Uber says new Edmonton driver training ‘red tape,’ city claims its needed to address resident concerns

Taxi and rideshare drivers in Edmonton will soon need to complete a city training course.

Local taxi and ride-share drivers will have to complete new training from the City of Edmonton, something one Uber representative called “classic municipal government red tape.”

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Lyla Peter, director of developmental approvals and inspections with the City of Edmonton, said the new training has been in development since 2022, after complaints from residents about the local vehicle-for-hire industry.

“Edmontonians came to committee and voiced their concerns with some of the challenges that they were experiencing,” Peter said. “A lot of that concern was focused on safety and also on barriers for those who have higher accessibility needs.”

The new municipal training package covers accessibility needs, customer service, safety and responsiveness, as well as Edmonton bylaw requirements and responsibilities.

Keerthana Rang, a spokesperson for Uber Canada, claims Edmonton’s new training is about twice the length of that in other cities and will make life “more difficult” for drivers.

“It’s the most time consuming training currently required for drivers in Canada,” Rang said. “It’s a full day drivers could be earning money.”

Peter said the free training is designed to be flexible and will take between four and eight hours, depending on the driver. Based on industry feedback, dispatchers will be the ones to deliver it.

“Dispatchers identified that they were in a position to best know their drivers and to work with them,” she explained. “The training can be delivered online, it can be delivered in-person and it can also be delivered at a self-paced rate. It depends on how the dispatcher has set it up for their drivers.”

Rang argues the training is unnecessary and repetitive, as Uber drivers are provided with training modules on road safety, interpersonal conflict and transporting riders with service animals – though not all of them are mandatory.

“There is information in the training around transporting service animals, but we just introduced mandatory training in September of 2024 where drivers have to complete our training in order to be online,” Rang said.

Peter said she appreciates that some of the content may already be covered by vehicle-for-hire companies, but the city’s training will ensure all of those companies and their drivers are following the same standard.

“We don’t want this to be seen as a barrier,” she added. “We want it to be seen as an enhancement to the service and as a standard that we set for Edmonton and what you can expect when you access a vehicle for hire.”

The new training will be required by all vehicle-for-hire drivers in the city by April 1. Both drivers and dispatchers will be subject to fines if drivers are on the road without it.

Rang said Uber will begin rolling the training out next week.

“If drivers don’t complete this new training by April 1, they do risk losing access to driving on Uber and if there’s less drivers on the road, but we have the same number of ride requests, it could also lead to increased wait times and fares for riders,” Rang said.