Mississauga city council has now created a committee that will be tasked with designing a pilot project that they hope will ultimately pave the way for traditional cabs and ride-sharing services to co-exist in the GTA municipality.
Mississauga city council voted in favour of forming the committee on Wednesday, weeks after councillors supported a motion to ban UberX in Mississauga, a directive which the city says is still in effect.
While a ‘cease and desist’ clause in the motion originally called for Uber to be banned from the pilot project if it continued to operate in violation of existing bylaws, Mayor Bonnie Crombie told reporters Wednesday that the clause was removed because it was redundant.
She said Mississauga is already enforcing its bylaws and that the city has handed out more than 300 tickets to UberX drivers to date, each carrying fines of at least $25,000 to the driver and $50,000 to the company.
“We wanted the pilot project to go forward and we wanted all parties at the table,” Crombie said.
She said the only way to get a “workable solution” would be to have all parties involved take part.
Crombie also acknowledged that ride-sharing presents a challenge because all the municipalities border one another essentially constitute ‘an open market.’
“Certainly we would prefer that the province take this on and regulate the issue so that it applies to each municipality equally, fairly rather than have piecemeal legislation,” she said.
Crombie said she expects to speak with Toronto mayor John Tory about the two cities approach to Uber as well.
In a letter to Mickey Frost, the city staffer responsible for enforcing taxi regulations, Uber Canada's General Manager Ian Black said Uber "welcomes the opportunity to work with the City of Mississauga" on a pilot project.
Black suggested that the program begin "as early as possible."
“Mississauga City Council meets on June 8 and could conceivably approve the terms of a TNC pilot program at that point," the letter read.
Black added that there are over 100,000 Uber riders and 5,000 Uber drivers in Mississauga.
"Suspending operations would seriously impact intercity mobility of Mississaugans that rely on ridesharing every day to get around the GTA, including those Mississaugans who use uberPOOL as a more affordable carpooling option that helps reduce traffic congestion across the GTA," the statement continued.
The pilot project is expected to begin in September and will run for a year.
Poll says almost half of Mississaugans disagree with Uber ban:
Meanwhile, a new poll conducted by Forum Research suggests that nearly half of Mississauga voters disapprove of Mississauga city council’s decision to ban Uber.
According to the survey, 49 per cent of the 722 Mississauga residents polled did not agree with council’s decision to order Uber to stop doing business in the GTA community.
About 42 per cent of respondents told Forum that they supported the move by council while one tenth said they did not have an opinion on the subject.
The survey also suggests that among those who have used Uber, satisfaction with the ride-sharing service is significantly higher than with traditional cabs.
According to the poll, 28 per cent of respondents said they had used Uber in the past and 95 per cent of them said they were satisfied with the service. Only 49 per cent said they were satisfied with their taxi service.
“While disapproval of council’s motion to Uber to cease and desist is not that much greater than approval among voters, it is clear that those who use Uber see it as vastly superior to the city’s taxis,” Forum Research President Lorne Bozinoff said in his analysis accompanying the poll.
The poll, which was conducted on May 19, randomly surveyed 722 people via telephone and is considered to be accurate plus or minus four per cent, 19 times out of 20.
