Uber to Resume in Calgary December 6 2016

[Locke]

So the City of Calgary is either greedy or incompetent? Take your pick I guess.

[darklord700]

Originally Posted by Geordi

Taxes. How are you going to sell cab licenses for tens of thousands of dollars when the market is flooded with Uber cars?

I hope I am wrong that we wouldn't one day hear Nenshi use Uber as excuses to jack up property tax rate due to the lost revenue in taxi licenses sale.

[Geordi]

Exactly. Instead of outrageously high licenses every once and a while, you implement a small sales tax on every ride. The city should be embracing Uber as a consistent source of income. They're sure as hell not paying GST, let the city get a cut.

Originally Posted by getbak

Unless I misunderstand how things work, the City doesn't make any money off of people reselling their taxi licenses either.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by heep223

Cab driver today asked me if I had taken Uber. I told him I had - after a Flames game, when 3 available taxis wouldn't pick us up. He actually laughed about that. I wasn't laughing.

Question - let's say as a passenger that you get seriously hurt in an Uber, and nobody's insurance will cover your rehab or lost wages. Wouldn't long term disability through work benefits cover it? It just seems like there's so many avenues to have it covered. We pay so many different types of insurance premiums...

So you are willing to take the liability for personal injury on yourself? Seriously, does the Uber app also brainwash you?

[heep223]

Originally Posted by peter12

So you are willing to take the liability for personal injury on yourself? Seriously, does the Uber app also brainwash you?

Isn't there a lot of grey area around all this? You make it seem so cut and dry.

[northcrunk]

Originally Posted by Locke

So the City of Calgary is either greedy or incompetent? Take your pick I guess.

Can we pick both? I pick both.

[GGG]

Ubers liability coverage should cover passengers. Being hit by an uber driver who is between calls with the app on is probably your biggest risk as he is an uninsured motorist.

[para transit fellow]

Originally Posted by heep223

Cab driver today asked me if I had taken Uber. I told him I had - after a Flames game, when 3 available taxis wouldn't pick us up. He actually laughed about that. I wasn't laughing.

Question - let's say as a passenger that you get seriously hurt in an Uber, and nobody's insurance will cover your rehab or lost wages. Wouldn't long term disability through work benefits cover it? It just seems like there's so many avenues to have it covered. We pay so many different types of insurance premiums...

That may work for some but not necessarily for others.

I don't have any long-term disability benefits at my employment. I would have to resort to Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH) and let the province (and your taxes) take care of me.

And... having met Calgary handibus passengers (now know as Calgary Transit access (tm)) that were hurt by un-identified drivers in hit and runs, I really wouldn't wish that fate on my worst enemy.

[getbak]

Originally Posted by BigNumbers

I feel like I am taking crazy pills here.. The solution seems so simple:

- Some form of 'tweener' insurance coverage that covers personal vehicle use for up to X amount of KMs / hrs / etc of livery driving - tracked by the uber app for verification if needed.

- Annual inspections, the same as cabs - again can be uploaded to uber and/or the city as required

- Police Information Check annually - again, uploaded to the uber app and/or city as needed.


Realistically, the only stumbling block is uber needs to work with underwriters to create a "tweener" policy to cover these scenarios that does not throw the economics of driving uber casually / semi-professionally out the window.

Once that happens, I see no reason why the city wouldn't allow uber.... And it all seems pretty easily accomplished.

I'm sure that something like that is exactly what we'll see.

One thing I hope the city does is make the rules all-encompassing and generic for any "ride hailing" style app and not tied directly to Uber.

The rules should specify what is required of a driver using the service and what is required of the app provider. So long as Uber or any other app meets those requirements, they should be able to deliver their service.

[jammies]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Wrong again. The city recognized the crisis in cab supply several years ago, before Uber was a viable alternative. This issue may have only come to your attention recently, but it has been simmering for years.

No, it is you that is wrong, mostly because you are arguing against a point I've never made. You seem to think this -

"One of the features of a taxi commission is that it operates semi-independently - I doubt very much that, until Uber came along, the majority of council and the bureaucracy gave more than a cursory thought to the taxi situation. Why WOULDN'T they trust the results of these studies?"

- means the same as "the city hasn't dealt with this issue and it came out of nowhere". It doesn't say that, even without the bolding I've added. You've conflated the point that they are now being forced to deal with the issue as a priority with a separate point that the purpose of a taxi commission is to deal with, you guessed it, the taxi industry. So the MAJORITY of councillors and bureaucrats, not being directly involved in that commission, are not generally going to be thinking about it and its focus.

This has nothing to do with whether or not they've occasionally dealt with it by commissioning a study, which is indeed "cursory thought". So, in short, stop with the "Wrong!" bit, which is intensely annoying when your point is the very definition of "completely missing."

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

You're right, the city chose the interest of a few hundred cab drivers and a few taxi companies over the interests of hundreds of thousands of citizens.

