Toronto is talking to kill time, not make sense
From 5,500 trained and licensed Taxi drivers to 55,000 random rideshares cruising the streets in a city that claims it wants to cut emissions.
How is such lunacy even possible?
Who takes seriously any debate on which one side is 5,500 trained, licensed drivers and the other is 55,000 random rideshares?
This debate is not serious, in the sense that both of these ideas can be entertained simultaneously by a rational mind.
It IS serious, however, in the sense that it is allowing Toronto to waste time, to rag the puck, to run out the clock while its Taxi industry gasps its last breaths.
At its February 29th meeting, Executive Committee listened again as Taxi owners and operators pled for some relief from the lop-sided reality of the current Taxi/Rideshare regulatory environment.
Alas, the Taxi owners who clung to solvency through the John Tory/Uber Honeymoon years have been disappointed in their hopes that Mayor Olivia Chow was going to make any quick move to help them, particularly through a motion to cap the number of rideshares cruising the streets.
In the end, Committee decided not to do anything immediately but to wait for a staff report in November, 2024.
So never mind numbers like 5,500 (the number of Taxis Toronto’s independent consultant advised the City needs) or 55,000 rideshares (the approximate number staff guesstimate are on the streets now).
Consider these numbers: Toronto used to have 5,500 licensed Taxis. As of January 6, 2024 there were just 2,764 licensed Taxis working in Toronto. 1610 plates have been returned to the City by drivers who cannot make enough money to renew them.
Of the 2,764 licenses currently working, 1,785 are attached to vehicles which will age out and require replacement by January 1, 2025. Whether or not their owners believe it is worthwhile to invest $50,000 to $60,000 of their own money to put an expensive new vehicle into service remains to be seen.
In the worst-case scenario, a scant 1,000 licensed Taxis would remain operating early next year, as compared to 55,000 rideshare vehicles. Why would Toronto allow such an uneven, unequal situation to become even more lopsided?
“This is working great for Toronto,” a jaded industry member pointed out to me earlier this year.
“Toronto realized 25 years ago that it made a giant mistake in allowing a secondary market in Taxi plates to develop.
“Toronto tried to eliminate plate value with Ambassador plates; they tried by releasing 500 Accessible plates into the market. Nothing worked to reduce the value of plates – until Uber.”
Ah, Uber! Uber’s ability to both subsidize fares and put thousands of drivers on the road with no barriers to entry has done what Toronto could not do itself: eliminate the value of the Taxi plates and decimate the most entrepreneurial business owners in the business.
So, if we look at the debate from this skeptical point of view, the point is not whether Toronto needs 5,500 Taxis, 55,000 rideshare, or any number in between.
The point is that Toronto Council will just keep blathering on, pretending this is the real debate, until the last brand-identified, roof-lit, legally metered Taxi with a fully trained driver disappears from the market, unable to survive the combination of plummeting revenues and unlimited numbers of competitors.
Councillors are ragging the puck, running down the clock, wasting time and energy pretending they don’t know the difference between 5,500 vehicles and 55,000 vehicles, or what to do about it. They disingenuously promote the idea that staff need another nine months to naval gaze on the topic, and propose some half-baked suggestion intended to convince disheartened Taxi owners to again invest their own money into this heartbreaking industry.
Taxi owner Ali P (as identified in the meeting minutes) perhaps phrased it best when he told Executive Committee, “Stop the shenanigans…why do we need to have so many people at a fancy-schmancy meeting? Put a cap on it. Take action right now.”
