The committee met at 8:06 a.m.

[S. Bond in the chair.]

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Good morning. I’d like to call the meeting to order. My name is Shirley Bond, and I am the Deputy Chair of the Special Committee to Review Passenger Directed Vehicles. I know that our Chair is joining us shortly, but we’ll get started.

I’d like to acknowledge that we are meeting this morning on the traditional territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən people, now known as the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations.

The committee is reviewing passenger-directed vehicle services, including taxis and ride-hailing, administered under the Passenger Transportation Act.

To inform our work, the committee held a number of public meetings and received submissions last fall. Today and tomorrow we will continue that work and hear from organizations and individuals with an interest or expertise in passenger-directed vehicles.

I’ll now ask the committee members to introduce themselves, and we’ll start, perhaps with my colleague Jordan Sturdy.

J. Sturdy: I’m Jordan Sturdy, and I am the MLA for West Vancouver–Sea to Sky.

J. Routledge: My name is Janet Routledge, and I’m the MLA for Burnaby North.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): And then online we have a couple of our members.

D. Routley: Hello. My name is Doug Routley. I’m the MLA for Nanaimo–North Cowichan.

K. Greene: Good morning. I’m Kelly Greene, the MLA for Richmond-Steveston.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Assisting us today, which I’m very grateful for, and I know the committee is, are Karan Riarh, Sean Morgado and Lisa Hill from the Parliamentary Committees Office and Amanda Heffelfinger from Han­sard Services.

This morning we’re going to get started. We have a really busy morning. Thank you. It’s great to see all of my committee colleagues again.

We would like to begin by welcoming…. I believe Mayor Mike Gray is online with us, and Mayor Gray is from the village of Radium Hot Springs.

Thank you for joining us this morning, Your Worship. We look forward to hearing from you.

You’ll have an opportunity to do your presentation, and then there will be a follow-up with questions if committee members have any.

With that, we’ll turn it over to you to get our day started.

Presentations on
Passenger Directed Vehicles

VILLAGE OF RADIUM HOT SPRINGS

M. Gray: Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the committee for having me here. Thank you for your time.

The main message I would like to bring today is that rural British Columbia is different. Many of the services, B.C. Transit as well as passenger-directed vehicles, really do require a certain population density that we lack in the rural areas. However, the needs of the rural areas aren’t very different. It’s just the method of achieving those needs that we’re asking the committee to consider today.

[8:10 a.m.]

B.C. Transit is the only model available to us as a local government. We spend an extraordinary amount of money in our community on transit, and I’m both proud and embarrassed to say it is one of the most inefficient systems in the entire province.

The average cost to the system for each rider in our area is $69 per trip. A rider going back and forth to work costs the system approximately $140 per day. If they work a four-day work week, 50 weeks a year, it’s approximately $28,000 in order to provide that rider with transportation to and from work, an extraordinary amount of waste. It seems very frustrating for us to be locked into that system.

On top of it being expensive, it’s also very limited, the services we have. It’s only certain days of the week and only certain times, which just are not conducive to many work schedules.

Passenger-directed vehicles are also challenging in our area. They do work better in larger cities, and we recognize that. Larger population densities provide the critical mass for sort of that sustained service.

We have had taxi operators in the past in the Columbia Valley, and regrettably, they have not been successful over the years. We understand that there are licences that have been issued for passenger-directed vehicles in our area for ride-sharing like Uber and Lyft. But to the best of our knowledge, at the local level, there’s no requirement or timeline target for them to operate. Licences are, for lack of a better term, parked.

Unfortunately for our community, this leaves us in a bind. Staff have trouble getting to work, and the local economy suffers. Residents have trouble accessing important services like medical, groceries and other areas, which reduces the quality of living.

There’s also a critical factor of drinking and driving. There’s no service late at night of any sort in our valley, except that provided by private business.

Some private businesses have stood up. Panorama Mountain Resort provides a service that runs up and down to their ski hill, largely for the self-benefit of providing a staff shuttle. But it is open to the public, and it is a service we appreciate. It is also heavily funded through government funding with the RMI funding.

There are several businesses that do run a shuttle service from licensed liquor establishments late at night, but that service is spotty and, unfortunately, has not been the general practice.

Money is being spent; it’s just not efficient, and it’s not working well. We don’t necessarily want more money. What we would like to do is have the freedom to spend it wisely and spend it in a way that makes sense for the Columbia Valley and, presumably, for other rural communities.

Our basic idea is to allow passenger-directed vehicles to contribute to a more public model to allow some of our current transit dollars, money that we are spending in our community to provide public transportation, to be redirected to vouchers or other subsidies to help make the passenger-directed-vehicle model more efficient in our area.

We think that would provide better service hours, better service areas for the community and better suit the needs in, frankly, a more efficient way than the bus model does in the rural areas.

We’d like some freedom to set some basic rules to qualify for the contributions we’d like to make to help subsidize and ensure these services are efficient and reasonable for an operator in our area.

[8:15 a.m.]

Basic rules we’d like to have considered are hours of operation — that it’s not just limited to only prime times but that there are some off-hour services offered. And some service areas — so it’s not just the largest community in our valley but also that the neighbouring communities get service.

We also come to this with an open mind. We’d like to help find some other out-of-the-box or out-of-the-big-city solutions, if you will, for rural communities. We think that would help in the long run for our residents and for the efficiency of the service in our area.

That’s our basic ask and our basic time. I see I’m well under time, so hopefully, we have some time for some questions.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much. We appreciate your comments. You certainly captured what the circumstances may look like in other rural communities as well, so we appreciate that.

We do have some time for some questions, and that is always appreciated. I’m wondering if my colleagues would have any questions they’d like to ask Mayor Gray.

J. Routledge: Thank you, Mayor Gray. You have pro­vided a really good insight into the challenges of shared transportation in rural areas. Perhaps I have a couple of questions, but I’ll start with one.

You talked about, as you referred to, parked licences. This is not the first time I have heard about that. Do you think a solution would be, perhaps, a deadline or certain conditions that get met, once a company is licensed, to actually implement it?

M. Gray: I will be totally honest. I’m not familiar with exactly what the licence process is and if there are the numbers and such. If there are limited numbers of licences — and it isn’t available by the fact of someone having and possessing a licence, it means someone else cannot have and possess a licence — to me, it makes sense that that is something we as a society, as a government, are saying is a precious resource and we are assigning to a certain person.

I think the responsibility comes that if you have the possession of that precious resource, you are using that in a certain timeline. To me, that makes complete sense and is something that the community wants.

J. Routledge: Thank you. I don’t know the answer to that question either, but I think that it’s something that our committee will want to be getting some information about in terms of the licensing.

I have other questions, but I can share the floor.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): All right. I will come back to you, Janet. Thank you. That was a really good question. I thought of that as well, as the mayor mentioned that.

We will go to Doug, if you don’t mind, Doug, and then back to Janet if no one else has questions.

D. Routley: Thank you, Mayor.

You indicated that you would spend dollars differently if you were able to. Could you expand on that? What restrictions are primarily holding you back? How would you do things differently if they weren’t there?

M. Gray: Sure. This makes me laugh.

I appreciate that B.C. Transit does a tremendous amount for our province as a whole, so I do not want this to come across as me being against B.C. Transit, because it is a fantastic resource for our community. It, unfortunately, is very limited in the fact that it really is designed for the larger areas, and when they expand that model out to our smaller communities….

We’re required to use a B.C. Transit bus only of a certain age that is of a certain size, which never gets filled up. We have to run that style of equipment out here. For the passenger-directed vehicles, someone that has just a regular three- or four-passenger vehicle or a minivan or something like that can operate much more efficiently than driving these giant 24-passenger buses that have one or maybe two occupants on board at the most. It just doesn’t seem to make sense.

The age of the vehicles — I understand why in the cities, where they’re being operated and heavily used, they don’t want them to get old and run-down. But you know, when they describe a used vehicle when you’re selling it, they talk about the highway miles versus city driving miles. These are truly highway miles that these vehicles are being put on.

[8:20 a.m.]

These are the best, most efficient miles with the least number of passengers, and they just hold up and last longer in our circumstance. Being forced to change them over on the same schedule as a heavy-rider municipality just does not make sense.

Those are just a couple of examples, but there are many things like that that B.C. Transit has as their model that we’re forced to participate in if we want to participate in the B.C. Transit dollars.

J. Sturdy: Thanks for the presentation, Mayor. I take it this is a regional district service, your transit service? Is it a regional district service?

M. Gray: Yeah. We’ve done a regional district service, and we’ve done it for a specific service area. So for ours, it’s a subregion of the Columbia Valley, which is three municipalities and two rural areas that have all gotten together. We work very closely as a community. All my notes for today came from the area as a whole, as opposed to just me representing the village of Radium Hot Springs.

We got together, and we’re all on the same page on this. We work well together, and we want to be able to work well together on this scale as well.

J. Sturdy: Do you, your group, have a specific proposition for us to consider, or have you presented anything to B.C. Transit?

M. Gray: We have in the past had discussions with B.C. Transit, and B.C. Transit’s model was very limited. To be honest — please don’t be mad at me — we’re not exactly sure what this parliamentary committee has at its disposal. If there are options that we have available to us, we’re not aware of exactly what those are.

The basic asks that I’ve had are…. We understand pie-in-the-sky ideas. If we’re given more parameters on “Okay, these are some of the things we can actually do and not actually do,” we would welcome the opportunity to get an actual recommendation that fits the criteria that you’d be looking at.

J. Sturdy: Well, thank you. You’ve raised really interesting ideas and questions, and I certainly encourage you to develop that proposition further, so something concrete to consider.

One further question, if I may, Chair.

Have you had any discussions with the passenger-directed vehicle or the transportation network providers to say: what are the obstacles to having more access to ride-hail in your areas, specifically in smaller communities? In your sub-area, why aren’t they activating those licences?

M. Gray: For us, I can say we have spoken to the previous taxi operator. We do not have contact information for any of the new licensees that are out there as to why they’re not operating. We have not been in touch with them. They have not been in touch with us. Then we’re sort of stuck in that spot.

As for the taxi operator and why it didn’t work, we really think it’s that critical mass. It is something where one person has to own and operate a vehicle that has to have the sign on the side, and it has to be that vehicle, and has to answer that phone. There’s no ability to…. It doesn’t have the flexibility to grow as we see systems like Uber and Lyft be able to do.

When there’s a high demand, lots of people can participate. And when there’s low demand, we can be down to one, and you can sort of watch your app and be sitting at home watching TV and “Oh, there’s a ride in my area; I’ll take that.”

The real ask, I guess, getting back to your previous question that we’d had, is the freedom to make it more attractive for these potential operators to be working in our system. I would love to be able to take the transit dollars we essentially feel like we’re wasting, about $700,000 a year, and shift that over to help subsidize a passenger-directed vehicle system, with some rules and stipulations.

I don’t know if it would be vouchers that were means-tested to make sure that service is provided at a reasonable rate for lower-income people that are looking for that service or to ensure that there’s a minimum amount they’re able to charge for offering service late, even if that service is not being taken up on — that they’re subsidized for having the service still available.

[8:25 a.m.]

Those small, little nudges for the private market, we think, would make it much more attractive for an operator to provide the service that we need for our community and, in fairness to them, still be profitable for them. We think it should. They are providing a service. The service may just be sitting and being able to provide a service, even if it’s not driving people at that particular moment.

J. Sturdy: Just for clarity, you would look to shrinking, minimizing or shutting down B.C. Transit and then transferring those dollars into some other delivery method?

M. Gray: Yes, with some of the conditions that I’d said. We’d like to ensure that the passenger-directed vehicle model or the hybrid model, if you will, still provides some of the essential things that we think come with the B.C. Transit model. That is specifically the low-income…. We want to make sure that the low-income people in our community have some sort of service available.

Right now we’re kind of in a catch-22 in the amount of money we spend on transit. I think we have found the peak inefficiency of it. If we spent way more money, I think we would have more riders and we would have more service available and it would be an efficient system. It would cost us a lot more. If we spent no money at all, we would save that money and have that available to go to another service.

Right now we’re spending just enough money where we provide a terrible service, and that terrible service gets the results you’d expect, which is a high cost per rider, limited times. But that’s the amount that we have available.

It’s very disheartening for us. We want to provide good service for our community. We want to provide some of the access to services that our residents need, like doctors and groceries and employment. We also want to provide the safety for late nights so that people that have been consuming alcohol or are engaged in other activities that make them unsafe to drive have some sort of a service available. Right now there’s nothing.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, both Jordan and Mayor Gray.

Kelly, over to you, and then I am going to go back to Janet, please.

K. Greene: Thank you, Mayor, for advocating so strongly for your residents. Obviously, it’s really important to you that people are able to get around effectively and affordably.

I guess I wanted to go to your point on having more attractive options. I wonder. We’ve heard from other rural communities that one of the barriers is that, because of the distances between destinations, there is an outward trip, but there’s no return fare. The rates don’t reflect being an empty vehicle. I’m wondering if you think that the rates, I don’t know, need to be looked at because of that empty nature of not having a return trip.

M. Gray: To me, that does make sense. I understand the operation side of that. I also am a business owner, and one of the businesses I have does operate a shuttle in order to do that. Let me tell you, it really is not fun when…. You know, I’ve been the guy driving the shuttle where I’m going 20 minutes one direction to drop one person off, and you have no reason to ride back. It takes a lot of time, and people should be compensated for that.

I would hope if this is an actual, viable option that we would be able to redirect some of our funds into making it more efficient for these operators. I think one solution for that is to let the operator collect the fare that they need, and then perhaps we can step in on the return fare that is otherwise empty. Make that an efficient trip for the operator. The community wins because we have the service available that wouldn’t otherwise be.

K. Greene: Chair, if you’ll indulge me for one more question about B.C. Transit.

Mayor, you’ve mentioned that you’ve got the full-size, 60-passenger buses running routes. I’m just wondering if there’s any room for advocacy from the regional district for shuttle-sized buses, like 10, 12 people.

[8:30 a.m.]

M. Gray: It’s not the 60s. I’m sorry if I said that. It is the smallest B.C. Transit vehicles available. But they are still massively oversized for a rural application.

K. Greene: Okay. Thank you.

M. Gray: I believe they are 24 passengers. I could be wrong.

K. Greene: Okay. I’ve seen the community-sized buses. They’re about ten or 12 people, but maybe a better fit.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Kelly. Appreciate those questions.

Because the mayor was so succinct, we do have a few extra minutes, so the committee can take up his time.

We will go back to Janet for a couple of her other questions.

J. Routledge: Well, Mayor, you really got me thinking.

I grew up in a rural area, in a different part of the country. In those days, your options were: you drove, someone else drove you, you carpooled or you hitchhiked. That was pretty well it. I didn’t experience public or commercial transportation until I moved to a city.

But times have changed. I think that it’s really worth exploring what we can be doing to meet the needs of the concrete conditions of rural areas, whether we’re talking about….

That one, I guess, would be for our deliberation in terms of what we could recommend. Would we be looking at a task force or some kind of committee of rural representatives to talk about what the conditions are, what the needs are and how we could meet them?

I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that.

M. Gray: I do, actually. Thank you. I know this is not a unique situation to the Columbia Valley. Certainly, it ex­tends. Our neighbouring communities feel the exact same way.

You get into some large areas. Cranbrook is of a size, 20,000 people, that they are able to provide some service. But even they find they’re on the cusp of being able to provide that service in a way that’s needed. That seems to be about the limit.

Other communities in our area have completely abandoned public transit. Golden, for example, abandoned it about ten years ago. It’s a challenge. They are saving a few tax dollars on it, but their community suffers, because there are great inefficiencies in not having some sort of a thing available.

Unfortunately, the impact is very much felt by the lower-income segment of our community, as opposed to equally felt by everyone. We feel lucky in our community. In general, we are an affluent area. We have a number of residents that are in positions where they’re more than willing to pay for this service for the greater benefit of the community, and everyone wins.

When we have more employment available, the economy works better. We’re able to have more services available. We think it’s better for our society as a whole to have this service.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): I just wanted to add one comment, if possible. I really appreciate Janet’s idea around taking a look at…. While it might not be something we can specifically make progress on, it is something we should be thinking about.

Rural communities care about how they get from place to place. What that looks like in the future, actually, probably does need some thought. I really appreciate my colleague’s questions.

I can only imagine there are additional challenges for persons with disabilities in terms of transportation. That’s been a huge concern for us on this committee in terms of access and equity. Would you just have a minute to comment on that? I think those are probably issues that are relevant in smaller, rural communities as well.

Mayor Gray, what is your reaction to…? How do we better serve persons with disabilities in your community and region?

M. Gray: Actually, it’s something I’d enjoy the opportunity to speak about.

I grew up in Calgary. When my grandmother was at an age where mobility became a significant issue, she moved from a rural area into the city simply because there was no way to get around. We were looking at having to buy a special vehicle for her. It just didn’t seem like an option.

[8:35 a.m.]

She moved to Calgary, and I lived quite a ways away from her. But we had a program there called Access Calgary, where people with disabilities were given access to a prescribed lower rate for services offered by private companies. Those were mainly taxi companies, but you could call the Access Calgary number and you could book a trip for a minivan that had accessibility for a wheelchair, as opposed to just a regular taxi. In turn, Access Calgary provided them with the balance of the funding for the fare, as well as some incentive to provide more vehicles of that sort.

I would be thrilled if, in our community, we could redirect some of our transit dollars to help provide some of those subsidies to make everything more accessible for our community. That would be an absolute win for us. When my day comes that I’m no longer mobility-privileged, I would look forward to having that service in my area.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Well, thank you very much for your participation this morning. We really appreciate it. We really wanted to hear from some rural communities, and you are the first of a couple that we’re going to hear from. Thanks for taking the time with us.

Are you in a different time zone than us right at the moment?

M. Gray: We are, actually. It’s a little-known fact that in our province, we do have the two time zones. We’re in moun­tain time. So I got to sleep in a little bit, compared to the committee, today.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): I wondered about that.

Well, thank you, Mayor Gray, for your time this morning. Thank you for talking about such a beautiful part of British Columbia. We really appreciate the feedback that you’ve given to us. Your contributions will certainly contribute to the dialogue that we have as a committee.

Have a great rest of your day.

M. Gray: Thank you. If I may, it would be great for us to hear what the other rural communities have to say. We understand. We’re building the plane as it’s going down the runway here. If they have better ideas and different things, we would love to hear them, and we’re not stuck on any idea we’ve presented. We’d like to hear what they have to say and to come up with a solution that is the best solution, as opposed to the one that we thought of first.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Noted. Thank you again for participating.

[M. Elmore in the chair.]

M. Elmore (Chair): Okay, we’re ready for our next presenters. We’ve got, from the city of Enderby, Coun. Brian Schreiner and Tate Bengston.

Welcome to the committee hearing. I’m Mable Elmore, the Chair. Thank you very much for joining us. You have 15 minutes for the presentation, followed by 15 minutes question and answer.

CITY OF ENDERBY

B. Schreiner: Thank you to the Chair and the committee members for inviting us to speak before this special committee. My name is Brian Schreiner. I’m a councillor for the city of Enderby.

I’m honoured to speak to you today, on behalf of the city of Enderby, from the traditional and unceded territory of the Secwépemc.

Included in this committee’s terms of reference is the following purpose: to review “whether the act promotes passenger-directed vehicle services, including transpor­tation network services, in small, rural or remote communities.” We’re here today to tell you respectfully that we don’t think it does. Later, we will propose a solution that we think will help.

[8:40 a.m.]

The city of Enderby is small. We are a tight-knit community of about 3,000 people. We have a surrounding rural population of 4,000. We’ve got a diverse economy and culture, amazing natural assets and heritage, great recreation opportunities, a bustling downtown and a growing portfolio of community events.

In Enderby, we also have an aging demographic. It’s fiercely determined that they want to age in place. Enderby is their home, their family and their friends. Now, we also have an influx of new residents from larger metropolitan areas, including many who are new to Canada.

For our newest residents, public transportation is a way of life. For Enderby, it remains an aspiration. Age, safety, convenience, necessity: these are all the reasons why pas­senger transportation is vital to small communities. How­ever, small communities have proven difficult for conventional passenger transportation solutions to survive in.

In Enderby, we haven’t had a taxi service for more than ten years. We only have regional bus solutions. The gap is being filled in Enderby by volunteers providing transportation for seniors who need to visit a doctor or, say, get groceries. But this group of volunteers is burnt out. Demand exceeds supply. The honorarium paid to volunteers does not cover their wear and tear on their vehicles.

A local not-for-profit right now is looking at pursuing a grant to obtain a vehicle to help respond to their concerns. It’s wonderful to see this volunteer spirit. However, sustainability needs a profitable, private sector solution. So we feel this is where ride-sharing comes in.

Ride-sharing leverages social technology in a way that could potentially provide a solution that is unmet through conventional passenger transportation options. You will note we said “potentially.” That potential has not been realized.

When we spoke before the select committee, in the past, on Crown corporations on ride-sharing, which was in 2019, we cautioned that creating a regulatory environment that levels the playing field with taxis essentially makes ride-sharing non-viable in small communities.

If a taxi is not viable in Enderby and if ride-sharing is regulated in a way that removes its competitive advantages, then it stands to reason that ride-sharing won’t take hold. Anecdotal evidence indicates this to be true.

The problem is this. Ride-sharing needs a sufficient pool of drivers to be viable. If customers’ demands cannot be met, they won’t use the ride-sharing app. So begins the downward spiral of a lack of supply, leading to decreasing demand, which further decreases the supply of drivers.

Now, we know the demand for ride-sharing is insufficient to generate full-time employment in small communities such as ours. Those who may consider driving for a ride-sharing service are unlikely to participate if their time and costs exceed perceived profitability. The industry has described the conversion rate of applicants into actual drivers as abysmal.

Our request of the special committee today is it make regulatory environment easier to onboard new drivers to ride-sharing services in small communities. The ride-sharing industry knows that not all regulations are bad. Regulations done properly enable ride-sharing to thrive, including in small communities.

Vehicle age requirements, commercial vehicle inspections and criteria for disqualifying drivers are reasonable and help the industry. This is levelling the playable field done right. It increases consumer confidence.

However, the biggest issue is requiring a class 4 driver’s licence for drivers, which is costly and time-consuming in its present form. In the province of B.C., class 4 drivers require a road test through ICBC, which can lead to up to two- or three-month delays. We are aware of some ride-sharing services that have paid the prospective drivers to travel to ICBC locations in cities several hours away, just to get onboarded within a reasonable time frame.

[8:45 a.m.]

In contrast to this, we noticed that our neighbouring province, Alberta, has eliminated the road test qualification for a class 4 licence, which has improved the driver conversion rate. We would recommend that the committee explore the adequacy of using a class 5 licence for ride-sharing drivers, even if supplemented by an experienced endorsement, such as having five years of prior driving experience.

If that is unacceptable, then at least consider the Alberta model of eliminating the road test in favour of an en­hanced knowledge test that focuses on passenger management and safety, as well as working with vulnerable populations.

This has worked in other provinces. It protects passen­gers. It eliminates an enormous hurdle that prevents ride-sharing from extending to small communities such as Enderby. We wanted to leave off by saying that communities are now expected to respond to the housing crisis by reducing or eliminating parking requirements. We get that, and we get why, but this expectation depends on adequate passenger transfer options to serve the needs of the very residents who we are inviting to join our community. This appears to be a case of the left hand working at odds with the right hand.

We are asking this committee to put both hands firmly on the wheel of passenger transportation services in small communities.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration. It’s sincerely appreciated.

M. Elmore (Chair): Terrific. Thank you very much, Councillor. I appreciate the perspective you bring. We’ve heard that in terms of the transportation challenges in small communities. Certainly, Enderby is very dynamic. I appreciate your presentation.

I’d like to open it up to committee members for questions for the councillor.

K. Greene: Thank you, Councillor, for being with us today.

You had mentioned the barriers to participation being the class 4 licence and the rates, the compensation. You had given some solutions you proposed for the licensing, but I was hoping to hear about what you would recommend on the compensation side to reduce barriers.

B. Schreiner: I’ve got my CAO from the city here. I’m going to get him involved with the conversation as well, if you don’t mind. Tate Bengston has joined me here.

Tate, maybe you want to do this one.

T. Bengston: Thank you for your question. Just to clarify, when you speak to compensation, would this be compensation with respect to drivers?

K. Greene: Yeah, to the driver, to encourage participation.

T. Bengston: One thing that we know right now is that in medium-sized communities, ride-sharing companies are currently subsidizing the drivers. In many cases, they are providing top-up guarantees to ensure a minimum hourly rate is being paid. And they’re investing in that and subsidizing that in order to try to build capacity.

Enderby is a bit fortunate in terms of our proximity to some medium-sized communities. In our discussions with folks inside the industry, they have indicated that it’s probably reasonable at some point to extend service out our way once they have sufficient capacity, but they are going to be looking at heavy subsidization for a number of years in order to get there. But it seems like that top-up guarantee is how they are approaching compensation right now.

M. Elmore (Chair): Other questions?

I had a question. Councillor, you mentioned…. Now, just to clarify: in Enderby, you’ve got 3,000 people within the town proper, and then you mentioned a 4,000 number. Is that 4,000 the total area, or is that 3,000 plus 4,000?

B. Schreiner: It’s 3,000 plus 4,000. So between 6,000 and 7,000 people for our trading area.

M. Elmore (Chair): Okay. Yeah. Great.

In terms of the existing, I was surprised but not shocked that you haven’t had a taxi service for ten years. It just puts real pressure on the community.

[8:50 a.m.]

You had referenced more need for transit. I think it’s why you mentioned a regional transit support and that it’s all volunteer. The volunteer transportation — is that partially funded? What’s in place?

B. Schreiner: We just have a volunteer base of people here that offer their own vehicle. There used to be about 12 of them. They would just drive people to Vernon and Salmon Arm for appointments and stuff like that.

