No plan to spend accessibility surcharge on new vehicles: report

City staff have come up with a planto spend the cash generated through an accessibility surcharge paid by Uber and Lyft, but the recommendations don't call for adding to the city's fleet ofaccessible vehicles on the roads.

In a report made public ahead of next week's meeting of the community and protective services committee, staff said that as of Dec. 31, 2018, the total amount of moneyin the vehicle-for-hire accessibility fund was close to $1.25 million.

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It's been growing since July 2017 when Uberagreed to pay a voluntary accessibility surcharge of $0.07 per trip to support accessible transportation in Ottawa.

Lyftagreed to contribute a similar amount to the fund in March 2018.

4 recommendations

The report said that based on historical trip data, "an average of $720,000 per year can be allocated to programs supporting accessible transportation [in Ottawa]."

City staff areproposingfour recommendations for how that money should be spent:

• To provide funds to not-for-profit local agencies, likecommunity resource centres, so that they canexpand accessible transportation services in rural areas.
• To develop a smartphoneapp for Para Transpo customers so they can track the arrival of their ride.
• To reduce the cost of taxi coupons, which allow Para Transpo users to take accessible taxi cabs at a discount.
• To increase the maximum allowance of taxi coupons per customer.

Those ideas follow aseries of public consultations where, according to the report,the number one idea was to "increase the number of accessible vehicles."

That was not one of the final recommendations, however.

The report said staff looked at the feasibility of all the ideas generated through the public consultations, and their analysis revealedsome of the ideas were already being considered.

"Other ideas were deemed not feasible for implementation at this time for reasons, such as cost, resources requirements, and sustainability," the report said.

During the consultations, city staff warned participants not to set their expectations too high.

Advocates concerned

Catherine Gardner took part in the consultations and said she's concerned the recommendations don't include improvements to rural-to-city and city-to-rural transportation.

Gardner is a nature photographerand accessibility advocate who uses Para Transpo, and said that when she wants to leave the city using the service, she has to pay an additional fee.

"I'm not allowed to take the bus to Jack Pine Trail because it's considered a rural area and it's 10 minutes away from me, so I have to pay $9.25," Gardner said.

Gardner said that fee applies to each of her trips to and from the countryside.

Accessibility fee should be for more vehicles: user

6 years ago

Duration 1:13

Catherine Gardner wants the fee charged to Uber, Lyft and others to fund more accessible vehicles.

Bob Brown, another advocate for accessible transportation, said he doesn't think the surcharge should help fund an app to track drivers, because that should be covered regardless.

"They have the trip-planning apps and stuff for the city, so why should it be any different for Para Transpo?" said Brown.

He did add hewashappy to see some of the money going towards reducing the cost of taxi coupons.

"It shouldn't cost me more to take a cab because there's no accessible Ubers or Lyft or things like that. It should be an accommodation to make [it] the same price," hesaid.

Both advocates agree the recommendations are a step in the right direction, but don't think they'll necessarily improveaccessibility overall.