≫ Good morning, Luca. Can we do a microphone check? Can we do a MIC check? ≫ Good morning. ≫ Perfect, thank you so much. ≫ Okay, good morning, everyone. My name is chair of the Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee and I have Jamaal Myers we upper marlboro to call meeting 18 of the Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee to order. Welcome, everyone for this meeting is being held with committee members and stop participating both by videoconference and in person at City Hall and committee room one. Members of the public may also attend in person or observe the meeting on YouTube. I asked everyone for their patients today with any delays and technical issues. Were also providing captioning for this meeting. Sky will be capturing today but I would like to remind everybody to speak clearly to assist in capturing all of our comments. Please note there is a change to how captioning will be displayed in the WebEx meeting. For those participating remotely the captioning is available in WebEx by either toggling the closed caption icon to show closed caption's or by opening the captioning panel by clicking on the more panels icon. Displays as three dogs on the bottom right of the screen, open captions and highlights. For those participating in the room court options will be displayed on one of the screens. Court captions are still available on the YouTube stream and there is no change. A reminder about microphones my room please keep your microphones on mute unless you need to speak. Members come if you wish to speak please raise your hand or unmute your mic and let me know and we will create a speakers list. Reminder about videos, members for quorum purposes in participation in the meeting please keep your cameras on. Staff and public speakers please keep video turned off and so you need to speak or answer questions. Reminder about motions, members if you have any motions please submit in writing to the clerk's office, clerk staff are available at tac@toronto. ca to help with motions. Although we are in different locations and meeting remotely today the committee would like to acknowledge the land we are meeting on as a traditional territory of many nations including the Mississauga's of the credit, [land acknowledgment] now home to many diverse first Nations and you and Métis people. We acknowledge Toronto's covered by treaty 13 with the Mississauga's of the credit. Although the minutes of a conflict of interest and does not apply to the Toronto accessibility advisor committee, I urge members out of an abundance of caution to declare anything that could be perceived as a conflict of interest. Seeing none, we will move on. May I please have a motion to confirm the minutes of the Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee meeting held on May 4, 2026. Moved by Howard wax, thank you. All in favor. Any opposed, carried. Before we start our meeting I would like to say a few words. The city of Toronto has proudly recognize emancipation Day since 1998 and since 2019 has also proclaimed an intimation month through the confronting antiblack racism unit. Emancipation month honors the abolition of slavery across the British Empire on August 1, 1834 and provides an opportunity to reflect, learn from and celebrate progress. This year's theme centers disability justice with the theme celebrating black disability justice engaging black disabled communities. We warmly invite advisors me members number the public to join annual black liberation on July 30 at 12:45 PM at City Hall as you gather to recognize this meaningful moment in our shared history and celebrate the strength and contribution of black communities. We have two items on the agenda today and let's consider them according to the order listed. The first item is DI 18. 1 the chairs report and I will give an overview of the chairs report. We have two speakers on this item, I will ask the court to confirm our first speaker: Candace is ready to proceed. Yes? Yes, ready? Okay. Candace, please go ahead. Candace is with the brain injury Society of Toronto. Candace, you have five minutes. ≫ Thank you very much. I sent a slideshow. Do , there we are. Perfect. Thank you Councilor Myers and members of the Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee for having Ruby and myself here today to speak about brain injury awareness month on behalf of the brain injury Society of Toronto. When we think about brain injury, we often think of something visible or acute. But for many people that have suffered a brain injury, the injury is an invisible disability. And many of them are faced with dealing with changes to their cognitive, physical, emotional and behavioral well-being. And these things can affect their sensory perceptions, their mood, their communication , their concentration. The ability to participate in social interactions. And it can be even more difficult because they are expected to function the way they did before their injury. Because it is an invisible disability , they are often, they are often faced with barriers because of the way our systems are built around them. The way communications can be difficult for them. Things like a noisy environment or a complicated form. Or even processes typically can be a real barrier for them to engage with the world. So for a lot of our members, being thoughtful about having accessibility services that account for these things can help to reduce some of the stress that they face. And the prevalence of brain injury cannot be overstated. Brain injury affects almost a million Canadians care there is about 18,000 hospitalizations yearly. And people with TBI's are about 2 and a half times more likely to be incarcerated. Adults that have had concussions are three times more likely to have longtime suicidal risks. And in terms of intimate partner violence come about 74 percent of victims of intimate partner violence have experienced a brain injury. And often do not know about it which means they are unable to access the services that might otherwise be available to them. So that is why brain injury is important but I will pass it off to Ruby who I was or program manager to tell you about what we do at BIST. ≫ Good morning. My name is Ruby from the brain injury Society of Toronto or BIST, founded in 2004 and started in the basement of Sunnybrook hospital has now grown into a vibrant and supportive community. While our physical location is in Midtown, Toronto we support people across the city from Etobicoke to Scarborough. We offer virtual programming telephone-based peer support services and our invasion is known in Toronto would have to face the journey of brain injury alone. We are committed to building a community grounded in hope, resilience and connection and while raising awareness of the often invisible realities of brain injury. We also worked to reduce your girls to participation by keeping eligibility requirements to a minimum, helping ensure our programs remain accessible and inclusive to those who need it the most. Brain injury can be incredibly isolating. Often in ways that are not immediately invisible that is my BIST we focus on connection and community. Feeling a sense of belonging, being accepted, valued ended connected to others is important factor in all health and well-being. We offer a variety of free accessible programs including social and recreational groups, support groups, workshops, individual support and peer support. One example is the BIST peer support program which connects people affected by brain injury either through their own experience or as caregivers. Individuals who are newer to their journey are met with trained mentors who have been living with the effects of brain injury for several years and matches are based on shared experiences, needs and interests. Participants connect by phone on a regular basis. This program helps reduce isolation and provide support in communities where brain injury services may be limited or difficult to access. As a social worker BIST to my support people living with brain injury as they move through their recovery and adjust to life after brain injury could also supervise students who helps provide the support. A major focus of hours work at the brain injury Society of Toronto is transitional planning. Helping people rebuild meaningful routines, strengthen social connections and move into what many describe as their second act or life after brain injury. Much of this involves practical, low barrier support such as completing complex forms, navigating systems, attending appointments, providing advocacy, and connecting people with community resources across Toronto. The services are often the first steps people need to access other supports. By helping individuals overcome barriers and navigate systems we increase access to services and help ensure the needs of people living with brain injury are better understood and addressed. Lastly, BIST is best known for its programming. We offer brain injury support group focused on coping, problem-solving , and stress management as well as women and brain injury support center and shared experience. We also run a variety of social and community programs that support connection and engagement for people living with acquired brain injury. This includes community outings to museums, and events across the city , as well as cooking classes and other recreational activities. Art is a major part of our programming. Our freaky Friday our group highlights the importance of creative expression. After brain injury the way people communicate can change and art offers another meaningful way to express yourself and connect with others. Each year we host a month-long art exhibition. And this year marks our 10th annual exhibit. And art display is currently on tangled art and disability until June 30 and we invite you to visit. ≫ Thank you. Thank you both for coming today. Does anybody have any questions or would like to learn more about the BIST? No, seeing him. Thank you very much for coming. ≫ Thank you. Thank you for having us. ≫ Okay. ≫ Would anybody like to speak on this item? No, okay, I will say a few words. Just so everybody knows him I am sure you all know this is our final meeting of the term. I want to take a moment to reflect on what this committee has accomplished together. When it became charitable has always been pretty straightforward. The people most affected by city decisions should be part of making them. That meant working with transportation services to come up, to come to this committee and pedestrian signal reviews and that meant providing people's lived experience an opportunity to help shape the disability inclusion action plan. That is embedded and across city departments. We sit firm together as a committee on supporting the E scooter band and on hoping we can work with the city on finding ways to increase social procurement for disability on businesses and of course, is a committee , we also made significant improvements to the experience of Torontonians who want to visit the Toronto Islands. We are in the midst of working on the inclusive handbook. So events across the city are inclusive and now we also have as a final act, we have this item of the accessible taxis which is a pretty hot topic which I am sure you are about to see. I just want to say thank you. It has been a journey and a pleasure getting to know each and every one of you and to see the commitment that you take to your work and your city has been really inspiring. As a counselor, it is really refreshing. I get a lot of complaints but I do not always get to work with people who are committed to working for the better of their city and their fellow citizens per thank you very much and of course thank you to the staff who have always been here. Always keeping us on time , keeping us organized. This has been a really great experience and I think Deidre has some other words you might want to share for those of you interested in continuing the work on the next term. ≫ Thank you, Councilor Myers. I am the manager of the accessibility unit: equity and accessibility, I am social government division. I want to reiterate our thanks for all of your commitment and your work on this committee and the valuable feedback you provided. Specifically on the disability inclusion action plan. I just wanted to let everybody know there is a two-term maximum limit on this committee so if you have not been here for a full two terms come if you are here just for one term or one and a bit then you are eligible to reapply and we will be sending out packages later in the summer the information on that. Thank you, again from our team. We really appreciate your dedication to this. ≫ All right, thank you. And with that, I will move to receive the item for information, all those in favor. Opposed. Motion carried. Great. Next we are on to our final item and it will be a longer item. This is DI 18.2. An update on assessment of centralized dispatch system for on-demand wheelchair accessible vehicle for hire services. Members today, Joanna Hazelton, director of policy and strategic support. Miscible licensing and standards to get a brief update on work done to date to assess options for centralized dispatch system for on-demand wheelchair accessible wheelchair for hire services, Joanna, I will turn it over to you. ≫ Thank you, chair. Members of the committee. My name is Joanna Hazelden. As the chair said. I'm the director of policy and strategic's support group from municipal licensing and standards. We are the division that regulates the vehicle for hire sector and this includes the private transportation companies as well as taxis and limos and accessible taxis which is the focus of today's conversation. I am doing today by my colleague, Gotti counts, director of business licensing along with Andrea DeMatteo who is the manager of the vehicle for hire service group. So we are here today to talk to you about an update of our work. In response to the Council and or direction. To explore the feasibility of centralized dispatch service for on-demand accessible vehicle for hire service. For those of you that do not know, the centralized dispatch service is the idea that customers can call one number and receive service. No matter the brokerage or the taxicab driver. This is in contrast to what occurs today where people must call several different brokerages or drivers to receive service. We think there are many benefits to establishing the centralized dispatch service and we have experience in learnings from other jurisdictions. This was something we are committed to doing in our 2024 report. And this work is in follow-up and direction from that. Okay so, before I get into the work that we've done collaboratively with the TTC and will trance, I want to get a bit of background and context. In 2020, on approval from counsel, municipal licensing and standards established the accessibility fund program which is created to support accessible taxicab availability and offset the higher operating cost associated with delivering the service. 