Now, there’s a non-for-profit looking at getting a vehicle. Basically, what that would…. That would just be like the 12 people, or whatever, using this vehicle. So that’s kind of more specific to those types of people.

I think what we’re trying to do is a traditional ride-share app where everybody has access to it and uses the app as opposed to relying on this. The service here is great. What those people do is awesome, but it doesn’t seem to be covering the void for everybody. You’d have to wait for the people, whereas a ride-sharing app is a little more immediate. I think that’s the gist.

M. Elmore (Chair): Right. Terrific. Thank you for that.

J. Routledge: Thank you very much.

I’d like to hear more about the neighbouring communities that require top-ups. I think that is something that we’d like to pursue and get more information about.

If you could just help us out a bit in terms of…. What communities should we follow up with? Are these bylaws they’ve put in place? What are the companies that have come to town and agreed to provide top-ups or minimum rates?

T. Bengston: Thank you for your question.

I can confirm that one of the communities where we are aware that the top-up guarantee exists is the nearby city of Vernon, which is about 20 to 25 minutes south of Enderby. There is one ride-share company there right now, Uride, which is working to build capacity.

J. Routledge: That’s very helpful.

T. Bengston: This is not something through a bylaw. It’s strictly a private sector response to build up their internal capacity of drivers.

J. Routledge: I see. Okay. That’s great. Thank you very much.

M. Elmore (Chair): Thank you. You mentioned Uride. Yeah. They’re also on our list here to make a presentation at — what time is it? — 1:15. So thanks for that heads-up on that. We can get into more details there.

Other questions from committee members?

All right. I would like to thank you very much for your presentation and for sharing and really giving us a good picture in terms of the transportation landscape and clearly articulating the needs and also some possible options to examine. That’s very important information for us to consider. Certainly, we want to ensure that services right across British Columbia are adequate.

I want to thank you for your presentation and for your time today.

B. Schreiner: Thank you so much as well. We really appreciate that. Take care.

M. Elmore (Chair): All right. Bye now.

Okay. We’ve got our next presenter. There we go.

Dr. Sarah-Patricia Breen, welcome to the committee to­day. You’ll have 15 minutes for your presentation, followed by 15 minutes of questions and answers from the committee.

Over to you.

SARAH-PATRICIA BREEN

S. Breen: Great. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me here today.

I’d like to start by acknowledging that I’m joining you today from the traditional territories of the Sinixt, Syilx, Ktunaxa, and Secwépemc peoples.

My name is Sarah. I’m the regional innovation chair in rural economic development at Selkirk College in the Kootenay region of southeast B.C. My position is one that’s focused on research and community support. I come to my position with the perspective of when I say economic development, it’s a very integrated concept. That means my projects cut across many topics, including transportation, which is the focus of today.

Before I really get going, I’d also like to note…. In January, I fell while snowboarding and got another concussion. I’m still in the middle of recovering, and sometimes video and screens pose a problem for me. If I lose my place or I start staring off or I miss a visual cue, I would just appreciate your patience and understanding there.

[8:55 a.m.]

M. Elmore (Chair): Yeah, certainly. No worries. We will stick with you, so feel very comfortable and relaxed. Thanks.

S. Breen: Excellent.

I understand everyone has a PDF copy of a slide deck that I put together. I’ll reference the numbers as I go. And they’re just visuals to accompany what I was planning on saying. So starting with the outline, which is on page 2, there are basically six things I want to talk about today: understanding rural, the importance of transit in rural places, the current state of transit in rural British Columbia, challenges to sustainable transit, innovations, and then some key messages for your consideration.

Moving to slide 3, with that colourful graphic there. I want to start here because when we say rural, it’s one of those topics where everybody has an idea about what it means, but they’re usually not the same idea. It’s very helpful if we’re on the same page.

Provincially we don’t have a standard definition of what is rural, small town or remote. Within the Passenger Transportation Act, rural or remote doesn’t appear to be defined. What we most commonly end up using are the eligibility requirements for programs like the rural economic diversification and infrastructure program, so anywhere that’s a place of 25,000 or less that’s outside of Metro Vancouver or the Greater Victoria area.

The graphic I have up there is put forward by one of my graduate students, and it identifies different types of rural based on population size going up and down and remoteness going left to right, which is the Statistics Canada Index of Remoteness. An approach like this can…. I want to raise it because it’s very helpful for providing a graphic illustration of the differences across rural and then it can be tailored to be subject-specific — so transit, for example. I could layer on top of this which of these communities have a transit system and which don’t, and it becomes a very useful policy tool.

I don’t want to get into too much detail here because that’s not the point, but I want to use it to underscore two key things I’m hoping you walk away with. The first is that in the absence of a definition or a common understanding of rural, what we see happen is there are going to be poor outcomes or unintended negative impacts to rural places. The second is not just that our communities are diverse. I feel like everybody knows that. But something to understand is that our knowledge base and where we get our information from is not as diverse as our communities.

When it comes to policy or programs or research, not only is rural often treated like it’s a uniform thing, but even when it’s acknowledged that it’s not, the information is dominated by certain types of rural — typically, that light green area on the graphic, which are those larger rural towns like where I live in Nelson or communities that are closer to urban centres. We have significant knowledge gaps in British Columbia as well as across Canada in communities that are small in their population, that are remote and that are Indigenous. So that’s something to keep in mind.

Moving to the fourth slide, talking about the importance of transit for rural places. Basically, when I say transit or transportation, I’m talking about travel within and be­tween communities, long and short trips, occasional and regular ones. Now, my specific work focuses on the shorter, more regular trips, either around a town or between towns. And for rural places, those connections between communities for regular daily trips are becoming more and more critical.

A person’s regular trips bring them from one commun­ity to another, from where they live to where they work, to go to school, to go to medical appointments and shopping. This is becoming more and more noticeable in communities where we have a shortage of affordable housing but also a workforce shortage.

Where I live in Nelson is a perfect example of that, where people needed to fill the workforce shortages end up living in outlying areas or neighbouring communities, and this is increasing that demand for transit. From a community perspective, transit systems have a range of direct, indirect, and induced impacts, and that can include job creation, resident attraction, workforce attraction, tourist accessibility, and more.

[9:00 a.m.]

Transit is also an equity issue. When we have transit and when it works, there are all these benefits, and it facilitates participation within the community. When we don’t have transit, or where it’s there but it’s not really super functional, the negative impacts disproportionately impact certain people: vulnerable people like seniors or youth, people with physical or cognitive impairments, low-income individuals, Indigenous people, newcomers.

I want to give one small illustration of this impact to workforce. For folks who are unfamiliar with the area where I live, the towns of Nelson and Salmo are about half an hour away from each other. Right now we have a bus that goes between them about three times a week — Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays — three times a day. Right away you can see that it’s impossible to use that for a full-time job, and because the schedule is so limited, it’s one of the first routes that gets cancelled when there’s a labour shortage.

I had a student intern working on a project with me, who is living in Nelson and working in Salmo and had devised her schedule for site visits based on the bus schedule. I got a call one night about 6 p.m. from my poor intern, who was stuck in Salmo because, while she got there, the last bus of the day was cancelled. I was unable to pick her up but authorized and paid for a cab ride for her to get home.

Her observation is that not everybody is going to have a boss that’s going to drive them to work, which I did sometimes, or pay for their cab or understand when they have to work from home. This illustrates how important transit can be.

Moving to slide 5, I want to talk a little bit about the current state of rural transit in British Columbia. That image on the top right: there are a number of points or green dots across B.C. That’s a good news story there. Relative to other provinces, British Columbia has a large number of rural transit systems, owing in large part to B.C. Transit.

However, there are functional challenges with these existing services, and there are also gaps. When I say functional challenges, I mean things like the example I just gave about my student, where you have limited days or limited times or cancellations or, with no exaggeration whatsoever, the fact that I can run anywhere in my town faster than a bus can get me there. That’s a functional limitation.

When I say gaps, I’m referring to the image that’s in the lower left corner. British Columbia’s regional trusts recently did studies on transit in British Columbia, and each of those reports shows where transit exists and where you can get it.

The map there is from the Kootenay report. I appreciate the writing is tiny, but basically, what we’re looking at is the green lines or, more to the point, the disconnect between the green lines, so the places that you can’t connect or that you can’t get between right now. It’s not insignificant.

While I’m on this slide, I did want to briefly touch on ride-hailing. In the fall, I provided a written submission to the committee where I did a scan of approved ride-hailing companies for rural services, just to see what was there. With a small number of exceptions — Tofino, Whistler, Cranbrook, I think — there essentially isn’t functional ride-hailing in British Columbia. It’s not serving rural B.C. right now.

Moving to slide 6, I want to talk about the barriers. What are the problems getting sustainable rural transit? My team and I had identified seven categories of barriers that impact sustainable rural transit. That’s the inner circle of that pie. Each of those categories has multiple subsections, often something that stands out more than others, and that’s the outer circle.

Some of the challenges are general rural challenges. They’re going to apply everywhere. Some of them are more reflective of place-specific characteristics, and they don’t impact all places in the same way.

Barriers also vary depending on whether we are talking about new systems or existing systems. For example, that big red chunk, sociocultural barriers — all of that literature we were looking at relates primarily to existing rural transit systems. The key is there. The issues are all related to the level of service that’s being provided and that it’s insufficient towards non-functional to meet people’s needs. That’s talking very much about existing transit services.

[9:05 a.m.]

It’s also worth noting there are some things that are a problem, but we can’t change them. That orange section, which is another very large pie, labelled demographic factors…. That’s a basic rural characteristic. We have a small number of people spread out over large distances, and as one of my former professors told me, you just can’t fix geography.

What I do want to pay attention to, though, are places that we can do things about, so blue, which is the operational expenses, and grey, which is funding and policy. Basically, if I’m going to use the colours to kind of walk you through this…. Because of that orange section — small numbers, large distances — we have the blue section, issues with the cost of operation and sources of revenue.

Rural transit has a high per-capita cost. It’s high if you’re running a bus, a van, a car-share, any other mode of transportation available. It is going to be high — period. The grey section, which is external sources of funding and policy, not to put too fine a point on it, does a bad job of addressing the existing expense factors. This is because there’s a lack of rural-specific funding, and therefore, the funds for transit don’t necessarily understand the geography and the need.

Most importantly, even where we have funding, there’s a lack of funding for operational costs, and that is what is needed more than anything else. It is very easy to get money to buy a bus. It is impossible to get money for a human being to drive that bus or service the bus or manage the transit system. I shouldn’t say impossible because recent funding from the regional trust did allow for operational funding, which was fantastic.

I’m in the process of doing an analysis of federal funding programs around transit right now, and I wanted to toss out a few numbers to help illustrate things. Our database has about 1,500 records of transit-funded programs across the country. Sixty-nine of them are in British Columbia, so it’s a very small number. Of those 69, nine of them meet British Columbia’s de facto rural definition of being in a place of less than 25,000, and of those nine, seven are expansions to existing transit systems.

The funding, and this is speaking at the federal level, is not doing a great job of addressing the barriers. It’s also worth noting that B.C. communities are at a distinct dis­advantage when it comes to things like the rural transit solutions funding. I can talk about that more later if people are curious, but I want to make sure I have room to get to my last couple of slides here.

Moving to slide 7, the point of this slide is that there’s a huge and growing number of available transit options and innovations. That map that’s shown on that slide is examples from all across the country.

Some of these are wildly innovative, like a municipal government who has basically turned their small local fleet into a car-share so that when they’re not in use by the municipality, local residents can sign them out, or these crazy multimodal systems that connect people safely from right at their front door through to their final destination, through lit paths and lock-ups for their bikes and all of these amazing things.

There is an interesting thing that happens when it comes to B.C. and innovation. Like I said earlier, we have a lot of dots when it comes to these examples, and you can see that on the map. We also have fewer of these more innovative place-based solutions, in part for the same reason that we have a lot of dots, which is B.C. Transit. It’s a little bit harder to be innovative or to get creative with solutions because of their legislative mandate. So we almost have the opposing issue.

Other provinces where these innovative ideas pop up can be really reactive and really forward-looking, but they lack the stability and the support we have. I feel like there are some future opportunities to kind of merge together, where we can have more innovation but with the stability and support that we’ve developed.

I want to leave off with just three key messages, basically. To revisit the Passenger Transportation Act with a rural lens, really clearly define what is rural so that we can reflect rural challenges and solutions. The differences across place: there’s no single solution. The range of rural places necessitates wildly flexible solutions.

[9:10 a.m.]

I want to just stress that while solutions might look different, there’s also a clear need for collaboration and connection across jurisdictions.

Third and most importantly, when we’re developing solutions to acknowledge and account for the difference between where the benefits of transit accrue versus where the costs are borne…. That really gets to what I said earlier, where the costs are high but there are a lot of benefits, the fundamental challenge is that the benefits are dispersed among the community and society, but the costs are borne by the service provider.

I think I’m running to the end of my 15 minutes. I have some references in there if folks want to read more.

I would be more than happy to answer any questions people have.

M. Elmore (Chair): Thank you very much, Dr. Breen. I appreciate your perspective. It’s certainly critical in terms of your message with respect to a rural lens and the real­ities outside of our urban centres. So I appreciate that.

I’d like to open up now to committee members for questions, if we’ve got, for Dr. Breen.

J. Sturdy: Thank you for your presentation.

Obviously, transit is an important issue in rural British Columbia and the various forms. The creativity around it is, I think, worth highlighting. However, our mandate is to look at, to review, passenger-directed vehicles. Do you have any comments in terms of passenger-directed vehicles and TNCs in rural British Columbia?

S. Breen: Yeah. When I wrote the written submission, and please excuse my memory at this moment, I had put in a little bit more detail on this, but effectively, what has currently been done around things like ride-hailing isn’t impacting British Columbia. It’s still an absence of it.

I will also note that studying ride-hailing is outside of my area of expertise, but from what I looked into, it runs into the same economies-of-scale issue that is a fundamental barrier to bus transit. There’s going to be a small number of people, and therefore, the dollars to be made are going to be low. It’s not appealing to a company like Uber, and so on and so forth.

There are also issues with those types of services perpetuating precarious workforce and other things. I think the biggest point I can underscore is that it’s absent right now. None of the opportunities are being taken advantage of. In its current state, it’s not a viable transit solution for rural B.C.

I apologize if that didn’t answer your question.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. I really appreciated it.

You did, in your written submission, include a scan of ride-hail companies in rural B.C. I think the important thing to note, when we think about our mandate, is that ride-hailing, at the moment, is not a viable option in rural B.C. for most communities. Dr. Breen, you’re on the heels of two elected officials from rural communities saying virtually what you’ve just said, that we need to look at innovation and we need….

I was very interested in your comments about the different models that exist that either encourage innovation or, in some ways, deter innovation. I think that’s a really important thing for us to recognize as we look at needs in rural B.C.

One of the things that I really want to thank you for — as someone who lives in a part of British Columbia that would be described as urban rural because we have the city of Prince George but we also have McBride, Valemount, Dunster, Dome Creek, those kinds of communities — is using a rural lens.

Even when we think about this bill that we are mandated to review, how does it capture the needs of rural British Columbians? It’s a big province. It’s geographically diverse. We’re about to hear from the cities of Vancouver and Victoria. There’s one set of circumstances there where one of the key ways you deal with mobility is you ride your bike. Well, I live in Prince George, and believe you me, right now riding your bike would be a challenge, to say the least.

[9:15 a.m.]

I think one of the key messages I really appreciated was to look at the Passenger Transportation Act with a rural lens. Maybe it doesn’t cause us to change the bill, as we move forward, but my colleague Janet, in our previous…. When we heard from two other speakers, it was: “Somebody needs to talk about transportation in rural B.C. and if there is a need to look at the model we have with B.C. Transit.”

I think we have to at least have a conversation about who should be talking about that. If it’s not us, related to this bill…. We shouldn’t ignore the fact that transportation matters in smaller rural communities as well. What are we going to do to encourage that conversation?

I really want to thank you for reminding us it’s a big province — that all of our legislation needs to have a certain look at the province in its entirety.

Thanks for your presentation. You’ve given us lots to think about.

S. Breen: Thank you. I really appreciate your comments.

I would just like to mention…. That busy matrix graph I put up, which one of my grad students had done up…. She is currently working in the provincial government’s rural policy and programs branch and building on that work. You have, at your disposal, some of the most cutting-edge resources for how to put a rural lens on legislation and programs and policy in-house. That whole group is filled with fantastic and amazing people.

One of the things, when I looked at the act itself, was that absence of a clear definition of rural and remote. It does lead to potentially unintended consequences.

Thank you for your comments.

M. Elmore (Chair): All right. Okay.

Any other questions?

J. Routledge: Thank you, Dr. Breen. This is a very interesting analysis of the challenges of transportation in rural areas. I’m trying to get my head around it.

One of the observations that you made was that in one of the communities, there’s a bus company that runs three days a week, three times a day. I’m curious about that. Do you have a profile of the ridership? I wonder who’s taking that bus. How can that stay viable?

Then I have some follow-up questions.

S. Breen: Yeah. Well, I mean, the irony of that whole project…. That’s why my student was in Salmo. It was be­cause she was actually studying the transit system.

In some ways, it worked out to be very good, because every time people saw her stuck at a bus stop, more people would come and talk to her. So we were able to get a good profile of who currently takes the bus, who would like to take the bus, what a viable schedule would be for those people and put forward those recommendations.

I’m just thrilled to report they’ve actually changed the West Kootenay transit service provision plan to be more effective for that community. It’s a huge win there. I’m happy to share those results.

But yeah, there’s a lot of work that goes into this.

J. Routledge: Thank you for that.

It raises questions, in my mind, about what role transit is meant to play, be it a bus service or be it a system of taxis and ride-hailing. There’s got to be a core economic role that it plays.

The area that I live in, in Burnaby, exists because a trolley, in the early 20th century, was put in place to go down Hastings Street for the purpose of taking workers to and from work in Vancouver. That was the core reason that it existed. Then a thriving community was built up around that.

I’m wondering if that’s what we…. I think where you’re heading, in terms of what you’re talking to us about, is the core economic viability. How does a transit system support communities and support people being able to live there and thrive there?

[9:20 a.m.]

I’m wondering. In some parts of the province, we want to have…. I mean, I think we clearly want to have a functional system. I think you called it, in your presentation, a fixed system. Does a fixed system work, or do we need something that’s more flexible?

S. Breen: A fixed-route system can work in certain circumstances very well, say the bus that goes from downtown Nelson to the college in Castlegar and brings students back and forth. That’s a perfect example of a fully functional fixed-route service.

There are also areas where that doesn’t work, and we need a more what they would call flexible route or an on-demand system. Certainly, B.C. Transit has examples of all of those — fixed, flexible, on-demand — and varying levels of working with the community to achieve those things.

I’m privileged to live where I live. The key part, I think, in this is there’s a challenging conversation around the bums-in-seats dollars piece. It’s never going to make money. That’s why we don’t have private operators running shuttles from the Kootenays to the airport in Kelowna. Don’t even get me started on our airports. But it’s just not functional from a dollars-and-cents perspective.

We’re embarking on a new and innovative project to look at incorporating those other benefits and values into the equation. If we’re saving our health care system money by actually ensuring that people can get to their doctors appointments….

Maybe the system isn’t making money in its operation, but it’s saving us money somewhere else or enabling peo­ple to get to work or all of these pieces. We’re trying to figure out how to flesh out that equation in a way that actually shows values for dollars instead of just showing bums in seats, because the math bill will never work it.

J. Routledge: So it’s a public service. That’s what we need to focus on. Thank you for that.

M. Elmore (Chair): Terrific. Thank you very much, Dr. Breen. We appreciate your presentation, really providing us with a comprehensive perspective from research, development and that context for us. So very helpful. Thank you very much for your time.

S. Breen: Thank you. Have a good day, everyone.

M. Elmore (Chair): We have our next presenter in the room. We have with us, from the city of Victoria, Ross Kenny, assistant director, engineering and public works.

Welcome to the committee. You’ve got 15 minutes for your presentation followed by 15 minutes for questions and answers from committee members.

Go ahead.

CITY OF VICTORIA

R. Kenny: Thank you very much.

Good morning, everyone. I’m really honoured to be here this morning speaking at the Legislature regarding mobility in the province.

I grew up in North Vancouver, and I’m a third-generation engineering graduate from the University of British Columbia and have worked to support urban transportation systems for 15 years.

[9:25 a.m.]

The first ten years of my career, I was actually working for the city of Vancouver, so that was my previous life there. I was fortunate enough to be exposed to transportation planning, urban design, rapid transit deployment and the expansion of the network of safe and convenient cycling routes.

While in Vancouver, I designed and built North America’s first protected walking and cycling intersections and have spoken at numerous conferences around this — and the north end of the Burrard Street Bridge, which was a major project that I led there in the city.

More recently over the past five years, I’ve had the pleasure of leading the transportation department here in the city of Victoria, in the capital, and focused, really, on building infrastructure and policies that provide safe, convenient and comfortable mobility options for everybody. While paving roads, building sidewalks or providing bike lanes, I also work with our planning department to ensure that new developments support current and future residents of the city and region.

Victoria’s mobility plan, GoVictoria, has a number of values that prioritize safety, livability, equity, affordability, climate action and accessibility. Our mobility hierarchy is an inverted pyramid where we identify pedestrians as our top priority in the city and one that we want to increase space for. This is followed by cycling, public transit, shared vehicles such as ride-hailing and then goods movement and single-occupant vehicles.

Like many cities in B.C., over the next 30 years, Victoria’s population is projected to grow by over 40 percent. The graph here is just from the recent OCP dialogues that we’re having at the city and shows kind of the growth projections that could occur.

Cities across the province are anticipating and also being legislated to accommodate similar levels of growth with new housing and support services, which will include transportation options. More people living in our cities also means there will be more trips that need to be made so that people can get to work, school, visit friends and just live their daily lives.

In addition to population growth in Victoria, we also anticipate significant growth in the surrounding capital region. The central graphic gives an indication just of how people move throughout the region here between the 13 municipalities of the CRD. This was produced back in 2019.

In addition to population growth, we’re also experiencing significant increases in tourism within the region. Just for an example, between 2022 and 2023, we had 26 percent growth in the number of cruise ship passengers arriving at Ogden Point, up to nearly one million passengers per year. This also has a significant impact on our transportation systems, especially in summer months.

To accommodate this growth in the city, Victoria is taking bold steps to improve affordability, reduce emissions and reduce the reliance on private motor vehicles. By providing sustainable mobility options and building housing near where people need to go, this will reduce transportation cost burdens and the time spent commuting.

This here is a photo of my old hometown on the Upper Levels Highway in North Vancouver. In many parts of the province, including the region here, many people still rely on the private motor vehicle for their daily transportation needs. A lot of that comes down to the type of housing forms that have been built over the last 60, 80 years where….

I appreciated the comments around Burnaby, where the city centres and the places that people love the most often in our cities were built around old streetcar systems and dense living where people could walk to transit.

Transportation policies such as CleanBC and GoVictoria call for significant increases in the number of trips made by sustainable modes. In Victoria, we have a goal of 80 percent of all trips by 2030 to be made by walking, cycling and transit, while provincially, there’s a goal of 30 percent.

Compared to driving, walking, cycling and transit have significantly fewer emissions, result in healthier and happier populations and are more affordable. They take up less space in our cities and towns and can support safe and vibrant communities.

Generally speaking, people choose the transportation option that is the easiest for them. So we’ve seen induced demand, and it has been talked about in multiple studies. I don’t have the research myself, as I’m an applied scientist, but we’ve seen that when highways are widened or roadways are widened, it provides some relief for a period of time, and then that space is quickly filled up with even more vehicles as it increases demand as people now travel further for their daily tasks. Ultimately, our roads can be­come more congested over time.

The same can be true for walking, cycling and transit. If we build infrastructure that people choose and is convenient, we’ll see people start to use those.

[9:30 a.m.]

As an example, in Victoria over the past seven years, the city has built a network of over 35 kilometres of safe and convenient cycling routes. By the end of this year, over 90 percent of Victoria residents will be within half a kilometre of an all ages and abilities cycling route. This infrastructure can impact people’s choices and behaviours.

Between 2018 and 2022, the cycling mode share in Victoria grew from 8 percent to 12 percent of all trips. That was a 50 percent growth in the number of cycling trips during that time.

Also, during the time of the pandemic, we saw all types of trips decrease — number of people taking transit, walking, driving trips decreased. During that same period, we saw the number of people cycling increase. It was the only type of transportation where we saw an increasing number of trips, and then that growth in mode share.

In 2022, 44 percent of all trips in the city were taken by walking and cycling, compared to just 34 percent of trips that were completed by single-occupant motor vehicle drivers. So what we can see from the infrastructure buildout is that by providing these options, people started to make other choices.

Over that same time, we also saw great improvements to road safety. There was a 39 percent decrease in cyclist-related crashes from data from ICBC; similarly, a 53 percent decrease in the number of pedestrian-related collisions.

Since 2007, in measuring our greenhouse gas emissions, we saw a 27 percent reduction in transportation mobility. This is really just going back to say that where we build infrastructure, it can impact people’s decisions and how they choose to travel around the cities.

In regard to how this gets done, I just want to shout out appreciation to the federal government, provincial government, which do provide grants for some of these projects and works. These grant projects have allowed the city to meet its goals quicker and at the same time deliver on the provincial goals related to mobility in CleanBC.

Building bike and transit lanes takes strong local leadership, as these projects can often be contentious as they can remove vehicle parking or vehicle travel lanes to greatly increase the amount of space for providing to move peo­ple. Providing funding to cities who are addressing these problems encourages these projects to continue and can also legitimize them to the local population.

Here locally, city councillors often talk about a number of our projects where, say, a provincial or federal grant has covered the cost of the protected bike lane infrastructure, with the city covering the cost of the asset renewal and all those other components. It helps them to justify projects, saying that the money from the senior levels of government is helping to offset the costs of the bike lane network and that the city is just doing good asset management protocol.

