It’s surely not the way Uber would have wanted it, but the company is having to buy its way into Kelowna.
The ridesharing giant is planning to purchase the license of another company already given permission to provide service in Kelowna.
Uber has a pending commercial agreement with that firm, a company representative said Friday, though they couldn’t provide details like how much they’re willing to pay to get the license.
My guess: a boat load.
Whatever the amount is, it reflects both a normal business transaction between a willing buyer and a willing seller, but also the fairly unsavory deals required to do business in the still ludicrously over-regulated local transportation industry in this province.
It’s an environment fragrant with the aroma of protected interests and cynical politics, in which the desires of real-life people get stated but insufficient consideration by the all-knowing, all-powerful Passenger Transportation Board, the relevant regulatory agency.
Just last year, the board rejected Uber’s straight-up application to expand to Kelowna and Victoria by saying there was no “public need” to do so, given the ongoing pandemic.
The taxi business, fragile flower that it is, said its industry would be “destroyed” in Kelowna if Uber gained a foothold, and the PTB seemed to agree. “(We) find the markets in the regions applied for are unable to absorb any more competition at this time,” the board said.
Rather than allow Uber, with its worldwide operations that include 140 Canadian cities, to serve Kelowna, the PTB granted ride-sharing licenses to areas outside the Lower Mainland to small companies new to the business.
One of them – we’ll find out which next Wednesday when the PTB releases its weekly bulletin – has agreed to sell its license to operate in Kelowna and Victoria to Uber.
For the transaction to proceed, the PTB doesn’t do any kind of market analysis, thank goodness; it simply has to make the determination as it has on previous occasions that Uber is a “fit and proper” company.
Predictably, lots of people don’t like Uber, with criticisms they rip off and mistreat their drivers, have sneaky billing practices, undermine public transit, etc etc.
That’s fine, they don’t have to give it a penny of their money. And anyway, for every such critic, there are more people who’ve actually used and enjoyed the service, and can’t for the life of them wonder how it can be that Kelowna has been an Uber no-go zone for so long.
I would have liked to get the Passenger Transportation Board’s take on things Friday, but a spokeswoman said she had no comment to make on the license transfer proposal and would instead issue a press release next week.
If the PTB approves the license transfer, Uber says it could launch in Kelowna by Christmas. Just 10 years and nine months after it came to Canada.
– Ron Seymour is a Daily Courier reporter.
