Changes to rules around Regina’s taxis could be on the way

The price for vomiting in a cab could be going up.

City administration is suggesting new rules for taxis, including a $100 clean up fee for any vomit or bodily fluids left behind.

“You have to stop, take the car, you can’t just clean it. You have to do a detail in the car, so they take the smell, they take all the precautions in case there are some infections and stuff like that, so you’ve lost that day,” Pablo Guerra, a spokesman for the taxi drivers’ union, said. “Why does the taxi driver have to pay that money?”

It’s already a rule that there must be cameras in the car, but city administration is now suggesting that audio should be recorded too. It’s also recommending that one of those cameras should face outward.

“It’s protecting the taxi drivers. They’re going to give you enough evidence for the police to charge the people when the action happened because they’ll have the whole picture when it happened,” Guerra said.

Safety shields are currently allowed but not mandatory. That won’t be changing because taxi drivers are divided on whether they’re helpful or harmful.

“Other cities have them, others have taken them away. This is allowing the driver, if they want them, they can have them, but it’s not compulsory,” Mayor Michael Fougere said. “I think it’s a compromise between those who don’t want them and those who do.”

Guerra said taxi drivers are also happy with the recommendation that new licenses would be awarded by lottery instead of the current broker-based system.

“The lottery is going to be a good system because it’s only three years, so more taxi drivers are going to be able to have enough to buy their own car,” he said.

The city already requires drivers to have GPS systems in cabs, and that’s helped to decrease wait times, Fougere said. According to the report, it dropped from 8.3 minutes in 2014 to 5.1 minutes in December 2016.

“We’ve been expecting this review to come forward for the last couple of years, and we’ve had lots of consultation with drivers, brokers and the taxi industry itself to see what they think about what’s going to happen,” Fougere said. “This report is a reflection of that consultation.”

The city’s community and protective services committee will discuss these recommendations Thursday, and if approved, they’ll go before council on June 26.