Where does ride-hailing fit into all of this? From the city’s perspective, ride-hailing and taxi services are a really important part of the transportation mobility network, as they are available for anyone who can afford to use them. They support tourism and people who can’t or don’t drive and are an important part of supporting car-lite or car-free lifestyles. The ability to reliably catch a ride when you need one gives people options.

If applied correctly, ride-hailing can also align with the GoVictoria’s mobility values I mentioned earlier. However, there is a risk that ride-hailing services can make our cities and residents more vehicle-dependent. This can negatively impact our urban centres.

Victoria has taken a proactive approach to improve livability by investing in road safety and lower speed limits, making alternative transportation more appealing, monitoring our traffic and curb usage, and making changes as nimbly as possible to respond to pressures and challenges that we’re seeing in our streets. This takes a dedicated team of professionals, along with the capital funding and the resources to implement the necessary changes. Not all communities around B.C. have this type of capacity or expertise to respond quickly.

Multiple studies around the world have shown that with­out investment, ride-hailing can result in worsening congestion in cities. They’ve also shown that in areas with weak public transit systems, ridership can decrease on that system as people shift to ride-hailing, which results in declining investment and frequency of transit services to the people in our communities that rely on them and can’t afford other options.

To avoid these pitfalls, it’s imperative to focus investment in sustainable transportation modes, while looking at ride-hailing legislation.

[9:35 a.m.]

Ride-hailing does add additional traffic pressures, especially during peak tourism times. It has also been found that ride-hailing alone does not lead to reductions in pri­vate vehicle ownership and the benefits that one might have from affordability by not owning a vehicle.

If public transit is affordable, efficient and reliable, it can be the mobility option of choice. Many people in the room today have likely ridden the SkyTrain in greater Vancouver, where you’re offered fast service and the terrific views. I think those two things go together well, where it feels dignified to take public transit.

When we look to other cities in Europe or Asia where they have invested heavily in rail and transit systems, again, it never feels like you are a second-class citizen maybe waiting for a bus on an empty roadway. Building a dignified system will further encourage people to choose public transit or mobility systems which ride-hailing can then supplement.

To make the most out of passenger-directed vehicles, the city would be looking to the province to ensure that passenger and pedestrian safety is prioritized by regulating drivers and vehicles, that tools are available to cities to manage congestion through time-of-day or per-trip fees, the active encouragement of drivers and companies for low-carbon and accessible vehicles, and to consider re­gional solutions in areas such as the CRD to ease business licensing challenges and to ensure data sharing between municipalities.

Over time, the city would also be interested in the prov­ince exploring and implementing other congestion management tools. This could help to alleviate congestion on some of our busiest roadways, highways and bridges throughout the province.

This could include items such as congestion pricing, which encourages people to spread travel demand and minimize congestion at peak times. This could also be used to generate revenue for other reinvestment into those same roadways for either road safety or public transit.

An expansion of distance-based insurance at ICBC to further incentivize other transportation modes. ICBC has made recent changes in terms of offering discounts if you drive under certain kilometres. Again, anything that can be done through insurance to further encourage people to drive less will help meet sustainable and provincial policy goals.

Overall support and incentives for shared mobility services, such as car-share, bike-share and scooter-share.

Ensuring that the integration of traffic demand management measures — such as bike parking, car-sharing and transit passes — are included in the new provincial housing legislation that comes to give people options, especially as vehicle parking may not be required.

Overall, an increase in automated enforcement to en­courage safer driving and improve reliability on our roads, especially during winter months, where we might have snowfall. Again, people driving too fast can create col­lisions. Enforcement when there aren’t, maybe, police officers available can reduce the number of accidents that occur on highways, improving that reliability for everybody.

Most importantly for the city of Victoria and to meet the broader provincial mobility and road safety goals, we look to the province to continue to transform and modernize the delivery of funding and the delivery of the public transportation in the capital region and beyond. Additionally, providing ongoing, comprehensive funding to the expansion of walk-and-roll networks can provide certainty for municipalities in the delivery of infrastructure and can encourage its implementation on a much grander scale.

As an example, where I talked about the grants that the city of Victoria receives, which are beneficial, one challenge with them is that it’s uncertain as to when or what we might receive in a given year. Moving into our financial plan being approved and a number of projects in the queue for delivery, we don’t know if grants will come or not, so they supplement future years more so than, maybe, the year that we’re in, from a reality of our fiscal pressures.

In summary, I’ve had the opportunity to lead some of the most contentious municipal projects in the province over the past decade. These include the Burrard Bridge bike lanes and reconstruction, working with the viaducts removal plan in Vancouver and, more locally, Victoria bike lanes — again, lots of public interest in all of these as we talk about how people get around our cities and our province.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with thousands of resi­dents on these projects in directly changing our cities. These changes were never easy, but they were always the right thing to do, and even where we’ve made mistakes, it still moved us in the direction towards our goals and vision for cities that are friendly for people that are walking, cycling and taking transit.

[9:40 a.m.]

Over time, most people have come to accept the change. In fact, after many years, most people have come to love those changes, even when they were opposed to them at first.

In order to make our province more resilient and prepared for the future, we must continue to modernize our mobility systems. Ride-hailing can be a part of that future sustainable vision, but to avoid the pitfalls, we need to ensure resilient systems for trains, buses, bikes and people.

M. Elmore (Chair): Terrific. Thank you very much, Ross. I appreciate your presentation.

I’d like to open it up to committee members for questions, conversation, comments.

I’ll jump in. Ross, you mentioned…. It’s very interesting in terms of that you designed the first protected passenger cycling safe intersections in Canada?

R. Kenny: It was a protected intersection, and these were intersections with separated bike lanes that also provide a full separation at the intersections, so pedestrian-queuing spaces where bike lanes pass behind. That, again, provides space for people to turn left.

Yeah, at the time — it was about ten, 12 years ago — I had the opportunity to present at numerous conferences. The North American city transportation officials, NACTO, was very interested in that. I had the opportunity to go to multiple conferences as a panel speaker.

M. Elmore (Chair): Interesting. So that was the first in B.C., in Canada?

R. Kenny: It was the first recorded one in North America at the time, on the Burrard Bridge.

M. Elmore (Chair): Oh, great. Cool. Kudos to you. Interesting.

I had a question with respect to one of your recommendations with respect to data sharing across municipalities. Is it that you’re referring to ride-hailing companies?

R. Kenny: Yeah.

M. Elmore (Chair): We’ve heard that theme quite a bit. Just your perspective from municipal government.

R. Kenny: I think, for us, especially within the CRD where we have such close boundaries, it’s just to get an understanding of where business licensing is occurring, so where ride-hail people are actually being picked up, dropped off, and what the actual travel times and travel behaviours of people are.

Again, this is one of the things that we’ve struggled with. We know in the Metro Vancouver area, there has been a bit more collaboration on business licensing for ride-hailing services, whereas in the CRD, that hasn’t been taking place. Each municipality is operating its own business licensing, and we actually don’t know who’s driving which areas and all of those components.

Again, just a regional view to ensure that we understand how many drivers, where they’re going and those types of facts to help manage the system and pressures.

M. Elmore (Chair): Got it. Thanks.

D. Routley: Thank you for the presentation.

As a cyclist who’s been hit many times over the years, I really appreciate the infrastructure build. I also noticed that Victoria lowered their speed limits in a lot of areas. Has there been any work done to determine how much of a factor the lower speed limits are and the reduced collision and injury rates?

R. Kenny: It was in 2022 that the city of Victoria started lowering all local speed limits to 30 kilometres an hour. We’ve completed just about 40 percent of the city of putting up signs on all our local streets. We don’t yet have after-data to suggest what the changes have been, though I’d say Victoria and the region here, compared to many parts of the province, have done a considerable amount of speed limit reductions on our major arterial roadways, down to 40 and sometimes 30 kilometers per hour.

I’d say the biggest change that comes from that, as a transportation engineer…. Many people drive to the de­sign of a street. If a road is designed as wide, large and empty, people drive quite fast. As we lower speed limits, it allows us to become more constrained and put other things in the roadway to really enhance pedestrian and cyclist experiences, whether that’s protected bike lanes or centre medians.

Again, when I talk to other engineers, people are…. We use speeds as design thresholds. Lowering the speed limit allows more designs that further prioritize vulnerable road users.

K. Greene: Thanks so much. I found the presentation fascinating for a lot of different reasons that aren’t ride-hailing. But I have ride-hailing questions.

[9:45 a.m.]

With respect to how you see ride-hailing, you have a couple of points on the congestion management ap­proaches and then again on the ongoing regulation of the industry slides. Both of them specify that the cities are going to be responsible for managing congestion. Am I reading that right? The city’s ask is to have two goals to directly, I guess, manage ride-hail impacts rather than a larger provincial or regional scale?

R. Kenny: Thank you for the question.

We’re coming from the city of Victoria. We are kind of at the end of the line. We would be looking to the province to look at our larger regional connectors — highways, bridges and other aspects. What we’re looking at is that we know in areas like UBC, I believe that they’ve provided fees on certain rides and pickups, and then they can use that funding to reinvest into sustainable mode share within the cities.

I think one of the components that we’re looking at is how to discourage or, again, to at least be able to reinvest infrastructure during peak times. Are there opportunities for cities to impose their own fee structure on ride-hailing? So if you were to, say at rush hour, take a ride-hailing and there was a surcharge for congestion which then could go to programs to actually reinvest to improve our roadways. Similarly, within cities, they could reinvest that into sustainable modes.

Whether that’s done at the provincial level or the municipal level, again, I’d look to the broader community here. I think that’s something that we see as another funding stream to ensure that affordability issues can be addressed on a broader scale so that people have other options.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. It’s a stark contrast to the presenters’ priority which were talking about rural B.C., which is desperately in need of a variety of forms of transportation.

I’m interested by, in essence, the dilemma your presentation lays out, the reality of ride-hailing. From Victoria’s perspective, it’s about congestion. In essence, it doesn’t reduce personal car, private vehicle ownership, yet in your summary you talk about it being a new transportation option.

Maybe speak to us a little bit about…. I mean, obviously, in Victoria’s ideal world, I’m not sure that ride-hailing has a place, but maybe talk about the conflict between the values and the reality of ride-hailing.

R. Kenny: Thanks for the question, Shirley.

I think that’s an interesting conundrum within transportation and say…. Ride-hailing is an important piece of modernizing our system. Within Victoria, again, ensuring that people can reliably, whether it’s a taxi or a passenger-directed vehicle…. Whatever that is, people having that option to be able to reliably get a ride when they need to is very important.

I think the dilemma that comes up is, and what we see…. You can see these are the studies and research that’s been shown across North America. Ride-hailing without further investment into other modes, again, can further entrench cities into being more vehicle-dominated — whether that’s ride-hailing vehicles circulating in congested areas creating more congestion in environments which are not conducive to people walking and cycling. Then it can make it more difficult to reallocate that space over time.

I think the challenge with transportation is it’s both. We need to look for new options in modernizing, and ride-hailing is definitely a part of that and ensuring that, again, especially in rural communities, or whether that’s transit on demand, people can get to where they need to go with­out having to own their own private motor vehicle. In our cities, allowing people to also get those rides but ensuring that there are other options available where the land use and density is there to support it.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Is there time for a follow-up?

M. Elmore (Chair): Yeah, go ahead.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): I wanted to, on that note then, ask about two specific things.

Could you describe manag­ing curb space? I’m assuming that’s competition for…. You know, in order to keep people moving and vehicles moving, maybe describe for me what managing curb space actually looks like between the variety of users.

I wanted to clarify that when you ask for policy tools to manage congestion such as time-of-day surcharges or per-trip fees, I’m assuming that would be on top of ride-hailing fees which already exist, which allow, for example, in ride-share, drivers to actually use pricing that depends on volume, those kinds of things. So there’s surge pricing that exists. Are you saying that the city would want a tool to add an additional charge to what is already in place with ride-hailing companies?

[9:50 a.m.]

R. Kenny: In regard to the pricing, I think what we’re looking at is…. We know that the ride-hailing companies call that surge pricing, which is increased costs due to supply-and-demand issues of not having enough drivers and vehicles. That’s how they can continue to…. The driver is, again, making more money on those trips.

From the city’s perspective, it’s whether that’s during congestion time or all-of-day fees, especially in, maybe, just constrained areas. In Victoria, maybe there’s a surcharge just in the tourism district, which may be Old Town, the Legislature or near Ogden Point.

Those tools are more to ensure that there’s a revenue stream to reinvest into these other mobility options versus, say, the surge pricing that we might have from the companies themselves.

Shirley, do you mind just repeating the first part?

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): You talk about how you proactively manage curb space. Can you just tell me how you do that?

R. Kenny: In Victoria, right now we’re working to modernize how we manage curb space here. Curb management includes things like parking meters or hourly restrictions, whether that’s two-hour parking or parking meters, to encourage turnover for everyone. Again, we don’t have employee parking on, say, our commercial streets all day.

When it comes to ride-hailing, this is something that’s still early days with the number of licences within Victoria. But what we’ve seen, actually, since the pandemic is a significant increase in at-home deliveries — Amazon, Skip­TheDishes types of companies.

What that has done is…. We have had to increase the number of loading zones throughout the city, so actually removing parking meter spaces and providing more loading zones for those really short-term stops.

Similarly, on local streets or in areas with a lot of apartments or high density, it’s looking at parking options where there may not be opportunity for, say, the private storage of motor vehicles on our streets as frequently, where you have a local road that’s 100 percent full of vehicles that people who live in those buildings park overnight. There may not be the space on that street now for these other enhanced services that come, whether that’s for catching a ride through ride-hailing or having your dinner delivered.

That is one of the pieces that we’re looking at and multiple policies that the city is looking to implement, whether that’s parking permit areas, expansion of parking meters. Then it’s looking at shared parking, such as how we use our parkades better and how we encourage people to park off-street where it’s available.

J. Routledge: Thank you so much for this presentation. I had the impression that there’s a lot more you could be telling us than you have time for in 15 minutes.

I’m giving a lot of thought to what you said about the role of ride-hail when it comes to congestion. Also, I think one of the strong themes that I hear coming through your presentation and your answers to our questions is the whole notion of integration, that transportation needs to be more integrated and that there may be some silos between public transportation, taxis and ride-hail. I’d like to hear more about what your thoughts are and how it could be better integrated.

Victoria is a large, urban area. I am remembering one of the presentations that we had previously. I think it was the Vancouver police. We were asking them questions about congestion. Their response was that when the bars close and a concert ends, they want as many taxis and ride-hail downtown as possible to get those people out of there. I wonder what your thoughts are about that.

R. Kenny: That’s great. I think in terms of large events or, say, Saturday night in downtown Victoria, we would feel the same. I think that’s one of these pieces where…. That comes back to that supply and demand — if people want a ride, having that available, and then they can leave.

I think from a congestion standpoint, usually those peak times are not when we’re seeing it, again, because the roads are generally more empty. But that’s getting taxis and ride-hail to the areas.

In Victoria, that’s one of the reasons why our pedestrian-priority street on Government ends at 10 p.m. We reopen the street because that was actually one of the things that we heard a lot from the businesses and from VicPD. Can we actually get taxis going down Government Street to encourage people to…? Again, so when they’re done, they actually can get a ride out and leave, instead of leaving it as a pedestrian mall. It is definitely still an important part of that consideration.

[9:55 a.m.]

It’s more challenging on big special event days like Canada Day around here at the Legislature, where tens of thousands of people…. How do you encourage those people to disperse? Again, the best for those is going to be transit when we want to move those high amounts of people.

Then in terms of integration of our transportation services, I think that is the key. And that’s where the complexity comes in and where it’s always that we have to be trying to do everything all at the same time.

In Victoria, that’s really where we’re trying to…. Every time we have to pave a road, how do we improve things for cyclists or pedestrians as part of this project and try to hit our goals and objectives? It’s not always a big public consultation or always either the best project or meeting all of our safety goals, but how do we keep inching towards where we want to go in the future vision?

Our cities have been built over 100 or 150 years or, depending on the community, starting even less. So we need to see that vision and keep working towards it. Then the more options that we have for people, the better.

I think the challenge for our communities is it’s difficult for them to see it. We all experience it. I went to UBC. I voted against the U-Pass when I was there, as someone commuting from North Vancouver. Why would I ever take the bus to UBC? As soon as I had a U-Pass, I took the bus four days a week, five days a week. And then my car sat at home.

I think that’s one of these things where we are really great at adapting to change as a population. People are generally bad at anticipating a change. The anticipation is really hard, but when it happens, it’s “Oh, that’s what it is now” or “That’s the new bike lane. Okay, I understand it now.” But if you ask people, “What do you think about us changing how it looks in front of your house or what your grocery store will look like?” people don’t want to think about that. It gives anxiety. When it happens, well, that’s just life, and we keep moving on.

That’s one of the challenges with cities, that balance between bringing people along and asking but also making sure we’re continuing to make the changes that we know we need to.

M. Elmore (Chair): Awesome. Terrific. Thank you very much, Ross. We appreciate your presentation and lively discussion from everyone. Thanks for your presentation.

R. Kenny: Thank you very much for having me.

M. Elmore (Chair): Okay. We’re scheduled for a committee recess. We’ll reconvene at 10:15 for our next presentation. Thank you very much, everyone.

The committee recessed from 9:57 a.m. to 10:15 a.m.

[M. Elmore in the chair.]

M. Elmore (Chair): Okay, 10:15. We’re back on air here.

I’d like to welcome our next presenter. We’ve got, from the city of Vancouver, Lon LaClaire, the general manager for engineering services.

Welcome. You’ll have 15 minutes for the presentation, followed by 15 minutes of question-and-answer from committee members.

Over to you.

CITY OF VANCOUVER

L. LaClaire: Thanks for having me.

First, before I get started, I would like to make a land acknowledgment.

The city of Vancouver, where I work, is on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and səlilwətaɬ.

For the city, it’s an important policy that we have to make that acknowledgment at the beginning of a presentation, on our road to reconciliation.

In terms of the city of Vancouver experience with passenger-directed vehicles…. We kind of put it in the context of all of what we’re trying to achieve with transportation.

We’ve put them into three categories. One is the people category. There are specific goals that we have on each of these. One is the vision zero, which is to eliminate traffic-related fatalities and serious injury. The climate goal is to become carbon-neutral by 2050 but also address the real challenges of transportation around a city, a growing city with limited space for moving people. We do need to move towards the more space-efficient modes, which are walking, cycling and transit.

That being said, we do kind of see ride-hailing as, actually, a really important part of that cornucopia of options that make a city really work well. So although we have a hierarchy of modes where….

Walking is actually the most space-efficient one. Cycling and transit are extremely productive in terms of how many people per metre you can move. Then we also see that passenger-directed vehicles and taxis and shared vehicles actually fill a really important niche in the transportation system. Private auto, obviously, at the bottom.

The reality is, in life, that there are many trips where…. You can live most of your trips by walking, cycling and transit, but there will be occasion where a car is the most practical option. In those options, we do want that car to be shared. So in the city of Vancouver, there is a very huge car-share fleet, both for one-way car-share, for two-way car-share and, of course, for taxis and ride-hailing.

When passenger-directed vehicles became a thing just before the pandemic, we were concerned about a number of key issues. One was ensuring accessibility. We have this accessibility requirement on our taxi fleets, and we were concerned that we might lose that with passenger-directed vehicles. The other was, again, with GHG reduction and pollution. We had more control over taxis. I know the concern was that without some real data…. There’s a lot…. It would be hard to make decisions about how we manage the system. Then there are also concerns about competition with taxi, transit and active transportation.

I have, on the right there…. Just mentioning some of the current tools that we have in place. We have the inter-municipal business licence, which the city of Vancouver manages on behalf of all of area 1. The city of Vancouver does have a congestion and curbside management permit. I was telling Ross about that in the break so that he’s aware of how we manage to do that. Then, of course, the province has the accessibility program fee to manage.

Just to walk through each of those a little bit. The inter-municipal business licence. We have a single licence for a company, which is $155. Then there’s an additional fee for every vehicle in that fleet. There is a reduced charge for zero-emission vehicles, and any vehicle that’s wheelchair accessible is no charge.

[10:20 a.m.]

We initially scrambled to get a regional approach, but given the timing, we actually had to implement at a city level only. We did it in collaboration with the Metro Vancouver municipalities, anticipating that we would want this to be across the region. In April of 2020, we managed to do that. We got agreement across all the cities to have a single business licence. Area 1, of course, is more than Metro Vancouver. It includes the Fraser Valley, Mission, Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Hope and also Whistler.

Just to let you know a little bit about what we call the congestion curbside management permit: this permit was a way for us to try to manage congestion in the busiest section of our city and our region — not for the entire portion of city of Vancouver, but just really the Metro core area.

This is a charge that’s in place for pickup and drop-off. If only one is in the zone, then of course it only is one charge, but if you’re picking up and dropping off in the zone, there would be two charges. It’s 50 percent off for zero-emission vehicles and free for wheelchair-accessible vehicles as well. It’s only in effect during those congestion hours.

Again, for us, curbside space is at a premium in this area. Similar to the way that Ross was mentioning, we charge for the curbside use. We’ve been repurposing a lot of curbside parking for passenger zones and for loading zones, and we also do want to discourage this type of use in an area where the other options are very prevalent. In the downtown, there is a lot of great transit. There’s a really great walking network and, of course, a great cycling network in addition to that. There’s one-way bike-share and soon to be one-way scooter-share.

I’m just looking at how the number of vehicles that we are licensing has grown over the years. Of course, this happened right in the first year of the pandemic, in 2020. So it’s not surprising that there’s quite dramatic growth over the last four years. We do expect that at some point we’ll taper off.

I think this is very much an effect of the bad timing, to launch in 2020, for this type of service. But you’d also notice in this that we actually have very few zero-emission vehicles, and we have no accessible vehicles registered for ride-hailing. So even though those incentives are there, they’ve not been effective at promoting the wheelchair vehicles.

Looking at some of the monitoring, we have some ideas on how we could improve on wheelchair-accessible vehicles. Actually, when we wrote this presentation, this was before I got the news that the province had looked at other ways that that money could be spent, gathered from the fee which was to retrofit vehicles. Previous to that, we understood that it was only to maintain wheelchair-accessible vehicles. That’s been something that we’ve been thinking about, how we can do more.

The strive for zero-emission vehicles, there our thoughts are that perhaps we could have some targets in the fleet for these TNS companies. For us, this is a really big one, because when we look at meeting our goal, reaching the vehicles that spend a lot of time on the road is really important. A private vehicle spends 95 percent of its time not moving. If it’s a taxi or a ride-hailing vehicle, it’ll spend a lot of its time on the road. So if one is electric, versus the other one being electric, the actual emissions outcomes are quite different.

Looking at the actual trip activity in the region, here you can see pre-pandemic. Actually, it was also pre-TNS companies. You can see that taxi trips are pretty stable. Of course, they took a big dive at the start of the pandemic, and they’ve been building back. Now you can see that total passenger-directed trips are actually up 50 percent from that pre-pandemic period, and you can see that TNS trips make up two-thirds of those trips. We’ve seen taxi trips drop by about 50 percent, but the total amount of trip-taking by this is up.

[10:25 a.m.]

Some of the research that we’ve seen on this: where are those trips coming from? Well, it is coming from other uses. This is the question: what would you have done if you hadn’t taken this trip? How would you have taken this trip if this service hadn’t been available?

Driving was a big one. Reduced driving is a big one there. Also, these are trips that might have been on transit or in active modes like walking and cycling, so that is a concern.

I would mention, too, though, on this front, when we look at this…. Actually, we had the similar concern for one-way car-sharing and other vehicle modes, this concern that it would just create more driving.

But the one thing that I would say in the city of Vancouver and the type of options that are available, actually having lots of options would allow people to live without a car comfortably or to not get a second car or to get rid of one of their cars. Once that happens, people think about every trip differently. So it is one of those things.

One-way car-sharing, in fact, when they came to…. Originally, car2go but now it’s Evo. When they came to our city, they said they can only be successful in cities with great transit systems. The reason they say that is because they can’t be relied on. So your one-way car-share isn’t always there, and often your transit systems are backup.

Supporting the local management of these transportation impacts, that’s something that we would, of course, encourage the province to continue to do, enabling prov­inces to manage the local transportation impacts, in our case, the curbside and congestion management permit.

We would also look to improve the quality of the taxi data. It’s something that we don’t really have a good handle on. We have great access to the ride-hailing data, but it’s not something that’s shareable. It’s actually all confidential. So we would like to explore ways that we could use that data in a way that could inform decision-makers.

This is kind of my final side, I believe. In summary, we’re concerned about the wheelchair-accessible vehicles and looking at ways that we can kind of create more requirements for those and actually get more of those types of vehicles out there on the street. It’s kind of finding a way to further incentivize TNS fleets to move towards zero — or low emission at least. Again, it’s the access to the reliable data and having it as something that can be shared. Then we would say: continue to support technical jurisdictions like ours in the management of the transportation system.

With that, I will conclude my presentation.

M. Elmore (Chair): Terrific. Thank you, Lon, for the presentation.

I’ll open it up to committee members for questions or comments.

I can lead things off. Lon, you had mentioned your third recommendation, accessibility to and the ability to share data. Is it the city of Vancouver that has access to some data? Where, specifically, are you looking to share it?

L. LaClaire: Yes, it was. The province agreed to share the data that’s available through these companies, so we make use of it, and it’s very interesting. It’s quite enlightening. There’s a lot of information there. But we’re prohibited from sharing it outside of our own personal use.

It helps inform staff in terms of our work in designing, say, a curbside management permit. But without being able to share it, sometimes the decision-makers and the public wouldn’t necessarily know how we came to that decision, because we can’t share that data.