2024, staff conducted a comprehensive review of the entire vehicle for hire by law. And there was a significant chunk of that report that focused on accessible service. Including feedback from stakeholders, along with specific actions and recommendations to help improve service. That report was sent back to staff to do more work. And then in December 2024, the executive committee asked that counsel directed further work on operational models and to continue examining the establishment of a centralized dispatch service. And then in 2025, the TTC board directed TTC staff to work with MLS to assess the feasibility whether this attentive service can be delivered through the existing Wheel-Trans infrastructure. And then I will mention in 2026, just a note that at the beginning of the year we enhanced the accessibility fund program including: providing a one time $25,000 grant to vehicle owners. To offset the cost of converting their vehicles as well as enhancing the annual grants given to drivers and vehicle owners. So the feasibility study that we , together with TTC staff we have been extensively studying. An understanding of current Wheel-Trans operations to see if this is something that can support on-demand service. The work looked somehow Wheel-Trans dispatch functions today and what will be required if that infrastructure was used to support real-time on-demand accessible dispatch service. This included reviewing current operations, technology needs, service model options, brokerage and driver participation, cost and staffing implications, and governance agreements requirements. This discovery work will help, has helped us determine whether Wheel-Trans is a viable platform for delivering such a service and if so, what changes would be needed to support implementation. Alright so from our pulmonary findings. Wheel-Trans is effective as a scheduled service component assigned as a real-time on demand accessible dispatch service. The three main gaps we need to overcome, first, customer access currently involves registration eligibility screening and advanced booking. Second, the existing system is centered around scheduled trips not real-time dispatch. And third, there is an existing supply contract restraints that may limit the number of accessible drivers and vehicles that can participate. Based on these preliminary findings: step is to look more closely what we need to change to support such an on-demand service. The areas on this slide reflect the questions staff are now working through good weather real-time dispatch can be enabled, how driver participation can be expanded and will be required to move to a 24 seven service. And how customer access could be simplified. Each area has operational, technological and cost impacts that need further analysis before a service model can be confirmed. For my final slide, I will talk next steps. So will continue our feasibility work with the TTC. In parallel, we are also looking at alternative service delivery models and other jurisdictions such as Calgary. To understand how centralized dispatch is structured and delivered elsewhere and the lessons that may be applicable to Toronto. Findings from both streams of work will inform the feasibility assessment and any future recommendations on which model we go forward with. Our current target is to complete the analysis and probably most importantly as all of you here, we are targeting towards implementation in Q1 2027. Thank you. ≫ Thank you. So now, I will ask the clerk to confirm our first speaker, is ready to proceed. Kamia, are you there? ≫ Yes. ≫ Welcome to TAC, you have five minutes maker deputation. ≫ Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I want to speak about the city's work on a centralized dispatch system for on-demand field trips for hire services and this type of system is so important to the disability community. For many people transportation is simply a way to get from one place to another. People disabilities: transportation determines whether we can participate fully in daily life. Whether we can get to work, attend medical appointments, visit family and participate in community needs. I rely on transpiration or work in healthcare and everyday activities. What I have learned from my own experience is accessibility is not only about whether a vehicle exists, it is about whether the vehicle is available when you need it, where you need it and without creating additional barriers. I want to share a couple of examples. I once traveled from Thornhill to the workbench at the Eaton center. I plan carefully, tracked schedules and make sure had enough time to arrive but near College Station there was an emergency on the tracks and the train stopped completely. I was stuck there for about half an hour with no accessible weight right at the station and no realistic way to find an alternative route that I almost missed the entire event because assistant did not have enough flexibility built in. Another year I worked near Sheppard young station. Almost every day the station elevators were out of service. TTC staff were very helpful in trying to assist me in finding alternative ways to access the station but I was still mostly late to work. I was told that I should have known about the elevator issues and planned ahead by my manager. I understood the expectation I arrive on time but the reality is people disabilities are often already planning extensively. This barrier is not a lack of planning and was a lack of reliable accessible transportation for these expenses highlight the same issue that, uncertain. People's disabilities need to know that one day there will be a reliable option available for public transit remains an important part of the system but it does not always provide the flexibility needed. Not all stations are accessible to them elevator outages happen in many trips require significant planning that make spontaneous activities, same-day appointments or changes to plans much more difficult or even impossible. It is also important to recognize that accessible transportation is not only about wheelchair users. People with different disabilities expend different barriers, someone with mobility disability may need an accessible vehicle, such as myself, I'm a wheelchair using and will need an accessible vehicle with a ramp to be able to ride. Someone who is blind or has low vision may face navigation challenges. Deaf Can hard of hearing writers can make face communication barriers. People with chronic health conditions may need more pics on arrival transportation. Accessibility needs are diverse but they need for reliable transportation is shared. I want to highlight that Experience living in York region. When the pickup location is in York region wheelchair accessible vehicles such as Uber and the assessed are not offered as options. The only alternative is often an XL vehicle or extra-large vehicle which requires folding your wheelchair and is not an open accessible service. It also always cost more than on-demand rights. Creating a financial penalty for needing accessibility. This is why centralized dispatch system has the potential to make a real difference. Accessible transportation should not depend on what someone uses. Whether the individual happens to know the right service before the trip begins. A centralized system to create one reliable way for people to access accessible vehicles. However should not be measured for this system exist, should be measured by whether people can get rides when they need them. An accessible system should mean shorter wait times can a better vehicle availability, reliable service across municipal boundaries, access without having to call multiple providers, and ability for people with disabilities to participate in life with more independence. I recommendations are first, to make sure the centralized dispatch system provides truly on-demand service not just an advanced booking system. Second, ensure it works across boundaries and thing between Toronto and York region because people's lives do not stop at miscible borders. Third, measure success based on the experience of other people get to work: healthcare coming in community activities reliably. Accessible transportation is not a luxury it is what allows people with disabilities to participant equally in society. People should know how to organize their entire lives on transportation barriers. They should be able to move through the city with independence, possibility and dignity. Thank you. ≫ Thank you, Kimia. Anybody have any questions for the speaker? Thank you very much, Kimia. Next I will ask the court to confirm our next speaker, Joan Lewis is ready to proceed. ≫ Is Joanne Lewis on line or in person? ≫ No, okay. Circle fountain. Next we will go on to Marian Playter. Marianne, are you online? ≫ Yes, I am. ≫ Thank you for joining us, go ahead, you have five minutes. ≫ I just want to ask chair Myers can I send an email requesting a motion for an additional component of minutes but is not allowed? ≫ What is the reason for the request. ≫ . ≫ I worked really hard all we can to try to summarize my personal experience and it has taken a long time to concise it all and as quick as I possibly can be. ≫ Okay so, I will leave it to the committee to decide whether we want to grant the extra minute and 1/2. Everybody okay with that work? Okay, I am seeing sums up, okay. Go ahead, you have 6 and a half minutes. ≫ Thank you. Chair Myers, members of Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee and others joining us today, my name is Marian Playter in September 2012 my healthy dad fell down a flight of stairs at home breaking his neck and become a quadriplegic. Over the past five years we valued and appreciated the organization and as such, wanted to use this as an opportunity to share our personal experiences and comments regarding the issue of accessible transit. I'm particularly passionate about this as I'm a person who is responsible for navigating all things related to accessible transit for both of my parents. As such, consider my experience is regarding accessible transit an issue that does not just affect members of the city of Toronto but from across numerous monistic polities of the greater Toronto area. In order to better understand the importance of mandating taxi ride sharing companies to offer appropriate accessible transit and respectfully ask counsel to allow me to share some personal experiences. Dealing with two systemic barriers that unless you have accounted them yourself you may not truly appreciate or be aware of them. The first significant systemic barrier facing parent transit using lack of a standard as user-friendly scheduling booking system across Ontario's transit networks. Individuals who rely on specialized transit are required to navigate multiple applications, websites, phone numbers, client identification numbers and booking procedures. Each system operates differently with varying eligibility requirements, booking windows, operating hours, cancellation policies, and customer service processes which should be a simple task booking a trip becomes unnecessarily complex and time-consuming. Taken literally several days to preplanning pre-book transit for my dad to simply attend a medical appointment. For many users there is no or little opportunity for same-day service. The reality is society function spontaneously. Life does not come with several days notice. Yet people who rely on care transit are denied that same flexibility. Expected to plan every aspect of their lives around transportation ability ability for this creates a two-tiered system of mobility. My Dennis personally spends the frustration wanting to travel from York region on a sunny we confirm as arousing transportation arrangements must be new made these early if it really is unfortunately cannot predict what the weather conditions will be like days in advance. While this consent we get in a car and take transit or call a taxi or use a ride sharing service many have no comparable option available to them. People with disabilities should not organize their lives around the limitations of transportation systems. Transportation systems should be designed to support the lives, choices and independence of the people they serve. The second significant systemic barrier is the absence of direct transit options across municipal boundaries which highlights how municipal boundaries create barriers that do not exist for most able-bodied trans users. My dad and I continue to personally experience these challenges the medical to that should have been simple be considerably more difficult because required coordinating transportation between multiple service providers. Instead of focusing on the purpose of the trip were forced to focus on logistics, timing and whether we will be left stranded in a transfer point. Transfer locations are hops themselves can present additional challenges. Not designed with the needs of paratransit users in mind, concerns about safety and weather protection, accessibility, adequate seating abortion availability can make these transfers difficult in some cases in practical. There was one travel experience that left me in tears after having to watch my dad use his urinal in the glass transfer hub with no privacy except for MIKE HARTNETT I tried to conceal them with as there was no washroom. The heat was supposed to be on but was not working. Accessible transfer from accessible transit refers to transportation systems and services that can be safely, independently and with dignity by people with disabilities. My dad did not experience any of these, particularly, dignity. It broke my heart and made me ask how is this possible in 2026? Municipal boundaries are administrative lines on a map that should not become barriers. A more coordinated regional approach to paratransit services would significantly improve mobility independence for people disabilities. If we are serious about excessively and inclusion we must ensure transportation systems connect communities rather than divide them. Finally, leads me to today's particular issue that people disability should have the same ability to access on-demand transportation as any other member of the public. In my personal experience, wheelchair accessible vehicles are nonexistent. This creates a situation where individuals with disabilities are effectively excluded from transportation options that many others rely on daily. Municipalities should require taxi and ride sharing companies that provide transportation services to the public to include a sufficient number wheelchair accessible vehicles and athletes. Accessibility should not be viewed as an optional business decision or a niche market consideration. It is a fundamental requirement for providing an equitable public service. Accessibility is not simply a financial consideration, it is a legal and human rights obligation. The duty to accommodate exist precisely because people with disabilities often face additional barriers that others do not encounter. When accessible transportation is unavailable those bargains are compounded. Personally, even if I can find to drive to my down to medical appointment absorbent rate fees range from $200 a trip one way, making this a huge financial burden. A person should not be prevented from accessing essential services and opportunity Sibley because in accessible vehicle could not be found. Yet this remains of reality for many Ontarians with disabilities but municipal licensing framework and operating agreement should reflect this obligation by establishing clear accessibility requirements. And accountability measures for all transportation providers. In summary, transportation services are available to the general public, they must also be available to people with disabilities. Accessibility is not a luxury, special service or an optional enhancement, it is a legal obligation to fundamental equitable society appeared by requiring accessible vehicles as it offering public transportation vehicle services, minister bodies can ensure all residents regarded as of ability of the freedom, dignity, and independence to participate fully in their communities. Thank you for your time, your expertise and your commitment to improving accessibility across Ontario. I appreciate the opportunity to share these comments and look forward to the consideration of this matter. Thank you. ≫ Thank you very much, Marian for coming and sharing your story could anybody have any questions? Thank you very much. Oh, sorry. Annika-- are you there cleaning. ≫ Yes, I am perplexed my apologies, Annika has her hand up, go ahead, you have five minutes. ≫ Thank you so much, Marian for sharing and completely appreciate the challenge you and your father have been experiencing a someone using a wheelchair just trying to live a full life like any of their peers. I appreciate you being vulnerable here with us and sharing all of that. I actually had questions that hopefully we can proceed with on this motion and understand a little better. Have you experienced any challenges with being the companion person for the support person accompanying your father? When using Wheel-Trans and you think it is sufficient for it to be a trip, have you ever had your father sharing Wheel-Trans with another person, have there been complications? Trying to understand how the on-demand service needs to be fulsome to support your activities. ≫ E, very good question. There have been a few situations where having to prove who I am and having to navigate enough support person has complicated the situation. Although, I carried all the prerequisite identification. I do the culinary work ahead of time. To make sure that the different transit service providers know that I am the one accompanying my dad. We have had opportunities where we have had other writers with us in a group on transit. Which has sort of complicated things in the sense of timing, getting to appointments, often leads to being late. Or waiting excessively longer times. And so, that has been a concern