Uber must really love Toronto.

Despite being based in San Francisco, as the company has evolved from a ride-hailing business to a tech goliath with dealings in food delivery, autonomous vehicles, helicopters, buses and beyond it has chosen Canada’s largest city again and again to launch many of its most interesting and important new services.

“Uber has been firmly digging its heels in the ground in Toronto and committed to the city for the long term,” Harsha Chandra Shekar, a business development lead focused on partnerships for Uber’s rides business, told the Star.

“It’s widely been said that Canada is having a tech moment, and Toronto’s vibrant tech community plays a significant role in this.”

Toronto has been an Uber test bed for everything from notifications that alert riders when their drop-off area is close, to its now-defunct UberHOP service. Its Uber Eats food delivery service was birthed in the city in December 2015, and in April it launched a trial that lets travellers have food from some Toronto Pearson International Airport restaurants delivered right to their gate.

In May, Toronto became the first Canadian city to land a pilot of the company’s Pickup feature, allowing users to skip restaurant lines by ordering ahead and grabbing their own food once it’s ready, and many expect the city will soon be ground zero for a new grocery delivery service.

But while consumers wait to see how Uber could use Toronto to jump into the grocery game, the company has recently launched another first: a program that allows customers to arrange rides without a smartphone or computer.

Uber is using Pearson airport to pilot two kiosks — the first and only it’s installed anywhere in the world — that allow people to hail a ride, pay for it using a credit card and then head to a designated location to be picked up.

David Rutenberg, a senior product manager focused on the company’s rides offerings at airports, said the kiosks became part of the company’s playbook after it realized “not everybody is as comfortable with technology.” If the pilot, unveiled in Terminal 1 in August, is successful it could be replicated elsewhere, he said.

Toronto came to mind when Uber was considering where to host the pilot because of the company’s roots in the city and its recent decision to open an engineering hub and expand its self-driving car office there, said Shekar.

“Toronto has proven to be a great testing ground for new products and features for a variety of reasons such as its strong affinity towards new technology, population size and diversity,” he said.

“People in Toronto tend to be willing to try new technology features or products as well as give feedback, so it gives us a good sense of what the wider population might use and enjoy.”

The city is also far from some of the drama Uber has attracted at home. U.S. lawmakers are increasingly discussing how they can reign in the company and analysts are criticizing it for losing more than any other American IPO since 1975 after it went public in May with a $120 billion valuation and saw shares quickly drop.

David Soberman, a University of Toronto professor specializing in marketing, said pilots in Toronto don’t have to deal with challenges like San Francisco’s bridges or the restrictions placed on Uber by places like New York, which has limited the number of ride-hailing vehicles on the road, or B.C., which has long fought the service’s entry into the market.

Uber recently pulled out of servicing Ontario International Airport in California after the airport raised operational fees for ride-hailing companies from $3 to $4 for each drop-off or pickup.

Torontonians have meanwhile proved to be very engaged with and accommodating towards Uber.

“If you’re in a market where something has really taken off and being adopted by people, it’s also a good place where you can experiment and try to learn because you’re learning with people that are quite committed to the system,” Soberman said.

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Toronto also has the bonus of boasting a population that is diverse and prone to travelling and its size is comparable to many U.S. markets.

It’s “sophisticated,” the business capital of Canada and home to Uber’s Canadian head office, Soberman said.

“There’s a big benefit to conducting tests in an urban area where your head office is located because it can be monitored more closely by the people who are directly affected by the results of the test and they can get direct feedback without waiting for it to come in the reports that come from another market,” he said.

However, not everyone is a fan of Toronto rolling out the red carpet for Uber pilots.

“These partnerships keep popping up because all people seem to focus on is the new and exciting, not all of the badness that’s been covered up by a curtain with a big U on it,” Beck Taxi operations manager Kristine Hubbard said.

Taxi companies like hers have fought Uber for years, arguing the company has skirted regulations and disrupted their industry by undercutting cab drivers.

The airport kiosks and the access to the airport that Pearson granted Uber and rival Lyft last summer have irked Hubbard in particular.

“Airports are definitely very lucrative. We don’t have access to Pearson airport, so if a Toronto licensed taxi driver wants to pick up at the airport they can pay up front $100 to pick people up at $15 a trip, if they get an order. They can’t go up and sit at the airport anywhere,” said Hubbard.

Ethnographer Alex Rosenblat, who wrote Uberland: How Algorithms Are Rewriting the Rules of Work, thought it was interesting that Uber chose Toronto for the kiosk pilot because she has found the U.S. to be more receptive towards Uber than other markets.

“I think it’s because Silicon Valley is part of American nationalism,” she said.

“Technology companies are given this wide berth with exceptions to the rules…whereas I don’t think that’s the same case outside of the U.S.”

However, she said perhaps Uber has been thinking of Toronto more because its tech counterparts have. Alphabet company Sidewalk Labs has proposed a hi-tech neighbourhood for a prime swath of Toronto’s waterfront that it has promised to deck out with sensors, affordable housing, raincoats for buildings and heated pavement.

Though the project has faced privacy concerns and controversy around the development process, Rosenblat said, “Maybe because Sidewalk Labs made headway it’s considered a good place to test out things.”

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