If you were wondering why you weren’t able to get a taxi on New Year’s Eve, it may have been because there were only 12 extra cabs on the road on one of the busiest nights of the year.

Tens of thousands of revellers packed downtown Vancouver to ring in the new year, but it was the trip home that proved to be the real adventure for many.

“We are hoping to get a taxi [home], but we had to get a ride out here today because we waited three and a half hours to get a taxi and it never came,” said David Davis, adding he had booked a cab that never showed up. “Our fingers are crossed… but we’ll see.”

The Vancouver Taxi Association said its entire fleet of available cabs was out on New Year’s Eve, but a lot of partygoers still found themselves waiting in the cold.

There are 708 taxis operating in Vancouver, including an extra 100 that are rolled out just on weekends -- but over the holiday season only a dozen extra cabs were authorized.

Yet when it comes to the city’s taxi shortage, it’s not just the passengers who are waiting.

The Vancouver Taxi Association says it’s doing the best it can to get more licences, but it couldn’t afford to roll out any more vehicles for such a short period of time. They want to put more cabs permanently on the road, but the process seems stalled.

“The area that’s affected the most is not receiving taxi licences,” said spokesperson Carolyn Bauer.

“We’ve had an application in front of the Passenger Transportation Board. It was posted on the transportation website on Sept. 14 of for 175 taxis… We have no decision on that as of yet - we’re still waiting.”

Vancouver City Councillor Geoff Meggs says the city is waiting for the provincial government to complete its wide-scale review on taxis and ride sharing programs like Uber before it can make any changes.

Both the B.C. government and Vancouver City Hall have been hesitant to welcome services like Uber, and councillors voted to hold off until at least October 2017 as the province undergoes a lengthy consultation process.

“Everybody is frustrated by the failure to get more cabs on the road generally, but it's been in a gridlock for more than a year,” Meggs said.

“There is nothing the city can do to wave a magic wand and have a thousand cabs come down on a magic carpet.”

With files from CTV Vancouver’s Scott Hurst