City to explore in-house dispatch for accessible taxis

Councillors are urging the City of Ottawa to consider running its own dispatch service as part of efforts to increase the number of accessible taxis on the road, as a perennial lack of vehicles leaves many waiting hours.

Members of the emergency preparedness and protective services committee carried a motion to include the feasibility study for the dispatch within the pilot of a new incentive program. 

Only about 80 wheelchair-accessible cabs are currently on the road, but city staff says 20 of those are not available for on-demand service because they are being used for the pre-scheduled Para Transpo service.

If every cab licensed for this purpose were running, there would be 191.

The new program will provide $5,000 per year to licensees to invest in their vehicles and up to $2,000 for drivers available 50 hours a week, said Bylaw Chief Roger Chapman, "so people that require these vehicles will no longer have to wait, as we've heard, three and four hours, in some cases even longer."

It will cost $1.5 million annually and be funded by the 10-cents-per-trip accessibility surcharge paid to the city voluntarily by ride-hailing companies, such as Uber and Lyft. 

Lack of accessible cabs labelled 'a crisis'

But taxi drivers and accessibility advocates told councillors this is a "bare minimum" first step. 

"I have witnessed first hand the destruction of the accessible taxi industry in Ottawa over the last eight years," said Dr. Lynn Ashdown. "What was once a reliable service has now become a crisis that needs urgent action."

It goes far beyond an inconvenience, according to Ashdown, who described a time when she had to wait over an hour, outside on a winter night in an abandoned area because no taxi was available to pick her up from a doctor's appointment.

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Ashdown says a close family member is near the end of their life and described how she was completely unable to get a cab when the hospital warned her that that loved one may have only hours left. 

"To be in that situation was absolutely horrible,"she said. "All I could do was sit and pray and hope and wonder what was going on and would I ever be afforded the opportunity to say goodbye."

Phillip Turcotte, who also uses a wheelchair, wrote in a submission to council that customers with disabilities are treated as second-class.

"It would never be acceptable for a customer without a disability to wait hours for a taxi, and it should not be acceptable for a customer with a disability to wait that long either." 

Shift from enforcement to incentive

Bylaw services had previously used crackdowns to deal with the elusive cabs.  

"The community was suffering and the industry wasn't providing the much needed service," Chapman said.

"What we saw was that every time a call came up, the dispatch board would go dark. Drivers were hiding basically because they weren't interested in taking the accessible fares." 

Tony Hajjar, an outspoken taxi driver with more than four decades on the roads, described a similar situation, where an older woman waited two hours with her groceries while drivers opted to take passengers who were going a longer distance.

He told councillors that the pandemic and competition from ride-hailing companies have squeezed the industry. 

Councillors balk at sole dispatch option

The proposed program will include a new centralized dispatch service for accessible vehicles.

Right now the city knows of only one vendor capable of providing the service: Coventry Connections. 

Rather than a call for proposals, city staff plan to issue a notice of the contract. Other operators can come forward with their qualifications. 

Councillors, unhappy with the idea of what they see as similar to a sole-sourced contract, are calling on city staff to investigate an in-house option, while moving ahead with a three-year pilot project.

Chapman said implementing the program will likely take until the end of the year, but a shift in the market will take more time. 

"It's not flipping the switch and all of a sudden we're going to see all these successful taxis back on the road," he said. "But certainly it's our intent to work with the brokers and to work with the drivers to make sure that these incentives are well understood... and we'll try and get them back on the road as quickly as we can."

The plan now heads to a future meeting of the full Ottawa City Council.