Mayor Olivia Chow’s plan to cap the number of rideshare drivers in Toronto failed for the second year in a row.
In a surprise move Tuesday evening, Chow sent the proposal back to staff for more work after conceding it angered too many people on all sides of the issue.
“No one is happy about it,” she said.
Last week, city staff recommended the city freeze the number of rideshare licences at 80,429 — the number of rideshare drivers currently on the roads.
Under the proposed system, new licences would have been issued as drivers gave them up, keeping the city's quota at 80,429. The city’s goal was to reduce traffic congestion and emissions, as well as edge commuters toward transit.
Keerthana Rang, Uber Canada’s spokesperson, said the company “will review the referral closely.”
“As we head into the holiday season, Torontonians can be assured that safe, affordable, and reliable transportation options remain available at the touch of a button,” Rang added.
Staff will now work on drafting a new “dynamic licencing limit that responds to a number of variables,” including “congestion targets, rider wait times, driver unengaged time, the proportion of active drivers out of the total licensed, and emissions reductions, and a principle of one driver-one license,” and more, such as whether the city could do anything to curb opaque surge pricing.
Staff weren’t given a deadline for the new report.
“My team tried to take all the concerns that you folks have that I'm hearing today, consolidated it and say, ‘Let's give it another try. Let's see if we could do better,’” Chow told the committee yesterday.
If the plan had passed the executive committee on Tuesday, it would have been sent to city council for final approval next week.
Last year’s lawsuit
Last year, Chow backed down after Uber threatened legal action and city lawyers warned they were on shaky ground.
“Last time after we put the cap in, there was a lawsuit. I didn't want the City of Toronto to waste enormous amounts of money to battle it out in court,” Chow said before the committee meeting on Tuesday.
Uber’s 2023 lawsuit revolved around what the company called a “bad faith” effort that deprived the public and the industry of “an open and transparent process,” according to the court filing.
On Oct. 11, 2023, council surprisingly passed a motion to cap the number of rideshare drivers on the road during a debate on reducing emissions in the industry.
The motion came “with no notice to the public, Uber or other impacted stakeholders,” the company said in the court filing.
“Under its own procedures, the city was required to provide advance public notice of the licence cap. The city chose to ignore its own procedures and adopted the licence cap by ambush.”
Chow backs down despite standing by consultation process
The city held several virtual and in-person meetings with various groups of rideshare industry stakeholders — including drivers and passengers — over the summer and conducted a months-long online survey.
The report on the consultations said nearly 3,000 people participated in the online survey. Over half of respondents were passengers and a third were drivers. Just four per cent of respondents worked on the corporate side of the ridesharing companies. There is no breakdown by company.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Chow took exception to Uber’s continuing complaints over lack of consultation.
“I was told by one of the company, Uber, to be precise, that somehow we did not consult. Excuse me, that is definitely not the case. The staff did good work. They consulted, they spoke to a whole lot of people,” the mayor said.
Uber, however, doesn’t see it that way.
“We only had one meeting with the city this year in terms of consultations,” Rang told TorontoToday.
The company also provided a 41-page written submission to the city’s executive committee.
