The City of Burnaby is the latest Lower Mainland municipality to introduce a municipal business licence for ride-hailing vehicles, which is making those companies nervous.
Burnaby will be charging ride-hailing companies $510 per vehicle to operate in the community, and won’t consider a move to a regional business licence until regional boundaries are waived for taxi companies.
Coun. Sav Dhaliwal says Burnaby taxi companies are required to pay that exact per vehicle charge and ride-hailing companies should do the same.
“We already have a taxi company in the city of Burnaby which we charge for their licence. We have been doing this for decades. This is a company that is not billionaires like the other companies we are talking about these days,” Dhaliwal said.
“If this is the right price to charge for local entrepreneurs who are barely making a living, I can’t see any reason for not charging similar amounts for other taxi. Bonny’s, Uber, Lyft: they are all taxis.”
Those billionaire companies Dhaliwal is referring to include Uber and Lyft, the two largest ride-hailing companies in the world.
If they have operating licences approved by the province’s Passenger Transportation Board, they will also be required to pay business licence fees in many Metro Vancouver jurisdictions.
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The Passenger Transportation Board has ruled ride-hailing vehicles can operate in one giant regional boundary that covers the Lower Mainland and the North Shore.
Currently taxi companies are only allowed to pick up in their own municipality, raising concerns of an unlevel playing field.
“The region better make sure that the local taxis aren’t paying any more than what they are charging the other companies from other countries,” Dhaliwal said.
“Burnaby taxis, where they can drive is not our restriction. For the people who work and live in my community, they should get the same treatment as other companies are getting.”
The Passenger Transportation Board is in the midst of reviewing ride-hailing applications. The province has promised to have ride-hailing on the road before Christmas.
In a statement, Transportation Minister Claire Trevena did not name Burnaby, but did express concern about prohibitive local business licence fees.
“The public demand for these services is clear, and I continue to encourage municipalities to work together to establish an inter-municipal business licence that would allow ride-hailing services to use one single licence across the Lower Mainland,” Trevena said.
“Provincial law prevents municipalities from blocking the operation of taxis and ride-hail vehicles. Only the Passenger Transportation Board is authorized to establish supply and boundaries for these services.”
Burnaby has the highest proposed business fee at $510 per vehicle. Richmond will be charging each vehicle $132, Vancouver’s fee is $100 and Delta’s is $25 per driver.
The Tri-Cities have announced a regional fee that covers Port Moody, Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam. The licence will tack on a 10-cent fee per ride. New Westminster and the municipalities on the North Shore are looking to be part of a larger regional business permit.
The North Shore municipalities say they are still determining whether to charge a local business licence until a regional one can be put in place.
Surrey is an outlier, saying it will go against the province’s wishes and not issue business permits for ride-hailing.
“We are looking to work with all municipalities to create a framework that welcomes ridesharing in a fair manner,” Uber’s head of western Canada operations and public affairs Michael van Hemmen said.
“Across North America municipalities have put in per-ride fees that allow for regional approach to transportation. Per-vehicle fees do the opposite of that. It forces drivers to pay out of pocket, up front.”
“Per-vehicle fees could break the model for ridesharing.”
The Metro Vancouver Mayors’ Council is set to discuss a regional licencing plan next week. The plan would get rid of each municipality charging drivers and replace it with a region-wide fee.
“Personally I think it makes a lot of sense for all the cities in Metro Vancouver to work together towards a coordinated approach,” New Westminster Mayor and Mayors’ Council Chair Jonathan Cote said.
“I am hopeful the discussion at the Mayor’s Council leads us in that direction.”
—With files from Sean Boynton
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