Ridesharing

Background

The term "ridesharing" or ridehailing, can be used to refer to a variety of activities related to sharing space in a vehicle but most commonly references services such as Uber and Lyft, digital platforms that arbitrate vehicle spaces as a form of ride service. These and similar platforms connect willing drivers with prospective passengers, matching demanded passenger destinations with ride availability and taking a commission on each fare. While at one point controversial, ridesharing platforms quickly have become all but ubiquitous in most major cities of the world due to their efficiency and ease of use.

Ridesharing Platforms and the Government of Canada

Governments have tended to be more slow to accept ridesharing services, with many municipal governments having initially prohibited ridesharing platforms due to their non-compliance with rules put into place to govern traditional taxi companies. With the gradual recognition of their distinctive enterprise, over time ridesharing platforms have gained widespread acceptance by government and have become an acceptable form of transportation for employees of the government of Canada for many years (since 2016?).

In 2018, the Canada School of Public Service (CSPS) became the first department to launch a departmental ridesharing option for its employees, specifically with Uber services. This allows employees to use the Uber ride-hailing app not only to hail vehicles but also as a payment method. CSPS employees would be able to use Uber to hail a ride and the details of the trip and bill would be sent directly to CSPS financial services, who would then tally and analysis the patterns from the previous month, and pay Uber directly for the sum total of all usage in the form of an invoice.

As the first department to use this service, CSPS imposed restrictions on the permitted usage of Uber in order to minimize risk. This included the limitation of the app's usage to working hours (7h00-18h00), the limitation of the fare to under $50, and the staggered roll-out of the app functionality throughout the department. For fares falling outside of these perimeters, it was still possible to use rideshare services but the employee would need to pay for them and expense the cost in the same manner as for regular travel.

Gradually more departments followed in CSPS's lead by authorizing departmental ridesharing and also steadily lowered the restrictions associated with the apps functionality as it became clear that the risks of abuse are marginal, or at least, significantly less than with existing systems. At the time of writing in early 2020, half a dozen departments and agencies have some measure of departmental ridesharing with Transport Canada being the largest user, having several hundred users being permitted the full functionality of the app.

Why Uber?

There are several competing ridesharing services, of which Uber is the largest, however Uber's early adoption as a platform for ridesharing in the GC is for reasons of capacity. In Ottawa, Uber has traditional been the sole service platform with a fully developed and tested corporate service offering. Lyft has hoped to launch an equivalent service by 2020 and local taxi companies are developing their own ridehailing apps as well which will ultimately have a corporate service as well. Thus while it can be expected that there will be a multiplicity of platforms available to public servants in the future, Uber had initially started as the default platform for so many departments due to a lack of viable alternatives.

Departmental Ridesharing - A How to Guide

The feasibility of departmental ridesharing is subject to much of the same kinds of departmental lore that tend to afflict many new initiatives. As a core premise it should be stated clearly and unequivocally that there are no rules, procedures, policies, guidelines, regulations, statues or other form of restrictions which prevent GC entities from adopting departmental ridesharing. The relative lack of these services is due solely to force of habit and their relative novelty as a service. This does not in turn make further adoption a clear-cut case as changing processes takes time and patience, however with transformation occurring ever more rapidly and ridehailing having been commonplace in most jurisdictions for over a decade, the case for departmental ridesharing offerings is a strong one.

Successful deployments to date have been marked with several key criteria:

1) High level policy cover: often, although not necessarily from the departmental CIO. In successful cases, policy cover has come from CIOs, ADMs and DGs with an appetite for experimentation and improvement.

2) Early Adopters: Departmental ridesharing need a group of early adoptors that are comfortable with ridesharing (or willing to learn!) and are willing to take the time to help others learn and test the system.

3) Support from Finance: The group whose work will be most directly effected by departmental ridesharing is corporate finance and so it is important to speak with these individuals early on. Finance also has the most to benefit. File:UBER USER GUIDE (TC).pdf 4) User Guides: Hey! Its the GC: we love user guides. Making new user guides can be a laborious process and feel unnecessary for something like Uber, so I've done you a solid and included the TC user guide which can be plagiarized at will ;-D

Advantages of Ridesharing for the GC

Ridesharing platforms offer benefits to users and the institutional GC alike. Ridesharing platforms offer greater convenience to users, more accessibility features for people with disabilities, the ability the schedule rides in advance and better plan out travel, share to location with teammates, reduce wait times for vehicles and to provide greater clarity in directions to drivers. Users are also able to leverage promotions from frequent usage across personal and departmental payment methods offering a perk somewhat akin to travel points, and similarly garner a higher quality of driver if they themselves maintain a high rating, with members of the Transport Canada pilot roll-out anecdotally noting a higher level of professionalism among drivers.

From an institutional standpoint, departmental ridehailing platforms are significantly less onerous on departmental finance departments, eliminating tasks that are time-intensive and tedious while freeing up time for more complex tasks. Departmental ridehailing platforms offer much greater accountability, showing the exact route, time and cost per ride, and offering the availability to rapidly identify variations that might indicate fraud. Preliminary research from CSPS and Transport Canada suggested an overall cost-saving of roughly 40% compared to the medallion (taxi chit) system which is the default used in the government of Canada, which tends to cost more per ride while charging an administration fee on top of each fare.