Now, again, I appreciate why, because there’s a lot of personal information there. You can see where the pickup was, and you can see where the drop-off was. That could easily identify a person, you know, if it was your house or something like that. But to find a way that we could require kind of levels of aggregated data that could be shareable would be what we’d be looking for.

M. Elmore (Chair): So it’s shareable to the public, that’s the aspect?

[10:30 a.m.]

L. LaClaire: Yeah. To the public and to decision-makers in a public format. So for us, that would be on the floor of council. You know, when we’re doing a presentation like this, we would like to be able to put the data up there so that they can see what the driver is behind the recommendation or the policy.

M. Elmore (Chair): And in terms of, like, outside of the city of Vancouver, are you looking to collaborate with other municipalities or other members or…?

L. LaClaire: Yes, we manage on behalf of the entire region, so we have all of that data for the entire region. The funds that come to the city from collecting the intermunicipal business licence and the licensing fee are actually distributed to all those municipalities as well. It’s distributed, so they have that information as well.

Interjection.

L. LaClaire: The information on the pickup and drop-off.

We also distribute the funds based on pickup and drop-off activity in each of the jurisdictions. So if you have no activity in your region, and in some of the regions that is the case, there would be no funds going there. But if you have a lot, you would get a lot.

M. Elmore (Chair): In terms of the information, is it how long the rides are? Do you get more, as well, in addition to pickup and drop-off?

L. LaClaire: Yes. Actually, I’m assuming that’s available too. I haven’t looked at that. We’ve generally been looking at the pickup and drop-off locations. That’s a help for us, again, in terms of managing the curbside demand, understanding where passenger zones might be and also understanding where the actual activity is and trying to keep it manageable.

M. Elmore (Chair): Great. Other questions or comments? Jordan and then Shirley.

J. Sturdy: Thanks. Just for some clarity, the issue around zero-emission vehicles, I take it, is more timing than anything else? Obviously, with the provincial elimination of internal combustion vehicles, it’s inevitable it’s going to get there. It’s just you want to push it faster?

L. LaClaire: That’s correct. We have the target of 50 percent reduction by 2030. To achieve that, we need to be pushing a little bit hard on that. As I mentioned, these particular vehicles, if we could get them to be electric before the private vehicle, that actually would achieve a lot just because they do so much of the driving.

J. Sturdy: The other clarification was around the accessible vehicles and your suggestion that passenger-directed vehicle or TNS organizations should be obligated to acquire those vehicles as a percentage of their fleet.

You’re aware they’re not eligible for the subsidy right now, right? The taxi companies don’t even seem to be picking up on it because there’s…. We understand…. I don’t think we have had a report on exactly how much money is there, but there’s quite a pot of money that has not been accessed to acquire those vehicles. Do you have any thoughts on that?

L. LaClaire: Yeah. I mean, our thought would be…. Again, say with the taxis, we were able to require them, so there were always wheelchair-accessible taxis in the city. I don’t actually know what the solution is to get those wheelchair-accessible vehicles into their fleets. But certainly, that money would seem to be a way of doing it.

J. Sturdy: That money is sitting there waiting for somebody to take advantage of.

Chair, have we got a sense of how much money is there? Did we get that?

M. Elmore (Chair): It’s still coming to us.

J. Sturdy: We’re going to find that out later today?

M. Elmore (Chair): Yeah, that’s the question we’ve put to them.

J. Sturdy: Thank you.

M. Elmore (Chair): Okay, thanks.

Shirley.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Thank you. I think the government just made an announcement about more money to deal with wheelchair-accessible vehicles.

A couple of questions. Jordan asked my question about shareable data. We know that having data drives decision-making, good decision-making, so we need to work on that. I don’t disagree with that.

I’m interested in your chart that talks about the impacts of ride-hailing. I’m wondering if you can…. On other modes of transportation or mobility, for example, I’m wondering how you have certainty. In looking at the, for example, reduced active modes, reduced driving, no impact, how do you have certainty that all of that can be attributed to ride-hailing?

[10:35 a.m.]

I mean, aren’t there other factors? Perhaps speak to us about the methodology involved there. People are making choices for different reasons. They may feel less safe on public transit or walking in the…. You know, whatever it happens to be. So could you describe the methodology that would assign those percentages of change strictly to ride-hailing?

L. LaClaire: Again, for this particular study, which was done in 2022…. It’s not our study, so I can’t speak to the quality of it. There just aren’t a whole lot of studies out there. It’s a difficult one to do.

All the new…. What it’s trying to tell us is that we had zero ride-hailing trips before 2020 — in 2019, we had none — and then suddenly we have thousands and thousands. The question is, really: how did you do that trip before? It doesn’t get at, necessarily, the…. Say the trip’s not taken. This is asking that.

It’s a tough thing to find out because you have to ask people: “You’re catching this Uber. If that wasn’t available, what would you have done?” This is what this is trying to answer. It’s that: “Oh, I would have taken the bus, and I didn’t.” Or: “I would have driven in my own car.” That’s the highest one at 37 percent.

That’s actually, potentially, a very good outcome: the fact that it’s hitting people driving their own car most. That might mean they’re using it instead of…. Say, going to a person’s house for dinner and then not driving back. Maybe that means not drinking and driving.

If total trips just increased by the same amount — by, say, 10,000 trips — at the same time that ride-hailing was introduced, then it hasn’t taken from any of these. So it’s really hard to know the full universe of trips.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Yeah. I guess my point is just that as you point out, it’s not exactly a science to suggest that because of ride-hailing, this has happened. There are a number of other factors that are considered. That’s why methodology matters.

Interestingly enough, we’ll be hearing from Uber later today. Your point about accessible transportation, which has been a focal point for the work that we have done together…. The assumption made is that TNS drivers are not required to take disability awareness training. So in reviewing the Uber presentation, the difference might be between “required,” “presented with” or “given the opportunity.” I’m not sure. We can ask that question later, and we will.

There certainly is, according to the presentation we have from them, a lot of work done in terms of trying to avoid sexual harassment, all of those kinds of things, including responsibilities related to accessible transportation. They also are very concerned, and they have a plan, according to their presentation, to transition drivers to EVs and, in fact, have a fund which looks at helping drivers get to….

They realize that when you have high-mileage drivers, you probably…. If you’re going to deal with other issues, you have got to move those vehicles. So it’ll be interesting to take your presentation and ask some of those questions directly of Uber.

I guess the last thing. I’m interested in…. The graphic is pretty dramatic when you look at the graphic that says PDV trips are up 50 percent and taxi trips are down by 50 percent. Was there any conversation on, when that work was done, why and what the choices were related to?

L. LaClaire: Again, for a lot of this, when passenger-directed vehicles were being introduced, all that we had to compare it to, in terms of our own data and our own information, was taxi trips. That’s why so much of it is by comparison. Both with the driver training or with the requirements for wheelchair-accessible, we had these controls on the taxi fleet, and we knew that we wouldn’t with these vehicles.

In terms of the total trip activity, again, this is…. This says, “total trip activity,” so drivers driving people around has gone up 50 percent in total. Again, I don’t see that as a concern.

[10:40 a.m.]

Getting back to the other one, — where it says “reduced, reduced, reduced” — it’s actually not reduced. In a really great city, you would actually want lots of people to take lots of trips. Walking is so great that you just walk for the joy of it. You bike for the joy of it.

You think: “Oh, you know what? I’ll go visit my friend. I don’t visit them very often. It’s easy to do, because I can do it this way, this way or this way.” So we don’t see the total number of trips increasing as a problem. I just wanted to say that. It’s actually a sign of a healthy, functioning, social city.

J. Routledge: I want to come back to data. You have access to data, but you can’t share that, I understand. If I understand correctly what you’re saying, from your perspective, the data that you’re most concerned with are the pickups and drop-offs. You see where the cars are moving around.

Do you have access to other data that you’re not using but that is available?

L. LaClaire: I don’t think so. I think we’re using every­thing that we have available.

J. Routledge: Okay, and it’s basically pickup and drop-off.

L. LaClaire: Yeah, and we can share that with our council, our elected officials, in camera. In fact, we recently made changes to the curbside management fee, just at the end of last year, and we shared all the data that was behind that. It’s just that we then received a bunch of criticism for increasing the fee. We couldn’t explain why to the broader public, and neither could council.

J. Routledge: I guess my second question, a related question, is: do you get data on food delivery as well?

L. LaClaire: No.

J. Routledge: That also would have a curbside impact. Okay, thank you.

M. Elmore (Chair): All right, thank you. I don’t see any further questions.

Lon, I’d like to thank you for taking the trip over and for your presentation today — important in terms of our deliberations going forward. Thank you very much.

L. LaClaire: Thank you. It’s nice to see you all.

M. Elmore (Chair): Great to have you here.

Our next presenters are all going to be joining us. We have Kuljeet Singh and Gurjant Takhar.

My name is Mable Elmore, the Chair, and we appreciate you joining us here.

You’ll have ten minutes for your presentation, between the two of you, and then we’ll open it up to ten minutes of questions and answers from the committee.

Welcome.

GURJANT TAKHAR, KULJEET SINGH

G. Takhar: Hi, thanks for giving us time. Hello, everyone.

For today, as you guys know, we’re going to talk about the ride-hailing companies. First of all, our main point is that we want to talk about the rates, because that is set by you.

Right now we have rates of 70 cents per kilometre, plus 33 cents per minute.

M. Elmore (Chair): Thank you, friends. Can you just introduce yourselves? We want to get it on the official record here, so we’ve got your names. If you could just start with your introductions, then we’ll start your time again.

G. Takhar: Sure. I’m Gurjant Singh, and I’ve been doing Uber and Lyft for three years.

K. Singh: I am Kuljeet. I’ve been doing Uber and Lyft for the last four years now.

M. Elmore (Chair): Thank you. Go ahead.

G. Takhar: As I told you, the Uber and Lyft rates are, right now, 70 cents per kilometre and 33 cents per minute — for the last four years, since they came to operation in B.C., in the Lower Mainland, as you can see. Everything goes up, year by year, and inflation is skyrocketing.

[10:45 a.m.]

We want the rates to be increased. We should get around $1.50 per kilometre and at least 58 cents per minute. In B.C., we have other cities, too, where we have the operation of Uber and Lyft, and their prices are different. I don’t know how, in the same province, you can have different rates according to the city.

Plus the Lower Mainland, especially Vancouver, is the most expensive city in B.C., and still our rates are way lower, and it has been the same for the last four years. Just in B.C., it has not been four years, but since Uber came into operation in Canada, it has been the same.

K. Singh: Now I’m going talk about a survey they have done with the ride-hailing drivers, where it shows that the Uber advertisement says $33 per hour, but what a driver is actually getting is $6.37. I ask you: do you think we can survive on $6.37?

The second thing, from the last four years, as Gurjant told you, as to how much they’re paying per minute, it’s so unfair. They are giving us 70 cents, plus 33 cents per minute, which is the actual amount. They deduct fees from that amount. If you’re stuck — you can see, in Vancouver, wherever you go, lots of construction going on — they don’t pay for the construction. You’re stopping somewhere lots of times. They don’t pay for the time.

Another thing is that we don’t have benefits. We don’t have overtime. We don’t have anything for non-engaged time. If I go with the non-engaged time, which is when you are waiting for the ride, they don’t pay. If they don’t pay, how are drivers going to…?

Even though they announced the legislation where they say that for the engaged time, they’re going pay 120 percent, let’s say I’m online for 13 or 14 hours, and I’m getting rides only for seven hours. Then for seven hours, I’m waiting for rides, and I don’t have anything to do.

They say you’re going get paid only for the engaged time. I don’t think it’s fair. If I do seven hours, I’m going to get like $140. Then I deduct all the operation costs, like my gas, depreciation and lots of other things. I have to pay tax to the government; there are so many things.

They say they charge like 25 percent fees, but actually, they don’t charge 25 percent fees. These companies charge, most of the time, almost like 50 percent fees. They should have to stick on 15 percent, at least, in this inflationary time. Everything is becoming expensive. Mortgage price, interest rate, everything is going up.

Why does Uber not increase the price? Instead of in­creasing, they are decreasing, because they keep hiring more drivers. I don’t mind more drivers on the road if they have enough work, and they said we are not leaving carbon footprints, but there are a thousand drivers sometimes. You can find them sitting outside. If you book Uber, maybe somebody is sitting outside of your house.

How many drivers do they want? They are not paying for anything. They don’t pay a minimum wage; they don’t pay for benefits. They keep hiring more drivers, whom they are ripping off. They are taking 50 percent from every­one, which doesn’t make any sense.

We should have to think about the gaps. The service fee should be a maximum 10 percent. I’m saying that with the inflation rate, everything has increased. My mortgage has gone up, the insurance has gone up, my car price has gone up, my car repairs has gone up. Everything is up but the Uber price; it’s going lower than before.

What I used to make in eight, nine hours, like when I started, first year…. If tell you the truth, now it takes 14 to 15 hours if I want the same amount. As I told you, they don’t have to pay anything from their pockets. Still, they are taking too much money from us.

[10:50 a.m.]

Lots of drivers…. The day before yesterday somebody sent a screen shot — we have one group — where it says they earn $10 in two hours.

Even if it’s a part-time job, where’s the regulation? There’s no regulation for this company.

G. Takhar: I will read all the things. We want the PDV to come and please change the rates and increase the rates to $1.50 per kilometre, and for permanent, it should be 58 cents. On top, they should put the cap on the Uber service fees to 10 percent, because on top of 10 percent, they charge, from every ride, an extra $2 as a dispatching fee, plus we pay city fees — everything.

That’s why we are asking that the minimum rate base fare should be $4.50, plus $1.50 for the kilometre and 58 cents per minute. As you know, everything has gone up, so it should be considered. In B.C., there are so many cities — like, let’s say, Kelowna or Victoria — that have different rates. Vancouver is the most expensive, so Vancouver should have more prices, more fares, than the other cities in B.C.

K. Singh: I want to add some points. Let’s say I take a ride from here to downtown, and there’s construction going on, or there’s a bridge closed, or there’s an accident happening or something like that. If you take an alternative route…. These companies show the rider the upfront fare. But I don’t think it’s fair for a driver.

Let’s say if the Port Mann is closed, and I have to take another bridge which is ten kilometres more and takes 20 minutes more. They don’t pay for that time I spend on the road.

Even, let’s say, they send you…. They have everything that happens. They have cancellation, everything in this app. You can’t cancel more rides. You can’t do this. You can’t do that.

There’s a rating system where people give you a rating if you are going late or picking up late. Sometimes they send you ten to 12 kilometres far, and the ride, after completing that ride, is a $5 ride. Do you think it’s fair for us? If I’m going ten kilometres for a five-kilometre ride, it’s not fair. So we need a law on pickup fees; we need more on a ride so we can at least survive properly.

Let’s say I want to spend time with my father. I can’t even spend my time because I’m working 90 hours. And this is not the life we want, especially in B.C. That’s a labour province, good for labourers. I have heard so many things about B.C. There, they care about their labour.

That’s the main point. They should increase the price, lower the commission from their price, because they’re not doing anything. They are just dispatching the service. Why would they take 50 percent? If they charge 80 percent from a ride, they show me $60. That doesn’t make any sense for me. We need more transparency in this.

G. Takhar: So that’s our presentation.

M. Elmore (Chair): Okay, terrific. Well, thank you very much, Kuljeet and Gurjant, for your presentation and for providing the perspective as drivers. That’s really important to us when we look at what’s working and how to im­prove the situation here in British Columbia.

I’d like to open it up now to committee members for questions or comments for our presenters.

J. Routledge: Thank you to both of you for sharing your experience of what it’s like to be ride-hail drivers. I have a few questions, but I’ll give other people an opportunity as well.

[10:55 a.m.]

One thing, I think, would really help us in terms of figuring out how best to recommend the kinds of changes that we’re called upon to make. Can you tell us: in terms of how the app works in logging on, do you tend to log on to more than one app at a time, or do you log on to one app at a time?

G. Takhar: No, we can log on to one app.

J. Routledge: You log on to one app?

G. Takhar: Yeah, we log on to one app.

J. Routledge: There’s a public perception that it’s the nature of the work that you log on to many apps at a time. If you could just tell us a bit more about that.

G. Takhar: We can log on to multiple apps, you know, but we can only work on one app. How can we do work on two, three, multiple apps? We can’t do that.

K. Singh: Janet, we’ve been meeting, I think, for the last two years. I have explained to you, so many times, these things. Even if you turn on….

First thing, if you have 90 rides in a week, they give you a target: “Do the 90 rides, and get this much in Quest.” So you can get more of the amount. Most of the time, I want to stick with one app, because I’m losing my Quest; I’m losing my promotion. So I’m trying to stick with one app. If they are not giving me anything, what do you have as an option?

J. Routledge: Okay, thank you, and now you’re on the record.

M. Elmore (Chair): Okay. Thanks, Janet.

K. Greene: Thanks to both of you for being here so that we can get your information recorded as part of the committee’s work and so that everybody gets to see and hear from people like yourselves, as well as municipalities and others, on ride-hailing.

I did have a question about your pay. You said that the rates haven’t gone up in four years but also that your costs incurred are going up. Can you describe your pay statement? Do you get a pay statement, and how do you see the deductions coming off? How do you know that they’re accurate?

G. Takhar: For every ride, we can see the breakdown after finishing every ride. It says, at one point, that’s the total fare. It’s not the total fare. They just say: “This is the fare, and this is the service fee deduction.” Plus, there is a booking fee deduction. From every ride, they take about $2 to $5, depending on which category you do. Then there is a regulatory fee, and there’s a tax on service fees as well, which we pay to the company. Plus, they deduct our expenses, too, from every ride.

Monthly, they just say: “You drove for this much online time, this many kilometres, and this was your engaged time, the engaged kilometres you were working.”

K. Greene: Just a follow-up, please.

So on top of the fees that you’re paying to Uber, for example, then from your take-home pay, you start deducting your maintenance on your vehicle, car payments, all of those things separately?

G. Takhar: Oh, yeah, everything. All the expenses we have to deduct after that. From whatever we get out of the field, then we have our own expenses. We have a weekly operating cost. We have to clean the cars every day. Oil changes, tire changes and inspections. We have to pay phone bills, insurance, car insurance, financing of the car and wear and tear.

K. Singh: There are lots of repairs, ICBC claims, so many tickets, so many things.

Again, can I add one thing? They say there are service fees and there are booking fees. I want to tell you one thing. Let’s say they charge booking fees, which are called, for the app, maintenance and app charges, which is $2 from every ride. Let’s say if I do 25 rides in a day, and I’m paying $50 for that….

G. Takhar: In actuality, they don’t show us, prior to accepting an assignment, how much the customer paid.

[11:00 a.m.]

They can show us any amount. Let’s say the customer paid $100. They’re going to show us $80. Then from $80, they’re going to do all their deductions. There’s so much gap in the amounts, because they don’t show us anything. Even on the riders’ side, they don’t show anything to them, like how much the driver is going to get.

I guess the perception in everyone is that drivers are making so much money in that, but in actual, we are just getting…. From the full fare, I guess we are just getting 50 percent out of the full fare, whatever the rider is paying.

K. Singh: Even, let’s say….

G. Takhar: Yeah, you can go ahead.

M. Elmore (Chair): Okay, thank you. We have more questions.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for your time and your comments today.

I’m wondering if you have noticed or taken advantage of the opportunity…. As I understand it, Uber signed an agreement with the UFCW related to protecting workers who work for them. Obviously, a pretty large private sector union. Have you taken advantage of the agreement that was signed between Uber and UFCW related to the standards that apply to workers?

G. Takhar: That’s just in the papers. Around 10,000 drivers reported concerns about everything last year to the UFCW regarding deactivations, regarding the rates, all the stuff, but in reality, they just heard the cases for about 900 people in a year. So where are the 9,000 people going to go?

Plus you don’t have much time to complain about anything to that. If you have an account that gets deactivated, you just have one year, just one year to do your complaint and get back to you if you want to sort out anything. There’s no advantage of the UFCW because we didn’t choose that union. They gave us the same solution as Uber gives us, which is…. Obviously, we have written in papers of Uber as well, like this is the thing.

I remember there was one guy. He got deactivated after nine months, because the Uber guys told him: “You had a complaint nine months ago regarding this. Now you are being deactivated.” So that’s the same solution the UFCW gave him after a year. So there’s no use to the UFCW. That’s just in the papers. They are doing agreements and things like that.

K. Singh: Can I add a point? It’s all algorithm. The deactivation they’re talking about — they don’t have any proof. They don’t ask you for any proof. If you have the video recordings, still they don’t ask you. It’s all algorithm. If somebody complained or something, it automatically deactivates the driver’s account, which just doesn’t make any sense.

They should have to have an office here. If somebody’s doing wrong, come person to person. If you’re firing someone from work, like, let’s say, in McDonald’s, everybody’s in front of them, what they have done. They can show in the video what they have done. The customer complains in front of the manager. How these UFCW and Uber…. It’s the same thing. It’s nothing changed. Whatever they say, UFCW says the same thing.

G. Takhar: How can we prove that we are not guilty? Because they don’t have any mandatory dashcams. They don’t set up recordings for the rights. So how are we going to prove that? If the customer complains, you are deactivated. You don’t have any solution to that.

M. Elmore (Chair): Shirley, do you have another question?

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): No, I’m fine, thanks.

M. Elmore (Chair): Thanks. We’re just running out. We’ve got 30 seconds. Just to get on the record, what was your…? You wanted an increase for the minimum rate for every minute in every kilometre. Can you just repeat that for me?

G. Takhar: We want the base fare to be $4.50. We want $1.50 per kilometre and 58 cents per minute.

M. Elmore (Chair): All right. Okay. Well, thank you very much. We’re right at time. I want to thank both of you, Kuljeet and Gurjant, for your time and laying out your experiences. That’s really important for us here. Thank you very much for your presentation.

[11:05 a.m.]

I’d like to welcome…. We have our next presenters, Guramar and Mandeep. I think they’re both there. They’re all together, so very efficient. Terrific.

Welcome. Hello. My name is Mable Elmore. I’m the Chair.

You’ll have ten minutes for your presentation, followed by ten minutes of discussion.

We’ll start, and can you please introduce yourselves so we can get you on the record here.

G. Sidhu: Hi. This is Guramar. We’ll start off with the HOV lanes. We have really big issues.

M. Elmore (Chair): Thank you. Then you’re joined by…. Is that Mandeep Singh that you’re joined by?

M. Singh: Hi, this is Mandeep. I’m driving Uber for two years now.

M. Elmore (Chair): Great. Okay, terrific. Thank you.

Go ahead and start your presentation.

GURAMAR SIDHU, MANDEEP SINGH

G. Sidhu: Hi, guys. The basic, main point we’re going to carry out is about HOV lanes and the issues that we are facing with the pickup and drop-off in the downtown areas as well as other parts of the city.

Starting with the HOV lanes. We guys are basically busy during congestion time, when the time is really busy. The busy time is morning from eight to ten, and after that, during the evening times, starting around 2:30 all the way down to five, 5:30 or six.

In those particular times, that congestion causes us lateness in getting the riders to their destination. When we guys are…. Let’s say I give you an example.

I picked up a customer from downtown, and I’m going over all the way down to the airport. There is congestion. All of a sudden, a taxi driver comes over, and he passes through the HOV lane. Now that customer who’s riding with us is putting pressure on us that I need to reach the particular point, the airport, within this minute. “Why are you guys not using the HOV lane?”

At that time, when we say that we are not allowed to use an HOV lane, first of all, they feel pity on us. I would like to say that they always say: “Why are these guys having different rules when you’re providing the same services as those other guys?” For Uber, as well as taxi, we guys are doing the same job, taking the customers from one destination to the other. But we are treated on a different spot.

Now the biggest thing that comes along with this is a rating issue. When we are not able to use the HOV lanes, the customer gets late. They see a taxi guy has reached over there about five or ten minutes earlier, and they give us a poor rating.

The rating is also included in the maps, because Uber is using really, I would say, a third-party map. They ask us to turn a left or a right on a certain point or during some point of time, and time of the day, which doesn’t allow us to do a right or a left turn in the downtown. But the customer thinks that the Uber driver is doing a turnaround to make more money. That’s not the case, because the customer is given the amount upfront. We are paid the same amount.

On the next point, I would like to have Mandeep, who can put forward the coming points.

M. Singh: Hi there. Actually, I would like to talk about the point for the tickets, the violation tickets that we got downtown while picking up the customer or dropping off the customer.

I think there should be some designated points for Uber drivers to pick up and drop off the customer, especially for Canada Place. It’s very busy during the cruise season. There is a proper commercial drop-off, like for taxis, but there is no drop-off or pickup for the Uber if we pick up a customer and they have bags or something.

They want us to drop off just as near as possible to the cruise. But we can’t go there because there is no drop-off, and customers start fighting with us. They said: “Why don’t you guys go there?” We are like…. We have to explain where we don’t have the right to stop in between, like on the site where the taxis can stop.

They get so much, like as Guramar told this…. They’ve become so petty, and they give us ratings. We can’t do anything at that point. I think there should be some designated points which can help us and especially can save us from the big tickets.

We can’t negotiate with the city bylaws officer. They said that we are not following the rules. “You do not come under the taxi laws. You are just ride-hailing drivers.” So how can we negotiate out of that? Especially for GPS…. Like for Uber, it’s a very outdated GPS.

[11:10 a.m.]

The thing is whenever we drive downtown, Uber has…. I don’t know when they got the blueprint of the GPS. They never updated it. They just take us to the “no left turns.” They will take us to the “do not enter” areas. They will say: “Make a U-turn on West Georgia in between….”

I don’t know how this Uber GPS works. Especially to save the money of the customer and to give them the cheapest ride, they will tell us to go in between the streets. And especially they just…. Sometimes they get us to enter the bicycle lane — that you can go through this lane, and you can just pick the customer or drop the customer. I don’t know how to explain this.

