VANCOUVER—Vancouver’s last crowded Canada Day without ride-hailing may have come and gone.

B.C. Transportation Minister Claire Trevena is promising that app-based ride-hailing platforms such as Uber and Lyft can submit applications by the end of the summer and begin operating before 2020, on an uncertain future date she knows “can’t come soon enough” for many British Columbians.

“It’s clear that the public and the ride-hailing industry are concerned about B.C. adopting a regulatory model that is overly restrictive,” Trevena wrote in a statement Tuesday. “I will be working to promote greater flexibility around key issues of supply, boundaries and pricing to prepare for the introduction of ride-hailing.”

Holidays like Canada Day, when people struggle to get a cab or wait in long bus lines to get home following festivities, are a prime example why Ian Tostenson contends ride-hailing is needed in this province.

“I saw yesterday two cruise ships in the harbour, people everywhere for the fireworks,” said Tostenson, president of the B.C. Restaurant Food Service, and an outspoken advocate for ride-hailing.

It will make Vancouver the last major Canadian city to get app-based ride services like Uber and Lyft, a lag partly explained by complicated provincial taxi regulations and a political will to minimize disruption for taxi drivers.

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“What I hear more and more is people saying, ‘I’m going to stay home, I can’t get a taxi, I want to have a couple glasses of wine,’” Tostenson said. “The taxi industry — I don’t fault them — but they can’t keep up with the demand.”

Multiple studies and the Passenger Transportation Board, a provincial tribunal responsible for implementing B.C.’s taxi laws, have concluded that bringing in the likes of Uber and Lyft would help ease passengers’ most common complaints. The top concerns are that there aren’t enough taxis available and that municipal boundaries sometimes preclude passengers from getting rides between Metro Vancouver’s 21 municipalities.

The province introduced legislation last November that opened the door for regulations allowing ride-hailing by fall of 2019. In March, a three-party committee recommended non-restrictive regulations that would allow drivers with a non-commercial licences to work for ride-hailing services, and no geographic boundaries.

Trevena repeated her assertion Tuesday that commercial licences will be required for drivers, meaning those who want to work for Uber or Lyft will have to take an extra driving test if they don’t already have a Class 4 licence.

For taxi owner-operators, who both drive a taxi and own the licence to operate it, the impact could be huge.

In Toronto, for example, taxi licenses are now worth 10 per cent of their value before ride-hailing, said taxi expert Dan Hara, who completed a study on modernizing B.C.’s taxi industry for the province in 2018.

“The province is trying to do it in a way that reduces the cost of disruption, particularly on the taxi industry,” Hara said. “With advance notice, people get the chance to adjust.”

ICBC, the province’s sole auto insurance and licencing body, also needs time to develop an insurance product for part-time commercial drivers, Hara said.

While ride-hailing will make it easier for people to find a ride during peak travelling times, it won’t solve all the lower mainland’s transportation woes.

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“Ride share — unless people actually share rides — wouldn’t necessarily reduce the peak amount of traffic,” Hara said.

That’s why Tostenson sees it as a “first mile, last mile” service that can link people to rapid transit and remove uncertainty about how people will get home.

TransLink, Metro Vancouver’s transportation authority, also assumes ride-hailing will fill a service gap, and is taking the potential of ride-hailing to reduce the need for parking spaces into consideration in its long-term Transport 2050 plan.

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