A ridesharing report unveiled at Monday night's council meeting is taking a look at the feasibility of new transportation methods around Estevan.

The report was put together after councillors heard of a situation on Christmas Eve when a bar had around 90 people at 2 am who needed to go home.

Existing taxi companies in Estevan weren't able to handle the surge, so the bar's owners ended up driving multiple people home.

Land Development Manager Richard Neufeld says that to expand ridesharing into Estevan a company would need to meet a few criteria.

"There is provincial legislation now in effect in Saskatchewan, the vehicle for hire and the company regulation, it was updated in 2022. So if Uber or Lyft for example wanted to provide services in Saskatchewan, they have to meet the act and regulations under that act. They also require an agreement with any municipality that would be hosting the service."

"Under the current zoning bylaw, we have ride-sharing services allowed, but that is basically it for regulation that I'm aware of in the city. We have the option, I think we're amongst not too large a group of municipalities where a taxi cab company can offer a service as a home-based business."

"That's two of the biggest requirements there is that the taxi cab has to be an owner operator and it's the resident of the home where the taxi cab parks has to be the only operator for that cab and it can only be one cab marked at a time."

Neufeld says that other cities, such as Regina, allow ridesharing and take a fee for every ride given.

He also brought up an experiment in Chatham Ontario, that got rid of any minimum fare for taxis and put in a mechanism to monitor for price fixing and gouging.

He also says that some communities can formally ask Uber to move into a community, though he's not sure how successful the practice is.

There are now multiple paths the city could take toward getting a ridesharing program.

"In terms of a path forward, I outlined some options. The city could approach Uber or Lyft and see if they're interested in servicing Estevan. A potential pitfall of this is that that could be looked upon negatively by our existing cab services. We could proactively create a rideshare bylaw. Again, I have the same issue with the taxi operators."

"There was one instance that I came across where I think it was Uber. They allowed the taxi cab companies to jointly use the app. What the fee would be for that, I don't know. But you go on the Uber app and you can find an Uber driver or a taxi cab driver at the same time... Last option, we could do a survey, engage to see what kind of support or action there may be for this kind of service in Estevan."

Councillor Rebecca Foord says that she'd like to hear what the community has to say.

"I think it would be interesting to gauge the community because in our community when you have a night like Lobster Fest, when you have a night where you have two weddings in town, where you have a Bruins game, when 300 people are pouring out of a building, we don't have enough to meet the demand in terms of taxi cabs and especially when our taxi cabs are kind enough to offer rides to Bienfait up to some surrounding farms."

"So I do think we should explore this and it's not to say we lack confidence in our taxi cab companies in town. I just do think with a big event we don't meet our demand for people needing rides. So I personally would like to see some sort of survey, just even just talk to some of the businesses in town, some of the restaurants to see how they would feel about it and how they experience large events in their businesses." 

Councillor Shelley Veroba echoed those statements, saying that she hoped any future plan would consider the local cab companies.

The council then passed a motion to accept the report and ask Land Development Services to get some feedback from local businesses.