The city went with the changes recommended by the various studies. Once again, I ask - what should the various councils have done instead of listening to the recommendations found through detailed investigation and analysis? Just released a bunch of licences 'cause Joe Citizen figures, on the basis of anecdotal evidence, that's what needs to be done?

You are also confusing the results of policy with the intentions behind the policy - the city didn't "choose" the interests of the taxi cartel over those of the citizens, that is an unintended consequence of the system as it is. Which, I'll agree, is not a particularly good system, but Uber doesn't have a good system either, albeit for different reasons.

[DownhillGoat]

Originally Posted by heep223

Wouldn't long term disability through work benefits cover it?

70% of my wage and a max of $1000 for physio doesn't sound as good as being fully covered by an auto policy. YMMV.

[fundmark19]

Originally Posted by BigNumbers

Realistically, the only stumbling block is uber needs to work with underwriters to create a "tweener" policy to cover these scenarios that does not throw the economics of driving uber casually / semi-professionally out the window.

Once that happens, I see no reason why the city wouldn't allow uber.... And it all seems pretty easily accomplished.

The only issue is uber is working with intact on a tweener policy. They can work all they want and if the provincial insurance council doesn't approve it we don't go anywhere. If taxi cartels have enough sway at the provincial level which I am sure they do this will be a drawn out process probably only solved once someone seriously gets hurt and there is a grey area for coverage

[Wormius]

Wrong thread.

[Bend it like Bourgeois]

Originally Posted by getbak

Unless I misunderstand how things work, the City doesn't make any money off of people reselling their taxi licenses either.

The city makes millions off of driver, plate, and broker fees each year.

That's ultimately what this is about.

[Swarly]

Originally Posted by Bend it like Bourgeois

The city makes millions off of driver, plate, and broker fees each year.

That's ultimately what this is about.

Why though? Shouldn't the city just get a cut of the taxes like every other business?

Just make one of the requirements that you buy a business licence from the city.

[para transit fellow]

I find it interesting how everyone imagines the taxi industry contributing millions to the City coffers.

City of Calgary's Transportation Livery Services (TLS) is one of the City's few self-supporting business units. TLS exists to regulate the taxi industry and sets the annual fees to the taxi industry to pay for the effort. Total budget is under 3.8 million.

Take a look at the later pages of this recent document:

http://www.calgary.ca/CSPS/ABS/Docum...REDUCTIONS.pdf

From the budget projections in the document, it appears that the City nets about a quarter million a year from the taxi industry.

[Vulcan]

Although I don't like Uber because they are bypassing certain regulations which protect the drivers and passengers, the taxi industry is screwed up. A lot of the blame is because of the limit on taxi plates and the other problem is that the current dispatch model doesn't work while Uber's does. Here's an example of what is happening at peak times.

“A lot of the drivers don’t like to book in to those areas when it’s busy,” the Checker driver says, because they’re just going to end up chasing down passengers that have left in another vehicle when they could just drive around and pick up customers that hail cabs on the street rather than by using the dispatch system. That, of course, creates a negative feedback loop – the customers get in a different cab because they’ve waited too long for the one they called to arrive, and drivers stop checking into the dispatch system because the fares they get sent to pick up are long since gone. “It’s partially brought on by the customers, partially brought on by the drivers and partially brought on by the companies, and nobody wants to take the blame,” he says.

http://albertaventure.com/2014/04/fare-trade/

[WhiteTiger]

The Herald weighs in, and finds there's not a huge difference aside from in initial waiting time:

http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-...came-out-ahead

[TopChed]

Originally Posted by WhiteTiger

The Herald weighs in, and finds there's not a huge difference aside from in initial waiting time:

http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-...came-out-ahead

Yeah, testing at noon. Great work Herald. That's the same time that everyone has complained about getting rides from taxis, right?

Test it at 2 am on a Saturday and I'll be impressed if a cab is within an hour of uber.

[Bend it like Bourgeois]

Originally Posted by para transit fellow

I find it interesting how everyone imagines the taxi industry contributing millions to the City coffers.

City of Calgary's Transportation Livery Services (TLS) is one of the City's few self-supporting business units. TLS exists to regulate the taxi industry and sets the annual fees to the taxi industry to pay for the effort. Total budget is under 3.8 million.

Take a look at the later pages of this recent document:

http://www.calgary.ca/CSPS/ABS/Docum...REDUCTIONS.pdf

From the budget projections in the document, it appears that the City nets about a quarter million a year from the taxi industry.

thanks for that doc. To me it sorta proves the point.

The city is paying for 4m in costs by collecting 4m from the taxi industry. I would not bet those costs go down in line with fewer taxi trips or more ride sharing. They might even go up. But there will be ever fewer taxi fares to pay for it all.

You can bet the city is looking at a gap in the future. Over time a big one. It's an economic problem. In my opinion.