HUB Position: Ride-hailing

The environmental impact of ride-hailing depends on how well it is regulated. Poorly regulated, a cheap ride-hailing service could incentivize low-occupancy car trips (thereby increasing congestion and GHG emissions). It could also incentivize people away from active and public transportation. Properly regulated, a ride-hailing service could decrease low-occupancy car trips, congestion, and GHG emissions and could better incentivize active and public transportation. HUB Cycling’s position on ride-hailing is that it should be carefully regulated in accordance with the following three objectives:

• Better incentivize the use of active and public transportation (by, for example, using taxes from ride-hailing and reduced reliance on on-street parking to convert on-street parking to protected bike lanes, and also by regulating ride hailing to ensure that vehicles do not pick up and drop off passengers in marked bike lanes, and also further by integrating ride-hailing with Compass cards and incentivizing trips that begin or end at transit hubs);
• Reduce the number of cars on the road (by, for example, focusing on encouraging single- occupancy drivers to move to multiple occupancy ride-sharing); and
• Reduce the GHG emissions of overall vehicles on the road (by, for example, requiring all ride- hailing vehicles to be electric).

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Last updated May 2019
Is there a particular issue you’d like to see us take a position on? Email us at action@bikehub.ca