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The decisions are the last rules to be set before ride-hailing companies can start applying for licences on Sept. 3.

Read said she expects that once applications are made, it could take six to eight weeks for the board to review and decide whether to approve them.

“It expected that (ride-hailing) services will be available in some parts of the province later this calendar year,” she said.

The government previously announced ride-hailing drivers will need to obtain the same Class 4 commercial licenses as taxi drivers. Lyft also requires annual criminal-record and driving-record checks.

Ride-hailing giant Lyft announced last week it would operate in B.C., despite disagreeing with the Class 4 licence decision. Uber has yet to announce its intentions.

Taxis will still be the only vehicles allowed to pick up street hails.

The BC Greens praised the new rules, but said they will keep an eye on the boundary issue and whether taxis should have their municipal boundaries relaxed in the future as well.

“The PTB has honoured the integrity of the process that we undertook as a committee,” said Green MLA Adam Olsen, who sat on an all-party committee that studied ride-hailing. “For too long decisions about this industry were based on politics. Now we’re making progress in a way British Columbians can be confident about.”

Liberal MLA Peter Milobar, who also sat on the all-party committee, said the geographic borders, fleet size and pricing decisions all make sense and were endorsed previously by MLAs. He zeroed back in on the NDP’s instance of Class 4 licenses as the main problem.

“What really it’s going to boil down to is this adherence to the Class 4 designations,” said Milobar. “You are likely going to see a shifting of drivers from the taxi industry to ride-hailing companies which will be further harm to the taxi industry in terms of their ability to compete.

“It doesn’t help the travelling public any if that just happens. We won’t see any more cars on the road we’ll just see different branding.”

Monday’s ruling by the Passenger Transportation Board came after the board released discussion papers on the topics in July and held public consultation meetings with taxi companies and ride-hailing organizations this month.