This is a very outdated app. I think PTB should negotiate with Uber so they can update the app and can charge the right money, and they can give us the right directions to safely go onto the road.

G. Sidhu: I would like to add about the pickup and the drop-off issues. The busiest pole park in the whole downtown is the Canada Place. Out there, there are some pickup and drop-off zones. During the busy season, like the cruise season, the pickup spot for the Uber guys is on the corner of Cordova and Burrard.

For someone who has suitcases with them — three, four, sometimes a family with six suitcases — they would have to walk all the way around for 300 metres.

I would like to share an example. One of our drivers was just by the Vancouver Convention Centre. There was a city bylaw guy. He told him not to stop there, but he said: “This is a commercial vehicle stop.” And such a thing…. The bylaw said: “You guys are not the commercial drivers. You are just the Uber drivers. The taxis are commercial guys. You guys are not commercial guys.”

We have to pass the class 4 licence. Why are we not being designated as commercial drivers? That’s the biggest point.

Now the most pressing issues that we are facing every time, especially doing the airport pickups…. Vancouver is a tourist city. Out here the tourists are coming with their kids. The taxis are taking the smaller kids without a car seat, but Uber can’t do that. That’s a big, big issue.

I had a customer from Europe. I had some customers from Australia. They said that the Uber drivers are exempted for the car seats. Until and unless the parents are holding the kid safely, they are allowed to do those in all those countries. And why are we not allowed to do that? If a taxi can carry kids without a car seat, why is Uber being barred for that?

Along with that, if I were to point out some places, like Granville Street…. A taxi can do a U-turn out there, but the Uber can’t. And the minimum, so that Uber acts right…. We have to wait for seven minutes. And for seven minutes in a no-stop zone, it’s a big issue. Police come over. The bylaw guys come over, and when we ask the customer to come over to the next spot because we can’t stop there, they get angry with us — and then false complaints and deactivation, leading to lesser ratings.

I have been going through this thing. A customer said that the driver hadn’t come over to the right spot. That got my rating brought down, and then that affected my tier of the driving thing.

I will just read from the things so that it could be an easier part. First of all, HOV lane access. From six in the morning till nine in the morning and then from three to six, the HOV lanes going from downtown towards the airport and coming from the airport towards downtown are just designated for buses and the taxis. I would like us guys included to that lane, because we are doing pretty much the same thing — taking over the customers.

Then the biggest issue is the car seat. Lots of our drivers who feel that we are responsible for that — we are rejecting the rides. Some guys who don’t care about that are coming over, picking up the rides without a car seat as well.

And if we can get some designated pickup and drop-off zones along with that. The minimum time shouldn’t be seven minutes. It should drop down to three minutes in downtown. We’re not talking about the whole city.

[11:15 a.m.]

Out in the busy areas, even in Surrey, when we are doing the things into the Surrey Central station, we are having the same issues. We don’t have any designated drop-off zone at the Surrey Central place, and we are getting tickets out there every day.

M. Singh: Uber should update its GPS too. That’s the big issue, because we have to work with this app, and they just give us the directions. We have to follow that. So their directions must be followed by laws, and it should also be safer for everyone.

G. Sidhu: That’s pretty much it, guys. Thanks for your time.

M. Elmore (Chair): Terrific. Thank you for your presentation.

I’ll open it up to committee members.

K. Greene: I definitely have some concerns about…. It sounds like the situation with the map…. I’m not sure what it is that we are able to do about that. But I’d like to investigate that further as a committee, because I have a lot of concerns that it’s telling you to do things that are illegal, like turning left in certain areas of Vancouver.

I did have a question. I didn’t hear from you whether you have any other employment. Is this your only source of employment?

M. Singh: Yeah. That’s the only source of employment.

G. Sidhu: Mandeep has been doing it for the last three years. I’m doing this for the last two years. That’s our only source of employment.

K. Greene: How many hours do you think you work in a day and a week?

M. Singh: Probably 13 hours.

G. Sidhu: More than 13 hours. If we do it all together in a week, we are working more than 70 hours. The 70 hours is the minimum the drivers are working. We have around 50 percent of the drivers…. For a main source of income, they are working even 90 hours a week.

M. Singh: This 90 hours, how they differentiate it…. They say that their driver was online for 90 hours, and then they show us that he was online only for 35 hours, just for the work purposes.

G. Sidhu: They keep us on the road all the time so that they can make more money and rip us off as well.

K. Greene: Thank you. I appreciate your presentation.

J. Routledge: Thank you so much for giving us this insight.

Just picking up on Kelly’s question, when you’re talking about the hours that you’re working, you’re talking about the time that you’re logged on, I assume. But you’re not paid for that whole time, as I understand it. You’re paid for the engaged time. You’re paid from pickup to drop-off.

Can you tell us, generally, what percentage of the time you’re actually working are you being paid for?

G. Sidhu: Somewhere between 40 to 50 percent of the actual time. I’ll give you an example of my…. We are not paid for the pickup. Let’s say if a pickup is around five or ten minutes away, we are not paid for that amount of time. We are paid when we start the ride, when the rider is in the vehicle, and until the time we drop off the rider, that’s the time when we are paid.

If we are going towards the rider to pick him up, there is no pay.

J. Routledge: Okay. So you’re paid for when the passenger is in the car?

G. Sidhu: Yes.

I would like to elaborate on the online and active time, if we have time. Otherwise we are covering that online and active time issue in the next segment as well. Me and Inder would be giving a presentation about the online and active time, and you could wait.

J. Routledge: Okay, great. Thank you.

M. Elmore (Chair): I have a question about the surge pricing. Does the amount of money you receive also depend on…? If it’s surge pricing, do you get more money, or how does that work?

G. Sidhu: We used to get more money when there was surge pricing. But nowadays, Uber doesn’t apply that surge pricing. I have been, through some customers….

Inder Raj had a customer in downtown last year. That customer paid $80 for a four-minute ride.

But you ended up getting around $20?

I. Gill: Yes.

G. Sidhu: That’s how they play. They give surge pricing to the customer, and they don’t deliver the same surge amount to the driver.

M. Singh: In addition, we don’t know how this app works. When we check the prices on the app, whether it’s surge price or something like that, what they do…. They show a customer the more price, but when we got the ride, it’s with the regular fares.

[11:20 a.m.]

This is a very common thing, because they just show us that this area is busy. That area is busy, and the customer is paying more money, but we are getting the regular fare. We are not pretty clear with the surge prices, because we are also in the dark at what this company is doing with this app. Because they have full control of this app, how can we explain surge prices? We are also not clear about the surge prices.

Sometimes they take $100 for the five-kilometre ride, but we are getting only the same $15. How can we negotiate with surge prices? It’s a very confusing thing.

What I would do…. There is one more thing in the app. They will show the driver that this area is busy. They just give us the fake information, mislead us so that they can collect more drivers on that place. There is no work, and all the drivers are sitting around. They are just fooling around. I don’t know, like this app has some…. It is playing with the drivers. That I will say.

G. Sidhu: With the surge pricing, the main issue is it’s linked with the drivers, but actually it’s linked with Uber. If a customer is paying four times the surge, they are blaming the drivers that you are getting this amount, but actually the main amount….

It happened with me. A customer was charged four times the surge; I got the same thing on a regular fare. But the customer is still blaming me: “You guys are making pretty good money.” So they’re just extortion, I would say. They’re extorting Canadian money from Canadian people, and then not even paying the right amount to the Canadian drivers.

M. Singh: And there should be the proper amount paid to the driver. But I don’t know why they took surge prices so much higher when there are drivers available. And they keep hiring more drivers every day. I don’t know how they keep up with the app that it shows that there are no drivers available. And if we could go with the regular prices, I don’t know how it’s going to happen.

G. Sidhu: The surge pricing is, like I would say, directly linked to the demand. Whenever there is a busy time, I assure you all the regular-time drivers, along with the part-time drivers, are on the road. No one is just sitting home during the busy time of any year. Still, if they are putting on surge pricing, they are just playing around.

M. Elmore (Chair): I take your point that the issue of the lack of transparency and accountability kind of, from the top down, from the price they give to the client to the cost that you receive — it doesn’t all add up. You’re not able to see how they break down all the pricing, so I take that point.

Other questions from the committee members?

G. Sidhu: The surge pricing is….

M. Elmore (Chair): Go ahead.

G. Sidhu: The surge pricing, I would definitely say, is a bone to the dog. They put surge pricing onto the map. All the drivers, thinking there is a bone, are running like dogs. And when we reach there, there’s no work out there. I would definitely say we don’t want the surge pricing. Give us the normal work but give it with transparency. That would be the biggest thing.

M. Elmore (Chair): Terrific. Thank you very much.

I want to thank you for sharing your perspectives and your presentation and answering our questions today. It really helps to hear your perspective as drivers on the road, with your experience with the apps and, really, to hear from you. So thank you very much for sharing your perspectives with us today.

All right. Now we have our next two ride-hailing drivers. We’ll allow them to transfer over.

Is that Inder Raj Gill and Vicky Sharma, the other two? Is that another…?

G. Sidhu: Actually, Vicky had some situation at his home, so I’ll be covering his spot as well.

M. Elmore (Chair): Okay. Terrific.

We’ve got ten minutes for you for your presentation and then ten minutes for question-and-answer.

Now, I’ll just have you again please introduce your­selves, so we can get your names on record. Start with your introductions.

INDER RAJ GILL, GURAMAR SIDHU

I. Gill: Hi, my name is Inder Raj Gill, and I have been, in totality, working with the gig apps for three years now. For the last year and a half, I’ve been driving for Uber as a ride-hail driver.

[11:25 a.m.]

G. Sidhu: I’m Guramar Sidhu. I’m working for Uber for around two years as a full-time and around 3½ years as a part-time. I used to do part-time work before, and now I’m a full-time worker.

M. Elmore (Chair): Terrific. Thanks. Go ahead with your presentation.

I. Gill: We’d like to cover two major topics during our presentation. We’d like to cover the utilization rate. I will speak more on that. Guramar is going to be covering online and active time.

With regards to the utilization rate, what we are trying to say or what, basically, it means is…. How much work do we actually get? Even though we are online, on an app, how much work are we actually getting?

Just to give you an example, when I say that we have a utilization rate of 50 percent, that means that out of the 100 percent of the time that we are on the job, we are only working 50 percent of the time. That is what I mean by a 50 percent utilization rate, just to clarify what we’re going to be talking about.

In the real-world scenario, in the practicality of every­thing, we only are…. Forty to 55 percent of the time is what our utilization rate is.

Now, if we come to what the province has offered as legislation, which is 120 percent of active time…. I don’t think it goes far enough, when we bring into perspective the utilization rate. If you’re only working, in the worst cases, 40 percent of the time, the 120 percent is of nothing. If we are just sitting there, logged into the app….

Basically, we are on the job. There’s nothing else we can do. If we are online and Uber decides to give us an assignment, if we are doing something else, we won’t be able to pick up the assignment. So we have to be vigilant. We have to be actively looking at the app. We have to have it online. That is only when we accept an assignment. So 120 percent of nothing basically means nothing.

We need to really work on the utilization rate, in my opinion. If we are only active, like I said, 50 percent, basically, we are getting paid less than the minimum, which, like Kuljeet and Gurjant…. They pinpointed yesterday’s survey in Ontario. A driver ultimately makes $6. I don’t know in what part of the world that is considered a livable wage.

Here in B.C., considering we have higher gas prices and higher insurance prices and considering we are only working 50 percent with the clients, that does not translate into a livable wage.

Anyways, I’ll go back to my topic, which is, like I said…. We have to correct this, to make this situation better for the drivers who are putting in their hard work, who are putting in their sweat equity, who are putting, actually, their monetary investment into this work, whereas Uber does nothing. I mean, what it gives us is just assignments.

We are the ones who are actually making the entire wheel go round. We need a utilization rate of at least 80 percent for all this to be viable. Everything will fall into place if the driver is working 80 percent of the time that they are on the job.

That is what I sincerely request. To benefit the whole gig economy, to work cohesively, the driver or the worker needs to be working at least 80 percent of the time that they’re online on a platform.

That’s what I wanted to talk about, the utilization rate. I’ll let Guramar talk about online and active time.

G. Sidhu: Carrying forward regarding the online and active time. Online time is the time when a certain driver turns on his app as available for hire. The active time is the time when we are just giving some rides.

Emphasizing on this one…. According to the law, we are not allowed to work more than 13 hours a day while driving, if we go all the way, according to the CVSE laws. In Uber, that 13-hour driving time is just considered as active time. I would like to say that the app should be off after 13 hours of online time. That will also increase the utilization rate, as said by Inder Raj.

[11:30 a.m.]

Let me give you an example. I worked for 18 hours on a day of December, but actually, active time was ten hours. Let’s put it this way. Am I not exhausted in those 18 hours? Shouldn’t it be my online time? The time when I am working should be 18 hours. I’m not going to the gym. I’m not going to the cinema with my family in those eight hours. I’m sitting out in a car, waiting for the ride, but still my basic online time is 18 or 20 hours.

The thing that I told you, that I worked 1½ years as a part-time driver and now I’m doing a full-time driver…. I could be a very good example. Let’s say I’m doing part-time work, and I’m just doing it on Saturday or Sundays. If I would have to work for 14 hours both the days, it wouldn’t affect my health altogether because I’m just doing it for those two days. But when that thing is flipped over and I’m doing 14 hours to 15 hours online time every day, seven days a week, now let’s put this thing into the safety of the people. Let’s put this thing into the safety of the pedestrians when we are on the rides.

I had a customer. She told me she had a ride with someone, and the driver slept at the red light. The light turned green, and the customer told him: “Uncle, the light is green. Let’s go up ahead.” That guy told the rider that he was working since the last 17 hours. He’s working for 17 hours, and his app is still going on.

That should be constrained according to the time. The active time shouldn’t be considered as 13 hours. The online time should be the main benchmark. When a certain person is online for 13 hours a day, after that, his app shouldn’t go out. It doesn’t matter even if in active time, he’s five hours. He’s exhausted. He’s sitting out, looking out for work for the last 13 hours.

If this thing is constrained properly, if the online time is brought into the face, then we will be able to get the utilization thing pretty much very easily. After every 72 hours, in the CVSE law, there should be a 24-hour sleeping time or off time.

There is no sleep or off time in Uber apps. We have drivers working for 92 hours a week. Gurjant worked for 92 hours. The other guy who was scheduled to be here, who had some issues and wasn’t able to attend the meeting, he worked for 95 hours. Out of those 95, he was active just 35 hours. Now the utilization rate scenario would be…. We couldn’t justify, according to this, online and active times. We should be getting, online, 35 hours.

I used to work as a truck driver. At that time, I was able to work 70 hours, and engaged and non-engaged time was all according to this active and online time.

I would like Inder Raj to go ahead with the engaged and non-engaged time.

I. Gill: Yeah. With regards to engaged and non-engaged time, first of all, it just treats the whole pay situation, you know, like a bouncing ball situation between the engaged and non-engaged time. We understand the definition of engaged time is that as soon as you get an assignment, you will start getting paid according to the legislation. But what happens when the utilization rate…?

I keep coming back, circling around to that, only because 50 percent of the time, you do not get assignments, so the engaged, non-engaged time falls short in terms of the driver getting paid a proper, livable or even minimum wage. In my opinion, I believe it’s the online time which should be considered as a benchmark. Engaged time only covers a portion of it or, I’d say, just a fraction of the problem. It’s the online time. That is the benchmark which everything should be derived from or calculated from.

I think we are done with what we had to present. Please, if you have any questions.

[11:35 a.m.]

M. Elmore (Chair): Terrific. Thank you very much for your presentation.

I’ll open it up to committee members for questions.

I have one. I can start. What’s the penalty if you don’t accept an assignment? What’s the consequence if you get a trip and then you decline it? Does that happen often? Do you do that? What are the repercussions of that?

I. Gill: A driver getting an assignment is based absolutely on their rating. Now, if we don’t pick up an assignment, our rating falls. So does a driver’s chance to get an assignment. It is a very tedious task to uphold the rating. You probably would have heard from each and every one of us how we are so concerned about our ratings. It’s anyone’s wish and whim to rate their driver.

Now, if we don’t accept an assignment, our rating falls, and we are pushed down, way down into the queue of receiving an assignment. It’s the app that tells us: “Keep up the rating. We’ll keep giving you good work.” It’s not us. It’s the app. It’s the contract that tells us that.

We see that every day in our life. For example, when my rating falls down to a certain level, I know that I won’t be getting an assignment. Even though I’m sitting amongst five drivers, I’ll be the last one to get that assignment which goes around.

I hope that answers the question.

M. Elmore (Chair): Yeah. Thank you. I see Kelly is next. I just have one more question.

Are there any incentives that are offered by Uber, in particular, that you’re required to incorporate?

I. Gill: The incentives are, again, tied to us working over hours, working over the required amount of time. For example, we get incentives based on how many trips we are doing. For example, from Monday to Wednesday, or Monday to Thursday, the app gives us a tier or a selection of incentives. If I do 20 trips, I’ll get this amount of money. If I do 40 trips, I get this amount of money.

So what the app asks us to do is to keep driving, and it asks us to pick up whatever assignments in whichever area, whichever distances. It doesn’t clarify that: “Okay. This is the kind of money you’d make on these kinds of trips that you’re taking.” It just requires us to do everything at whatever cost.

G. Sidhu: I would like to add on to this one. Not every single driver gets any incentives every week.

I. Gill: Yeah. That’s tied to the rating as well.

G. Sidhu: That’s tied to the rating, as well, and sometimes not even to the rating. They will just pick it up. Some drivers…. These guys are getting some promotions this week, and these guys are not getting this.

I. Gill: The newer drivers…. If they’re trying to recruit new drivers, which is a way to lure newer drivers in…. There are obviously no restrictions on how many drivers can be driving on the platform.

This has happened to me. When I started off, very early on, they gave me an incentive of $400 just for ten trips. They want newer drivers to join the platform, because drivers like us have figured out the platform. We’ve figured out what the problems are, so we are able to somehow navigate the app in whichever way possible.

First of all, it’s just a fool’s errand. Otherwise, if you’re not picking up the assignments which don’t make sense in terms of money and time…. We don’t pick them up, because we now understand how the app works. The newer driver doesn’t. So the app incentivizes the newer drivers to stay on the platform.

G. Sidhu: And let’s say we are not able to complete that request. We don’t get anything out of those 20 or 30 trips.

I. Gill: That we’ve already done.

K. Greene: Thank you. I appreciate you explaining the ins and outs of the app, using the app.

I was wanting to ask you…. You said a few times that people regularly work 60, 70, 80 or even 90 hours a week. Can you explain to me what’s keeping you? What are the forces that are keeping you in employment where you have those extreme hours but only maybe 30 or 50 percent engagement time?

[11:40 a.m.]

G. Sidhu: That’s the money that we want to make to get the living for our houses. That’s the main issue that’s leading us. We are not even making the ends meet.

I will give you an example. The amount I used to make in 70 hours — now I’m not making the same amount even after working 90 hours. We are not making much money. We are getting paid even lesser than….

When we expense out, it will be even less than minimum wage. That’s the main thing.

I. Gill: The report from Ontario proves it.

G. Sidhu: The report from Ontario already proves it.

What about the reports? We have some weeks in our apps where we have worked 80, 90 hours. But we have just got $1,000 or $1,200 a week working 80 hours, working 90 hours.

I. Gill: To just continue on what Guramar said, a lot of us need, or are kind of enslaved to, the promises of flexibility, as in…. The app, on their whim and their wishes, they give us assignments. But this…. I don’t know. I can’t even call it a silver lining. It’s essentially….

For example, a lot of us have to take care of our families, our parents. People like us right now are, due to our skill set, finding it difficult to find a job. So we have only this option. We just log on to the app. Whatever work is thrown our way, we take it.

A lot of us are in that situation. People are leaving their trucking jobs or people are leaving their full-time jobs because they’re not getting enough shifts. They’re not getting enough hours. Their mortgage payments have gone up. Their rents have gone up. Groceries have gone up. I don’t think we have to explain or even talk about, you know, the prevailing situation.

But to answer your question in just one sentence, it’s just…. I can’t even say that. We have to make ends meet.

G. Sidhu: The main thing is that they are leveraging the flexibility thing: “You are your own boss.” We are not our own boss. We are slaves, kind of. If we don’t accept a trip, our rating, our acceptance rate, go down.

Secondly, if a certain rider is being very rude to us, we are saying, “Yes sir, no sir…”

I. Gill: So our ratings don’t fall.

G. Sidhu: …so that our ratings don’t fall. We are sometimes in such situations that if we go ahead and give the ride to that particular guy, he could be dangerous to us. He doesn’t just give us bad ratings. We are not getting him out of the vehicle.

The flexibility thing. I stopped driving trucks because I could spend time with my daughter. In trucking, you would have to be out of the house for four or five days. The same thing is prevailing out here. I’m leaving for work at five in the morning. I’m coming back home at nine. My daughter is leaving at that time when I’m leaving, and she’s again off to bed when I’m home. I’m still in the same basket.

M. Elmore (Chair): Okay, we’ve got another question from Janet.

J. Routledge: Yes, I have one question that plagues me in terms of the stories you’ve shared with us and your frustration.

You’ve talked about the app a lot. You’ve talked about algorithms a lot. Do you have any human contact with your employer?

G. Sidhu: No.

I. Gill: Can I take it?

G. Sidhu: Yes, sure.

I. Gill: Hi, Janet. It’s good to see you again.

There is no point of contact. Whatever contracts or whatever updates to contracts that are pushed down on us, they’re either a yes or a no. If we accept it, that is what gives us work. If we don’t, then we’re just off.

G. Sidhu: We can go online on that.

I. Gill: If we’re trying to approach customer support, they’re agents who are not even here in Canada. A lot of the time, they’re not trained enough to understand how the system even works here in Canada. There is no way for us to actually contact the people who make a difference.

So we are, again, on the wishes and whims of the app.

G. Sidhu: Just for ten seconds, I would like to cover one thing. One of our drivers, Mandeep, came over with me. His app was blocked yesterday.

[11:45 a.m.]

The reason for that was a customer told Uber that his vehicle is not working properly. That’s it. His app was blocked. He had to send all the pictures of his vehicle inside and outside, had to wait for three to four hours until his app again came back online. Who is responsible for those four or five hours that he lost work?

M. Elmore (Chair): All right. Well, thank you very much. We really appreciate your presentation and sharing the ins and outs of your experiences driving on the road, day in and out. It’s very important for our deliberations here for the committee. So thank you very much for the time, and thank you for your presentations.

G. Sidhu: Thanks for hearing us. Thanks a lot.

M. Elmore (Chair): Okay. That concludes our presentations this morning. We’ll be going into committee recess and back at 12.45.

The committee recessed from 11:46 a.m. to 12:48 p.m.

[M. Elmore in the chair.]

M. Elmore (Chair): We’re back. We’re on air. This is Mable Elmore, Chair of the Special Committee to Review Passenger Directed Vehicles. Thank you very much.

We have our next presenters here.

I’d like to welcome you.

From Uber, we have Michael van Hemmen and Yanique Williams.

Welcome. You’ve got 15 minutes for your presentation, followed by 15 minutes for questions and answers from the committee.

Over to you.

UBER

Y. Williams: Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to present to you today. My name is Yanique Williams.

In my role as Uber’s public policy adviser for British Columbia and western Canada, it would normally be my honour to represent Uber at proceedings like these. How­ever, as Uber’s general manager for Canada mobility is based in British Columbia, we could think of no one better to present to you today.

With that, I turn it over to Michael van Hemmen.

M. van Hemmen: Thanks, Yanique.

I had the chance to speak to a similar committee about four years ago. I think MLA Sturdy was the only one who was on that committee and who’s on this one as well. It’s a pleasure to be with all of you today.

[12:50 p.m.]

I was born and raised in Port McNeill, and I live in Port Moody right now.

As Abigail’s class was going to be on a field trip, we thought, actually, a more cool field trip would be to watch me present to a committee. I don’t know if she felt the same way but a little bit of excitement in bringing your daughter to work today.

The primary thing I want to leave you with is that the current regulatory framework for ride-sharing in British Columbia is working quite well. While we have some tweaks to propose, given that three of the four years that ride-sharing operated in B.C. were during COVID, we think it would be premature to make significant changes to the framework.

To start, I want to leave you with the vision of what Uber is trying to accomplish. Uber wants to provide an alternative to people owning a car or, in the case of a family like mine, where I’m married with three kids and living in the suburbs, to help us avoid owning more than one car.

We do that by enabling safe, affordable, reliable transportation options. So if you want to rent a car, order a ride with a driver, select an e-scooter, understand where transit stops are outside or near your location, those options are all available in the Uber app in B.C. today.

We are focused on the personal car market for a couple of reasons. The first is that it’s massive. Across North America, individuals take about 1,500 trips a year. Those are journeys that could be walking between two different locations. The vast, vast majority of them are driving. So that market, if you think about it, is orders of magnitude larger than the existing taxi businesses today.

Second, in most cities, specifically in B.C., there is no more space for new roads. There’s no more space for new traffic. We need to make more efficient use of the space for housing and density, and we need to rely upon transit and other shared modes of transportation to help move people around.

Transit doesn’t work in all circumstances for all trips. So there need to be other options like ride-sharing, taxi, micro mobility and the density to support them. If we do that together — along, again, as I mentioned, with a strong transit backbone — we will see fewer private car trips and less congestion in our cities.

Uber leans into this even further through products like UberX share. That is a lower-cost product that allows multiple riders to share a ride who will follow along a similar route, even if they’re not going to the exact same destination or have the exact same starting point.

Over the last four years, we’ve expanded our platform to reach the majority of British Columbians in the Lower Mainland, Fraser Valley, central Okanagan and capital regional district. We now serve more than two-thirds of B.C.’s population. We’ve seen B.C. become the leading prov­ince, not just in Canada, for Uber. Actually, if I was to expand this across North America, to be the leading regional or state jurisdiction.

