VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Following the province’s announcement that ride hailing won’t come to B.C. before at least the fall of 2019, a local man has created a petition to push for the government to pick up the pace on approving Uber and Lyft type services.

Hossein Maleki argues the latest announcement breaks a promise that everyone in the province will be hurt by, even cab drivers.

“My goal for this is to showcase to the government the anger of people of delaying this. There’s no reason for delaying this and it seems like people agree,” says Maleki. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

He adds delaying it and increasing the number of taxi licenses makes people invest in something that will ultimately go away anyway.

“If you look at the restaurant industry, everybody is struggling. No one wants to go out any more, I see friends drinking and driving,” he says. “It’s just becoming the norm. People are deciding that, ‘Hey, I’m just going to drive and have just a few drinks.’ It’s wrong for a city like Vancouver to be so behind the times.”

So far, there’s been a few hundred signatures in just a couple days and he’s hoping it will gain traction and hit the 50,000 mark.

“There’s a lot of good people who have petitions already going on, our goal is to actually team up wit them. There’s organizations like MADD, there’s the restaurant association, there’s a lot of people doing a lot of work. We just hope to be another one that show cases that this last push to 2019 is unacceptable.”

He says they’ll keep the petition going as long as it takes to get a response from the transportation minister, and when he hits the magic number of signatures, he hopes to deliver it to Victoria in person.

“The more we pretend this is not coming, the more we are hurting the people who are drivers in the taxi association in the long term,” he says, adding he’s talked to cab drivers that support Uber and Lyft services.

“[Delaying it] is something every one in the province would be hurt by.”

-With files from Alison Bailey