Nobody is sharing anything with “ridesharing”

It’s time to re-group and reconsider ground transportation responsibly

by Marc André Way

“Ridesharing.” Remember that quaint idea?

It sounded so warm and fuzzy and friendly in 2014. Supposedly, individual car owners would be offering rides to friends and neighbours who were headed in the same direction to work or grocery shopping. A web-based app would allow everyone to agree upon a fair rate for a certain distance, while alerting your friendly community “ridesharing guy” that you’d like to schedule a pick-up when it was mutually convenient.

What’s more, “sharing” rides and vehicles would lower emissions, reduce gridlock, and protect the Earth from climate change. Ridesharing had everything, and it was cheap.

Unfortunately, none of this turned out to be true. No one is “sharing” anything: it’s a pay-per-trip business, plain and simple. We don’t have friendly neighbours sharing rides, but unlimited numbers of full-time drivers being exploited outrageously: across North America, we are seeing unhappy rideshare drivers protest, hold union drives and launch lawsuits. Both gridlock and emissions are up, and Toronto’s Board of Trade calls gridlock “an economic crisis.”

The current atmosphere is so acrimonious, it’s hard to remember that these firms like Uber and Lyft first entered markets by persuading politicians they were going to be “sharing” rides, not providing professional transportation services. In 2025, we can see clearly that not one single part of any of the “ridesharing” sales pitch officials received in 2015 was accurate or true.

Now, with the breaking story in Toronto in April regarding the Uber driver who apparently inadvertently drove away with a child sleeping on the back bench of his van, we can also see that this unprofessional, fake “sharing” system poses real safety risks not anticipated by regulators.

It is unlikely that politicians in cities across Canada would have welcomed Uber and Lyft had they been presented as just two more Taxi companies: they would have been required to follow existing Taxi regulations on a true level playing field.

Now, the truth is known. Justice Marc Smith decided on May 13, 2024 that “Uber was a bandit Taxi company.” Nobody was sharing anything: “ridesharing” was just a fancy new name for our time-honoured profession, providing transportation at a time, a place, and a price sufficient to allow operators and drivers to make a fair profit and which consumers could afford and trust.

The simple name-change from Taxi to “rideshare” hardly justified an entirely new regulatory system. This new system arbitrarily removed some of the elements most important to passenger safety, like consistent Vehicle Identification and driver registration, and consumer protection including standardized fare rates and driver earnings.

A decade has passed since the rideshare myth was sold. Looking forward, we have great opportunities to re-group and reconsider ground transportation in a consistent, competent, responsible manner. Both Ottawa and Toronto will be reviewing their by-laws in 2025, and perhaps many other municipalities too.

It is incumbent on regulators, officials and politicians to work with industry members to develop better new standards. New regulations need to take into account not just emerging technologies and novel services, but also the most important traditional elements of good ground transportation oversight, which include:

• providing safe and secure service to the public;
• offering high quality customer service in clean, comfortable vehicles;
• employing courteous, knowledgeable and experienced drivers; and
• permitting people who work in the system to share fairly in the costs and benefits.

*****

Marc André Way is the president of the Canadian Taxi Association.