By Jacob Willis
BELLEVILLE – The heads of Central Taxi and the URide ride-sharing service put aside their competitive rivalry Thursday, joining QNet News to discuss the state of transportation services in Belleville and their role in them.
Years from now, perhaps URide’s arrival in town at the end of 2020 will be remembered as a passing of the torch for transportation options. The transcript of Thursday’s Zoom call reads like a swan song for the traditional taxi services. Central Taxi, which along with one other cab company has had a stranglehold on the market for decades, is being unceremoniously pushed aside by municipal legislation and ride-share alternatives, according to its chief executive officer, Marc Andre Way.
“We’re actually looking at possibly exiting the Belleville area,” Way said from his Ottawa base. Central Taxi has operations in cities across Ontario.
“Belleville is the city we’ve found the most challenging,” he added. “Partly because the driver pool is very small and we have a hard time attracting new drivers; partly because our workers are unionized. There are barriers to new drivers – you can’t just get behind the wheel in a day and start making money.”
Marc Andre Way (left), chief executive officer of Central Taxi, and Cody Ruberto (right), CEO of the URide ride-share service, met with QNet News reporter Jacob Willis via Zoom Thursday to discuss the arrival of ride-sharing in Belleville. Photo by Jacob Willis
In an interview with QNet last week, Way was more blunt about the situation. “It’s unfortunate, but Belleville is not a town where there’s a lot of potential employees wanting to do this kind of work,” he said. “It’s partly a socio-economic issue ‒ let’s just say that there’s other options than working as a taxi driver available to the (Belleville) population.”
Way says the dwindling number of drivers is what creates the long wait times and availability problems that have plagued Belleville’s taxi companies over the last few years.
But Cody Ruberto, CEO of Thunder Bay-based URide, says he’s already got between 30 and 50 drivers on board in Belleville in his first three months of business.
“We get all different kinds of people,” Ruberto said. “We’ll get some teachers that do this on the side. We’ve had firefighters working for us. People who might be working another part-time job will do ride-sharing as well, and there’s some people that want to do it full-time. So really we’re getting people from all different walks of life.”
Way cited what he called an unfair municipal regulatory system as one reason for taxi businesses’ woes.
“For years the taxi industry has been regulated through a series of bylaws that are quite onerous to honour,” he said during the Zoom discussion. “And the municipalities have chosen to disregard those bylaws when it comes to ride-sharing programs.”
Belleville does not currently have any bylaws governing ride-sharing.
In the interview last week, Way said regulations on vehicle safety, driver vetting and responsibility were thrown by the wayside as Belleville council members rushed to allow the introduction of ride-sharing services here.
In response, Ruberto indicated that he’s open to a municipal bylaw.
“Most of the cities that we operate in do have a ride-share bylaw,” he said. “For cities that don’t have one, I think that a ride-share bylaw should be created, and we should be regulated. It just takes cities a while to put that together.”
He noted that URide has its own regulations as well.
Everyone who becomes a driver has to have insurance, he said: “Whenever you turn on your app as a driver, you switch from your personal policy to our commercial policy, which is to transport passengers. It covers you, and it covers the passengers. As soon as you turn the app off, you switch back to your personal policy.”
Way responded: “You have an app that allows you to carry insurance only when you have passengers in the car. We can’t have access to that – even though we have an app, even though we have the same technology you have. If the rules across the province were the same, then we’d be competing equally. But the problem is they’re not.”
As for vehicle safety and driver vetting, Way said that URide “may not be getting the best of the best” if it’s finding employees when the taxi companies are struggling to do so.
Ruberto’s response: “Before coming onto the platform, drivers have to pass background checks, vehicle safety checks, and they have to have a clean driving record. You have to have a certain amount of driving experience ‒ in Ontario, drivers have to be 25 or older.”
The rating system that ride-share services use is a great way to hold drivers accountable and reassure passengers that their upcoming trip will be safe, he added.
“When every drive is rated, it encourages a great driving experience. Customer service goes way up. Everybody wants that five-star rating.”
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