as well. I think there needs to be some real flexibility with understanding. I understand on the larger scale it is hard to come together and coordinate all of that. But I think an understanding of what we deal with on a regular basis, the simple fact that I am the one navigating in I am not the one with the physical disability. My dad is not able to do half the things that are expected in the number of hours that I spend preparing for a transit event. I call it that because it takes a long time to get them especially from the York region down to Toronto. There is not anybody that will cross borders, other is not anybody that offers a wheelchair accessible transit that is actually available for a power tilt wheelchair. My dad does not have the lecture being able to get out of his wheelchair and have it folded out then he can then get in a vehicle. And so, I think that is an issue but I think being sensitive to the fact that there are people who need to use and to have support persons with them. Sometimes those persons are going to be flexible. It might not always be me. And this point it is with my dad but it is not always the same for you might have a friend that wants to come with you. How is that managed and what does that look like? Does that answer any of your questions? I hope. ≫ Yeah, I totally appreciate it. I know the current state of Wheel-Trans causes these issues so we have an opportunity to consider all around I really appreciate your input. ≫ I know that York region, I have called taxi agencies themselves and I have called in Toronto and in the Durham region. There are no taxi services, providers, I will say : that offer a wheelchair accessible vehicle. And that has made it really difficult. Things were mainly difficult. For us to get to Ganis appointments. In fact, it has caused my dad actually not attend a medical appointment because the cost factor is so high even if we can find someone willing to cross the boundary and works with the privately owned. And that is extremely frustrating. I really hope that something can be addressed with this. ≫ Appreciate thank you so much for sharing. ≫ Thank you, Anika . ≫ Thank you, anybody else have questions? Navi go ahead. ≫ Hi, Marian thank you for sharing your experience today. I was hoping that you could provide a little bit more insight since you have been doing all of this coordination. It would help me understand, you identify number of vehicles available for hire that is, accessible vehicles are not available and cost. I wanted to date into that a little bit in that, I am trying to understand. You, when you are coordinating like a trip across boundaries you have essentially from what I understand, requested taxis across multiple apps or service providers and there have been no taxis available, accessible taxis available. Is that right? ≫ That is correct. We either have a choice. We have a choice of taking, going for a one hour appointment in Toronto and spending almost 7 to 8 hours from start to finish with traveling with being stuck at the hugs, having the experience I shared with my dog using the urinal and so on and so forth. And being a very complicated and exhaustive process. The other option and only other option from the York region to get to Toronto I am called the York region taxi company directly. Spoken with the manager. And have asked why do you not have a municipal accessible transit vehicle available? I mean, I would assume it is a bylaw. I would assume some kind of legal requirement if you are offering services to other people that people who have a disability should be able to have such a vehicle provided. And I was told no, especially since COVID started people have decided, the drivers who were using those accessible vehicles have decided they are not, too expensive to manage. They have not bothered to renew their licenses or what have you. There vehicles are falling apart and it takes cost to do it. Their bottom line was we do not have anybody who can service you. So I will tell the committee what I ended up doing is when my dad was discharged from the rehabilitation center in Toronto, we had to move to the York region retirement home. We had a wonderful gentleman who was from back. And he drove us from Toronto. Straight through to the retirement home. Wonderful. A long trip but straight, direct, just us, great. My understanding or expectation of that point was when he needed to return back to Sunnybrook hospital for follow-up appointments, that we could contact this driver because he was part of beck and we could continue on I was very shocked to discover there was no such situation. We had to privately arrange with him to hire him separately, he did not have a problem crossing boundaries because he was working privately. And knew there was no other option for people like my dad to have accessible transit for him. He crossed the boundary and he set his price rate and he was as accommodating as possible. Both he has a business to run. And it costs that much money to go into Toronto. And it has just become to financially impossible to navigate with all of the other expenses of somebody who has a physical disability. I mean, a wheelchair alone is like the cost of a car. Something has to give somewhere. ≫ I appreciate you providing a little bit. I am understanding the complexity of planning even a simple healthcare visit. Thank you for sharing that lived experience. I appreciate it. ≫ Thank you, Navi . ≫ Thank you. Any other questions? Seeing none. Thank you very much, Marian . ≫ Thank you. ≫ Next, we have Roddy ISN C advisory group. Are you here? One more call for Roddy. Roddy. Next we have Adam was off - no clean okay. Next we have Nicoletta -- Nicoletta here? Oh, she is in person. Do you want to turn on the microphone. ≫ Testing. ≫ Nicoletta, go ahead. Thank you for joining her at five minutes per. ≫ Good morning counselor Myers, good morning Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee , my name is Nicoletta. Almost 29 years Toronto has been my home at six years old my family chose this city was born with a disability. Big part of that reason was because it is better accessibility, better opportunities. For the most part I've been able to thrive in the city. I love this city it is my home. I have studied her, worked here, I live independently. But one thing I cannot access his on-demand transportation. For years now there has been a major shortage. We have known this for years, Lady and gentlemen. In 2024 the city hosted numerous public consultations and activists like myself and many other people with lived experience came out and share their perspective and made viable recommendations on what should be done. We are sitting here two years later and no changes have been made. Now that we have seen none in a tangible way. We have seen city representatives offer information that is inaccurate. We have asked how many vehicles are on the road that are offering on-demand transportation right now. We have heard all kinds of things. I want to be clear that we are not asking about the number of licenses. We are not asking about the number of vehicles that are tied to TTC is Wheel-Trans. We were asking about the number of vehicles on the road right now that are prepared to provide on-demand transportation. That answer remains unclear to this day but we know there is a major shortage for the city has had two years to do something. Why hasn't anything been done? Not too long ago counselor Myers, vehicles were extended on the road. Many of these were on the verge of expired and had safety issues and instead of putting new vehicles on the road, people's safety was compromised. Driver safety was compromised too. Instead of putting new vehicles on the road how come that was the solution? What do you think that signals about how the city views people with disabilities and their safety? I want to provide some comparative context. A couple weeks ago I was in Winnipeg for a conference. And always without fail, I was able to get a vehicle within 20 minutes. And all hours of the day. Six in the morning, midnight. Same goes for most other major cities in Canada. Ottawa, Windsor, Toronto is a major outlier. Everyone on this committee has been entrusted in tasked with lending voices to accessibility matters in the city. And yet, most of the people who are concerned about this are ordinary citizens like myself and other people with disabilities. This role, I want to remind you all, comes with great responsibility. Nothing has been done. I would like to reiterate that. It is ordinary citizens, people with lived experience who are living with the consequences of poor decision-making every day. We know that there has been accessibility -- and estimated $20 million, I am not sure if that number is accurate but I would like to know why that money has not been released to get new, viable vehicles on the road. Toronto has failed. Councillor Myers , there is a way to sugarcoat it, Toronto should be ashamed. I would like to say that again, ladies and gentlemen, Toronto should be ashamed. I would like to echo what speakers before me have said, how is this possible in 2026 the -- solution is simple, we need more vehicles on the road that are ready to provide on-demand transportation. Councillor Myers, my question is simple, where is the accessibility fund and why hasn't it been released to solve this problem that people are facing every day. Thank you. ≫ Thank you, Nicoletta. Does anybody have any questions for the debutante no? Seeing none. Thank you very much. Next, we have Adam Boyd cocoon. Adam, are you there? Online? ≫ Hi Adam, it is your turn to speak. Please turn on your microphone. Thanks. ≫ There you are. Adam, you are on mute. Adam, if you are trying to speak we still cannot hear you. You are still on mute. There we go, we can hear you. ≫ I am having a minor medical episode. If you could put me at the end of the list. That would be better. That would be more able to speak. Click. ≫ Okay, we will do that. Next we have -[Name? ] okay, next we have Omar. Spinal cord injury Ontario board member. Omar. Great. ≫ Good morning, chair and members of the committee. My name is Omar Herbert I and I am a board member of spinal cord injury Ontario my last term ended as a pleasure to come for the last term of the TAC. To speak on the issue of centralized on-demand accessible taxi dispatch. At its core, issue in mind amputation is not really about technology. It is really an issue of equity as we have heard from the previous deputation's. For decades, it is not just two years, Toronto has worked I would say very hard to improve accessibility and public transportation. Much of that was driven by the recognition that accessibility is a legal obligation. And and accessibility right and for that reason as a lawyer I take these issues very seriously as I am sure this committee and Council does. The human rights Tribunal decisions and 2007 with the TTC and David the Polsky really emphasized accessibility barriers are themselves a form of discrimination and public institutions have a positive duty to remove those barriers. Those decisions I believe also felt emphasized that accessibility has to be centralized as a part of the design of municipal services and indeed, we would encourage similar approach for this initiative as well. Since that time, Toronto has made significant progress, we have accessible buses and streetcars, improved simply accessibility my think quite a bit can be done in that regard still command a transformed Wheel-Trans system. Yet one very significant major gap remains, the reliable on-demand accessible transportation in terms of feasibility, we have seen other cities like Calgary successfully implement it. With some challenges, of course. But it has demonstrated the feasibility is no longer a question. Today, people use wheelchair accessible taxis continue to pay significantly longer wait times than other passengers. We have heard that from the previous deputation's today. The challenge is not necessarily a lack of vehicles but although that is part of the problem. Really this problem seems to stem from is the fragmented nature of the current dispatch system. Accessible vehicles are dispersed across multiple brokerages and customers have no simple way of accessing the closest available vehicle. No other passenger is expected to call multiple providers in the hope of finding transportation, people with disabilities should not be expected to do so either. The proposed centralized dispatch model offers a practical and achievable solution by allowing the nearest available accessible vehicle to be dispatched regardless of brokerage affiliation. Toronto can make better use of existing resources on improving reliability and reducing wait times. I encourage this committee to go beyond consultations and feasibility studies and work towards implementation towards the 2027 goal. And one of the ways that goal can be achieved and continued beyond that target or through a number of other recommendations. First of all, that citywide point of access should be simple and intuitive. The customer should be able to request an accessible vehicle through one unified platform. Second, there should be enforceable service standards. The city should establish maximum wait time targets and publicly report on performance. We often say what gets measured gets managed. And so, we do believe service standards will ensure that accessibility is not just aspirational and in fact is implemented for third integrate or consider integrating with Wheel-Trans, TTC already dispersed dispatch services, infrastructure relationships with successful transportation providers building on existing capacity will be more efficient and cost-effective in creating an entirely separate system. Fourth, require transparent public reporting. The city should publicly report quarterly date on wait times, trip completion rates, customer complaints, geographic coverage, and service equity. This information will be reviewed by stakeholders accordingly. Fifth, ensure the governance is continues to be what people with disabilities who use the services. Nothing about us without us remains foundational accessibility principal and members of the disability community should plan on going role in oversight, evaluation, and continuous improvement. The success of accessibility journey has come from moving beyond accommodation towards inclusion by design. The question before us is not whether we can coordinate accessible transportation more effectively. The question is whether we are prepared to provide people with disabilities the same level of convenience, reliability and independence that other residents already expect. Thank you and why welcome any questions from the committee. ≫ Thank you, Omar. Does anybody have any questions? Seeing none, and you very much, Omar. Next we have Chris, I saw him online. Chris, great. Thank you for joining us today. Chris, go ahead, you have five minutes. ≫ Hello, thank you for all the members of counsel for being here. Today my name is Chris stigas and I am a resident of Toronto. I had an accident roughly 10 years ago. And now I have a spinal cord injury. I sort of mumbled perspectives to draw on: pre-accident where I can simply pick up the phone and call a taxi service or call any sort of ride for hire that I needed. Whether it be Uber or ataxia and I can find one within less than 10 minutes. And now as a wheelchair user, especially after COVID, I find myself mostly using conventional transit. The TTC to get around. For both business meetings, personal meetings, and social meetings. And if I can ever , something comes up during any one of those events that I am attending, such as it runs longer or there is inclement weather like rain or snow, and my plans change where I can no longer take conventional transit like subway or bus or service vehicle. And I need to call in accessible taxi area or whether through Uber or beck, any other providers in Toronto. There is nothing available. I just find that extremely shocking and unacceptable for 2026 as a person with a disability in a city that prides itself on being inclusive. And offering so many services to so many people but sort of leaving the disability community to fend for themselves. I have been in situations where I have been stranded at night not being able to get in accessible taxi and having to practically wheel home with my powered wheelchair. Risking the battery running out and not being able to get home. I have been in situations where I have been stuck in the rain and using