A plan by a taxi association to increase the number of taxis during peak periods on weekend nights appears tangled in red tape.
The taxi industry wants to add 60 cabs at night to deal with a cab crunch after the bars close. But it could take months to work through government regulators so the plan takes business sense, says a taxi industry representative.
"It's frustrating," said Amrik Mahil, the head of the Association of Pacific Taxi Owners, who told CTV News about the proposal. "Our industry has too many chiefs."
Mahil's plan is one way to deal with the number of drunks flinging themselves into the street near the Granville Street entertainment district to try and catch a cab on the way home.
He would have to get approval for 60 new licences from the province's Passenger Transportation Board. The Board told CTV that they would give the green light to a night-only license, but only if the taxis could prove it makes business sense.
The main business hurdle is the insurance costs that can be as high as $21,000 a year for a cab -- and there's no way a cab could work just nights and make enough money to pay that fee, Mahil said.
"It's not easy to make a living as it is," Mahil said.
One way the night cab proposal could work is if ICBC gives the night cabs a substantial discount on insurance, he said. Many get a fleet discount already, which can be as much as 63 per cent. Paying for two days a week of the discounted rate, for example, could shave $10,000 off a $14,000 insurance bill.
An Insurance Corporation of B.C. representative told CTV News that the company is not opposed to meeting with Mahil and sorting out an arrangement. However simply changing rates would mean making an application to the B.C. Utilities Commission, which could take months.
The city has tried to put in a cab stand but often the cabs are snagged along Seymour Street before they can even park. City Councillor Geoff Meggs floated the idea that the city could lease out taxi licences to cab drivers, and adjust the numbers to meet the demand.
Minister of Transportation Shirley Bond promised to send inspectors to count cabs to get a better sense of the problem before she committed further action.
Another idea is to let cabs from other parts of Metro Vancouver come into the city -- something that is illegal right now but is already happening, said Mahil.
Planning expert Patrick Condon said there's another way to solve Vancouver's night-time transit issues: creating recreation centres in other cities to spread out the crunch.
"There's no reason for the vast majority of people who want to be entertained to have to trek to downtown Vancouver and to this entertainment district," he said. "Everyone in the region deserves to have satisfying places in their own community that they can go to as well."
Metro Vancouver's leaders promised to create regional centres for living and working and entertainment more than a decade ago, but entertainment got left behind, said Condon, a University of B.C. professor of landscape architecture and the author of The Seven Rules of Sustainable Communities.
With a report from CTV British Columbia's Jon Woodward and Mi-Jung Lee
