issue 17// vol 46

news // no. 5

Ride-hailing approved, chaos ensues

> Different rules in different places, and a lawsuit

Atiba Nelson
Staff Reporter

 

fter months of stalling, Uber and Lyft

were given the green light to operate
within the Lower Mainland and Whistler
by the British Columbia Passenger
Transportation Board.

The decision to open the roads to the
two largest ride-hailing companies means
that cars can operate in Metro Vancouver,
but business licenses must be secured
by the companies in each municipality
operators hope to service. Additionally,
the ruling prohibits municipalities from
withholding business licenses to the ride-
hailing entities.

Hours after the transportation board’s
decision, Vancouver started offering
licenses to drivers.

“We're ready for ride-hailing! Staff
have been working hard behind the
scenes to make sure that once provincial
regulators approved applicants like [Lyft]
& [Uber], our staff can turn around
business licenses in three days or less,” said
Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart in a
statement on his official Twitter account.

Other municipalities were not as
speedy.

Ina move that heralds the start

of ride-hailing service for Douglas’
Coquitlam campus students, the Tri-Cities
(Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, and Port
Moody) decided on a regional licensing
structure to allow Uber and Lyft room to
drive in the three cities with one business
license.

“Tt’s what our residents would expect—

  

local governments cooperating with a
uniform set of regulations and not an
obstacle to the viability of the service,’ said
Brad West, Mayor of Port Coquitlam.
Prospective rail-hailing companies
would be charged one annual fee, with
the three cities splitting the fee as follows:
Coquitlam would get 40 percent, while

 

Photo by Billy Bui

Port Coquitlam and Port Moody would
receive 30 percent each. Annual licenses
fees for companies would be scaled, as
companies with 1 to 25 vehicles are charged
$1,000, $2,500 for a company with 25 to 100
vehicles, and $5,000 for a company with
more than 100 vehicles on Tri-City streets.

Currently, only West Vancouver, North
Vancouver, Surrey, and New Westminster
do not have a licensing plan in place.
However, Douglas College students who
use Uber should not be affected as the
company’s coverage area engulfs the New
Westminster and Coquitlam campuses.
Douglas College Lyft users are not as lucky,
as the company’s initial roll-out only
includes a small area of Vancouver.

As some municipalities embrace
ride-hailing as competition to taxi services
in their city, others have found ways to
obstruct ride-hailing operations within
their borders. Surrey has issued by-law
tickets to Uber operators, despite being
told to cooperate with the new services.

Worsening the road conditions for
ride-hailing companies is the fact that
taxi companies have banned together to
sue Uber and Lyft, claiming that the two
companies have been given an unfair
advantage by being able to operate across
cities.

Douglas students get to keep riding
transit, but at an increased cost

>» U-Pass Extended for five more years

Atiba Nelson
Staff Reporter

 

he partnership (between TransLink and

the Province of British Columbia) that
busses post-secondary students around
cities throughout the province has been
extended until 2025.

Douglas College students at both
the New Westminster and Coquitlam
campuses can rejoice as the student
associations at the nine other participating
institutions voted to approve a five-year
extension of the U-Pass BC program,
despite monthly fee increases.

Currently, the monthly U-Pass rate
is $41 dollars, but is slated to increase to
$46 by the end of the five-year extension.
Douglas College students may not feel
the monthly increase due to the fact that
students pay a lump sum for the U-Pass
upon registration in courses for the
semester.

The “Universal” pass program started
in 2003 as a pilot project. Initially, only
University of British Columbia and Simon
Fraser University students were eligible
for a U-Pass. At that time, the U-Pass
program was sponsored by Vancity credit
union, and sold as a way “to generate more
off-campus transit trips by students for
work, shopping, entertainment and other
purposes,” according to an August 2003
media release on the Vancity corporate
website.

In 2010, the Government of British
Columbia asked BC post-secondary

education students to vote on whether
their institutions wanted a U-Pass, as only
Capilano and Langara students had joined
UBC and SFU students as groups using the
subsided transit pass.

Douglas College students asked
students to vote to become a part of the
U-Pass BC program, and 96 percent of
voters approved Douglas’ entry into the
program, despite the program imposing
a mandatory fee and no mechanism to
opt-out.

Each time the issue of the U-Pass BC
program contract renewal has been tabled,
Douglas students approve the program,
which may be due to the uniqueness of
both Douglas campuses proximity to
the Skytrain—a mode of transportation
available to U-Pass holders.

Opponents of the U-Pass BC program
have held onto longstanding arguments
centred on the program becoming an
unnecessary financial burden for students
who do not use transit services.

Douglas College does allow students
to opt-out of the U-Pass BC program. To
opt-out students must prove to the College
that they have a documented physical
or psychological medical condition
preventing them from using the transit
system. The form, available on the Douglas
College website, must be completed by a
qualified medical assessor and submitted
to the college. Another U-Pass BC program
exemption is if a Douglas student holds a
U-Pass from another BC post-secondary
institution.

  

Photo by Michelle Lim