a power wheelchair not wanting it to get wet. When using streetcars or buses. And also being stuck because of the rain and the snow. I think that we put, there was a bunch of recommendations in front of City Hall, approximately two years ago on how to move forward with accessibility and what to implement, what is being requested, nothing has been done and everything to repeat what one of the previous speaker said, there is a fund with approximately $20 million that has not been released. Or has not been used to improve accessibility. And with companies such as Beck who has got multiple vehicles on the road and Uber, there should be mandated to have a minimum level of accessibility or accessible rides to go with their fleet. If we are going to be promoting inclusivity in the city there is building codes that have building requirements for accessible buildings. Needs three minimum requirements for accessible taxis and accessible inverters the same way to provide equitable service for all people of Toronto. Thank you very much. ≫ Thank you, Chris. Does anybody have any questions? No, okay, thank you very much, Chris. Next we have Heather Lane. Heather. ≫ Hi there, sorry about that and I will be very brief because my baby is about to get up. I do visit Toronto frequently to visit my friend. And in the electric wheelchair. At times when it is raining and there is a lot of snow because you can always clear , it is hard to get around. It would be a lot easier if an accessible banner vehicle was accessible to get to sports events and to get around 10. That is all I really have to say, it should not be something that we are thinking of. It should be something we get done. I hope you all the best and have a great day. Thank you. ≫ Thank you, Heather. Assuming no questions. Next we have Aaron Schumann. Aaron. No, okay. Next we have Christine Hubbard. ≫ Let me do. ≫ Who is that? Someone talking. Okay. It wasn't him. Okay. Christine, are you ready? ≫ Yes, good morning. ≫ Christine, no stranger, the five minutes. ≫ Christine Hubbard here representing Beck taxi. I think our company up until very recently was only taxi company, no bride companies offer any wheelchair accessible service but we're the only ones able to offer at any time. Equitable on-demand service and that is what we're talking about here. It has disappeared and I invite anyone who has talked about mandating to companies to have enough vehicles to ask me questions at the end of my deputation. Because there's a lot of history there and frankly right now, we are mandated. And any fleet that has more than 500 vehicles has to offer equitable on-demand wheelchair accessible service. We have never seen that applied to Uber, Lyft, talk, with they deny the fact they will ever ever tried to offer the service and have never faced any consequence. When I have decided to do this morning is listening to these deputation's, pulling up my 2019 deputation on the same issue. 2019. It is 20 to 96. In 2019 that is where there was a real fulsome consultation and review of the accessible system could I would say that 2024 review completely fell flat. Nothing in happening and I will get into the number spent some of the things we have heard. But from 2019, four the accessibility strategy, I must say I do not call myself a numbers person but the mouth does not seem to work out. To my knowledge and at that time 550 on-demand wheelchair accessible vehicles, we were all enjoying being able to provide the service, drivers were making money and customers were able to get where they needed to go on time. With 550 wheelchair accessible licenses and a budget collected strictly for members of the vehicle for hire industry, we have heard about the $21 million being held by municipal licensing standards staff for the city of Toronto. This money has been collected by taxi drivers. Blueberry and Lyft drivers so it is there money being held, keeping them from being able to potentially buy the replacement vehicles they may have been able to buy. But here we are, at that time they will be collecting about $5 million. But the plan only accounted about $2800 to be distributed to the drivers on an annual basis. What that left was a huge collective money. But what staff should have seen and what the city should have seen is that year-over-year the number of drivers applying for those funds has significantly increased. By the time we have the 2020 for consultations that number had decreased by half at least. So now, no mention was made of that. Steadily decreasing applicants for those funds. Obviously it means something is wrong. I called it a crisis at the time and I was told Christine there are some new crazies these days the word has lost its meaning. In 2019 additionally, had gone to a consultation and the driver consultations because forgetting a lot about the drivers who invested their life savings, invested their health, invested their obviously there time and their hard work and physical bodies to do this hard work and have been left in the end with nothing but vehicles that have been taken off the road by the city. When we first introduced, this brings us to the centralized dispatch issue, when this was first introduced, the idea that Evelyn would have to join a brokerage. We saw on TTL were wheelchair accessible, you will see a couple of them are a company called a for you. I do not know how to get a hold of them for a couple were called the line taxis, anyone heard of that? Now we have allowed these drivers to work independently not even offering the service. We have Uber with 66,000 vehicles connected to their company, seven wheelchair accessible vehicles. But we do not actually know if they are even on the road. But what we talked about in 2019 is it was widely agreed by members of the disabled community and advocates in attendance that people should have access to all TTL vehicles perhaps through centralized dispatch. This was recommended in 2019. Instead we came up with the fund that they know the ins and questions to the problems. The vehicles at that time were falling apart and that was 2019. Save vehicles that just came off the road three months ago. Let that sink in Favor what I did and what I have heard and Councillor Myers delivery meetings than 130 wheelchair accessible vehicles available. As my time runs out I will ask the question about freedom of information and responses I got about what is actually on the road is aptly writing the service, and where we find ourselves. Please, my time is running out, thank you. ≫ Thank you. Does anybody have any questions? I see Dana and I see live, Dana,. ≫ You want to turn your microphone on we. ≫ Sorry. Sorry about that. Thank you very much for your presentation. And thanks for back taxing, my mom and I used them once in 2019. Can you tell me first of all, how many of the road from Lyft taxi? And how many need to be fixed in what is the cost? ≫ I will answer the second part, none of them can be fixed. What the city did instead of making a plan to encourage refined waiver drivers to replace the vehicles, an extension of electric vehicles was passed instead. I believe this came at the request of some of the companies that were due wheelchair accessible Wheel-Trans Favor Wheel-Trans vehicles will be extended in again, maybe more information than you need, it was because during COVID those vehicles were not utilized as much. The idea was maybe they were not quite as old as they would have been at 10 years because they had not been utilized for several years in between. That should not have been applied to the on-demand accessible service because those vehicle stayed on the road doing accessible work and regular. But science is not part of the question. These vehicles cannot be fixed, they should've came off the road as I said the same vehicles we talk on 2019 that were already five years old. People were already feeling drivers and writers that this was not a safe situation. These vehicles should be replaced and instead not only did they extend the life of the vehicles provided the staff time to come up with a plan for replacement. Did not happen before and it has not happened now. So Beck taxi is only 15 when wheelchair accessible licenses, heard a couple of times people have asked many wheelchair accessible vehicles on the road? Because the answer 500 votes. That is how many licenses not how many vehicles prior to the people are trying to access the service I think they want to apologize, to hear them spoken in public as though you're supposed to feel good about being able to access the vehicles they say are representing 500, it is just not true. So we kind of 200 and we were able to attract, the licenses came in there was no guarantee drivers will be able to buy vehicles but they did. All 500 licenses were taken up and drivers brought the wheelchair accessible vehicles and it was up to Beck in co-op and other companies to compete for those cars. We had no right to them. What staff or with the bylaw scented was, they all have to be members of a brokerage but what we saw quickly happen, four or five of them were able to get together and create their own brokerage. So you wouldn't be able to call and access them. We started to see that problem, number one. But we, with a million-dollar investment contract 200 vehicles and drivers. From 2015 to 2019 we were offering equitable on-demand wheelchair accessible service. And everyone was happy. Drivers are not paying dispatch fees. We were getting hurt or incentive from of course, those 200 were incentivized dispatch. So all of the things that had been recommended we were doing that only 200 and left the other 300 doing whatever. Working with companies trying to do the same. 2019 the vehicle start to fall down. 2024 we hear they are going to extend the life of the vehicles. They were given consultations. That taxi submitted data that have been requested which course we have heard we do not provide, we did. The average 2023 based on the taxi companies data that have been submitted was. Turns 27 still making the 15 minute period which was not good enough but it was what we can do. That was supposed to be applied to Uber and any other bride. Operating the city, that never happened. So 2024, I sat right here inside we have 90 wheelchair accessible vehicles. Nothing happened. 2026, the accessibility fund looked identical to every other annual. Anyone as of March 31 I think we had .[Inaudible] So we get the information that all of these drivers can apply for the accessibility, only couple thousand dollars but a couple thousand dollars is basically. [Inaudible] So my question was, why are we talking, is there. ≫ Christine, you are overtime. You have other questions. You have other questions. . Go ahead, live. ≫ I think you are muted. ≫ We cannot hear you. Does anybody else have questions in the meantime? Go ahead. ≫ He already spoke to Oakley. ≫ I have not spoken. I filed this request I guess 30 days ago, something like that. My response was received June 9. My questions were, when we had a couple of meetings, one, not a couple, one meeting. After all of the vehicles that expired, after everything has fallen down completely, that was April 21, I think. Questions were asked about how many wheelchair accessible vehicles are actually on the road? All I can speak to is the company I work for. Semiprivate information, we cannot tell you, okay, fine. How many license wheelchair accessible vehicles are on the road for every company including rideshare in the city equate I have a list that indicates that. I wanted a list of names and all licensed brokerages with on-demand wheelchair accessible vehicles registered to them for public access. Not Wheel-Trans. And how many, I know you asked the question a couple of times, once in April, again in May and nobody can answer the question. The rear loading vehicles that are available for on-demand service. Very, very easy for staff to determine which ones can also accessibility fund applications from all of this. But we capturing this number of 130, I think it started 501 80 then to 130. I think that was the one I will start with. I will start with the list at 125 active wheelchair accessible vehicles on the road and this is the list that was provided with. That there were 125. All I had to do was go on the city of Toronto's website and this is the 125, three pages in each says it is a rear loader good at first glance I saw a couple of wheelchair accessible wheelchair letters sent right away and going something is wrong. I was able to pretty quickly, you're the first two pages. All of these have no vehicle. On the city's own website , no vehicle. Then there are multiple companies that only do Wheel-Trans work not on-demand wheelchair accessible service. So there are a few on here that I do not understand what they are doing or who they are with, could be transmitted by vehicles, we know there are silos on the list. We know there are dozens and dozens and dozens of expired vehicles on the list that are not on the road. But the fact is it leaves about 40, I would say 40, and that is it they are still on the road. That is if the person who owns it does not have a broken down parked in their driveway. And it means that any given time, these vehicles do not have to drivers they won. That leaves seven days a week 24 hours a day, some work in the day and some work in the night and some might work on the weekends. Maybe there are 15, we kept hearing this number and I think the question he was trying to access the service are asking, where are they? They do not exist. The city, municipal licensing and standards has allowed this service to completely fall down and over the last few months, and in 2024, when we told them, they determined based on our data it is 15 minutes the average wait time. We heard in Maine we do not get information from taxi companies we can all point average wait time to bring in Lyft. I have it right here, something about smart meters on taxi companies with you smart meters. I have my approval letter is 122 of the smart meters that were picked up by enforcement staff and driven around the city and approve we have been waiting for them to states implement them. Every single thing that should have been done has not been done. And it is a failure. I have been around for a lot of problems between our industry and this city. I am so stunned by truly and there are drivers sitting at home in debt from their previous vehicles who could be buying a vehicle if the incentive money that was paid for by their own industry was distributed to them. Help us understand. ≫ Thank you. Thank you. Liv , want to give it another shot? ≫ Yes, sorry, something was wrong with my WebEx. Thank you for your passionate statement and recommendations. My question was going to be about your FOIA request but you've gone through that. So, thank you. In the need to balance vehicles available for Wheel-Trans because we know Wheel-Trans is using something of these vehicles including Beck vehicles. And on-demand service vehicles. How do we balance that and how do we from your perspective and send more on-demand vehicles? And what is the role of this sort of multiparty on-demand system that we are talking about? ≫ Christine, before you answer, we got a request from one of the committee members that they did not for the last two minutes of your response. The first question, you were too far away from the mic. Remember to speak into the mic with your responses. ≫ I should get some water. Okay so, we have a systemic issue that has existed since the very beginning. As the wheelchair accessible licenses were generated or distributed, that is the same time Huber was agreements operate in this city. One piece was happening without being considered by the other piece. And what the wheelchair accessible vehicles work drivers require, obviously they have to keep busy during the periods where they are not being used for wheelchair accessible service. These people be able to make a living while they are operating. So the advance of inviting tens of thousands of vehicles onto our streets and at that time being in the most prehistoric, basically, weights undercut rates and become a monopoly. Which is exactly what the city allow them to try to do. All of those supplemental trips were being taken out. So the drivers now, because we had a good number: 200 was a good number. We would not have been able to keep anymore busy and any less obviously increases the weight tempered with the FOI there was a couple of other things. I wanted to know the total vehicle count on every