Break out the bottle of Screech and reel in a kissable cod because Newfoundland has a new resident: Uber.
What happened: Uber is now servicing St. John’s, Newfoundland's largest city, and the accompanying Avalon Peninsula area. It is the first ride-sharing company to operate on the Rock since the province updated its Highway Traffic Act late last year to support such services.
- Locals and tourists have complained for years about the lack of transport options as the number of registered taxis in the province fell by 25% between 2018 and 2022.
- Uber operates in over 140 municipalities in Canada. With Newfoundland joining the fold, P.E.I. is now the only province without Uber (though it does have ridesharing).
Why it matters: For city-dwellers, it’s easy to forget that Uber isn’t a daily facet of life for all of the country, with less than half of Canada’s population (19 million people) having access to Uber. Recent entrances into once off-limits markets like St. John’s and Victoria — which happened last June — signal that Uber really could eventually be pretty much everywhere.
Big picture: There were 135,000 working-age Canadians employed as ride-share drivers in 2023, 48.1% more than there were in 2022, a sign of growing demand for services like Uber. As car ownership becomes too expensive for many, demand could grow further.—QH