Easy, rider: Saskatoon taxi fleet manager urges patience, flexibility when calling for pickup

Taxis are back on the road in Saskatoon — just not all roads.

Drivers are assessing whether they can negotiate streets on a call-by-call basis, said Riide Saskatoon fleet manager Mike Francis.

He's asking customers to be patient with wait times and be prepared to walk to their taxi.

"The drivers are actually calling the customers to try to co-ordinate, if maybe the customer has to walk out from their crescent to the main street just so that they can actually get service," he said Thursday.

"It's tremendously difficult in residential neighbourhoods."

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This is a far cry from Monday, when Riide was able to only get one set of wheels on the road.

"We were almost completely shut down," he said.

"At one point we were down to one four-by-four taxi that was able to actually move around on the streets."

A spokesperson for SkipTheDishes said the company shut down all deliveries on Tuesday "for the safety of our independently-contracted couriers."

"But we were back online as of [Wednesday] morning."

SkipTheDishes has more than 430 restaurants on its network in Saskatoon, she said.