Today more than 20 percent of kilometres driven via Uber are in electric vehicles. We will talk more about that later.

Over this period, we’ve been committed to a number of local and national partners that support British Columbians. We’ve chosen to partner with organizations that have a direct link or can receive a direct benefit from the services enabled via our apps.

There are three that I’d like to highlight today: Mothers Against Drunk Driving Canada, where we work together to increase awareness of the dangers of impaired driving and the alternatives available; Driving Change, which is a multi-year, multi-million-dollar campaign, with Uber partnering with leading sexual violence and domestic violence partners around the world, including EVA B.C. and YWCA Canada, which assist vulnerable people with transportation as they’re leaving difficult circumstances; and CNIB, which is a three-year partnership that we have with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind to address the ongoing challenge of ride refusals experienced by their members who are guide dog handlers, as well as other blind and low-sighted users of the platform.

There are two ends of the Uber platform, riders and drivers. For riders, ride-sharing platforms like Uber have made life a lot easier. When time is tight, Uber can be trusted to help someone get from A to B quickly and safely. Uber also has acted as a safety net for low-income individuals and other underserved communities who need access to reliable transportation and can’t afford to buy a car.

To date, 3.15 million unique riders — these aren’t trips; these are people — have used Uber in B.C. since 2020, which is a staggering number. That’s a lot of people. This includes local residents and tourists who have come to rely on Uber as they travel and use it at their own home location.

Eighty-one percent of riders say safety is an important reason why they select Uber, and it rises to 89 percent amongst women. And 77 percent of riders agree that having options like Uber helps reduce impaired driving in their area.

[12:55 p.m.]

Part of the reason why riders and drivers alike choose Uber is because of the safety features available in our app. We have a senior vice-president of safety and customer support. He reports directly to our CEO. It’s something that we take seriously and invest in with significant resources.

It’s how we’ve built features like Share My Trip, which allows a rider to share — with a friend, family, loved one or anyone — their trip in real time. You can see the location of the trip, who the driver is, the destination, when they should arrive and, also, if it’s diverted off route.

Another favourite of mine is RideCheck. If we detect sudden braking, like you might have been in a car accident, we’ll push a notification to both the rider and driver to see if you’re okay. Also, it’s in place if you’ve been in one location for an extended period of time without movement, which might lead us to think that something might not be going according to plan.

Finally, these features are especially helpful as teen accounts have become available. My eldest is 14, and given we only have one car, and I’ve got three kids, and they’re at ages when there are definitely busy family activities after school and through the evening, we occasionally use Uber to get him where he needs to be at different times.

I’m able to track his trip automatically. He doesn’t have to share it. I track it automatically. We have PIN dispatch. That means that as he gets into the car, he has to give a PIN to the driver to start the trip. So we know that he’s getting into the right vehicle. I’m able to contact the driver, as well, in real time, as that trip continues.

While riders turn to the platform for safe, affordable and reliable rides, drivers appreciate the safety features and turn to the platform for flexible earning opportunities.

On the screen here, we have three examples of three real drivers: Balwinder, Joy and Sung. They all drive for different reasons. One, Balwinder, for more time with his family. Joy, who is our first driver here in Victoria, drives to keep herself busy in retirement, and Honey Toes is actually in the car occasionally as she’s driving. Sung drives to help with the rising cost of living.

What brings them collectively to the platform is flexi­bility. Flexibility is the ability to work if you want, when you want and where you want. Ninety-one percent of drivers, who are ultimately very important customers for us, say that they couldn’t drive without it or they wouldn’t drive without it.

This is obvious when you look at the breakdown for how people drive and the number of hours. More than 50 percent are driving less than 15 hours a week. Also, you’ll see variation significantly, where upwards of 50 percent of drivers will change their hours by more than ten hours in a week because they want that extra flexibility.

You might want to work 40 hours one week, but you might want to work only ten another week. You have that flexibility, based upon your own schedule, to do that. We don’t have any say in that.

The earnings that drivers achieve here in British Columbia are higher than minimum wage. First, we have to report them quarterly to the Passenger Transportation Board. I can share with you that the median hourly earnings in Vancouver are $36 per hour, excluding tip, during the time that drivers are working, from when they accept the trip through to when the trip has been completed and the rider dropped off.

This has been particularly important in a time of rising costs. Seventy-three percent of drivers say that having flexible work has helped them in emergency financial situations.

We know that there’s a lot more that can be done to level up our work with drivers. That’s why two years ago UFCW Canada, Canada’s largest private sector union, and Uber came together and signed a landmark agreement that offers drivers and delivery people representation services and advocates for joint leave for labour reforms across the country.

If I was to have told you when we were last at committee, in 2018, that Uber was going to have a deal with a large private sector union that’s a part of the B.C. Fed…. I think people would have laughed at me and said that there was no way that was to happen.

We put in the work and did that, and the outcomes, from what we have seen from drivers, are largely positive. Ninety-one percent of workers agree with the proposed reforms, that they’re a good compromise, and 94 percent of workers in B.C. agree it’s important that any changes to app-based work protect the flexibility of a driver’s schedule.

As I pivot now to one of the things that has become very meaningful, not just for the business writ large…. Something that the team, which is all working on ride-sharing, in Canada feels very passionately about is becoming a zero-emissions platform. We’re working towards that goal in major Canadian cities by 2030, and this goal can only be achieved by working together.

[1:00 p.m.]

When drivers choose to have a fully electric vehicle on the Uber platform, they can be eligible for up to $5,000 in additional earnings and bonuses that Uber pays to the driver in order to help facilitate that transition. We’ve made that available two years in a row now.

Drivers, when we announced that, received provincial subsidies. Uber kicks in as well. It was up to $10,000. This year we’ve got that second year going. So $5,000 this year. In addition, we’ve negotiated deals with automakers like Tesla to provide discounts of up to $3,000 for purchasing an EV and bringing it onto the platform.

That’s kind of the status of the business. As we go through towards opportunities…. As we mentioned, ride-sharing has been available for four years. Only, really, one year to kind of assess how things have been going post-pandemic. For the most part, things have been going, we’d say, quite well.

Three areas that we’d like to see changes. The first is in class 4 modernization. B.C. is the only province that hasn’t either allowed a standard class 5 licence with training or taken part in a modernization of the class 4 licence. Provinces like Alberta, Nova Scotia and, most recently, Newfoundland and Labrador have done that to ensure broader access.

This is especially true in remote communities and small towns where getting a different class of licence can be difficult. I know when I was 16 in Port McNeill and getting my licence, I couldn’t go the first day I was eligible to get rid of my N. There are only so many spots, and trainers aren’t always there in smaller communities. That has prevented our ability to expand more broadly across the province.

The second is wheelchair-accessible vehicles. Since en­abling ride-share in 2020, the government has levied a per-trip accessibility fee, which is quite common across many different jurisdictions in North America. That’s because ride-sharing companies do not own vehicles. So an alternative system was made that was a little bit different than taxi. It has generated meaningful income for the government to be able to put out.

What we would be asking for, and what we’ve written to the minister requesting, is the ability for Uber to enable wheelchair-accessible vehicles through our app. There should be, probably, a service standard associated with that.

If those two things are achieved — that we don’t need to pay those extra fees, which are substantial…. Hopefully, the outcome is, actually, that more wheelchair-accessible trips happen, as opposed to just the fees being generated. We think that we have some opportunities that we could do that.

That ties into, actually, the last point around reducing red tape. There are two aspects to this. The first is that while we’re regulated at the provincial level…. Some municipalities and other government agencies are now enacting either additional complex regulation or saying that there’s duplication that they can’t avoid. An example of that is ICBC. ICBC right now….

Uber has started partnering with taxi companies around the world globally. We’re in discussions with taxi companies in Canada, as well, about bringing them onto the app.

ICBC has said, even though the taxi companies are paying for their own insurance, which is super expensive — I didn’t listen to their testimony, but I would be surprised if they didn’t mention that — that Uber would also still have to pay for commercial insurance on our end. That makes a partnership pretty prohibitive. If both of us are having to pay, really, what is our largest cost…. If you figure that driver’s earnings are happening, set that aside, our largest cost is insurance.

We were asking and seeking for removing that dupli­cation. It is kind of hindering those types of partnerships here in B.C.

Secondly, it would be that some municipalities are interested in enacting additional charges as a way of either — what they say, in a way — managing or regulating congestion, whereas ride-sharing is less than 1 percent of trips. If you were to look at how you are actually going to manage congestion, you should probably look at what is the bulk of those trips, as opposed to what’s less than 1 percent. We’re continuing to try to find ways to work through that together with them.

With that, thank you for your time. I think I hit my 15 minutes. A little over. Thanks for giving me the 30 seconds after.

[1:05 p.m.]

M. Elmore (Chair): No worries. Thank you very much, Michael and Yanique. I appreciate your presentation.

I will open it up to committee members for questions. Does anybody want to get us started?

J. Sturdy: Thank you for the presentation.

We had some delegations from drivers this morning, and they spent quite a bit of time talking about ratings. Can you explain how ratings work? Whether drivers have any recourse for bad ratings, I guess, is one of the areas to explore. How the ratings affect access to trips in the future.

We had — I don’t remember where this came from — an example where somebody…. A mother expected a kid to be delivered by Uber, essentially. The driver refused, and there were consequences around that.

How do ratings, or their willingness to take trips, affect their opportunity to take other trips?

M. van Hemmen: Thanks for the question.

One of the fundamental principles of ride-sharing is that there is an accountability loop. Both the rider and the driver, at the end of the trip, rate how that trip went. So both folks carry a star rating afterwards. The star rating doesn’t impact access to UberX trips, but it can impact access to premium trips.

In general, there will be a review of…. Are there interpersonal conflict incidents? We get a report not just…. If it was a low star rating, we’ll ask you why. What happened?

If there’s an interpersonal conflict or something like that that happened, there’s then an investigation that happens. Notations can be put on either party’s account, and either party can eventually, with enough of those notations or with enough serious notations, have their access to the system removed.

That’s going back to that standing for safety principle. We want it to be as safe as possible. Sometimes we haven’t been as good, honestly, at dealing with the complaints that drivers have had or received against them.

That’s one of the number one things that UFCW has partnered with Uber on. I would say that “partnering” might be too… It lacks conflict in it. It’s a process now that UFCW has with earners. If an earner is removed from the platform, they have that venue to go through the union to bring forward an appeal to Uber to regain access to the platform. So that’s been in place there.

Regarding a kid being delivered without a parent…. That shouldn’t be happening. According to our terms of services, you have to be 18. A teen account being generated by a parent…. You have to be at least 13, if you’re a teenager, with your parent creating the account for you. Otherwise, you have to be at least 18 years old.

In cases like that…. If Uber support has made a mistake, we would for sure want to correct that with the individual.

J. Sturdy: How about taking trips or accepting trips, versus not accepting trips, and how that affects your op­portunity to accept other trips or be provided opportunities?

M. van Hemmen: Accepting trips, overall, doesn’t impact your ability to be on the platform, but we do have quality thresholds for more premium products.

We have different products like Uber Premier or Uber Comfort. Think of it as like premium economy, like if you are flying premium economy or business class. To achieve access to those products, you need to maintain a higher star rating because the riders are expecting a little bit different level of customer service.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Thanks for your presentation. We appreciate it. Nice to see you bring your daughter to work. That’s fun too.

I have a number of questions. I wanted to ask specifically about accessibility. You’ve talked about wanting to see an expansion of wheelchair-accessible vehicles. We’ve certainly heard a lot about that. I just wanted to….

We had a presentation this morning that talked about the lack of a requirement for drivers to receive training in terms of supporting people with disabilities. In your materials, you talk about…. You provide information for drivers to read. There is a difference between providing it and requiring it. Could you speak to that, first of all?

[1:10 p.m.]

Secondly, it was interesting that you noted that riders can notify drivers of special accommodations. That word “can” is critical because, of course, riders don’t need to do that, according to their rights. They can just ask for a ride. So how do you deal with the issue of: a driver pulls up, and the whole issue of saying, “No, sorry, not doing that”? We’ve heard from taxi drivers and others about how they deal with that.

Could you just speak to those two issues, to begin with?

M. van Hemmen: For sure. On accessibility, the simplest way to put it is that the fee right now, the 90 cents per trip, is so expensive that we could offer the wheelchair-accessible service for less than what the fee costs. So we think we could expand service.

Over the last two years, we believe that the province has generated $25 million for accessibility. We think that with less than that money, the services could actually be made available through Uber. We could get more into details about that if you’re interested, but it’s an area that we would partner with.

We do partner and have it available in Toronto, as an example. And we do partner with taxi, actually, in order to make that happen. Because oftentimes wheelchair-accessible vehicles aren’t being used for wheelchair-accessible trips. They’re used in airport runs because they’ve got more space for baggage and stuff like that.

We have per-trip incentives that we provide directly to drivers who complete wheelchair-accessible-vehicle trips. We’re not making money on those trips, but it’s a way that we’re able to still facilitate them.

When it comes to training — you’re right — we don’t actually provide training on how to use a wheelchair-accessible vehicle. Most people don’t. We do have required modules that people…. “Modules” is probably too strong. We do have required information that drivers do have to agree to, especially around service animals.

This is an area that has been really complicated and difficult for the business to deal with, because a lot of drivers have not just an aversion to having a dog in their vehicle, but there are religious and cultural sensitivities around having pets nearby as well. It is a requirement, though, under law that drivers do have to accept a trip with a service animal unless they’ve received an accommodation in advance.

Drivers are able to notify us, in advance, of a medical reason in order to provide and not have those trips. Otherwise, if they do that, they will be removed from the platform — if they refuse a trip.

Another part….

Interjection.

M. van Hemmen: I’m sorry, Yanique. I don’t know if there’s anything I missed.

Yanique actually leads a lot of our work on this.

Y. Williams: In regard to accessibility again, as Michael made mention, we do not have the required training, but there are modules that drivers do have access to. All of the drivers are to accept the community guidelines as well as our accessibility policy that we do have on the platform.

We do have things that do take over the screen, as an example, that reminds drivers of their legal responsibility to take folks who require the use of a guide dog. We also do work alongside CNIB. This past September for Guide Dog Access Awareness Month, we had events across the country to raise awareness. We were alongside CNIB members at our green-light hubs talking to drivers, reminding them of their responsibilities. We provided them with blankets. We provided them with a number of other things to raise awareness.

In addition to that, we are actually actively working on a module which will be given to the drivers on the platform to again inform them of their legal responsibility around transporting riders who require the use of a service ani­mal.

M. van Hemmen: I’d would summarize, though, to say, like, when we talk about modernizing class 4, this is the perfect kind of example. Individuals right now, if you’ve ever tried to do it, have to answer a bunch of questions about driving a bus, which you’re never going to drive. You’re driving a car, usually, maybe an SUV, and you’re driving people in it.

There isn’t training, as an example, about conflict resolution — how to simmer things down, if things get tense. There isn’t training around wheelchair access, if you’re driving that. I don’t know if that needs to be a part of it, because not everyone drives with a wheelchair. But everyone does need to know about how to deal with service animals, as that’s an example that comes up frequently.

[1:15 p.m.]

So we’re taking some steps there, but when we talk about modernizing, it isn’t just about removing every­thing. It’s that, actually, if the government, or this committee, wants to keep class 4, there are ways that it can actually be made more effective for the activity that drivers are engaged in.

M. Elmore (Chair): I’m just going to jump in….

A Voice: I’ll let others go….

M. Elmore (Chair): Yeah, sure. Then we can come back.

Thanks for your presentation. I had a question from the issue coming up from people who utilize ride-sharing, and drivers as well, in terms of getting the cost of the ride — kind of the breakdown from the ride, what drivers get.

That was one of the recommendations we heard from the drivers in terms of being able to see that kind of transparency around how much is charged and where all the services go to, in terms of that issue of transparency, in terms of costing and how that is accounted for.

M. van Hemmen: Yes. I’ll repeat it back to you just to make sure I understand. So trying to understand more what the rider pays versus what the driver is making.

M. Elmore (Chair): Yeah, the overall cost, overall number. Where does it go?

M. van Hemmen: Drivers receive weekly statements that show each individual trip on them. That shows how much the rider paid and also, in the end, how much they earn. The way that it works in British Columbia is that drivers…. The money flows. The driver charges the rider an amount. Uber charges the driver 25 percent, generally, for UberX, which is the standard most popular product, and then a booking fee, which helps to cover insurance, amongst other things. So there’s a booking fee and then 25 percent, and that’s standard across trips. Drivers don’t receive that information up front in B.C. yet.

What the government has enacted in legislation as part of some of the labour reforms that Minister Bains brought forward is that drivers will receive information that shows how much on that particular trip they are going to earn before the trip begins, as well as some additional information around destination. Does that answer the question?

M. Elmore (Chair): Yeah. Great. Thank you.

M. van Hemmen: We can give examples of the receipts or statements if the committee is interested. It’s also something that we’re working on with the Labour Ministry around some of the transparency requirements as a part of that legislation.

M. Elmore (Chair): We have also had…. A consistent theme, as well, was you just run data and access to data, sharing that and having that available, certainly with privacy concerns and not being able to have that personal information.

M. van Hemmen: Yeah. So we can provide examples that remove some of that, if that would be helpful.

M. Elmore (Chair): Yeah.

J. Routledge: Speaking of data, can you tell us…? In one of the presentations from one of the cities, they talked about data that was passed on to them that they used for congestion purposes. Can you tell us what the data is? What data are you required…? I guess it’s called the data warehouse?

M. van Hemmen: That’s what the province officials call it, yeah.

J. Routledge: What you’re required to provide to the Passenger Transportation Board.

M. van Hemmen: Yeah. Through the ministry, we present data of every trip request. So every trip request that comes through for a ride-sharing trip ultimately gets sent to the government. That includes the geolocation of where the trip started, where the trip ended, the driver who was associated with it, information about the driver. It calculates the distance and the time of the trip.

It’s very detailed and, frankly, quite onerous, but we provide that. There are details on every trip the province has.

J. Routledge: Okay. Thank you.

J. Sturdy: We had a number of presentations this morning from rural B.C., and I live in rural B.C. The concern was that we don’t really have access to ride-hail in the majority of British Columbia. What are the barriers to it? How can I get Uber in Pemberton or in Radium, I think it was, a variety of different locations throughout the province — or even in Whistler, for that matter? What are the challenges to providing those services in these communities that don’t have access to transit?

M. van Hemmen: The number one thing that could open that up would be modernizing class 4. Right now with ICBC wait times, the availability of drivers with that particular licence…. It just isn’t practical to try to open up and have an operation at scale.

[1:20 p.m.]

In Quebec, we are actually available across the entire province because, similar to B.C., we’re regulated at a provincial level. They have a standard driver’s licence, so you can use a class 5 there, but they have training on top of that. That training touches on things like accessibility. It touches on things like conflict de-escalation in order to be able to provide the service. So if B.C. was to go down that road, that would be an example of the main thing that we would see enabling that across the province.

M. Elmore (Chair): All right. Well, we’re out of time.

Janet, okay. Quick.

J. Routledge: Sorry. If you could just clarify again. So there’s the cost of the trip, and Uber charges the driver 25 percent of the cost of the trip. Then there’s another charge as well?

M. van Hemmen: There’s a booking fee, a small booking fee. It’s less than a dollar.

J. Routledge: Okay. What is the 25 percent for?

M. van Hemmen: The 25 percent is for all the costs that Uber bears. The main cost is insurance. We pay for the insurance as a part of the trip. Also, payment card processing fees, which are multiple percent, marketing, engineers.

J. Routledge: So when there’s surge pricing, there’s this 25 percent of the surge, and they get the rest.

M. van Hemmen: We take 25 percent of the surge. They get 75 percent of the surge.

J. Routledge: Thank you.

M. van Hemmen: No worries.

M. Elmore (Chair): All right. We’re waiting for our next presenters. We’ve got some technical issues. If it’s all right, we’ll just keep going and keep our conversation going until we get our next presenters online. We’ve got first-time speakers.

Kelly, go ahead.

K. Greene: I know we are over time. I will just…. I wanted to offer a comment that we heard this morning that was a bit concerning about the maps on the route that the driver has to take being inaccurate — indicating lefts when there’s no left at a certain time of day, pull over into a bike lane, that kind of thing. I just wanted you to be aware of that. Hopefully there’s a fix.

M. van Hemmen: I appreciate that. Maps are complicated. We don’t actually create them ourselves. We purchase them from TomTom and Google — Google on the rider side and TomTom on the driver side. We do have a feature in the app that allows drivers to actually tell us when there’s a mistake. That can be tricky right in the moment, but if they remember at the end of the trip, they can press the button and actually let us know in the app about how to fix that.

I agree. Especially when there’s construction going around, and there are different signals turning. Streets can be closed for a year, and we wouldn’t know that ourselves unless it’s reported somehow.

J. Sturdy: Do drivers have to follow the map?

M. van Hemmen: No. The only time when a driver would have to follow some sense of a map is…. They have to get, obviously, from the start to the end. But with a shared ride like UberX Share, which is when there are two riders who are going along a similar route, you need to go and pick up the second rider at the right spot. You just need to do the origins and destinations the same. The driver is able to drive the route they prefer, whatever works for them and the rider.

M. Elmore (Chair): All right.

Do you have a quick question, Shirley?

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Yes, thank you, Chair.

I wanted to ask…. You talk about your sustainability goals. You talk about understanding the need, when you have intensively driven vehicles, their contribution to the challenges we face.

There’s no timeline for you, at least in the materials, in terms of moving to EVs. I saw the supports you provide drivers. What are the timelines that you’re looking at in terms of an aggressive plan to deal with that?

M. van Hemmen: Our goal across major cities in Can­ada is 2030, which is going to be a stretch, right? We first made that commitment three years ago. We’ve doubled, each year, the number of electric kilometres that have been driven in the province, which has been great. Hopefully, we can maintain that rate.

But there are other signals. Who knows what happens federally with federal incentives and other issues that might lead toward headwinds. But that’s what we’re shooting for.

M. Elmore (Chair): All right. Well, thank you for accommodating us. We appreciate your presentation.

M. van Hemmen: We can obviously follow up if there are other questions that you have for the analysts — what­ever, in writing, you guys need.

J. Sturdy: If you could, you offered to provide us with some trip sheets or some reports. I think the committee would be very interested in seeing what the driver sees at the end of the day or the end of the week.

M. van Hemmen: We can provide examples of those statements.

M. Elmore (Chair): Thanks. We appreciate that.

Michael and Yanique, thank you for taking the time.

Abigail, I hope you enjoyed your visit here. Nice to have you here.

Okay. We’re going to take a short recess just to get our next presenters online, get that sorted out. We’ll be in recess.

The committee recessed from 1:24 p.m. to 1:29 p.m.

[M. Elmore in the chair.]

M. Elmore (Chair): Okay, everybody, welcome back.

I’d like to welcome now…. We have our next presenters. From Uride, we have Cody Ruberto and also Ravi Dhami with us.

Welcome. You’ll have 15 minutes for your presentation, followed by 15 minutes of questions and answers from the committee members.

Over to you.

URIDE

C. Ruberto: Perfect. We are really excited to be here. Thanks for having us. Basically, I’m looking forward to the questions, looking forward to working with all of you to solve some major transportation problems that a lot of communities across B.C. are facing.

I’ll just kick it off with our story of why we got started, why we’re even here, and then I can share some of the positives, some of the challenges that we’re experiencing, and then I look forward to all your questions.

I’m Cody. I’m the founder and CEO of Uride. And just a fun backstory. It’s a little bit of a strange story. I’m not a tech person. I’m not a business person. I grew up in a small town, in Thunder Bay. It’s 110,000 people.

[1:30 p.m.]

Basically, I was playing professional soccer in Europe. I got injured and ended up going back home to do my rehab. I was supposed to have a year off soccer.

When I was back in Thunder Bay, every time I’d go out at the end of the night, I’d see crowds of people stranded with no ride home. You would wait about an hour for a taxi. If it was a holiday, you could wait three to four hours. You’d see all these people stranded outside in minus 30. A lot of people would walk home, and other people would drink and drive. It was a huge problem.

Basically, when I was growing up, I had friends who had been killed by impaired drivers. My best friend’s brother was actually driving drunk and killed someone. The person that he killed ended up being the brother of a good friend of mine.

I thought this was a problem that shouldn’t exist. People need access to reliable transportation. There’s a stat that basically says the number of deaths related to impaired driving in rural communities is seven times higher than in urban centres, and stats like that shouldn’t exist.

I wanted to do something about this. I started giving free rides to people. Honestly, I couldn’t put a dent into the crowds. So we thought: “There’s no Uber and no Lyft in our community. We’re going to start a ride-share company here to try and fix this problem in Thunder Bay.” We got up and running, figured out how to run a business, and figured out how to have a model that works in these areas.

Then we started getting people from across the country reaching out, saying that they had the same problems that we had and just asking for us to expand into their area. We started expanding and got so many incredible people that came on board and helped build this company. We’re super, super grateful. We expanded it into B.C., and we’re so excited to be here. It has been awesome dealing with all of you. Yeah, on some of the work we’re doing, we’re really excited about it.

I’ll start with some of the things that we’re really excited about. Like I said, we started this company to get people home safe and prevent impaired driving. Having quick pickup times is key for that. Right now our pickup times across the majority of our cities have been going really well. Most people are getting picked up in under ten minutes, and the service has improved a ton, compared to the feedback we were getting before we entered.

Passengers in general love the service. I get incredible feedback often. We have so many incredible drivers on our platform that are making a difference every day, that believe in the mission, that are helping people get to and from work, that are helping people get home from a night out and helping to prevent impaired driving. We’re so grateful for them.

