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UBER Set to Relaunch in Calgary by early December after City Adopts new Bylaw - no Word on Vancouver (Still)
Friday, December 2, 2016
UBER at the BC Tech Summit in 2015
Vancouver, BC, December 2, 2016--(T-Net)--The CBC reported today that global ride sharing company Uber says it expects to bring its ride-hailing service back to Calgary within weeks after city council approved bylaw changes Monday (yesterday) that make the city's licensing fee structure more favourable for the company.
The changes were approved by an 11-4 vote. See the full story on the CBC website here.
Meanwhile, there is still no word on when or if Uber will be able to operate in Vancouver.
Over 72,300 people have reportedly now signed the UBER petition for BC ("British Columbia Needs Uber! Sign the petition!") and over 200,000 people in BC have downloaded the Uber App and used it elsewhere, according to a report by the Vancouver Sun (which also indicated that 250,000 people visiting Vancouver wanted to use its service while visiting our fair city).
UBER recently noted that Vancouver is the largest city on the continent without ride sharing. Ouch.
People in 67 countries and over 400 cities worldwide have now embraced ridesharing, using Uber to complete 1 million trips every single day in cities like Seattle, Portland, Edmonton and Toronto (and now Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto and Ottawa).
There are now 13 active Uber cities in Canada, including the following:
Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Hamilton, Kingston, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Ont, Montreal, Niagara Region, Ottawa, Quebec, City Toronto, and Windsor.
The CBC reported that Peter Fassbender, the BC government minister responsible for TransLink, began a review of the province's taxi industry in January of this year.
He said he hoped to find a "made in B.C." solution to help taxis and ride-sharing services work side by side, and that the government hopes to reveal its rules for Uber early next year in 2017 before the May 2017 provincial election.
Uber Canada spokesperson Susie Heath meanwhile issued a statement regarding Vancouver recently: "We believe that Vancouverites are clearly underserved and that people deserve access to more reliable transportation options in the city, including more taxis. The City of Vancouver and the provincial government should take action to expand the number of options available, before the busy holiday season."
A number of BC tech executives and members of the BC tech community also banded together back in in January to voice their concern for the lack of ridesharing regulation in British Columbia, and penned an open letter to Premier Christy Clark and Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Todd Stone. See full details and a copy of their open letter on the Vancouver Sun website.
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Editor's Note: We agree!! Uber is needed in Vancouver. Let's get it going.
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