company and as I said before, it is in the bylaw. Any fleet of more than 500 vehicles must have on-demand wheelchair accessible service. The only company that has more than 500 vehicles in the fleet now is Beck taxi. With 1140 vehicles. The others are Uber with 66,000 vehicles. Lyft with 44,500 vehicles and talk with 29,370 vehicles. Of all of those three companies of course there is some overlap and we see some vehicles have three stickers and maybe three phones and God knows what kind of problems that creates. But the only one listed with wheelchair accessible with Uber is seven. Based on the things I did receive I'm not even sure if that is true but Beck is 1140 and on-demand vehicles left we have 22. And that is insane and what I think, there are two things to answer the question. We hope to separate Wheel-Trans from on-demand completely. Let's never answer the question about only look accessible vehicles on the street when talking about Wheel-Trans vehicles. They do not participate in this work. Let's also talk about regulation. Let's talk about the bylaw has been clear these company should have been offering equitable. We did not need taxi company data to determine what is equitable and order a Uber it is faster than an ambulance. Isn't that how fast you should be able to get a wheelchair accessible vehicle is not with AODA states? Our 15 minutes that is provided in we heard in May they did not have a number. It was never applied to those companies and the system keeps getting worse. Basically the answer is we have to start over, there is nothing to work with right now so we need to go back in 2015 and completely start over. Even though we have been bringing the alarms about this crisis since 2019. And I am sorry. ≫ Okay. Any other questions? I see Anika and Navi. ≫ Hi Christine, thank you for joining and being such a wealth of knowledge regarding these issues. We are not appreciating the fact we have been a part of this is 2019 and even further back. I have a few questions. My first question is do we know a cost differential between hiring a Beck taxi through a Wheel-Trans system or directly from the Beck app? And is not a cost being passed on to the passenger or to the driver, what does that look like? My next piece is come as you mentioned, there may be at this stage I would call it false vehicles that should be wheelchair accessible and are potentially not on the road. Are we lacking an enforcement or investigative body that is ensuring that these licenses are being used and properly applied plate I will pass the board to you here. ≫ Answer your first question, you cannot contact Beck taxi for real transit service. All that comes through Wheel-Trans system. This is why I say that, it is completely separate from the standard taxi dispatch system. If you do get a Beck vehicle through Wheel-Trans you are paying your transit fare. If so, that is completely separate. If you order a Beck taxi and you need a wheelchair accessible taxi right now unless one of our 22 vehicles, which means it really maybe 12 on the road at any given time , if one is close we are sending it but we cannot guarantee wait times. And we had a visit from an enforcement with a letter about how as the only company even trying to offer the service that we were not able to get to wheelchair accessible vehicles at 3 PM, we cannot even get a regular taxi out there at that time for the day the CNE was closing, we are faced with zero support. Zero support from the city. But in your second question, my apologies was, lack of enforcement. They showed up at our office with a letter. And it is not what these people do not know where they are not unfriendly people. They are doing their job. But I sat there knowing that we are the only ones even trying. And Uber and Lyft and talk, where are they? The other taxi companies, I am not going to suggest they've been decimated I will suggest they do not qualify anymore to have to do this work. Because most of their fleets are actually Wheel-Trans vehicles and not on-demand taxis like ours is. So they cannot even be part of this conversation except they are still expected to offer service which is hilarious. Uber, Lyft and hop are not, nothing has been done. There should be 10,000 wheelchair accessible vehicles. But there has been none. It is really hard to dissect, it does keep coming back to taxis. While taxi industry, what are you doing, we have been reduced by half the number of vehicles and drivers we are working with has been reduced by half. People's lives have been ruined. But these giant billionaire American companies have been propped up to do whatever they want. Because frankly they owned the city at this point in the answer is we have to start over and we need to find out who should be in charge of it. ≫ Thank you. ≫ Thank you, Anika. Next we have Navi. ≫ Hi, Christine. Thank you for your input here. I am hoping you can provide a little bit more insight about Beck's course of MLS. I am thinking, because we have Joanna here today, maybe a good opportunity to learn more about this process. But from what I understand, phase 1 until 2019 there was repair opportunity and what I will call phase 2 which is now its replacement. Can you let us know about any respondents Beck has had with MLS trying to access support? What specifically? I know there needs to be replacement that may be for her provide more insight as the correspondence you have tried to access their services. ≫ Sure, they generally provide any services to Beck in terms of wheelchair accessible service. They do not support that Internet seemingly expected to. But what we have been doing is, ringing the alarm set consistently through committee meetings like this. Through other media. CDC, city TV, CD 24 , any outlet you can imagine, on the radio, I've been talking about this, took the fire and the people who require wheelchair accessible service will be excluded from those games. Excluded from fan Fest, excluded from opportunities to participate in they require on-demand service. It has been through messages about accessibility fund and the awful clunky old terrible way that driver information has been collected. That service hours have been collected. The way the money is distributed. The forms that I have to personally sign for 200 vehicles a couple years in a row. When I had said any vehicle that is wheelchair accessible associated with Beck is doing the work. You do not have to ask because if we find there is a driver who is not interested in participating in one of the main purposes of this license he will no longer or she will no longer be able to operate in our brokerage. And we will be able to carry on with another brokerage or deal with the city. So there has never been a change. For example, they have been collecting, drivers would apply for the fund and it is like print your name from a print your name again to my print any negative rigor, check this box, email address. If the drivers build his own name wrong mistakenly in one of the three lines he would be disqualified from the fund and automatically disqualified the following year. It was like we have this money. But we do not want to give it to anyone. We hide this money we collected but we do not want to really get it. Sure, I would be reviewing locations to make sure they are okay. Councillor Myers I was sent you over the years, please tickle can help me understand why we're doing this. Why are we sending in the mail giving 30 days to respond when they might be back home? What if someone died and if they do not come back in time, sorry. Can you email it to them? No. They write their email address every single year, can you call them? No, I cannot do that. In terms of support, and will be clear, Beck taxi has succeeded in spite of our regulator. In spite. So in general, the service has been none. And as I was sitting here listening to the debutante and their lived experience, I do feel like we just come up here, and I am a service provider and I think it is important that I am here. This process is to exhaust and alienate. Maybe if we just keep her coming up here year after year and nothing ever happens she will just give up. So I wasn't sure if I was actually going to come up to speak but I remembered I had a 2019 deputation that really did seem to apply to seven years later. ≫ Christine. Since we only have, thank you for sharing that. I'm wondering, I care about the inaccessibility of the process, disqualification that seems to be continuing without review. Are you receiving denials for repair requests? ≫ Not repair requests. The denial for accessibility fund requests. And this year is a little bit different because they did come up with him after seeing that as you saw the numbers, last year maybe they were I will say: 200. I will be generous and say 200 on-demand water accessible vehicles, that number has consistently gone down as I said. Those vehicles are not on the road anymore so they have now found out if they had registered a new vehicle last year, they would get $25,000. No one knew about that before. No one registered vehicle in 2025. I think we have three drivers. When I sent the message to them like please tell me there is something planned for 2026. This is that your all the vehicles are coming off the road and I received out, come on Christina we plan for the year before. Two weeks later I said that is what I will send, sorry, I don't (nothing fragmented number place and 2025 and nothing in 2026 and suddenly two weeks later, we are changing and bones offer $25,000 for 26 registration all these guys already got sedans and retired. We are starting from scratch and I want to be clear, in a centralized dispatch I don't think we got an update on the centralized dispatch system. The soonest they can come up in September, October, that was in April. I did not hear any new information here today. But these are 10-year-old ideas. 10-year-old ideas. $25,000 was enough money five years of from about $25,000 does not cover the conversion. ≫ Thank you, Christine. ≫ Thank you. ≫ I do not see any other questions. Thank you very much as always for coming. You are always a wealth of knowledge. And passion. ≫ Thank you so much. ≫ Next we have Jennifer Conroy. Jennifer, are you there? ≫ Yes, I am. Can you hear me? ≫ We can hear you Jennifer. Please go event. You have five minutes. ≫ All right, thank you so much. Because of the size of mine tilts power wheelchair my Wheel-Trans profile mandates that I have buses. I cannot afford a taxi safely. I have nearly falling off ramps or list injuring myself or others while trying to situate a large chair in a small space. Wheel-Trans transitions to a taxi only model, it threatens my daily safety and independence. Beyond safety, the current taxi infrastructure is insufficient. Accessible taxi is sparse. For example, I was told by Beck taxi there will 31 accessible calves. I learned this the hard way when on for using a Wheel-Trans ride I called my taxi ticket to work on time. I was told by dispatch that day that it would be a 30 to 40 minute wait for them to find and accessible cab. I eventually had to cancel my ride and rely on 1/3 party app just to get to work on time. Finally, there is a financial burden. While taxi rides are consistently expensive, often 25 to 30 per trip. Even the cheaper options on rideshare apps are between 17 and 20. They and up to an unsustainable monthly cost for those of us on ODSP and fixed incomes. This is not a one size fits all solution. Our mobility needs are as diverse as we are. In a system that ignores that diversity is inherently inclusive. Exclusionary. We need a service that accounts for these realities. Not one that forces us into molds that we do not fit. Thank you. ≫ Thank you, Jennifer. Does anybody have any questions no, okay. Thank you very much. Next we have Peter -- Peter. We can hear you. Go event. Five minutes. ≫ Hi, Councillor Myers the members of the committee. My purpose today is hopefully to empower you as members of the advisory committee to ask questions and ask questions to decision-makers. Because it is clear from listening to the lockstep utensil we do not have a dispatch problem. We are going to spend more money, spend more time, energy, there is probably approximately less than 10 vehicles on the road every day. Pick up the phone. Call. If you call Beck taxi all they will tell you is called the city because we do not have any rights available. If you call Uber all you will see is the big black sign saying no cars available. We are playing smoke and mirrors here, everyone. We have a municipal licensing standard committee that failed to build market of accessibility. We are holding onto $20 million. We have money to spend. The average vehicle costs, accessible vehicle costs $110,000. The conversion of the vehicle costs approximately 50 to $60,000. We have manufacturing companies that are ready to go. All we have to do is give them money and increase the supply. But we keep on coming up with all of these excuses and all of these different fraud technicalities. Or administrative pathways to prevent us from putting resources into where we need to put them to create on-demand service. I do not know what to say anymore. Like I have lost complete understanding of how we build bylaws, but we do not follow them. We collect money from individual residences and citizens using on-demand services to build a fund. And we are completely perplexed on how to spend it. We are going to spend more money on dispatch right now around amalgamating PTC in order to single point dispatch only approximately 10 vehicles. If we had 100 on-demand accessible vehicles today we would not have a dispatch problem. I do not think people care if they call two or three providers to get a cab as long as they get a cab. But now we are stuck in this place will rethink me to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a centralized dispatch system when we have no vehicles available. We are doing things backwards, guys. And I do not know what levers this has to talk to executive committee, the Mayor's office, or whoever is responsible. I just simply asking you today to do two things. Number one, at some point in the day anybody was hearing me today pick up the phone and try to call and accessible cab. Or grab your app for your smart phone and try and find out if there is an accessible on-demand vehicle for service available. You will not find them. You are sitting on $20 million. Most problems have no money and a big problem to resolve. You have $20 million to resolve a problem. And you are not spending it on the problem. We are spending it on dispatch, incentives of $25,000. 