Toronto’s Accessible service in total collapse
Beck Taxi will have 3 WAVs after March 31
'No Ride Home: The End of Accessible Taxis' https://t.co/PnyQuORjYT
— Kristine Hubbard (@KristineHubbard) February 10, 2026
People will be confined to their homes as of March 31st in a city that left them behind. This isn't hyperbole. Even to order a new van now, takes 6 months. They had $21M of the industry's money in 2024. No plan
Beck Taxi’s Operations Manager Kristine Hubbard provided Greg Brady of Chorus Media with a concise summary of exactly the situation facing Accessible Taxi users in Toronto in a February 10th interview.
“Toronto is sitting on $20 million it collected from the industry,” Hubbard points out. “There is no plan.”
All of the information Hubbard details in the interview has been publicly available and flagged for Toronto staff since 2022.
Meanwhile, the City of Ottawa has revamped and updated its Accessible Taxi program to such a degree that wait times have been cut in half while the number of Wheelchair Accessible Vans (WAVs) available to users in that city have increased by 50 per cent.
The Canadian Taxi Association made a comprehensive submission to Ontario’s pre-Budget consultation process on January 30th, including consideration of the fact that many parts of the province including the City of Toronto are in flagrant non-compliance with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA).
“Various levels of government have been warned about the damage caused by open entry to the ground transportation market,” says Marc André Way, president of the Canadian Taxi Association.
“While the Canadian Taxi Association (CTA) will not presume to comment on the over-all state of the province’s compliance with its own AODA, we can state this with confidence and evidence: Ontario’s decision to allow American corporations unlimited access has indeed created a crisis in on-demand accessible Taxi services.
“Ride hail services are not only in blatant non-compliance with the requirement they provide equitable on-demand services, the subsidies provided by their venture capital investors have allowed them to undercut the operators who do provide the services, putting them out of business. It’s time for Ontario to have a serious and productive discussion with stakeholders in this industry about compliance with the AODA.”