Some of the coolest things since we have launched in B.C…. You could look at some articles. The rates of impaired driving in a couple of our cities have dropped. This is something that’s extremely close to me and close to everyone in our company. We’re really excited about that.

We’ve been able to do a good-deeds program. Every month a portion of all our rides goes towards helping different initiatives in our communities. It could be helping the local shelter house or if there’s a family struggling that needs assistance. We’ve been able to do a lot of initiatives like that, that we’re really excited about. We want to do a lot more of that as we continue to grow throughout B.C.

Some of the challenges that we have…. I know, a lot of you on this call, and I, myself, relate to this: there are rural communities that are extremely hard to go into and make the unit economics work. Basically, in cities that are, in general, under 40,000, we’ve had a hard time operating and making it worth it for drivers to be on the road where they’re making great money and it’s worth their time.

To be able to fix the problems in communities like that is a huge problem, not just in B.C. but across Canada and beyond. We’re always thinking about it: “How can we go into smaller communities, communities of 5,000 to 10,000 people even, that might not have a taxi service and might not have public transit? How do we go about solving some of the problems there?” We’ve run some pilot projects in Ontario, and we’re testing different things. There are a lot of thoughts we have and, I think, things we can do to ad­dress those problems.

Other challenges. You know, in small towns, there are a lot of short trips, which is a lot different than in Vancouver and larger areas. Right now for every time you book a Uride…. If you’re in, let’s say, Prince George, and you book a Uride, there’s a 90-cent fee that you pay on top of every fare that goes to the accessibility fund. That’s a huge problem that needs to be solved through the accessibility fund: accessible vehicles.

I have some ideas of what we could do there, but for our customers, on a short ride in Prince George, that can make up about 15 percent of the fare. Then from that, you have insurance, you have credit card processing, and there’s a little bit of fraud. We want drivers to earn a good income and a good living here. Then we have our overhead costs, which is 24-seven support and stuff like that.

[1:35 p.m.]

Unit economics have been challenging. The 90-cent fee per trip has also been a challenge for us, especially in these smaller towns, where the rides are a lot shorter.

Another thing on this too: accessible vehicles. This is a problem across Canada; it’s not just in B.C. We’d love to help out in whatever way we can. Right now, from every trip that we give, basically our customers pay 90 cents into this fund, and then we can’t actually access anything in that fund. It’s only taxi companies that can access it.

This is something…. I’m happy to chat about it during the question stage, but if there was a way to remove that fee and make the service more affordable for our customers, especially with these really short rides in these smaller communities, that’s something that would help.

If there was other funding that was available either at a federal level or a provincial level, where there’s a fund that we could also access, funding for accessible vehicles, and be part of the solution to just make sure that there are way more accessible vehicles across the province so people can get rides when they need it, we’d love to be a part of that.

Licensing. Licensing was a big challenge for us, especially during COVID. I also went through the process to get my class 4. I got out on the road and started driving. It was really challenging. The wait times were pretty long back then. Then there were a lot of steps. So right now we’re doing a lot better with that. The wait times have dropped a lot for us. We are doing pretty well with the number of drivers we have across our markets. It was a huge problem. It’s improving a lot, but that’s just a little bit of feedback for you.

Other challenges we have…. There’s even seasonality. So cities like…. For example, we’re in Penticton where, in the summer, there’s a lot of demand, tons of tourism. It’s a lot easier to make it sort of sustainable for drivers, where they’re earning a great income. Over the winter months, with seasonality, there is no tourism. Demand drops a lot. Often we’re paying drivers a lot more even than the total cost of the fare to just keep them up and running, keep them available for passengers. So that’s also been a challenge for us.

Then also in Penticton, for every single fare that customers pay, there’s 90 cents. It’s a lot of short trips, so it works out to about 9, 10 percent of the fare right now. Our regional GMT can give you the exact numbers. But unit economics over the winter months has been a challenge in Penticton and a lot of smaller communities.

From there, other than that, we’re super excited to be here, super excited to work with all of you. Like I said, we know the transportation problems that exist in these rural areas across B.C., and we want to do everything that we can to help. We look forward to partnering with you, working with you and trying to help in any way we can. So I’d love to hear your questions.

M. Elmore (Chair): Terrific. Well, thank you for the presen­tation.

I’ll open it up now to committee members. Do we have any questions?

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Thanks a lot for your presen­tation.

I want to just confirm that you are in six communities in British Columbia. Is that correct, and you are looking at expanding to Comox and Courtenay?

C. Ruberto: Yeah.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): You’re also in four provinces and expanding to a fifth. When you compare what it was like or is like to start up and operate here in British Columbia…. You’re also in Alberta, New Brunswick, British Columbia, Ontario.

Are there…? You’ve noted one, which is the licensing issue. Are there other things you see that are more significant barriers in British Columbia than they are in other jurisdictions?

C. Ruberto: Yeah. Something I touched on before. A lot of the fees per trip are significantly different, and they get a lot less profitable in these smaller communities. If there’s a small town where there’s a trip that’s ten bucks and, basically, there’s a 90-cent fee per trip, it makes up a huge portion of our fare.

Our business in general is a pretty low-margin business. If you have insurance, credit-card processing, you have 9 percent for this…. When you add all those things up, then you add in the cost of actually operating the business…. Then we want to make it a great job for drivers and make sure that it’s more than worth their time to work here. It’s really challenging and we’re really working to avoid that.

[1:40 p.m.]

We know there are accessibility problems. That’s another thing that has to get solved, too, and that we want to be part of. We want to be part of it.

M. Elmore (Chair): Okay. Thank you. We’re just having a little bit of feedback. I don’t know if you’ve also got the phone going. I think we heard that.

Other questions?

Are you good with that, Shirley?

Is there anyone else?

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Janet has a question.

J. Routledge: Sorry. I’m having trouble hearing you. I know it’s a technical problem. I’m missing a lot of what you are saying, but I do know that in some of the rural communities that we’ve heard from earlier, they’ve talked about wanting to have more ride-hail, the challenge of it. They’ve referred to you offering the service.

I’m sorry if I’m asking you to repeat yourself. If you could go over the licensing issue again. I understand that there are incentives that you provide the drivers in order to have enough drivers to make it viable.

C. Ruberto: Yeah. I’m going to turn off my volume, so hopefully that helps. Could I get a thumbs-up if it’s better this time? Cool.

Licensing. The issues we were running into before were extreme wait times. Some drivers would wait two to three months to get licensed. In my experience, I think I had to book, probably, about seven or eight weeks in advance to get my licence. It was challenging. It was a big process. Now it’s actually getting a lot better.

Essentially, to get drivers through the process, we’re trying to hold their hands and trying to make it as easy as possible for them to come through. We’re supporting them. We’re coaching them, and all that, going through this process. We are also offering aggressive incentives. Often we’re offering a $1,000 bonus for someone to go through the licensing process. That has helped.

There are other things that we do. I mentioned Penticton. In the winter months, it’s really challenging to make it worth a driver’s time to be on the road. I mean, in that market, we’re actually just paying even more than 100 percent of the trip over the winter. It’s not something that’s sustainable. We’ve got to figure out a solution there.

Yeah. We’re doing everything we can to get over every hurdle that we’ve faced so far.

J. Routledge: Thank you. That came through loud and clear.

M. Elmore (Chair): Yeah. That did the trick, putting the volume off. Thank you.

K. Greene: Janet asked my question about incentives.

Just because we missed a bit of audio there, maybe if you have a written summary of your presentation, that would help. Thanks.

M. Elmore (Chair): Okay. If we can get a written submission, we’d appreciate that.

Shirley, did you have another question?

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): I’m good.

M. Elmore (Chair): Okay. All right.

Well, I want to thank you very much for the presentation. We appreciate it. Really a tribute to your entrepre­neurial spirit in terms of undertaking your efforts. It’s just a great addition to our presentations here. We appreciate having that input. Thank you very much.

C. Ruberto: I just want to say thanks for even having this meeting. I’m from a small town. It’s usually the last place that gets thought about. There are, again, cities of 5,000 and 10,000 people that still have a ton of problems, and they don’t have access to reliable transportation. It’s a problem that needs to get fixed.

I’m really excited that you guys are addressing this. Like I said, we’re in your corner, whatever we can do to help. Call me any time. I’m happy to share my number.

I know this wasn’t the best call, so I apologize for the technical errors. But seriously, call me any time. We live and breathe this. This is something that we think about every night when we’re going to bed. Whatever we can do to help, just let me know.

M. Elmore (Chair): We appreciate it. Your experience from areas outside of our Metro and urban areas is something that has come up quite consistently. To have your perspective and your experiences is really valuable. Thank you very much. Take care.

Now we’ve got our next presenter here. I see David.

D. Doney: Hi.

M. Elmore (Chair): We’ll get you settled in here. Welcome.

[1:45 p.m.]

We have our next presenter, David Doney from HandyDART, TransLink.

You’ve got 15 minutes for your presentation, followed by 15 minutes of questions and answers.

HANDYDART – TransLink

D. Doney: Nice to meet everybody. First of all, I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity. I sincerely appreciate it. I’m proud of our service, and I’m really looking forward to giving you a bit of an overview of the system itself.

Given the time that is available, I am going to condense the presentation somewhat. I wasn’t totally sure what, from a committee perspective, you’d like to hear, but I’ll give you a high-level overview, and then I’m happy to open it up to any questions at the end, if I can.

As you said, my name is Dave Doney, and I’m the director of Access Transit service delivery for Coast Mountain Bus Co.

To clarify a little bit of the governance model, it gets a little bit confusing when it comes to Coast Mountain and TransLink, etc.

For everybody’s clarity, TransLink, as you know, is the Metro Vancouver region’s transportation authority. They are the owner of the HandyDART service contract, including all fixed assets associated with the HandyDART service. Access Transit service delivery, which is run under Coast Mountain Bus Co., for which I am responsible, oversees the execution and accountability of the contractor and/or the operating agreement.

As for the operating agreement, it’s currently being run by Transdev, which was formerly First Transit, and they are under current contract until June of 2026.

Some really quick facts for those that aren’t familiar with the HandyDART service in general. HandyDART is the name of our custom transit or paratransit service. It is a door-to-door service. It’s a ride-shared service, and it’s intended for customers with disabilities that are unable to navigate conventional transit service without assistance.

Trips are available on a regular or temporary basis. Some examples of a temporary basis might be medical requirements or visitor status, etc. Customers, also referred to as clients at times, must be pre-registered and are required to book trips between one and seven days in advance, obviously based on availability.

Service is currently available from 5 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week. Trips are generally booked in two ways, either ad hoc, on-demand basis or subscription basis, which is generally an auto-reserved trip, which are somewhat repetitive in nature. We support a number of customer-facing programs, but I just wanted to highlight a few of them for knowledge.

The first one is the HandyCard program. A HandyCard is an identification card for customers with permanent disability status, which enables them to travel on conventional transit at concession fare rates and provides a free-of-charge ride for a caregiver, should one be required.

The second one that I wanted to talk about was the TaxiSaver program. The taxi program is a taxi voucher program which gives HandyCard customers the ability to purchase a limited number of taxi fare vouchers for use at their discretion. These taxi savers are subsidized at a 50 percent rate by TransLink. This is a highly popular program from a customer perspective.

HandyDART also partners with a number of accessibility programs within the community, and I just wanted to touch on a few as well.

Our first one that we have is our HandyDART users advisory committee. This committee meets quarterly. It consists of elected members from within our disability community, as well as representatives from TransLink, Coast Mountain and Transdev. The intent of this committee is to address operational challenges and bring end-user perspective forward when looking for operational solutions.

We also belong to a number of disability advocacy groups and collaborate frequently with day programs and health care providers.

Finally, we rely frequently on peer-agency collaboration — for example, locally with B.C. Transit, who is following up on this, or North America–wide, generally through CUTA or APTA.

To elaborate a little bit more on the specific HandyDART services in the Lower Mainland, currently we have six depots throughout the Lower Mainland. Cloverdale and Vancouver, as you can see on the map, are our two largest facilities and also our two only maintenance facilities. All properties are owned or leased by TransLink, with the exception of Vancouver. That is leased by Transdev and subleased to TransLink.

[1:50 p.m.]

The Metro Vancouver service area is obviously quite large, over 2,100 square kilometres. As it’s so large, the region is divided into nine separate subregions. These subregions are required in order to maximize service efficiency and maintain on-time performance. In the upper right-hand corner, you’ll get a sense of what the additional boundaries are.

Multi-region travel is also called cross-boundary travel through those temporary zones. They’re generally direct, but occasionally they do require transfers.

In total, in 2023, just to give you a sense of what I’m talking about, there were 250,000 cross-boundary transfers done. Of those 250,000 trips, 4 percent, or 9,100, required transfers. The remainder were direct.

We continue to look for opportunities to eliminate these transfers. However, we do remain focused on minimizing any impact to service availability or reliability.

Just to elaborate a little bit more on what the fleet consists of. From a HandyDART perspective, we currently consist of 339 dedicated vehicles through those six depots that I was referring to earlier. The plan for expansion in 2024 is by an additional ten, to 349.

In addition to our HandyDART service, we also use taxis as a supplemental service. This is sometimes referred to as non-dedicated service. To give you a sense of what we used in 2023, it was approximately 23 percent of our total service.

We have 14 Lower Mainland taxi companies who currently accept HandyDART rides, which is predominantly most of the taxi companies in the Lower Mainland, with the exception of Yellow Cab out of Vancouver. I’ll elaborate in the next slide a little bit more on taxi usage. Questions around it come up quite often.

As for Transdev, which is the operating company…. They currently employ approximately 450 employees systemwide throughout the Lower Mainland.

Finally, for HandyDART customers…. We have approximately 30,000 active clients servicing approximately 4,200 average weekday trips. That equates to about 85 percent of pre-pandemic, or 2019, numbers.

As I said before…. I just want to touch a little bit on supplemental service, non-dedicated service — at this point, taxi.

We quite often get the question: why are taxis used to supplement our service? Taxis are used to provide a greater level of flexibility and reliability for operational challenges. Some of these challenges might include coverage limitations, staffing issues, remote resident access and, finally, limiting cross-boundary travel.

Some of the challenges that we currently see using the supplemental taxis are…. The first one is service limitation. For example, taxis have limitations jurisdictionally when it comes to either permitting or licensing between jurisdictions and/or taxi companies. That can be challenging. Quite often there’s a level of reluctance to take a ride out of jurisdiction, knowing that they can’t necessarily take a ride back.

The second challenge is driver training and customer service consistency. We have a high level of expectation when it comes to our training and accountability with our dedicated staff. We have challenges holding that same level of accountability with taxi companies.

Finally, the lack of technological integration is also a challenge. What that means is we lack visibility when it comes to GPS, when it comes to data access or even dispatch software integration.

I just wanted to touch a little bit on our total services for 2023. As I said before, HandyDART trips totalled, in 2023, 1.18 million trips. Of that 1.18 million, 890,000, approximately, were by dedicated or HandyDART service. Approximately 282,000 of those were done by non-dedicated or a supplemental taxi service. This pie chart on the screen will give you a rough breakdown of the trip purposes for all of 2023.

Our on-time performance did quite well. We measure that quite closely with the contractor on a monthly basis. They did quite well. They closed 2023 at 91 percent. What on-time performance does mean, from our perspective, is…. We measure it at plus or minus 15 minutes of a pickup window or drop-off window of that time. So 91 percent was done within that 15 minute time frame.

Our denial rate was at 0.07 percent. A denial is defined as a trip request that cannot be accommodated as service is unavailable for a customer’s requested window.

[1:55 p.m.]

Finally, our refusal rate was a little bit higher at 0.3 percent. A refusal is defined as when an alternative time is offered, generally up to an hour before or after the customer’s requested time. However, for whatever reason, it’s not agreeable to the customer. Hence, it’s recorded as a refusal.

I just wanted to finish this last slide with a few of the initiatives that we’re looking forward to in 2024 and be­yond. The first one is an electrification pilot. We have three battery electric buses arriving in 2024, which we’re looking forward to expanding. In addition to that, we’re continuing our progress on our updated online registration and ap­plication processes. Finally, we’re looking for a dispatch capability improvement.

Some examples of ongoing projects within a program are updated on-board computer hardware, new software tools such as online booking and cancelling capabilities, and an upgraded “where’s my ride” functionality. This is a GPS call to the client communicating actual or imminent ride arrival.

Finally, we are looking to expand our hours beyond 5 a.m. to midnight. We want to run further into the evening; however, it’s still in the initiation or planning phases.

That concludes my presentation. I’m happy to answer any questions, if I haven’t answered them already.

M. Elmore (Chair): All right. Okay. Thank you very much for the presentation. Appreciate it.

Shirley, go ahead.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Perhaps you could start by clarifying…. This describes HandyDART as TransLink’s brand name. Are there not handyDART services all across British Columbia? What is the connection? I know there’s one in Prince George. They’re all over the place.

You’re speaking today on behalf of TransLink’s version of HandyDART. How are they all…? I’m assuming they’re connected together under the broad umbrella of B.C. Transit.

D. Doney: Correct. They’re all subcontracted out.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): They are subcontracted out, but they are under the umbrella of B.C. Transit.

D. Doney: Correct.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Does B.C. Transit, then…? While it’s important to have the data that we have here for TransLink service areas…. I mean, one of our big concerns is regionality and making sure that there’s equity of service.

Is that data, in terms of provincial usage, available through B.C. Transit. Who has…?

D. Doney: That’s a great question.

My understanding is that the follow-up presentation will be done by B.C. Transit on behalf of the handyDART services as well.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): So they would have the more regional approach.

D. Doney: Correct.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): In essence, you speak, then, on behalf of the TransLink sort of urban approach, across the boundary, to that.

D. Doney: That’s correct.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): I’m hopeful that there’s an aggregate, in terms of data, that is provided by B.C. Transit in terms of where there are gaps in service and how handyDART functions more broadly provincially.

I’ll wait for that, Madam Chair. I do appreciate…. I may have another question, but I’ll wait till others go.

M. Elmore (Chair): All right. Okay. Thanks.

Janet, go ahead.

J. Routledge: Thank you for this insight into handyDART.

D. Doney: You’re welcome.

J. Routledge: I see them around a lot. My mother used to take HandyDART years ago. It connected her to the community. It was really important.

Speaking of which…. Maybe I missed it. What is the average age of the person who…? Is it mostly seniors?

D. Doney: That’s a good question. I don’t actually have that data on me right now. Sorry.

J. Routledge: Okay. Fair enough.

Then a follow-up to that, in terms of the technology. I see the background in one of your slides shows an iPhone. I’m wondering, then, if you have had any analysis or any thoughts about — how can I put it? — if app-based access would be a barrier to a significant percentage of potential riders.

D. Doney: It’s a really good question.

It’s something that we’re definitely sensitive to as we plan. Obviously, we want to bring the services to an age at which people can book, should they be able to, online either via an app or via the web.

It’s something we’ve been sort of working towards since roughly about 2019. Obviously, we ran into the pandemic challenges, and that slowed a number of the projects down.

[2:00 p.m.]

It’s something that we’re definitely sensitive to. It’s something that we wouldn’t necessarily limit ourselves, at this point, to being exclusive with. We definitely want to keep the phone lines open. Any way that we can possibly book we will — that’s operationally feasible.

That being said, we do want to progress. We do want to get up with the ages and try to get to a point where we can be booking online. It’s something that we’ve been pushing for and really striving for but that we’ve really struggled with from our software side of things. We’ve got a number of initiatives that are being planned, but we’re definitely sensitive to making sure that it’s accessible to all of our clients.

J. Routledge: Just a follow-up on that. Do you have a sense…? In terms of, I guess, efficiency and how straightforward it is, is there a difference between one-off requests and someone who is going to go to something like their Alzheimer’s club every Wednesday afternoon?

D. Doney: There’s not a difference. We do our best to not deny any rides. You can see that by…. Our denial numbers were quite low. If you consider 1.18 million trips, and our denial rate was a little over 1,200. So we take all trips.

Now, that being said, that has a lot to do with the ridership not being regained to pre-pandemic numbers. We’re at about 85 percent now. We will see that denial rate come up a little bit unless we can adequately assign the appropriate level of resources as the demand grows.

That’s the balance. We’re trying to sort of balance how we can reasonably grow within the community and still keep that denial rate as low as possible. It’s a fine balance because it’s a ride-share program, and these 44 to 5,000 trips that are scheduled every day…. We don’t really know what they are until the day before. These trips come in up to seven days in advance, and all of that scheduling is done literally the day before to create these trips. There are going to be inefficient trips, and that generally spills over into supplemental service.

At this point, denial rate continues to be low. I would expect that denial rate will be impacted somewhat as the ridership increases.

J. Routledge: I was thinking about it more from the…. I mean, that’s actually very helpful. But where I was coming from, actually, is more from the point of view of booking the trip. For some people who have a challenge with their phones or just a challenge with their schedules, if they schedule, or it’s scheduled for them, every Wednesday afternoon for a year, as opposed to: “This week I need to go to the doctor, and then I need to do this….” I mean, that would, to me….

I’m not saying…. I don’t know what you can do about that, but HandyDART is a lifeline for people.

D. Doney: It is, absolutely. We do have subscription trips, but we do try to manage the subscriptions as well, because we have a very high percentage of cancellation rate right now from a customer perspective. We’re pushing over 25 percent. There’s a whole bunch of variables and reasons to that, without getting into too much, but a lot of it…. We’re trying to manage that. We’re trying to update our cancellation policy in order to make sure that as many rides as possible are available.

But should you qualify for a subscription, that is a possibility. That’s a recurring trip on a fairly regular basis. That is one option.

K. Greene: Thanks for coming in today. Appreciate hearing from you.

I have a couple of questions. One is: have you had any reports from your users on issues with access to taxis, any problems that they’ve had being secured properly or being passed up if they’ve got a seeing-eye dog or similar?

Then also, since we’re talking about ride-hail, if there has been any consideration or thought on connection to service with ride-hail.

D. Doney: Yes, to answer your question. Unfortunately, I don’t…. I’m not proud of this, but it’s something we’ve been working on. At the beginning of the year, our complaints from HandyDART to taxi generally averaged about 3 to 1 — three higher on the taxi side.

Earlier on in my presentation, I did talk about accountability. You know, we do struggle. We do have a very clear training program and accountability process involved with the taxi services themselves, but we do have higher-than-average complaints because we don’t have visibility, necessarily, or direct visibility into that service.

[2:05 p.m.]

It is a challenge from that perspective, but I am proud of the fact that our teams have done quite well. The collaboration is very transparent between the taxi companies now. There’s a lot of cooperation to try to follow up on some of those complaints, etc. I’m proud to say that we have got that rate down to pretty close to 2 to 1 now, but it is still higher than our regular service. I hope that answers your first question.

Your second question was: have we considered a ride-hail? We have, absolutely, and we still continue to. I am very passionate about providing the absolute best service I can for our customers, and if that includes a ride-share component, then by all means.

That being said, there are a lot of hurdles to go through before we get to that point. A good example of that is ride-share and ride-hail are generally a curb-to-curb service. Ours is a door-to-door service, which also has a lot of expectations around the door-to-door, in which we have current customers or clients that require transfer to caregiver services, which we provide. Obviously, that’s not something that would be available to a curb-to-curb option.

There are a number of hurdles we’re working through. We’re also trying to be sensitive to all parties involved in this, and we’re trying to do it right. There is planning going on in the background to see if there’s any opportunity there. However, a final decision has not been made yet.

D. Routley: Thank you for the presentation.

One of the issues that keeps coming up is the jurisdictional restrictions on tax. I’m wondering if you know of any place where there are exemptions to jurisdictional restrictions based on the fact that it might be a wheelchair-accessible vehicle or a handyDART service and if you think that might be an incentive to help us meet the…?

When we looked at the data we have received on this committee, the number of available licensed wheelchair-accessible vehicles compared to those who are active at any given time, there’s a huge discrepancy there. Would it encourage more of them to be on the road if there was some way of exempting them from jurisdictional restrictions? Then they could take a return trip.

D. Doney: It’s definitely a challenge from our per­spec­tive. We have limited access to accessible vehicles in general, and quite often when we’re talking about supple­mental service, we obviously share them with the general public. It is a challenge. However, given the good relationship that we built with the local taxi companies, we do also do charter work. We will charter taxis on a longer-term basis for that particular day. I’m a little bit oversimplifying it to not get into too much detail, but we will block off a section of time with the taxis, which has been quite helpful when it comes to the accessibility side of it.

I’m hoping that answered your question.

M. Elmore (Chair): Looks like it. Okay.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much.

I guess I’m thinking about the shortages that people are facing when it comes to human resources. We’ve certainly seen it with busing issues, for example, for getting kids to and from school, etc.

I also know that, as you know, this is door-to-door service, so it requires a person who has the ability to help someone from their front door. We’ve often seen that when they come to pick them up from a medical appointment.

Maybe just tell us a little bit about your recruitment process and training, so it’s not just about driving the vehicle; it’s about actually caring for that person from the moment they get picked up to the moment they get returned home.

Tell us a little bit about how those people that work for you and handyDART are trained. Are there special components of the work that you emphasize?

D. Doney: I can’t really talk on that, so I’ll reiterate the fact that they’re not TransLink employees. With HandyDART themselves, it’s just the assets that are owned by TransLink, managed by Coast Mountain, and then the actual employees themselves are Transdev employees, First Transit employees.

[2:10 p.m.]

I can’t speak to you in a great level of detail when it comes to their training program. It is an extensive training program. However, since the pandemic, they have strug­gled, just like every other industry, to try to hire. There has been a number of initiatives that they have taken on to try to entice or incentivize people to come over. That includes blocking specific times with ICBC, for example, in order to expedite the testing. That was one of the roadblocks that we previously had, but it still remains a challenge. I’m not going to lie to you.