01 something cost 110. You have decimated a bull market. The only way to solve this problem now is to start picking up the phone and start calling the people who have been providing on-demand accessible service to the city and start looking at comparable compromises on to maintain these drivers to continue to do this work. Or incentivize new industries to start looking at accessibility, specifically. Because what we have now is completely broken. Our MLS team unfortunately, is not, does not have the wherewithal to create a market of accessibility. Everything they tried has failed and they have no relationship with the people that are providing the services. I am not talking about brokerages I am just talking about the people who invested their time, energy and business of self contractors to be able to be a part of a brokerage or a part of Uber. They are the ones spending all the money and trying to create a livelihood from it. We are ignoring all about. So I call this committee, please start asking questions and start communicating with the mayor's office, MLS, people who have the decision to make this happen. And particularly, working with the community organizations like Ontario and other disability organizations. We are here to help you do it. We have been ignored and shunned out of the conversations as well. Thank you. ≫ Thank you, Peter. Does anybody have any questions? Dana. I cannot hear anybody. ≫ I am not sure my questions are for Peter but my questions are generally open to where is this money? ≫ Do you want to say that for questions of staff create okay. That's all right. ≫ No questions for Peter. Thank you, Peter. Next we have Joshua Forbes. Joshua, are you there? Joshua Forbes. Next we have Helen. Helen -- know. Next we have Alex Maria. I think I saw Alex. Alex, you are online. ≫ Alex. Can you hear us? It is your turn to speak. ≫ Okay. We will go back to Adam Cahoon. Adam, are you there? ≫ Yes. ≫ Go ahead. ≫ I just want to say as Liv pointed out, there were some issues with WebEx. Thank you for letting me come back and speak at the end. It was quickly, I will say this. Because I was in a hurry and I locked my hands on my desk trying to un mute so I needed more than a few minutes to process the pain. I am physically fine. But I want to thank all of the deputy tents that came out to speak today. I was scared when I saw this item that there was maybe going to be me and another person. I was only able to recruit one other person to speak on this item. And I am glad that many people spoke. The one question that came to my mind when this first came out and still, is the one thing that is sort of scary for me. It is , is this going to in a weird way create a weird situation where Wheel-Trans in the accessible system is stealing, is sort of running two parts of a duopoly and turning it into some ways more of a monopoly than it already is. Because if I call up and decide I need to use a wheelchair taxi does not mean that all of a seven Wheel-Trans is now going to realize, Adam Cahoon said, I need a cab. But when it is a Wheel-Trans shared service I am in a giant chair. When I sit down in a slightly uncomfortable situation I can maybe fit on a bus. But to do anything it is sort of a bit of a problem. Sort of how even tilting down quickly to answer with my name, suddenly it came up a lot quicker, it can be hard. And when writing on tilted which you do in a taxi can create a very bumpy uncomfortable ride. So last time I used a wheelchair taxi I actually had back problems for a few days afterwards. Because I was crammed in. So I am definitely worried about if I call a Wheel-Trans wheelchair taxi through the Wheel-Trans pub and I do get a taxi, is that going to mean that all of a sudden Wheel-Trans now says, Adam can take taxis. And the next few times I booked a Wheel-Trans bus they may be send me a taxi. Second of all, the other concern I have is it going to be one of those things where people that are mis-categorized on the family of services, and when they realize they are having a mess up on family of services trip because of an elevator breakdown, they call Wheel-Trans. Wheel-Trans says you know what, we can get a Wheel-Trans vehicle to pick you up but we were able to get you a paid for wheelchair taxi because now in both things. It is sort of like the same little incestuous world we have with Ticketmaster and StubHub. Where if you are desperate we will with the extra payment be able to get you a vehicle. It is not about whether we can get vehicles. It is about how much we are willing to pay. And sometimes when we are in a jam we are willing to pay more and that is scary for me. And in my last 10 seconds I just want to thank all of you for doing this wonderful work. As being the last to speak at the last meeting of this accessibility committee. I want to thank you for all your wonderful work. Thank you. ≫ Thank you, Adam. Does anybody have any questions for Adam? No, okay but I will run through the list one more time to see if any of the speakers are here. Joan Lewis. Nope. Ronnie hard. Adam. Number -- [Name? ] Aaron Schuma. nope. Joshua Forbes. Nope. Helen. Nope. And Alex. Nope. Nope, okay. So we will now bring it into committee were committee members can ask questions of staff. Dana, you are first. ≫ Thank you very much. I have a couple of questions of style. ≫ Sorry from Alex is here. ≫ I will be super quick. Thank you so much. I appreciate the last-minute bringing in. I just wanted to be here on behalf of my best friend, he is a brother to me, like a family member, been friends since childhood. You heard him speak earlier, Chris, since the accident he had about 11 years ago we spent a lot of time together and he has really created a whole new life for himself. It is amazing. In the last few years, I don't know if it has become more for him, we do a lot of things together. Just as a simple example. Using Wheel-Trans on a planned basis a few days in advance, I go to medical appointments with him. We go to sporting events and he comes to my house to visit and hang out in the backyard and things like that. But when plans change, he was here last week with a bunch of us and he was not feeling well. He needed to get home a lot sooner to get to his care and take some pressure off. And I could see it myself I could see how difficult it was. He was in a place where he had to wait another hour and and a half to get his prescheduled Wheel-Trans and literally sweat it out. He was literally feeling like he needed to get pressure off and get out of his chair. And it is not easy. I feel it three or four or five years ago you could get on that and get UBER or call Beck and get in accessible van. And get around easily when things would change. Another time we were at an event and the subway was closed and we were trying to my realized how hard it is to get around and he is trying to call in accessible vehicle. And it was just my realized he was so frustrated because it happened two nights in a row. I'm remembering a lot of occurrences where, I heard other members or other people speak here today and I did not realize other cities, maybe this is a problem in Canada. I offered other people speak here today. Toronto is the worst city when it comes to can I feel terrible about that. I had no idea for my best friend, like my brother and all of the other chair users in this incredible city. How is Toronto in the situation? How did this happen? I am shocked actually. I wanted to share that as someone who spends time with a chair users. And I am hoping that my real live experience with my best friend, you know, lands wealth everyone out here. I appreciate everything everyone is trying to do and I really hope we are not having the same conversation in a year or five years from now. But a conversation saying thank you, the improvements are incredible and your city is the best city in the world when it comes to accessibility. That is what I wanted to share. Thank you very much. ≫ Thank you from Alex. Any questions for Alex? Thank you very much. Going to go back into committee. Dana, you have the floor. ≫ Okay, I have a couple of questions. I hope you can hear me. First of all, why is there no enforcement? Beyond it seems Beck. So Uber, Hopp, Lyft. The municipal limits were. A number of accessible vehicles. By is nobody enforcing that clean and my second question is, why aren't we supporting people who wish to ensure their vehicles are properly accessible when we have been collecting all of this money from everybody who takes a Lyft, Uber, taxi. Why isn't going out of here like a great wonderful? -- Waterfall. ≫ I will start with the enforcement. I am speaking about the wait time standard. For PTCs Uber, lift, and Hopp. So what Christine mentioned, in our bylaws currently we have a provision to set away time standard but it is benchmarked on taxicabs. And the data and service time they provide. Because we do not get regular data from the taxicabs do not have that benchmark. And this is in part why we recommended a few things in our 2020 for review. Type set an explicit 15 minute standard form PTCs. And that decouples it from the taxicabs data. And this is also why we recommended mandatory digital meters. So we do get that ongoing data from the taxicabs. In absence, recommendations were not approved. In absence we are left with where we are right now. So we are doing the best we can with the tools that we have. We have the current regulation. ≫ My question was, aren't you not mandated to have a certain number of accessible vehicles and brokerages over 500? ≫ It if you are asking for like an explicit number, no, it is more of the wait time standard. That way time standard implies or that way time standard you would ineffective need a certain number of vehicles. ≫ Why wouldn't that apply to everyone? Like, I know you are only getting data from taxis but why aren't you getting data from the rideshare companies as well? ≫ We get data from them regularly. Yes. ≫ Are they able to fulfill that 50 commitment please for an accessible vehicle plate. ≫ L okay, we do get data but in order to set the standard to be able to enforce against the taxicabs or pardon me, the PTCs, blueberries andLyft we need to set that standard and that standard is contingent on taxicabs due to yes, we did get it once review brokerages but they have been on been submitting regularly was slightly wanted to introduce digital meter requirement. I know, it, I appreciate that this is a bit of a semantics here. And it is still , I think we all acknowledge that accessible service is not where it should be that I think we are not arguing that point there there is certainly fewer vehicles on the road than in the past. Things like essentials dispatch and things that we are able to do, we are trying to increase the service. ≫ My second question was why aren't we letting that money flow out of your water so everybody can have in accessible vehicle when they need one. ≫ So we do have funds available and this is why earlier this year we introduce the $25,000 one time incentive. We also increased our annual incentives that have been offered to drivers and vehicle owners. Since 2020. So we are waiting to see what the uptake is but I think there is further opportunity to look at where else can spend that money. But we want to make sure it is available. So let's say we establish a centralized dispatch that allows us to for example, distribute per trip incentives. Something we recommended in 2024 and our staff report was a perjured of incentive of $15 during the day and $25 at nighttime. So those are some of the things that we recommended doing that with a centralized dispatch would allow us to do. ≫ That was your last question, we can go for a second round if you want. Next I have Alex. And anybody else want to speak? I will create a list. Alex, Richard. Eric. Anika. Miranda. Navi. Anybody else? Luke, Liv, Howard, no? Okay, perfect. Alex, please go ahead. ≫ Thank you so much, everyone. I want to revisit this whole notion of benchmarking. I am very confused on why you are benchmarking on the taxicab industry as opposed to moving forward on benchmarking on more relevant indicators such as commodity expectation of clients. Or availability etc. My, where did that benchmarking come from and why are we still using that as a benchmark? Clearly the data are not available. ≫ Maybe I can try and answer this. The idea of setting a benchmark is that the service provided to those with mobility needs is equal to other taxi and other on-demand service in the city. For example, someone who does not have mobility issues is able to get a taxi within 10 minutes , the idea is the same benchmark would be set for those with mobility issues. The same amount. That is why the benchmark is dependent on what the taxi industry response time is. If there response time is 10 minutes it should be 10 minutes on the other side as well. That is why it relies a lot on the data we receive from taxis which we have not been receiving consistently reliable data on. In recognition that we have not received reliable and consistent data, what we tried in 2024 to do was to bring a report to counsel. To separate the two to say that we will no longer require the benchmark to be sent by what the taxi non-accessible response time is. We will set our own benchmark and the benchmark at that time was attempted to be set at 15 minutes. Regardless of what the taxi non-accessible response rate would be four accessible taxis our intention was in 2024 in recognition of this issue was to set it up 15 minutes. That unfortunately was not adopted by counsel. ≫ Just to clarify as well, this is a bylaw requirement that we have to follow in less than is changed. Set by counsel. ≫ Alex, any other questions? ≫ I guess, the natural question is why was not adopted by counsel? What were the key reasons? ≫ In 2024, this was a broad review of the vehicle hug for higher bylaw. The company recognitions around accessible service was one part of the report pray there was quite a bit also about the sector. And so, just during discussions counsel referred the item back to staff to do more work. I would say more on the accessible part, on the other aspects of the bylaw review and asked us to do more work before being comfortable adopting the recommendations. ≫ Okay, thank you. ≫ Thank you, Alex. Next we have Richard. ≫ Thank you. The way the bylaw is written now, would you have to get the standard from the taxi companies were could you measure it yourself, potentially? ≫ Yes, we would have to get the data from the taxicab companies. That is where we would be able to set. ≫ Okay. And , what, could you tell us a bit more about the fund that is available that others have spoken to? Is there a lot of money still left in the fund or is there a lot of turnover or not really? ≫ This is the accessible live fund program introduced in 2020. The whole purpose was to offset the cost of providing accessible service. This is the more expensive capital cost for the vehicle but also, the cost of providing the service itself. It takes more time. Generally means drivers can't perform as many brides as they would normally. Oh boy, okay, you are asking about the fund. So we have distribute about $7 million since the fund was introduced. We made recent updates and 2026, as I mentioned, providing these one-time grants and enhancing the annual funding we provide to drivers and vehicle owners. We are trying to get more money out the door is maybe the long and the short of it. ≫ Just perhaps I can add a quick note to that as well. The way the fund is being used as in two ways, one is to both incentivize new vehicles to come onto the road. But also to ensure incentivize those vehicles to remain on the road. While there is a significant upfront cost for vehicle owners and drivers to put these vehicles on the road, we do want to ensure when the fund is being spent is being spent in a way that keeps those vehicles on the road and not just a situation where a larger amount of money is spent up front. But there is no guarantee those vehicles will remain on the road for the period of time we need them. ≫ Thank you. What would be the next steps? I know you are building towards Q1 2027 for some of your analysis. As that have to go back to executive committee to be approved or to counsel once you have done the analysis? ≫ It was directed to undertake a feasibility study. So we are assuming that, guess we will need to get report back on this. ≫ Okay command last question from me. Could you some of the cross boundary challenges across municipalities that some of the debutantes spoke about them are there other challenges without and how you are accounting for that in your analysis work. ≫ And perhaps, my TTC colleagues may be able to comment from the Wheel-Trans side of things. Now if I understand, it is getting brides to and from municipalities. Part of our challenge as we are only come if we are just talking about on-demand taxi service, MLS is only able to regulate within the city of Toronto. We cannot compel York region to do anything, structure their licenses. For example, that as part of our challenge I would say. And I do not know if you want to comment on the Wheel-Trans issue. ≫ Certainly I can. Dean Milton, manager of strategic initiatives that Wheel-Trans. Through the chair. Essentially the question is, really twofold here. We are talking about taxis for higher versus Wheel-Trans, the current Wheel-Trans contract. Which is part of public transit. So currently, as many of you may or may not know in the room, there is a new bill that is received Royal assent, Bill 98 building homes and improving transportation infrastructure and. And so, essentially right now we are looking at the possibilities of what a unified scheduling system might look like. To make the public transit side of this equation easier for customers. As well as under the act we are also exploring what additional trouble into regions might look like from a customers standpoint. Which of course, complexity is with respect to our contract and taxi services which is just discussed, many of which cannot operate outside of the region of Toronto. There is a few things being looked at. Thank you. ≫ Thinking. I will pass in back to the chair for the questions. ≫ Thank you. Next we have Eric. ≫ Five. Thinking to the presenters and the debutantes today, clearly a very complex issue. I am curious you did mention in 2026 the new incentives, I think you referenced that potential for