Cab companies demand more weekend taxis
Posted January 23, 2012 12:37 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – If you’re struggling to get a late night cab ride home on the weekend, you’re not alone. The city’s four taxi companies commissioned a study which found there still are not enough cabs on the weekend evenings into the early mornings.
The study found peak demand from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. is almost six times greater than demand for any hour between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m.
Carolyn Bauer, General Manager of Yellow Cab, says in response to the findings, the four companies have submitted an application for 99 permanent weekend evening taxi licences.
“It usually only heats up only for about an hour, but we want to clear the streets out, we want to make sure the passengers get home safe.”
It also found out-of-town cabs are poaching clients from Vancouver, something that concerns Bauer because they don’t have the same level of accountability.
But Bauer says that’s not enough, they need to address the problem of out-of-town taxis.
“There’s no safety protocol in place, there’s no accountability, there’s no responsibility. They all paint their taxis yellow and when we get the complaints of a yellow cab, we have the ability to track it, run the GPS and we search for an issue or for a complaint. We’ll find out and nine times out of 10, it’s not even a Yellow Cab.”
Trips originating from Downtown Vancouver represent 40.5 per cent of total traffic for weekend evenings.
