Pearson airport testing pickups using Uber and Lyft
Posted June 12, 2018 1:56 pm.
Last Updated June 12, 2018 8:04 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Passengers landing at Toronto’s Pearson airport are now able to arrange to be picked up using their Uber and Lyft ride-hailing apps.
The Greater Toronto Airports Authority says Uber and Lyft customers can request rides at Canada’s largest airport under a pilot program that started Tuesday.
The service will give another option for 47 million annual airport passengers and 49,000 airport workers.
Until now, ride-hailing services could only drop off passengers at the airport. But Beck Taxi operations manager Christine Hubbard suggests they’ve been picking up rides at the airport all along.
“A lot of these cars, I’m sure, are entering the airport already posing as private vehicles.” Hubbard said. “We know that a lot of these ride-hail drivers are not properly marked the way they’re supposed to be.”
More than 200 North American airports, including Ottawa, Montreal, Edmonton and Calgary offer full ride-hailing services.
The Toronto airport authority says it studied similar operations at other airports and consulted locally to understand benefits and impacts to operators.
As part of the pilot project, it will continue to monitor the impacts of this service on existing transportation providers and review their feedback.