increasing those once you increase the uptake currently. The other lever we heard that made reducing challenges is the current process for drivers to apply for the funds. Because there been any review in making that processes are than what we have heard today? ≫ So, a couple of things. So definitely appreciate that making it easier for drivers and vehicle owners to apply and receive those incentives is certainly something that we need to look at. We are operating with quite an old technology system behind the scenes. And as a division we are undergoing a very significant technological transformation of several of our backend systems. Including this one. And think user experience, whether the users be licensees, grant applicants, is top of mind in this transformation. I think this was helpful today to put a finer point on it as well and certainly appreciate that. I would say maybe, we have got that feedback and that is helpful and we are doing what we can. And will hopefully people will see some soon. ≫ Okay. Second question: I me. Obviously, we have heard a lot of challenges around the vehicles on the road. Seeing your timelines thought the intent is that recommendation goes forward in Q1 2027 and moves into implementation, I am unclear on the actual implementation or potential limitation timelines of a centralized dispatch service. If you can explain that a little bit. Invite insurance is could you provide the service level will meet based on what we have heard based on the number of cars. ≫ Good questions. So it will be dependent on the model that we go forward with. And I would say we are investigating parallel streams, one is with TTC Wheel-Trans and the other looks more like the Calvary urban attend model. Where the city does more of the heavy lifting on the centralized dispatch. Timelines are a bit challenging to determine right now. We do recognize that urgency and as I mentioned with the centralized dispatch service we will be able to offer those per trip incentives, for example. And and sent drivers to come online and provide that service because point well taken. If there is not enough people out there it doesn't matter what kind of centralized dispatch system you have. We are trying to look at this holistically and with our one-time grant incentives. Annual incentives. The per trip incentives. We are trying to encourage as many drivers to offer the service as possible. It is yeah, we need to take a holistic approach. There is some things we just cannot do without biological changes. I will be up front and clear about that, that it will take a Council approval for some changes that we put forward, for example in our 2024 report. But we are well aware of all of these issues. I think we have got some good solutions and so we are working towards them. ≫ Okay, thank you. That is it for me. ≫ Thank you, Eric. Next I have Anika. ≫ Hello, thank you and thank you to the presenters again for coming today and sharing with us this report presentation. My question maybe repetitive here because we were able to extend this to Christine who of course has a lot more access to the data. But I am wondering if the MLS knows how many accessibility are deployed. If that is weekly or monthly, is that information the MLS potentially has? ≫ Thank you for the question. Because we are not getting regular data from the taxicab companies, we are not able to tell you from any vehicles on the road at any given time or any given month. We have to rely on the annual application and renewals. And also uptake of our grants but unfortunately, I cannot tell you how many rides were offered last week, for example. And this is partly why we recommended a mandatory digital meters for not just on brokerages but all of the independent driver and taxicab owners as well. But again, that needs a bylaw change. ≫ Appreciate that. And I guess my next question to that is as you mentioned this new benchmark or this existing benchmark about wanting to have 15 minute wait times for accessible vehicles. Is there an opportunity to consider presenting a different benchmark? Like having a discussion of there should be 100 vehicles available per day at work anything in that ballpark? Still an opportunity for that work normally past that discussion? Anything with them. ≫ Think you for the question, through you chair. I think there are a variety of ways of achieving the service delivery. Unfortunately, all of those would require a bylaw amendment before we can proceed online. ≫ I guess my next question is, what kind of support you need to go through with a bylaw amendment? Something for this committee, through a whole different process, is the opportunity to consider that if necessary? ≫ The normal process as we would bring forward report to committee recommendations. The committee would accept those recommendations. Modify them, tell us to go back and do more work. I think, we will take the will of this committee. I think, I would defer to the chair here on this. But we will take an opportunity, the committee can express its will. And we will follow as appropriate. ≫ Thank you very much. ≫ Thank you, Anika. Next I have Miranda. ≫ Yes, thank you. I just want to thank-- ≫ Miranda, you are cutting out. Sorry, keep going. ≫ Can you hear me? ≫ Okay, go. ≫ Okay, thank you. I want to thank all of the speakers and presenters on this issue today. I noticed is a recurring theme of instability in program, in-service, right? And I am just wondering if there has been consideration of innovative aspect. Where we can use maybe AI agents. Or automated conflict resolution management systems. And a system to help manage recommendations that can then be utilized to address some of these issues that are being mentioned. And then, report that to the committee because I think we can all agree that this is something we need to address and something we need to get to assist these citizens. That have this particular need. And so, this is my question I am posing. ≫ Miranda, maybe to clarify, are you asking if we have used AI or other technologies? Do you need to develop solutions? ≫ That is correct, yes. ≫ I cannot say that is something we have considered. I think that is an interesting suggestion. ≫ E, I think it can help. It also can help in tracking, monitoring how the issues are being addressed and resolved. So I just want to and that to the table for consideration and later to report back to the committee on that. I think it will help address a lot of the issues. And help us to not miss the mark. Where concerning results and aligning to citizen needs for this. Thank you. ≫ Thank you, Miranda. Next we have Navi. ≫ Hi, thank you so much. I am wondering if you have any of the many data about the number of applications that have been received by the city and the number of approvals. ≫ I do. Thank you for asking. For $25,000 one time grant for newly registered vehicles, we had six vehicles of the 2025 model. And we have 30 vehicles so far that are 2026 but of course only halfway through the year. For the annual grants and incentives, for 2025, let me do some quick math here. So nay we have 240 -- just over. And I am just, 248 four 2025. Pardon me. 348. ≫ Sorry. For 2025 number of applications versus approval, I am terrible with numbers. Could? ≫ These are approvals. We , these are net of the number of applications. ≫ F, do you have a total both of those potentially? ≫ How many applied? ≫ Yeah, and I think just trying to reflect back some of the feedback we received from our debutantes today. ≫ Maybe give me a second. ≫ Of course , thank you. ≫ Do you have any other questions while we look this up? ≫ Yeah. My other question is, we have agreed in our meeting here that the number of vehicles is the issue. I am wondering how 20 5K was decided upon as the number that it would address the issue of number of vehicles on the road. How was that developed ? ≫ Thank you for the question, through you chair. In recognition that vehicles were coming up for expiry. And it was a whole of the city to increase the number of vehicles that would be on the road. We looked at the cost of putting vehicles on the road. The projected workload and income of drivers as well. And the balancing the upfront incentive to putting vehicles onto the road. With sort of a prorated incentive over the lifetime of the vehicle in order to try and incentivize those vehicles to continue to remain on the road. ≫ Yeah? ≫ I think one of the speakers mentioned in accessible vehicle is around 100,000 dollars. This was a balance of the additional money that will be required on top of purchasing a regular vehicle. And also, we wanted to make sure that we were being responsible with the funds and we did not want to say fund a conversion of a vehicle that would end up driving to Mississauga, for example. We wanted to make sure that we were provided the incentives and the amount to fund drivers here. I think what we are always open to feedback about whether the 25,000 is enough. I think that is feedback we are gathering throughout this process. Because it is fairly new. It was only a few months ago we introduced this one time incentive. And if I can go back to your question about how many applications we received. In 2025, for service provided in 2025 to date we received 340 applications and processed 240 of those so far. But I will note, that drivers and owners can apply all year. Up to December 31 so we expect that number to be higher. As the year goes on. ≫ My follow-up question here, now that we have understood the upfront cost, the number of vehicles is the issue, is it within the purview of animals to make amendments to the 20 5K to addressed the need expressed here to ensure we are able to have more vehicles on the road, what with that process, timeline before that? Does it require city Council approval? ≫ Through you chair. It is within our control to increase and adjust the funding being paid through that AFP. Because the 25,000 was rolled out this year, which has been more than double what it was last year, we are still collecting some data to see whether that in and of itself is pushing the numbers up in the number of vehicles coming online. But certainly, once me a chance to review those numbers if they are not sufficient or not having the infant we intended them to have, looking at that AFP payouts is one of the levers within our control. ≫ My follow-up is maybe we will have a second round, unfortunately seems like the question of the number of approvals for the 20 5K is not capturing the issue. Which is the number of vehicles on the road in time to get them on the road. I am wondering, I think there might be an opportunity to invite you back and talk about how that would be amended to ensure we are really addressing the issues that have been raised today by the debutantes. Thanks. ≫ Thank you. I guess we have a second round. I will go with my questions now them. So I guess my first question is, is the number from what Beck taxi provided and what the debutantes said in terms of the number of on-demand, accessible vehicles being at approximately 40 Macs. Maybe 50 on any given day, does that sound right? ≫ Again I cannot verify how many are on the road each day because we do not kind of data. What I can tell you is how many have been licensed. ≫ That is not the question. We have gone back and forth on this now several times and I think with already established a number of vehicles and number of licenses are two separate issues. You can have a million licenses into vehicles. ≫ Always, vehicles license. ≫ How many vehicles licensed are on the road, approximately? They gave the number. . And 40 and approximately 15 per day up give or take, does not sound right? It sounded consistent with what all of the debutantes who take the service said. ≫ Yes so unfortunately, I cannot verify on the road but I think we all agree there are not enough. ≫ You do not know the number. ≫ I know the number that are licensed and able to be driven on the road but I do not know how many are on the road at any given time. ≫ Why do you not know that number? ≫ Because the taxicabs, we do not have a process to mandate that we get real-time data like we do with private transportation companies. And this is why that was recognition of our 22 for report. If we have digital leaders we would be able to provide real-time data with, a month behind, but say. ≫ Right, but given the number is pretty low and we all agreed. We could do a count. How many do you have? There is only five or six taxi companies in the city. You could request the information and I am sure they would give it to you in terms of figuring out how many are available in total and whether or not we know how many are available any given day. We can leave that as a separate issue. But figuring out the total number, I think that is something analysts can do, no? Just requesting the information. ≫ Right, okay. So like a spot check? ≫ Spot check. You can ask hey, how many on demand accessible vehicles are in your fleet? ≫ So we know how many are in their fleet it is just. ≫ That are on demand to. ≫ We do know that. ≫ What is the total number? ≫ Bear with me here, we have 478 licensed, 82 percent of those are under contracts with Wheel-Trans TTC. So the remainder we have is 84 and these are on-demand only. So they do not drive for TTC. ≫ On-demand, 84 we have. How many of those 84 are on the road? We do not know that. ≫ Do not know that. ≫ And as there anything preventing MLS from simply asking the taxi companies hey, is this vehicle on the road? ≫ So, we can for sure and we have in the past. It would be a point in time. And it, we would have to make reality independent drivers as well. Those unaffiliated. ≫ Any reason why MLS is not requested this information already quite we have had several meetings. This is why I'm a bit perplexed as to why we do not have this number like bumped down. ≫ How many are out driving. ≫ How many are on the drivers, not going to ask about the rear loading vehicles. But how many are on the road? We have had multiple meetings now over this. Very simple straightforward question. I am not getting the answer from MLS in terms of this is how many, 84. ≫ Perhaps I can take that small stab at it. What we know is there are 84 that are available to be on-demand on the road at any given time. It is impossible for us to be able to tell at any point in time how many are actually on the road. ≫ Right. But this is what I guess, you know there is 84. You do not know the state of those vehicles, you do not know if those vehicles are being driven to me do not know if the owners are still driving the vehicles. You know they are registered and they have licenses. correct? So nothing preventing you from saying here is that 84. Let's go through the list. And if we have to do it manually for a spot, point in time check to verify how many of the 84, not a large number, are still on the road today. There is nothing preventing MLS, do not meet the bylaw change, you can do that tomorrow. Correct? ≫ What I would add if I may, even if all 84 on the road, I think what we are acknowledging is not in itself is not enough to provide the service. ≫ Absolutely. I think there is no disagreement there. But I think in order to get the number we need to know what we are starting from. And right now we do not have that information which is what MLS should have. And then I guess, the second question I have is, Christine brought up the issue of 66,000 Uber, 44,500 for Lyft, approximately 29,000 with Hopp and only seven of those vehicles are accessible. Does that sound accurate? And if not, what are the numbers? ≫ The number we have is 17. ≫ 17 66,000. Is that what the bylaw says they should have given the size of their fleet cleat . ≫ Again, the bylaw does not specify a certain number it is more about the wait time standard. Which is an indirect way of increasing the numbers. ≫ Are they meeting the wait time standard based on the size of their fleet cleat . ≫ We have not been able to establish a wait time standard. ≫ Why have you not been able to establish the wait time standard for the rideshare companies? ≫ It is benchmark, wait time standard that, of a taxicab. ≫ Why are you relying on them cleat can't you do that separately? Sounds like a chicken and egg problem. ≫ Which is exactly why we recommended in our 2024 report to decouple that and set the straight 15 minute wait time standard. ≫ Is there anything preventing MLS from decoupling the issue and bringing forward the accessible recommendation separate from the larger review or does it have to come as a package