That’s one of the reasons why taxi percentages are higher. We work quite consistently with the contractor currently to ensure that they’re doing all they can to hire the appropriate resources. And I’m quite happy with what they’ve done so far, a little bit little over 100 for 2023. Sorry I can’t elaborate necessarily on specifics with the training program.

M. Elmore (Chair): Well, conveniently, we have ICBC tomorrow. We’ve heard a lot about testing waits, etc.

D. Doney: Oh good. There you go. Well, we’re very happy that they’ve given us some blocks of time.

M. Elmore (Chair): All right. David, thank you very much for taking the time and for your presentation. It has been very helpful.

M. Elmore (Chair): Okay. Linda, hello. Can you hear me?

L. Dawe: Hello. I think I’ve got my technology figured out here. Can you hear me?

M. Elmore (Chair): Yes, we can hear you. And are we going to be joined by Afzal and Adam as well?

L. Dawe: They are right here beside me.

M. Elmore (Chair): Okay. Great to see you all on screen. I’m Mable Elmore, the Chair, and we are looking forward. You’ve got 15 minutes for your presentation, followed by 15 minutes of question-and-answer from committee members.

Before you start, can I just ask each of you to introduce yourselves so we get you on the record.

HANDYDART – B.C. TRANSIT

L. Dawe: You bet. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Linda Dawe. I am the director of regional operations here at B.C. Transit, and I will hand it over to my colleague.

A. Bishop: Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Adam Bishop. I am the manager of accessible transit here at B.C. Transit.

A. Aung: Hi, I’m Afzal Aung. I am the coordinator for the specialized program which involves handyDART.

M. Elmore (Chair): Terrific. Great to meet you. And over to you for your presentation.

L. Dawe: Thank you, everyone, for the opportunity to meet with you this afternoon and talk a little bit about B.C. Transit and handyDART and the services that we offer.

B.C. Transit, as you may know, is a Crown corporation. We are governed by the British Columbia Transit Act, and we are mandated to plan and deliver safe and reliable public transportation to communities across British Columbia outside of Metro Vancouver. B.C. Transit offers services across 130 communities across B.C. through partnership agreements with approximately 59 local governments.

We service a real mix of urbanized areas — larger-sized communities like Kelowna or Abbotsford to more rural-sized communities, maybe Hazelton or Bella Coola.

Contracted operating companies actually provide the service. They handle the bookings and the scheduling of rides, and B.C. Transit works along with operating partners who deliver this service. We work with nine operating companies that are private, five non-profit agencies and four municipalities around the province.

I will tell you a little bit about handyDART from B.C. Transit’s side. HandyDART was launched in 1981. It is similar to what David was talking about from a Vancouver perspective. HandyDART is an accessible, door-to-door shared transit service for people with permanent or temporary disabilities that prevent them from using fixed-route, conventional transit without assistance.

[2:15 p.m.]

This service really provides a key connection for people that may experience isolation or disconnect from family and friends in the community. HandyDART gets people to and from things like important medical appointments, family functions and other community events. Trips that we have at handyDART may be either subscription trips, which are reoccurring in nature, such as for work or for school or day programs. Or they can be one-time trips to meet a specific medical, social or shopping or recreational need.

Now, at handyDart, drivers accompany the handyDart customers to and from their home entrance, so it really is to the bus. That really is that door-to-door service. As a public transit agency and as public transit, all rides and requests are treated equally. So a medical appointment will not be prioritized over a casual social outing.

Currently handyDART is available in 28 transit systems across B.C. The fleet is approximately 231 dedicated handyDART buses. As of March 31, 2023, there are ap­proximately 16,400 active handyDART registered clients. Now, important to note, an active client is a registered handyDART client who has used handyDART services at least once in the previous 18 months.

I’ll just talk a little bit about handyDART as far as taxi companies go. We have non-dedicated services that are utilized through taxi companies. So there’s taxi supplement and taxi saver.

Taxi supplement is that program where a handyDART ride is delivered by a taxi due to either unavailability of a bus or if the use of a taxi makes more sense. Customers pay the regular handyDART fare, and the local handyDART office exercises their discretion when dispatching a taxi in lieu of a bus.

Some of the benefits of taxi supplement that are seen are: flexibility, such as when a bus is already in use, so there’s no bus available; reliability to ensure that there is a ride for those customers who need it; better utilization of buses, so taxis help us have better utilization of our buses; and there’s also the service area enhancement, so maybe taxis are going further than our buses may go. The other benefit of taxi supplement is around the issue which was I think mentioned earlier — staffing issues and operator driver shortages.

Taxi saver is a program whereby a customer can purchase taxi coupons with a face value of, say, $80 for a discounted price every month. Only permanent handyDART clients qualify for this purchase. There is no limitation on how the customer chooses to use their coupons.

Now, a few challenges experienced with taxis that we’ve seen are that there are not enough accessible taxis to use for the clients that need them. There’s also a jurisdictional restriction. It’s not always clear what area taxis are operating or able to pick up customers in.

Another really important piece of this is the training needs, which are really important for assisting handyDART customers with special or unique needs. Also, the door-to-door service is a very important part of what handyDART does. There’s also the piece around needing to be trained on mobility aids for that customer, which is very important to them and to us.

Maybe I can just give you, and share, a few ridership and capacity statistics. This would be from the year 2022-23 fiscal. These are approximate numbers, but requested trips in that year would have been around 752,100 requested trips. The amount that were actually delivered is about 727,700. Taxi supplement was approximately 42,900 rides used, delivered by the taxis.

We do also experience some challenges with late cancellations and the, at times, inability to deliver service, but the taxis have been able to really help us with that part.

What’s just interesting to note…. If you’re curious on what people are using handyDART for, we have seen from our knowledge that approximately 60 percent of the trips provided by handyDART are for medical appointments.

[2:20 p.m.]

Now, some of the challenges that we’re seeing at B.C. Transit are that some systems are slowly reaching capacity. While we haven’t come back fully to pre-pandemic levels, we are seeing capacity issues at play. At Victoria handyDART, for example, clients need to call at least two weeks ahead of their trip to secure a ride. Seats on the bus fill up fast. Also, there are clients who are required to bring an attendant with them, but they live alone, or they don’t have friends close by. So they need somebody to travel with them.

B.C. Transit really is understanding some of the challenges that our handyDART customers are experiencing — for example, with our online booking process, as we’ve experienced in the Victoria regional transit system, and also around the desire for improved payment methods when using door-to-door service. Our organization is under­taking quite a fulsome review right now of our custom transit services, which will consider all options for improving handyDART service all around the province.

That’s a high-level overview of handyDART from a B.C. Transit perspective.

Maybe I’ll just open it up to any questions that you may have.

M. Elmore (Chair): All right. Okay, thank you. I’d like to open it up to questions.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. Thanks for the important service that you provide across the province.

I’m interested in the ability to apply to be a handyDART client. As I understand it, one of the things that may be necessary is a form or information to be completed by a health care professional. If that’s correct, can you just speak to me about the challenges that people are having in a health care system where they don’t have a medical professional that they are attached to?

I’m concerned about the length of time it takes from the day you apply, to going through the application process and the challenges that may exacerbate that wait if you require a medical sign-off.

L. Dawe: Yeah, a very good question. I’ll let Afzal Aung answer that question.

Afzal, over to you.

A. Aung: Thanks for the question.

The medical verification form is a supplementary form; it is not a requirement. It is good; it supports their case. But in 14 of the systems that we have, we have a registration program in place, whereby the client will need to attend an in-person assessment with a contracted vendor or a professional occupational therapist. So a medical verification form is not required for such systems.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): So there’s no rider that is going to be denied service over a period of time because they haven’t had a medical attestation or description of what their physical challenges might be?

A. Aung: Correct. The medical form is not a requirement.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Okay, thank you.

M. Elmore (Chair): All right. Other questions?

Okay, I want to thank you very much for your presentation. We appreciate it. Thanks for your time.

The committee is going to be in a recess. We’re waiting for our next presenters at 2:45.

The committee recessed from 2:24 p.m. to 2:45 p.m.

[M. Elmore in the chair.]

M. Elmore (Chair): Okay, thank you. So we’re back, and we’ve got our presenter. Karla is ready to come on board here. Great.

Hi, Karla, welcome, from Inclusion B.C. Thank you for taking the time to present to the committee. You’ve got 15 minutes for your presentation, followed by 15 minutes of questions and answers from the committee.

Over to you. Go ahead.

INCLUSION B.C.

K. Verschoor: I think, to be really honest, I’m not sure that my presentation will take 15 minutes, so perhaps you’ll have a bit of your time back. As I look around the screen, for those of you who don’t know me, I’m Karla Verschoor. I’m the Executive Director of Inclusion B.C.

I’m joining you from my home office on the unceded traditional land of the Qayqayt Nation.

Inclusion B.C. is a provincial advocacy federation that supports people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, their families, and the community organizations that provide disability supports around the province. Just to give you a little bit of context from the lens I’ll be talking about today.

We did submit a written brief in your first call for participation. I don’t know if you each have a copy of that or not, but I thought I’d spend my time today kind of adding to the points that we made in that written submission. Just being really honest with you, when I first received the request to present to the committee, I wasn’t quite sure what we would say, particularly around the passenger-directed aspect of this, because one of the most primary barriers to the using of passenger-directed services is going to be the cost.

Seventy percent of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Canada live in poverty, and 78 percent of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities here in British Columbia are unemployed or underemployed. When you think about passenger-directed services, right off the bat there are some really strong structural barriers there for the people that I work for and with, costs being at the forefront of those.

They make the assumption that most operate under smartphones with apps — that implies you have a Visa — with data, as well as digital literacy. Each time I go out and we’re doing engagement with our constituencies and our communities, transportation is one of the two top issues every single time. This type of transportation is so out of reach for most people, it rarely comes up.

The conversations tend to be kind of reduced to talking about public transportation and handyDART services. Many of our members that live in small or rural communities fundraise for their own fleets to support the people that they work with to access their communities. When we introduce employment supports for people, one of the things that we’re most often purchasing is taxi vouchers.

It’s a really tricky topic, because it’s almost like asking people that shop at the food bank what they think of fine dining. This is so far out of reach for people that it rarely comes up. I really wanted to start our time together just mentioning that to explain why my presentation probably won’t be very long, and it’ll be just going over what I already submitted.

Where we do see the use of taxi vouchers is to supplement handyDART services, which I think is generally a positive thing, but it tends to be reduced to medical appointments and things of that nature. It’s not really about community inclusion or accessing your community.

Although people may have access to doctor’s appointments and things like that, which is very positive, and I don’t want to diminish that, it’s not really giving people access to their community or the workforce and combatting those other issues like isolation and loneliness that we often hear about.

[2:50 p.m.]

Every time I go into a conversation about transportation, I think back to a round table we had last summer in the community of Nanaimo. One of the participants, who uses a chair as well as having an intellectual disability, said to the group: “I never know what my day will look like when I leave my home and how the world will receive me.”

Then she went in to talk about the treatment she received on the bus by drivers, not being strapped in for safety, and then having to wait three to four hours for taxi services.

“You can use an accessible van.” How accessible vans…. Sometimes the door opens, and she’s let out into active traffic.

I’m just thinking about…. When we talk about transportation services, I think we have an ableist undertone, where we’re not thinking about all the passengers, particularly when we’re talking about passenger-directed services. We’re not really thinking and designing for the margins of our community.

I think that’s the main point that I wanted to make with you today. These services are not designed for the people that I work for and with. I think in terms of ways…. I don’t know that I have any solutions on ways that could be designed that are not tackling poverty or building social housing on transit routes or investing in transportation subsidies for people that are experiencing marginalization in the workforce. But I’m sure those are all things you’ve already talked about. I think that that’s what I had to share with you today.

I know that there was a new investment in accessible taxis, which was wonderful. This is to enact the accessibility act here in our province. I think that one of the other things…. Whenever we have things that are consumer-driven like that, there is an attitudinal barrier for people. I’ve been in taxis many times with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The driver looks to me for the tip, because they just imply that there won’t be one from the other passenger.

If you are looking at investing in fleets and vehicles, there might be an opportunity to invest in some attitudinal training around disability for drivers of the organizations that receive those grants.

I think that’s about all I have for you today, unless there are any specific questions you have for me. I think everything else I had was outlined in the brief.

M. Elmore (Chair): Thank you, Karla. I want to thank you for your presentation and just reiterate, on behalf of the committee, that we appreciate it. It’s important, certainly, to identify the experiences of people with intellectual and cognitive disabilities.

It’s certainly an important aspect in terms of having, really, the ableist and intersectional perspective to really understand the impact of transportation services to the broader public.

I just want to reiterate the importance of your perspective and your presentation and appreciate that. Certainly, in terms of the reality of identifying accessibility barriers, those are critically key and important to highlight, to note and to integrate in terms of how we move forward, what our recommendations are, to ensure that transportation services adequately meet the needs of the public.

Just on that, I want to thank you for taking the time. Now, do we have any questions from the committee members?

We had, Karla, a couple of presenters who were visually impaired and talked about their experience in terms of, mainly, accessing taxis, because it’s also a barrier in terms of the app component. So your recommendation with respect to training and attitudinal sensitivity and understanding how to interact respectfully with people with different abilities, I think, is an important component.

Can you talk or maybe share a little bit on that in terms of specific training? There’s been training previously for the taxi industry. We’ve heard there’s not training for ride-hailing and just across the board.

Can you talk a little bit about that in terms of what some good examples are in terms of courses and what you think needs to be implemented?

[2:55 p.m.]

K. Verschoor: I think it really does come down to just awareness of the population of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, considering it’s about roughly 1.5 percent of the population.

I think if you were to look to some training that might be transferable to this industry, a lot of training has been developed for first responders and things of that nature, just so that people have basic understanding of intellectual and developmental disabilities and what would be an appropriate way to interact and interpret some of what you might be seeing or witnessing or be unfamiliar with or uncomfortable with.

It is really, I would say that it would be a combination of training that would be designed for someone who met someone for the first time that was providing a service, as well as a bit of historical training about the province’s or the country’s treatment of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and that understanding that no two people will be alike, that it’s going be an individual opportunity to know someone, find out where they want to go and build their capacity to respond to all different kinds of passengers.

When I think about any type of training…. And one of the gifts I think that the community living movement has for our country is this idea of inclusive design. And if you design to the margins to be able to support people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, your capacity to support the general population has grown in response to that.

I don’t know. I don’t have the training designed right now, but I know that there are existing trainings out there that could be adapted to this workforce to build their capacity to support passengers of all abilities. I would be happy to work with a member of the committee and find out and do a bit more research on that. I do know it’s out there, but I don’t have it at top of mind right now.

M. Elmore (Chair): Terrific. Thank you. That’s a good answer.

J. Routledge: Well, since you’ve taken the time to talk to us, Karla, I, too, would like to, I guess, discuss further about training. I think that has been a theme, the impor­tance of training. As a Burnaby MLA, I have some relationship with BACI in Burnaby.

K. Verschoor: Yeah, that’s getting there.

J. Routledge: Before the pandemic, I would go to meetings. I would go to socials. I would go to barbecues. I think it’s important. From my experience and how I’ve appreciated that interaction is…. I think that on all of these fronts, when we’re talking about making recommendations about training, it’s not training about people. It’s training with people. I think that if the drivers could actually spend time with people with developmental disabilities and interact, it would make a huge difference.

K. Verschoor: Yeah, I think that’s brilliant. I mean, we have members all around the province that I could draw into any type of getting to know your community members with intellectual and developmental disabilities initiative that…. If you know people, you can respond to people and increase your comfort level.

If that’s something that comes out of this, I would be absolutely willing to help facilitate that connection be­tween community members and that industry to kind of build that relationship, and that relationship is part of that training.

Yeah, Janet, that’s perfect. Thank you.

M. Elmore (Chair): Any other comments?

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Karla, for your presentation today. We appreciate it and the work that you do. I have a person with an intellectual disability that works in my office, and it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done in terms of building a team, and Tegan is part of that team. She’s also a special Olympian, so we’re pretty proud of her in terms of the sporting accomplishments that she’s had as well.

I don’t think the length of your presentation determines whether it has an impact or not, because this definitely does. When I think about what you’ve said in a very short period of time, it’s very powerful. When you think about…. You’ve actually given us something that has built on what we’ve already learned — that attitudinal behaviours are a challenge with drivers. I think it’s time we actually recognize that. We certainly hear presentations about: “Well, we do this, and we do that.” Of course, drivers are human beings too, but there does need to be….

[3:00 p.m.]

You made the comment, for example, that some ride-sharing services aren’t…. There are not clear customer service standards and expectations, and that should be for every British Columbian, not just some of them. I think that, for me, in your written presentation was very powerful.

The other thing that you said was that we have to recognize the cost implications. You talked about…. I will just quote you: “For people who are often living in precarious circumstances, a single ride can exceed someone’s travel budget for an entire month.” We have to stop and think about that. We take it for granted that people have a phone, they have a Visa, they have a whatever. Many people do not, so it leads to that whole sense of isolation and loneliness, all of the things that you’ve referenced.

I just want you to know that we will think very carefully about what you’ve talked about in terms of training. I think the phrase “attitudinal barriers” is really descriptive, and I think that as we deliberate on what we are going to say and do at the end of this, there’s more work that needs to be done.

Ironically, the Justice Institute is up next. It used to train people.

I just wanted to thank you. Thank you for the written presentation in particular, which really stood out for me in terms of serving all British Columbians. So thank you for that and for the work you do every day.

K. Verschoor: You’re very welcome. Thank you for what you are doing today too.

M. Elmore (Chair): Right. Any other questions or comments from the committee?

Karla, I’d like to thank you very much for taking the time and for the powerful presentation. We appreciate it. Thank you.

Okay, we’ve got our next presenter in the waiting room, so let’s bring them on board.

Welcome to the committee, Joan. You have 15 minutes for your presentation, followed by 15 minutes of questions and answers from the committee members.

Over to you.

JUSTICE INSTITUTE OF B.C.

J. Glover: Hi, everybody. I am Joan Glover. I’m a program director in the justice and public safety division at the Justice Institute. I was invited here today to provide information about the TaxiHost program.

I provided oversight for this training until it was halted in 2019. I will say it’s been about five years since this training stopped, so my recollection of details may be a little foggy, but I am pleased to share an overview of the program.

I also thought it might be interesting for me to provide information about two online courses we were in the process of developing for ride-hail and taxi in 2018-19. I believe you have a copy of the PowerPoint which is the basis of my presentation today.

I’d just like to start by acknowledging that today I’m at our Pitt Meadows campus, located on the unceded traditional territories of the Katzie and Kwantlen people.

The TaxiHost program was delivered from 1996 to 2019. It was created as a way to standardize training being provided throughout the Lower Mainland. Prior to this, training was not consistently delivered by companies and often took a back seat to fleet coverage.

The high number of complaints from consumers and community partners resulted in key stakeholders such as ICBC, Tourism Vancouver, Vancouver International Airport and the Justice Institute, working together with other community partners, to develop an independently administered third-party training model. This was to ensure the delivery of training to every taxi driver that entered the industry, no matter what company they worked for.

[3:05 p.m.]

The next slide is just a list of other stakeholders that were involved with the original development of the program.

The TaxiHost program evolved over time, but the final approved delivery model was TaxiHost Pro. TaxiHost was required in all municipalities in Metro Vancouver, Abbotsford, Chilliwack, and the training was also required by all drivers operating a vehicle for hire at Vancouver International Airport.

The delivery model was face-to-face, and this allowed instructors to facilitate the hands-on components within the disability training course. This included curb management, loading, unloading and proper securement. Courses were delivered in a flexible format on a weekly basis to accommodate individuals that were working, studying or transitioning from unemployment to work as a professional driver. There were over 19,000 drivers trained during the program’s existence.

Completing an assessment process was required for students before they were allowed to enrol in the program. Student demographics included a high proportion of applicants that came from other countries or provinces. Each applicant had to demonstrate basic literacy and English proficiency. This was required to ensure drivers could effectively communicate with their passengers. Some newcomers often had to brush up on these skills before enrolment into the program. A simple geography quiz was also required. This verified an applicant’s familiarity with local cities, bridges, highways, major transportation corridors and destinations within the Lower Mainland.

TaxiHost Pro included three courses. They were completed over five days, part-time, totalling 30 hours. Students were required to achieve 75 percent on all three courses to pass. The cost in 2019 was about $550, and then a certificate of completion was issued, as it was one of the requirements to acquire a chauffeur’s permit.

Just quickly, I was going to go over the courses involved with the program. The first one was taxi industry and driver safety. This course provided a review of taxi operations, rules and regulations, map book skills and the use of GPS. Students were also provided strategies to reduce the incidence of conflict with customers and the risk of assault. Taxi drivers are one of the most at-risk occupational groups in North America.

The second course was service excellence and accessibility in transportation. This course emphasized the importance that all customers want to be treated with dignity and respect, using the correct language. Knowing how to handle and transport mobility aids was taught in this course.

The course also taught drivers how to develop the ap­proaches and skills to help the passengers feel more comfortable, including those with specialized needs.

Then the third course was collision avoidance driving. This course helped prepare drivers for on-road service delivery, and it was actually a hands-on course that in­cluded an on-road evaluation and skills training.

Moving on to 2018, once the province announced that ride-hail was coming to B.C., JIBC began development of a new online training course for the sector. We believed that there would be a training requirement, and initial indications at that time were TaxiHost would carry on. It did become clear that the taxi industry wanted to ensure there was an even playing field, so we decided a similar online course could be developed with taxi-specific content.

An integral part of creating these courses was having a robust group of subject matter experts, and an advisory committee was formed.

[3:10 p.m.]

We were really fortunate to have a broad range of people involved, and this included academics, researchers, disability groups and other relevant experts who had backgrounds in areas such as the taxi industry, road safety, personal safety and de-escalation, tourism, accessibility, universal access, indigenization, and diversity and inclusion. There was also ongoing communication at this time with the passenger transportation branch and MOTI about this training.

The goal of the online course was to provide a minimum standard of training to help ensure the safety of passengers and drivers, as well as maintaining a high level of service. As you will see, topics included driver familiarity and knowledge of the local communities in which they were to drive, personal safety and strategies for maintaining a safe work environment, effective communication strategies, tools for supporting universal access and diversity, and a review of road skills.

The online courses were self-directed and estimated to take about four hours to complete. At the time, the proposed cost was $75. The online course for taxi was also going to include specific rules and regulations, as well as procedures for handling money and tips to reduce the risk of robbery and assault. It also included a module for working with passengers with disabilities that included principles of securement and ramp and curb management.

These courses were about 70 percent completed. Then in 2019 — I think it was September — we were informed that training was not going to be required, and the delivery of TaxiHost and the development of the online courses stopped immediately. That was the end of the Justice Institute’s involvement in this area.

That’s the end of my presentation. I’m happy to try to answer any questions you might have.

M. Elmore (Chair): Thank you, Joan. Appreciate your presentation.

I’ll open it up to questions or comments from the committee.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Well, thank you very much.

Over and over again in the presentations, we’ve heard the TaxiHost program worked. We’re certainly hearing that there’s also a need for something to either replace it or…. I wrote down my question as: what does a refreshed TaxiHost program look like?

Obviously, in 2018 you’d made proposals for two separate programs, which you outlined in your presentation. I think that while we hear continually from companies, “We’re training; we’re giving modules; we’re doing all of these things,” consumers still feel — particularly the persons with disabilities and organizations that represent them — that there’s not really a standard approach to making sure that clients can expect a certain level and standardized approach.

What does a refreshed…? Has the Justice Institute revisited their thinking about the two online programs or anything at all in this subject area?

J. Glover: Well, to be honest, we really haven’t since the program ended in 2019. I mean, we had done a lot of great work with the development of the online courses. We were really recommending at that point that there should be a re-certification process every three years. That would be the refresh.

We thought that in having a course that was four hours in duration — financially, it was $75 — it shouldn’t be that much of a barrier, especially for a working driver, and that that might be a good option to ensure maintaining that level of service. There was a lot of focus in the courses around working with people with visible and non-visible disabilities. That was a key component of that online training.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): If I might, I was going to ask, when those courses were being designed, about the process and the inclusion of people who’d actually experienced those things. So you went through that process of being inclusive in terms of how and what needed to be done?

[3:15 p.m.]

J. Glover: Yes. As I said, we put an advisory committee together. Unfortunately, I can’t remember who, specifically, but we did have input from at least two different disability groups. They provided input and content. We also had filmed videos that demonstrated how to work with people with different needs to ensure that it was accessible and safe for all people.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Thank you.

J. Routledge: Thank you, Joan, for this overview. If I understand, there was a program. It was in-person, and it was $550, and you were in the process of replacing it with something online that would cost $75.

I must tell you that I have been in more than one taxi where the taxi driver has raised the issue of TaxiHost and said that it should come back. In your opinion, what would it take to get it back?

J. Glover: That would be a much bigger discussion. I mean, to be frank, we had staff, we had instructors, that we all had to let go in 2019 because there wasn’t the program to support those positions. That would be a fairly large conversation.

The one problem with TaxiHost, of which we were fully aware, as an in-person model, was having that access throughout the province. As much as I believe in the benefits of in-person training, where you can have that applied component, where people can actually do hands-on components, we were pretty realistic. That wouldn’t be a realistic model if it were going to be a requirement throughout the province.

If there were a recommendation, it would really be to revisit some type of online training, which would be fully accessible throughout the province.

J. Routledge: Thank you.

M. Elmore (Chair): I want to thank you, Joan, for your presentation, and we appreciate that. It’s much appreciated, your time.

J. Glover: No problem. I’m happy to provide the information.

M. Elmore (Chair): That concludes our presenters for the day. We’ve got more presenters tomorrow, eight to one.

Are committee members fine…? Did you want to go in camera to discuss any concerns or we’re good for the day? Yes, carry on tomorrow. We’re good? Okay.

I’d like to conclude our meeting today, and I’ll do that with a motion to adjourn.

So moved, seconded.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 3:18 p.m.