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Taxis break for Ford

The Taxicab Passenger Bill of Rights states that “drivers are not permitted to recommend a hotel or restaurant unless the passenger requests this information.” But what if your cab driver recommends a mayoral candidate?

The way that people get around the city has been such a hot topic in this year’s mayoral race, but even so, the taxi industry seems to have taken the backseat to things like bike lanes and the TTC.

Cabs do not traditionally play a role in electing mayors, but with so many driving all over the city, the bumper of a taxicab might the exact place that our mayoral hopefuls would want their names.

Whether taxi drivers want advertise a politician or dishwasher liquid on their cars is up to them, according to Howard Moscoe, the Chair of the Licensing and Standards Committee.

“Candidates can buy advertising on bus shelters, so I don’t see why they can’t buy them, or people can’t put them, on taxis,” he said.

Rob Ford is getting support from some cabs not by buying advertising though. He’s making promises to change a two-tier licensing system in Toronto, which might explain why his name seems to appear more frequently on taxis.

Right now, there are two different licenses that a taxi driver can have. The first is an ambassador license which means that only the owner of the car can drive and operate their business with it. This is the license that the majority of taxi drivers in the city have. The second type is a standard license which lets the car’s owner lease their vehicle or have it driven by shift drivers.

“The ambassador license was constructed to advance the principle of individual ownership of taxi licenses and the people who received ambassador licenses are lobbying very hard to be allowed to put a second driver on their vehicles,” said Moscoe, “And Rob Ford has made a commitment to them to do that.”

That could explain the bumper sticker pictured above. And since he hasn’t heard of any other candidate who’s made any promises like that to the industry, Moscoe said that he’s not surprised that Ford was who this driver have chosen to support.

But John Duffy, the publisher of Taxi News, said even with this promise, he wouldn’t say that the taxi industry is backing Ford. There are too many different groups of taxi drivers with different priorities to say that most of them are in support of one particular candidate.

He said that the issues are so delicate and complicated that most politicians choose to turn a blind eye rather than put the time and effort into understanding and fixing them. “They just plug their ears and go ‘la, la, la,'” said Duffy.

“It’ll be interesting to see how that pans out,” Duffy said about Ford’s promise, adding that the industry has been disappointed by councilors before. “All politicians make promises to get elected,” he said, “what happens when they are elected, though?”

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