cleat . ≫ No, it does not have the come as a package. ≫ Okay, thank you. So we will go to the second round and we have Dana. Please go ahead. ≫ Think you very much. First of all, can I just say thank you to Jennifer and you and your team. I appreciate this is tough. My question , I think is for you, Jamaal and our group as a whole. This is our last meeting. What can we do as a committee to have some impact on this decision? How do we make ourselves heard loud and clear cleat because I do not think there is a one of us around this table are online that are on the wrong side of this issue. I think we all want to make things different and better. So what do we need to do to make a change? ≫ That is a great question. We are working on some motions right now to try to address some of the issues and based on some of the questions we all have been asking and some of the debutantes. So we will circulate these motions shortly. We are just finalizing them. I believe is not your only question? Okay. And then, the next question is, I had Navi fermented you want a second round pre- spray go-ahead. ≫ Please. I was hoping that we could, I know we have the debutantes here. They come I think what resonated with all of us or with me at least is, that there has not been a timeline. Or there have been timelines and moving goalpost meeting those timelines. For me, I, one of the biggest barriers I have identified is within MLSs review today, and we have identified the 20 5K is not going to address the issue of the number of vehicles so in the purview of the MLS to extend that budget as needed. I am wondering if today you are able to speak to how the MLS is going to address that. Do we have a timeline, a process, what are your initial ideas of how to bring what we have heard today and the current process together? ≫ You for the question. So again as I mentioned earlier through you chair, we have made the change to 25,000 in the beginning of this year. It has been over a twofold increase in the previous rent payment that was paid out as well as increasing the yearly amounts that are available. I think we do need to look at those numbers to see how they, what the uptake has been like this year. And then, once we are able to see year-over-year if we have seen an increase in the number of vehicles. And if that increase indicates that we are headed in the right direction to meet this challenge. Then we might be already sitting at the right number. But if for example, the end of this year we are seeing the 25,000 has not incentivize the amount of vehicles that are required in order to meet this demand, then we should be looking at that number. But I would add that that number in and of itself, is not enough to incentivize vehicles. I think what we need? We need cooperation from industry as well to provide the service where there is. What we have heard today is no one is providing this on-demand service. We have heard Uber is not providing appeared either PTC companies are not providing it. We know that Wheel-Trans is not providing it. There is an opportunity for the industry to fill this void in collaboration with MLS. In how to incentivize vehicles to fill the void that exists with the industry that is there to fill that void. We are happy to play the part which is to incentivize vehicles to come onto the road. But also incentivize them to remain in Toronto and remain on the road for years. But we do need cooperation from industry and data collection, data sharing. So we can hold PTC is responsible for their obligation under the bylaw. But also cooperation and ensuring this void that exists is being able to be filled. We are not the ones that are driving the vehicles. We are not the ones controlling the dispatch of the vehicles. I'm think I'm a part is to look at the incentivizing numbers. And we need the cooperation of the industry in order to bring PTC on board. And hold them accountable under the bylaw now to standards of the service. But also to ensure they are there to fill that void. ≫ I hear that. And I just want to make sure we are not circling the drain here. Because I think, the issue, the MLS requesting additional time to examine whether 25 K is appropriate is, like it can sound discouraging. And I am hoping that from what we heard from the W tense as well as from Beck taxi, that the issue and what is within MLSs purview today and requires immediate action seems to be having better consultation about what is not being measured with that 25 K number. What the actual cost is to replace vehicles and to get more on the road immediately and with additional time to review whether 25 K is appropriate. It, just so we can have a better understanding of MLSs plan. What, how is not planned? Is it going to be done half through the year, next year, how long is that question going to be entertained? ≫ Through you chair. It is, I think we have to sort of acknowledge that it was a lower number for a period of years at $10,000. In recognition that vehicles were coming up for expiry and the cost of replacement, the cost of these vehicles on the road and maintain them on the road, that is why MLS more than doubled the amount of money that was offered in these grants. And that began in January of this year. It is too early at this point to make conclusive determinations whether that number is correct. So what we are doing is an ongoing review throughout the year. What is the uptake of that new grant amount compared to previous years? And if it looks at the uptake is heading in the right direction then we might be correct in our assessment of what the incentive should be. If the uptake is not correct and we are doing that now, we will certainly do at the end of the year once we have a bigger picture of a full year of 25,000. At that point we will be able to see if that number has increased more. ≫ I hope we are able to invite you back to discuss at that time as well. ≫ Thank you. Liv. ≫ Thank you. I think you know, we have heard from many parties and sectors here. The fact that this system is not working and I am not clear that a centralized dispatch system is going to be the silver bullet here. We have multiple factors. And we do not have a system to incentive more cars on the road to meet the service. Be they through rideshare, through taxi service etc. etc. My question is to the Chair. Do we have any motions currently in the works? We're almost out the end of this meeting. Not, I think we need to make some motions around recommendations, timelines, some accountability built in. I suspect I have seen a lot of scurrying so I suspect there is a motion in the works but I would love to move to considering some action items for this committee. ≫ We are working on those right now as we speak. ≫ Okay, great. I think Luke also has a comment. So I will perhaps, yield over to my colleague, Luke. ≫ Sorry, Luke do you have a comment more questions ? ≫ It is a bit of both. ≫ Okay so, I saw, why don't we do this, Luke, ask your questions. Then Eric can ask your second round of questions as well and then we will have a separate time for speaking and you can ask the second part of your, you can make the second part of your remarks. Does not work, Luke? ≫ That sounds good. I guess my question for staff, how the cities disability inclusion action plan aligns with the long-term goals for making sure our transportation system, systems are available. We have put the work into creating an action plan. What is the strategy here? We are getting granular yes, in this moment of people and the stress, the system is so fragmented. There is 80, 40, 15: there is way, there is a significant issue here. Where are we at in framing this issue with respect to our long-term goals to create a city that is accessible by design. And disability inclusion is recognized as a priority across the entire organization. Once again, people with disabilities are being left out. We have great president to draw from from cities like London, England. Where there is mandates that vehicles for hiring back on the road need to be accessible. I get the feeling there are the consensus amongst my fellow committee members that if we set some numbers in place with a long-term goal of creating a fleet that is ambitious, yes. But 100 percent accessible. Let's do it. The time is now when we are rebuilding the system that is so broken. Sure we can start with benchmarks, of course. We start with where we are and right now. But to grow this and follow our mandated plan, to create an inclusive city across the entire organization. We have to do this. I just love a response from my comments about what I have shared. Thank you. ≫ Thank you, Luke. ≫ From accessibility unit. I can speak only to the disability inclusion action plan and hear what you said,, loud and clear. What we have included in the disability included action plan is the goal of the transportation. The goals of the transportation related options which is section eight. The two that most closely aligned to this issue is our commitment to increase ethical Access to arrange of accessible transportation services in Toronto. To meet the needs of all residents and visitors. As well to increase awareness and consideration of accessibility in the city's transportation related strategies, planning and policies, and there is to specific actions the city has committed two and one is related directly to the vehicle for hire accessibility fund. This is a five-year action plan. Which this is not everything. But it can be changed as we go on. But for our first commitment that was made by MLS, that we would increase the awareness of the fund. To offset the higher cost of providing wheelchair accessible services. We are already seeing work done this year as Joanna and team have outlined to increase the awareness. The second thing related to this is to continue to investigate ways to reduce current wait times. Again, the focus in the plan and commitment is on reducing the wait times. To ensure equitable transportation options. I hope that is helpful, . ≫ Thank you, Luke. Next we have Eric. ≫ Hi, thanks again. Question for staff. I hate to go back to the numbers but we just heard that the number of cars on the road could be anywhere from pessimistically zero to optimistically 84, I think was the number. Maybe, what are your target numbers through this incentive program? What is the number you are trying to achieve to ensure the service level that we all want? ≫ Through the chair, good question. I would say we are less focused on numbers and we are more focused on the service that customers are receiving. Specifically, I would say the wait time standard. It would be very challenging for us to say that 300 vehicles is the right amount versus 500. I think it is really the customer experience and are they receiving government service to known accessible rides? ≫ Quick follow-up, I am curious how you are tracking the uptake in the new grant model. Against if you do not target numbers and you are having challenges with your time-based approach. How you will actually be tracking that over the course of the year to know if you need to adjust it. Quietness in other words, is the grant. ≫ What does this look like to you at the end of the year? I guess, an easier way. ≫ Good question. I think the number of vehicles that are on the road driving would be success. I think feedback from the industry, I would say they are not shy about telling us whether they like something or not. You know, people will tell us this is not enough. I think that is the real important thing. If we see our money playing out into vehicle conversions. We work very closely with convergent companies as well, only two of them we are aware of. A bit of a challenge. Even if we had 500 drivers and vehicle owners wanting to convert their vehicles there is a bit of a market supply problem as well. ≫ Okay, thank you. That's it. ≫ Thank you. Okay so, before we go into speakers I'm wondering if it is okay with the committee that we take a quick 10 minute break so we come back at 12:40 PM. We are just finalizing these motions and want to make sure everyone is on the same page. If everyone can come back and 12:37 PM, if that works. That would be helpful just to give us time to work things out and again, if you do have any motions you can bring it totac@toronto.ca. Some of you already submitted motion so we will take it 10 minute break and will come back and go to speakers and that will be the last item. Thank you. ≫ Thank you, everyone for your patience. We are just putting the final touches on the motions. I understand Anika and Navi submitted motions, I will be submitting everything in one big motion and move it through there. If you want to talk about it in your allotted speaking time please feel free about the individual pieces you put forward and what you are hoping to achieve could anybody else can add in their comments as well. That work? Okay. ≫ Hello. Members of the public, please bear with us for a few minutes. We're almost there. We are still working. ≫ Hi everyone, checking in on time. I have another meeting at 1:00. ≫ We are just there. ≫ Great. So, thank you for your time. Do we want to go to speakers? Anyone who would think to speak. No? Okay. Navi, Anika want to say anything about your motions you are putting forward? ≫ Assured. I requested to include a portion in the application of the accessibility fund that would provide the ability for drivers and applicants to give feedback to the process. My hope is this can assist in the less in their goal of reviewing the accessibility fund. It's feasibility, provide meaningful engagement from drivers and applicants in the development and redevelopment on the deliverables of MLS. In their goal to improve the accessibility fund and to ensure we are able to address the limitations in this process and of course, looking forward to have that discussion when we invite you back. ≫ Thank you. Anika. ≫ I think I am just reflecting on the discussion we have had today regarding trying to understand how licenses are being used. That As you mentioned, Councillor Myers from earlier. Although motion is looking forward to and how to further incentivize some more drivers for the future. ≫ Thank you. And I am just going to post the motion. The motion reas TAC recommend the executive committee and request that Executive Director MLS to report to the first meeting in 2027 on working with stakeholders such as members of the disabled committee, transportation companies ensuring Uber and Lyft to review options to increase accessible services provided by the vehicle for hire center including PTC such as vehicle type, fleet size and mandating a standard rate time, and investigation to the number of accessible taxi vehicle license is distributed and in use across the city including how many vehicles have been lost over the pandemic. Three, consultations with the providers of accessible vehicles. To understand incentivize Asian methods for the launch and implementation of the centralized dispatch system. Five, eight feedback will common process as a part of the accessibility fund program application process to capture data to improve the system. So, thank you to everybody involved in this. This has been a collaborative effort between staff and myself and Christine from Beck taxi also offered her comments. Thank you very much. And with that, I will take everything together and if anyone has any questions. Great, all of those in favor. Opposed. Carried. Thank you very much. And now, we are on to the end of our meeting. The last motion is the Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee excuse the absence of Hannah Andrews from the June 15, 2026 Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee meeting, all of those in favor. Opposed, carried. And thank you. And so before we end the meeting, I just want to say thank you all very much. This has been a very fruitful discussion. And whether or not I am the chair next term or not you all will be here at least some of you. I do hope you take on this issue. And really work with the staff and members of the community and industry that help us to get to a better standard of where we want to be . In a city like Toronto in terms of providing on-demand transportation services to anyone who wishes to visit family, shop , go to doctors appointments etc. So thank you all very much. And I will just display, with that we can conclude our business. Enjoy the summer everyone. Thank you. ≫ Thank you very much. Thank you Toronto Accessibility Advisory Councillor Myers and staff. ≫ Thank you everyone. R