds to assist in converting vehicles) to punative (seizing the inactive plates of drivers who cannot generate enough revenues to put a vehicle on the road).
Accessibility Fund Program “a parting gift”
Toronto’s Accessibility Fund is a hastily designed program, described by City Taxi’s Neil Shorey as (former Director of Licensing) “Tracey Cook’s parting gift as she ran out the door.”
In its 2022 public report, Toronto lists its Accessibility Fund Program as a “completed” initiative.
The Accessibility Fund is supposed to collect funds from all VFH drivers including Uber, Lyft, and non-Accessible operating Taxi drivers to distribute to Accessible-operating Taxi drivers in an effort to subsidize their work. The idea that drivers who are already among some of the most vulnerable, marginally employed subsistence workers in Toronto should be the ones to subsidize Accessible fees has, to date, never been questioned.
However, while the program collected $4.6 million in 2023, it distributed only $1.2 million, leaving $3.6 million sitting in the fund. Taxi industry observers predict this $3.6 million, collected from working VFH drivers, is what Toronto will offer to return to them as vehicle subsidies in any new proposed vehicle conversion program – what Beck Taxi’s Kristine Hubbard describes as “returning to drivers the money taken from them.”
The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act requires on-demand Accessible transportation services to be “equitable” with services provided to non-disabled persons. In 2015, Toronto’s Taxi industry had exceeded the goal of making six per cent of Taxi fleets wheelchair-accessible and reducing response times for on-demand calls to about 10 minutes.
Later, permitting PTC companies such as Uber and Lyft open entry to the city and the addition of 65,000 new vehicles on the road devastated the earnings of Taxi drivers so completely that virtually none can afford to purchase and operate a new Wheel-Chair Accessible Van (WAV) as their old one ages out of service.
