Dozens of unlicenced “ghost cabs” patrol Vancouver’s Gastown and Granville strip, picking up passengers when taxis are scarce, a CTV News investigation has found.

The ghost cabs, which don’t have typical cab meters and usually just take cash, can fill a void left by Vancouver’s cab crunch on the busy Friday and Saturday nights.

“We just thought we were getting into a cab,” said Ruwan Silva, who found himself with two friends in the back seat of a white Chrysler that picked the group up near the Gassy Jack statue in Gastown.

The middle-aged female driver told them she would take them to their destination at Georgia and Main streets – but only afterwards asked for money, Silva said.

“I thought it was going to be free. At the end I was not happy that she asked for $10,” he said.

CTV News approached the driver to ask questions about her business, but she said she didn’t want to be on the newscast and peeled away.

Driving a taxi is a highly regulated business in Vancouver, with both the province and the city deciding who has a right to pick people up curbside.

Only the roughly 700 licensed Vancouver taxis that belong to one of the four Vancouver cab companies are allowed to pick up fares – a system that critics say puts too few cabs on the road and can result in longer waits.

On Friday and Saturday nights, the rules seem to come second to a mad rush for passengers – CTV News cameras saw passengers being picked up by both suburban cabs, which technically can’t pick up fares within the Vancouver city limits, and limousines, which can’t accept street hails.

Cabbies are frustrated that they see many unlicensed cabs chasing their fares, said Satnam Jaswal of Vancouver’s Yellow Cab.

“There’s a ghost car picking up all over the place,” he told CTV News Saturday night. It’s risky for passengers to get into unmarked cars, he said, adding, “You never know who they are. Do they have a licence? Do they have insurance?”

They also don’t go through criminal record checks, unlike cabbies. In 2013 the driver of a black SUV that picked up a 25-year-old woman from Gastown was charged with beating and sexually assaulting his unwitting fare. That has police reinforcing the warning.

“You might be driving with someone who is a convicted sex offender,” Const. Brian Montague told CTV News.

But the existing cab system poorly serves consumers, representatives of tech company Uber have said, arguing that it should be opened up to more competition so that riders can get a cab faster.

Currently, Uber has been rejected temporarily by Vancouver city council and may contravene provincial rules, so Uber doesn’t operate in Vancouver, though it operates in more than 200 cities worldwide.

Jaswal said he’d rather see the cab shortage resolved by having the provincial Passenger Transportation Board approve more cabs.