Ontario carpoolers may not have to worry much longer about breaking the law when they participate in some rideshare programs.
Under existing legislation, carpools are only allowed if they don’t cross municipal boundaries, whose destination is the workplace or school and don’t change participants. While the law has been on the books for years, it has only been enforced because bus companies are taking legal action against services that co-ordinate riders and drivers. An online service called PickupPal was charged and fined $2,836.07 under the Public Vehicles Act by the Ontario Highway Transportation Board.
“The government has taken immediate action to change the law to allow for carpooling,” says Ottawa Centre Liberal MPP Yasir Naqvi. Bill 118 changes section 1 of the Public Vehicles Act to include “a car pool vehicle” under the definitions of “public vehicles.”
PickupPal is like a bulletin board on the Internet. Participants submit an offer, or need, for a ride including the destination, date and frequency. PickupPal then co-ordinates these requests but leave set up to the participants to decide details.
The website also offers suggested pricing, safety ideas and advocates meeting in person or on the Internet through things like Facebook, before taking the ride.
“What drives them nuts is it’s a different kind of model,” says PickupPal co-founder Eric Dewhirst. “We don’t make any money off the deal when someone rides together. But we don’t have a lot of overhead to have a website. And we don’t need to make a ton of money to make a difference.”
That difference, Dewhirst says, is not the eradication of corporate, public transportation but lies in a more social community and environmental awareness. Plus cutting costs doesn’t hurt.
When Michael Raine, a university student in Ottawa, finished paying nearly $100 for a Toronto concert ticket, finding the cheapest way to get there was the next priority. The $60 it cost to get there and back was a better deal than the $95 Greyhound ticket. Plus being able to claim environmental consciousness is always nice, he says.
“You are punishing a positive service,” Raine says about the current law. “A carpool is a group of people, sharing a ride.” He has also travelled with his friends to Montreal, sharing the cost of gas, and sees no difference between the two.
Travel expenses – and possible fines – can add up for people like Joe Hueayda (not his real name) who works in Ottawa but lives in Toronto.
“There are many like me,” says Hueayda. “Especially in Ottawa because of the government.”
Hueayda has been travelling to and from work, with carpooling passengers, for the past 10 years. While he sees the existing law as unenforceable, he says that if internet services that help co-ordinate rides were banned, he wouldn’t take buses on principle. Rather, he would continue with the group he has gotten to know over the years.
In 2000, a complaint filed by Trentway-Wagar Inc., a subsidiary of Stagecoach group PLC – one of the biggest bus companies in Canada – shut down Allo-Stop in Ontario. Allo-Stop is a Quebec-based group that links drivers and riders, much like PickupPal.
“The only way you’re going to get things changed is if you stand up,” says Dewhirst who talked with the founder of Allo-Stop before jumping into the huge media campaign and legal fight against their charges. “They are going to take a run at us, and we are going to fight it,” says Dewhirst. “So that’s what we did.”
View the petition of more than 2,000 signatures and comments at: http://save.pickuppal.com/support./