By Kate Horodyski
Ottawa buses may soon have to share the road if a bylaw allowing taxis to use bus-only lanes is passed.
Cabs would be permitted to drive, pick up, and drop off customers in the lanes currently restricted for public transit.
Taxis have been able to use bus only lanes on Albert and Slater Streets and part of Montreal Road since the 1980s. Usage is restricted from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on weekdays to avoid rush hour, but city council is now considering other streets for bus and taxi lane sharing.
However Helen Gault, the city’s manager of Transit Service Planning and Development, says this will only occur if bus routes won’t be affected.
“We hope it would have no effect, otherwise it wouldn’t be recommended,” she says. “The only reason for transit priority lanes is to keep transit moving.”
She says there have been no problems with taxis using the lanes on the roads currently shared.
The bylaw has the full support of taxi companies.
Richard Szirtes, owner of West-Way Taxi, says it would have many benefits, such as potentially lowering cab fares.
“It would benefit everybody,” he says. “It would definitely provide better service for the taxi customers. For everybody else in a car it would mean that the cabs would be out of their traffic.”
Ahmed Khatib, the secretary for the Ontario Taxi Union, says the bylaw is particularly important for environmental reasons, as it would cut down on pollution from cabs.
“If a taxi driver is going anywhere in the city, the cab is always running,” he said.
“The faster he can get to where he’s going, the less pollution he’ll leave behind.”
He argues if catching cabs along transit routes was more convenient, people would be more likely to bus and then catch a cab if the bus route didn’t get them all the way to their destination.
For this reason, the union is pushing for cab stands along major transit ways.
But taxis are not likely to be given access to every bus-only lane.
Gault suggested that Woodroffe Avenue will likely be among the streets exempt from the bylaw.
And during the Nov. 7 transportation committee meeting, it was suggested that the proposed bylaw allow “site specific exemptions to permit taxis to access bus-only lanes during non peak hours.”
Traffic and Parking Operations of Ottawa will be collecting information for the report, which will determine the effects of imposing the bylaw.
Transit services will be providing data as well, including passenger volumes and heavy traffic times.
City spokesperson Eric Collard says details are not being released yet, but the final report will be due in February.