Category: WHEELCHAIR ACCESSIBLE TAXIS

Of the City of Calgary’s 1820 transferrable taxi licenses (often called medallions due to their value) 750 medallions are held by the three largest brokers in the city: Associated Cabs, Checker Cabs and Mayfair Taxi–but not one of these is attached to a wheelchair accessible van (WAV) for a variety of cock and bull excuses.

Excuse number 1:  Drivers don’t have pockets deep enough to invest $55,000 in such cars because there is not enough income to support such an investment.

True, but the brokers certainly do.  So why aren’t they buying the cars themselves?  An investment of $4.5 million  would add 83 cars to the fleet.  That’s enough to meet the City’s requirement of 11% of cars that are to be WAVs.

Excuse number 2:  Drivers don’t want to lease such vehicles because their cab fare income is too low relative to the lease they must pay each week.

That’s true too.  But why the hell are the taxi brokers charging them such unserious stand rents in the first place?  They can easily pay them $15 an hour or a commission of say 50% of fares earned whichever is greater after fuel is paid for and the owner pays for the carwash.

Brokers can also dispatch these cars ahead of others when vacant and allow them to park first at the airport.

It is also possible to guarantee licensed driver-owners a daily take of say $200 per 10 hour shift.

The foregoing terms would result in cab drivers seeing a move to WAV driving as a promotion with a higher income for himself and line up at the broker’s door to drive such cars.

The introduction of a centralized dispatch system would help reduce the overall capital requirements to place enough wheelchair accessible taxis on the road.

Brokers presently sublease their medallions to driver-owners at no charge.  They get from them a fixed fee called “stand rent” and that is the basis of their revenue.  The more cars a broker has the more income he earns.

If the brokers are unwilling to use their licenses to purchase WAVs as broker owned taxis then, to ensure that justice is done, The City of Calgary will have to force the issue through legislation to wit: prohibit the practice of “FREE SUBLEASING OF TRANSFERABLE PLATES” to driver owners unless the driver-owner already holds a transferable taxi license.

If taxi companies are unwilling to restructure their business model to better accommodate wheelchair bound customers and improve the incomes of cab drivers in general and WAV operators in particular, then governments must do it for them.

Last May 27, 2019 council, in the course of its regular session to rubber stamp the usurious increase licensing in licensing fees for cab drivers while giving ride sharing TNCs such as Uber a sizable break on such fees even had the temerity to hear administration mention the Livery Transport Service (LTS) describe their policy of Hybrid licensing.

Hybrid licensing is LTS’ policy of applying  one set of licensing fees and rules for taxi drivers while yet another far less stringent set of rules and fees for the TNCs. It simply means that Uber can have as many cars on the road as it wants while the number of taxis must remain frozen at their present level.  In other words, any increase in demand for public automobile transportation is to be reserved for Uber and no one else contrary to the Municipal Government Act.

There is absolutely nothing in the City Bylaws or Provincial legislation that allows it–so where did they get that bright idea.

It appears that council is eager to spend even more of heavily burdened taxpayers money on legal fees.

Click the link below to see for yourself how council handled the overall licensing issue.  It clearly betrays government favoritism towards Uber at the expense of traditional taxi drivers including TNC drivers.

SEE THE DEBATE HERE it’s 7.2 on the minutes.  Just click it and it will take you to that part of the video where this is discussed.