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A taxi stand
?Think back to your last week in Uxbridge - downtown, Toronto Street South, even your own residential neighbourhood. How many taxi-cabs have you noticed over that period? Two, three, a half-dozen at most?
It might interest you to know that the Township’s taxi bylaw actually allows for a total of 21 taxis to pick up fares within our boundaries. The municipality issues seven taxi licences, the owners of which are each allowed to operate three cabs. But, of course, the reality is that there’s rarely enough business in Uxbridge to support five taxi drivers, let alone 21. So on a given Friday or Saturday night, if you don’t have a designated driver within your group of friends, there are probably fewer than a handful of commercial drivers to whom you can turn.
The Township’s bylaw department recently conducted an investigation of the taxi industry here and discovered this to be exactly the case. Although all seven of the licenses are currently taken, bylaw officers could only find three of the companies or owners even listed in the Uxbridge phone book. They talked to local drinking establishment operators, who were almost unanimously aware of only two companies - GQ Taxi (which stands for Grand Quest) and All Points Taxi.
Even these two companies weren’t exactly the epitome of reliability. To avoid the liability of inebriated customers getting behind the wheel, pub owners or bartenders sometimes found themselves acting as cab drivers, delivering their customers home at their own expense. Not exactly in the job description, and not exactly the best situation for the health and safety of the pub-crawling population.
So on Monday night, bylaw officers dragged four of the current licence-holders before Township Council for hearings, recommending that their licenses be revoked, either for poor record-keeping, unreliable service, or both. The owner of All Points (and its sole driver), Lloyd Bynoe, was one of the four. He pleaded that his goal was to substantially improve his accessibility in the community, and various members of Council cited his record of good service. He was put on probation for six months, and asked to improve his record keeping.
The other three, who have been virtually invisible in the Township, did indeed lose their licences. One man, who owns more than 70 cabs in Pickering and Ajax, was upset at the reduction of his empire and threatened legal action.
Although we agree that close monitoring of the taxi industry is an important public safety issue, perhaps the method of reviewing licences could be a less humiliating process. You couldn’t help but feel for these drivers as their business practices were roundly criticized in public. Few other business owners face such open scrutiny.
There is probably only room for a couple of full-time cabbies in Uxbridge. But to pick up the slack on busy weekend nights, we need part-timers, and the current licence fee of $1,000 is perhaps a bit inhibiting for them. In the interests of public safety, we suggest that Council review the fee schedule, and perhaps devise a sliding scale depending on the number of clients served.
We need more cabbies we can call, but it’s a business. It needs to be worth their while.
