Will digital ride-hailing have profound consequences for Canada? To find out, “Taking Canada for a Ride? Digital ride-hailing and its impact on Canadian cities,” a five-year study of ride-hailing across Canada, has been funded by a $350k SSHRC Insight Grant.
UTTRI associated faculty Professor Shauna Brail is co-Principal Investigator with Professor Betsy Donald of Queen’s University.
The project features a research team from five universities:
- Thomas A. Hutton, University of British Columbia
- Eric J. Miller, University of Toronto
- Hamed Motaghi, Université du Québec en Outaouais
- Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay, Université TÉLUQ
- Tara Vinodrai, University of Toronto
- David A. Wolfe, University of Toronto
- Zachary D. Spicer, Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and University of Toronto (collaborator)
The main research aim is to investigate the impact of ride-hailing on the 15 largest metropolitan regions in Canada: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa-Gatineau, Québec, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, London, Halifax, Oshawa, St. Catharines-Niagara and Victoria. These 15 regions account for approximately two-thirds of the country’s population, jobs and GDP (Statistics Canada, 2018).
Project summary
In 2012, digital ride-hailing — most notably facilitated through the Uber app on smart phones – entered Canadian cities and dramatically disrupted the taxi industry. Over the past six years, city after city has witnessed protests by the taxi industry and its allies. Municipal governments have responded with regulatory changes to their private ride-hailing transportation regulations. Most large municipalities and provinces have embraced the new disruptive technology, although others hold back. For example, digital ride-hailing remains illegal in British Columbia. In contrast, Ontario and Quebec have embraced regulation.
The impact of the introduction of digital ride-hailing may have profound consequences for Canada. First, concern exists over money leaving the Canadian economy. When people use the Uber app, a 25% commission fee plus a booking fee (estimated to be as high as an additional 25%) is paid to Uber and instantly leaves the country after each digital ride app transaction. Second, economic policymakers question whether Canadian cities and Canadian firms could do more to encourage home-grown innovative solutions to mobility challenges facing our cities. Third, Uberization may be exacerbating an already unequal and precarious labour market in many Canadian cities. Finally, transportation planners wonder whether a proliferation of ride-hailing is increasing congestion and undermining people’s desire to use public transit, thereby impacting a publicly funded system.
Surprisingly little empirical evidence exists to validate these concerns. Using a case study of Canada’s 15 most populous metropolitan areas, we will investigate sources of economic loss, economic gain, and municipal policy response with respect to ride-hailing. This research intends to advance knowledge and offer policy solutions addressing the realities of an emerging platform economy. The proposed research builds on recent work supported by SSHRC, through an initiative called Creating Digital Opportunity (Wolfe, 2018). Having developed expertise and insight, the researchers propose to extend and expand work to date, in order to further refine data on the urban and economic geographies of digital ride-hailing in Canada (Brail & Donald 2018a,b; Brail, 2017,2018; Davies, Donald et al, 2017; Motaghi & Tremblay, 2018).
The project will contribute to the advancement of knowledge in both theory and practice. Theoretically, our aim is to re-examine traditional urban economic development theories in light of dramatic changes to local ground transportation, a sector that has been considered a non-traded or derivative sector but is now becoming more globalized and integrated with other forms of urban mobility. In terms of practice, we aim to provide policy and regulatory insights to governments, urban policy think-tanks, and transportation institutes on how we can improve mobility, provide better ride-hailing regulations, and enhance local economic development in Canadian cities when people use ride-hailing products.
The research has the potential to benefit multiple communities in Canada including academic and policy research organizations, students, private mobility firms, transit agencies, municipal governments, and civil society groups interested in mobility options for Canadian cities. We have assembled an outstanding research team with deep local knowledge and partnerships in cities across the country in order to maximize nation-wide impact and benefit.