By Taylor Turner
Ottawa resident Catherine Gardner was recently forced to spend the night at Algonquin College because she was told that there were no taxis available to pick her up.
Gardner is physically disabled and relies mainly on OC Transpo to get around town, but she calls for a taxi when buses aren’t running, when she has a long distance to travel, or when she has her photography equipment with her.
She says the problem is there are rarely any accessible cabs available when she needs them.
“There aren’t enough accessible taxis on the road,” she says. “When I call they just say that they have no taxis.”
Gardner’s story furthers recent criticism from Conservative MP Steven Fletcher, who says Ottawa is the worst city in the country for accessible taxi service. Fletcher is also physically disabled and says the city fails in comparison with other Canadian cities like Vancouver and his native Winnipeg.
But Hanif Patni, president of BlueLine Taxi, says Fletcher is ignoring the progress that has been made over the past few years. He says the company has “worked really hard to make this right.”
According to Patni, 40 more plates for accessible vehicles will be issued this year, and an additional 40 will be added next year. The first 40 would bring the total number of accessible cabs in the city to 65, close to the 59 that operate in Vancouver, but far from the 150 that operate in the Montreal area. Currently, BlueLine has 15 accessible cabs – more than any other taxi company in Ottawa.
Gardner says another problem is that drivers of accessible cabs usually don’t like to pick up disabled passengers.
“A lot of them are refusing to pick us up because it takes too long to load our chairs in,” she says.
Patni acknowledges that some drivers are reluctant to pick up physically disabled people because of the extra time it takes and the typically shorter travel distances, which means less money. He says they can’t make a living just off of these trips.
“They are naturally inclined to do more economically productive work,” he says. “There is only so much work out there.”
Antonio Francesqui, a driver for BlueLine, does not drive an accessible cab and says he wouldn’t want to.
“There’s no business for accessible cabs,” he says. “At first they thought they would make a lot of money, but no.” Francesqui says the dispatcher often repeats requests for accessible cabs because drivers are slow to respond.
Despite drivers picking up able-bodied people in accessible cabs, Patni says if a disabled citizen calls for a taxi they will be successfully taken to their destination 85 per cent of the time.
But Fletcher says anything less than 100 per cent is completely unacceptable, especially for a city like Ottawa.
“For a world city it is showcasing a pretty poor example of transportation,” he says. “You have the president [of BlueLine] acknowledging that drivers won’t pick up people in a wheelchair. That’s a terrible message.”
Patni says BlueLine and other taxi companies in Ottawa are working with the city to “make accessibility more accessible,” but says it’s hard to force drivers with accessible plates to pick up people with disabilities.
He says that the city is looking at several options to improve services, such as revoking plates or fining both the driver and the company.
Money is also an issue because an accessible taxi costs three times more than a regular cab. But he says it is important to “treat everyone equally” and disabled passengers will never have to pay more than other citizens.
According to Patni, recent progress shows that the problem will be “completely licked” within the next year.
But for Gardner and many other physically disabled residents, next year isn’t soon enough. She says she just wants the same options as able-bodied people.
“If there is an emergency,” she says, “I would like to be able to take a taxi.”