Quote:
Originally Posted by The Yen Man
I still don't understand why the city limits taxi licences. There shouldn't be a limit to how many licenses they put out. Do they regulate how many restaurant licences or pub licences they put out? I highly doubt it. So why is the city so protective of taxi companies? That's the issue that rubs me the wrong way with city hall's position in all of this.
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It was felt that in order to maintain a standard of quality, you had to ensure that cab drivers could earn a decent full-time living. And to ensure cab drivers could earn a decent, full-time living, you needed to limit the number of licenses.
The problem is that demand for cabs varies dramatically by day and time of day. There's probably 8x greater demand for cabs at 1:00 am on a Saturday night than there is at 2 pm on a Wednesday afternoon. And demand spikes seasonally during the Christmas season. So a fixed number of full-time cab drivers doesn't really make any sense, especially in a young, fairly affluent city like Calgary where people go out a lot. The city tried to tweak the licensing system to increase the number of part-time licenses, but it was too little, too late.
I honestly don't think it's corruption. Rather, we had an outdated and inflexible system and the people who could change it didn't have the imagination or boldness to evolve. They overestimated the difficulty in sorting out the matter of existing licensing, and vastly underestimated the groundswell of public rage over the issue. Now it's out of their hands.