Uber has warned that it could raise prices and extend wait times after Toronto Mayor John Tory announced Monday that the city is halting the issuance of additional taxi licences until it can craft a temporary parking plan to alleviate congestion.
Toronto became the first Canadian city to grant Uber a blanket permit earlier this year, which allowed the ride-hailing app to operate in the city. The city issued nearly 20,000 of these permits through the first quarter of this year, expecting that drivers and drivers’ vehicles would pick up one another’s passengers.
But finding enough drivers willing to register as Uber drivers has proven challenging: Companies in Montreal have complained that driver turnout is low, the New York Times reports.
“We think this is important, to get back on the path to a sensible plan that takes urban mobility seriously,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan told the Times.
Uber is also expected to face other challenges in this case. After George Osborne, the former British chancellor of the exchequer, warned of a “discriminatory ban” on ride-hailing apps, which in June, he vowed to oppose. Uber’s London unit had its license extended in September by the British city’s transport authority, an agreement that covered ground-taxi and cabbie drivers, Bloomberg reports.
The Canadian market has also proven demanding for Uber. The company revealed in its first-quarter earnings that the number of rides it transported in Canada had increased 82 percent. By comparison, its number of rides has increased by about 80 percent in the United States, according to USA Today.