Major Vancouver taxi company rolls out regional fixed-fare ride-hailing app | Daily Hive

Vancouver's Black Top taxis launches regional fixed-fare ride-hailing app

RiLo screenshot/Daily Hive | Black Top & Checker Cabs

Ride-hailing giants Uber and Lyft could have some real competition in their Metro Vancouver operations due to a big new move by a long-established local taxi company.

This week, Black Top & Checker Cabs launched a brand new smartphone app-based ride-hailing service called RiLo, which provides the major Vancouver-based taxi company with a supplemental business operation in addition to their traditional taxi service.

The app — available on both iOS and Android — has an interface that feels highly familiar and intuitive in terms of its user friendliness. The platform loads quickly and provides on-demand, end-to-end trip booking capabilities, the ability to pre-book rides three weeks in advance, and the real-time live tracking of taxi vehicles under the company.

RiLo also provides notifications through the app and by text message when the taxi vehicle is near the pickup point.

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But there are some major pricing and operational differences that make this a real competitive alternative to Uber and Lyft, based on Daily Hive Urbanized’s testing of the app and use of the service on Tuesday and Wednesday.

RiLo’s fixed-rate, ride-hailing fares are locked upon booking, with no surge pricing

The fares do not fluctuate — the price is calculated and locked upon booking, without any fluctuation due to traffic congestion and accident/construction detours, as RiLo absorbs the difference. There is also no surge and dynamic pricing during busier periods, with the price shown before booking being the price that will be paid.

According to the company, it does not rely on an algorithm markup for pricing, with the other companies greatly fluctuating their rates during peak travel periods, major events, rainfall, and other times when high demand is apparent. Instead, the fare is purely based on the distance of the route. This means certain types of trips, based on the time of day, can be much cheaper on RiLo than on Uber and Lyft.

RiLo’s model is also substantially different from the highly unpredictable meter-based pricing of hailing traditional taxis, which is based on a combination of the trip’s time duration, distance travelled, and the route decided by the taxi driver.

This taxi-based ride-hailing app does not have any extra charges for flag rates, wait time charges, and traffic delays. Short trips are also priced as short trips.

RiLo

A trip with Black Top & Checker Cabs using RiLo ride-hailing. (Kenneth Chan)

Black Top & Checker Cabs

Same pricing for all vehicle types, regardless of size, capacity, and comfort

Another key pricing difference is that all vehicles for RiLo, regardless of size and capacity, have the same fare — the exact same price for a four-seat compact vehicle, a four-seat sedan, a four-seat vehicle/SUV with a large trunk, a four-seat vehicle with wheelchair access, and a four-seat van with ample luggage space for oversized items such as a bike, skis, and other items.

It should be noted that the traditional major ride-hailing companies of Uber and Lyft do not offer any wheelchair-accessible vehicles, with this need met by the taxi companies.

RiLo’s only price variance is a higher fare for some trips on the six-seat van with ample luggage space, and an extra $15.00 charge for the four-seat van with ample luggage space if the purpose of the trip is to move cargo.

Moreover, it should be emphasized that all RiLo vehicles are licensed taxi vehicles, driven by Class 4 licensed taxi operators who are also required to complete the Justice Institute of British Columbia’s accredited Taxi Host Level 2, which provides education on the best practices for transporting people with disabilities, driver safety/assault avoidance, collision prevention, and advanced regional geography. The service does not use any gig drivers.

As well, 100 per cent of the standard fare and the tip is provided to the driver.

And while this ride-hailing platform uses licensed taxi vehicles, RiLo is not limited by the regulations of the B.C. Passenger Transportation Board’s (PTB) taxi municipal operating boundaries, which normally restricts taxis to picking up passengers to within their municipal jurisdiction of registration only.

“For regular taxi service, municipal operating boundaries still apply. However, RiLo is an app-based, pre-arranged ride-hailing service, and Black Top holds the required Transportation Network Services (TNS) authorization through the Passenger Transportation Board,” Sydney Van Alstyne, a representative of RiLo, told Daily Hive Urbanized upon inquiry.

“That TNS authorization allows Black Top to offer RiLo as a fixed-fare, app-based ride-hailing service within the authorized operating region, while our traditional taxi service continues to operate under the normal taxi licensing rules.”

RiLo screenshot/Daily Hive

Goal of becoming Metro Vancouver’s ride-hailing app for other taxi companies, too

The fleet size of Black Top & Checker Cabs alone also provides RiLo with the critical mass needed to sustain a major ride-hailing service.

Upon inquiry, Van Alstyne says Black Top & Checker Cabs currently has a fleet size of over 400 vehicles. This includes 36 wheelchair-accessible vehicles.

While the RiLo app already works across Metro Vancouver, their current operational focus during the current first phase of launch is to provide an optimal service within the city of Vancouver, which also includes trips to/from Vancouver International Airport. This is because the Black Top & Checker Cabs fleet spends their time mostly within Vancouver’s municipal borders, enabling convenient and timely ride-hailing services with low wait times in this jurisdiction.

Van Alstyne notes that RiLo does already have some broader regional presence based on where the drivers live, as many Black Top & Checker Cabs drivers live outside of Vancouver and begin their shifts from those areas.

“Our expansion will be based on vehicle availability, response times, customer demand, and operational reliability,” she said.

For the future second phase of growing RiLo’s reach, Black Top & Checker Cabs will aim to invite other local taxi companies to join the platform — effectively creating a single unified regional ride-hailing platform for licensed taxi vehicles.

Under the PTB’s Region 1 for ride-hailing in B.C., ride-hailing companies approved to operate in this area can choose to service Metro Vancouver, Fraser Valley, and the Sea-to-Sky corridor reaching Squamish, Whistler, and Pemberton. Taxi companies operating across this vast area have a combined total fleet size of thousands of licensed taxi vehicles.

“We believe RiLo can become a stronger local ride-hailing network by bringing together established taxi fleets under one seamless customer-facing app. That would improve availability for the public while keeping the service local, regulated, and accountable,” she said.

Van Alstyne told Daily Hive Urbanized that Black Top & Checker Cabs first began planning RiLo in early 2025, including app development, dispatch-system integration, payment processing, fixed-fare trip handling, driver communication, testing, operational procedures, and marketing preparation.

“The goal was to modernize the taxi experience so customers could get the convenience of ride-hailing while still being served by licensed, professional local taxi operators,” she said, noting that creating RiLo represented a “significant” investment for the taxi company.

“For us, this is a long-term investment in the future of the local taxi industry. RiLo is about giving the public a modern booking experience while keeping transportation dollars, accountability, and service standards within the local community.”

To better enable taxi companies to compete against the multinational ride-hailing giants, taxis elsewhere in the world have been known to create their own regional taxi ride-hailing apps that emulate the same convenience and seamlessness of using an app-based, end-to-end transportation service.

RiLo screenshot/Daily Hive

Van Alstyne says that during the design and planning process, their team looked at how taxi companies in other parts of Canada have created app-based booking, upfront pricing, and fixed-fare ride options. They particularly looked at an Edmonton-based taxi company.

“Our objective with RiLo is similar: to give people a local ride hail solution as an alternative to the large global app-based platforms,” she said.

“RiLo is our way of bringing those elements together for Vancouver and, over time, for the wider region.”

Throughout all of June 2026, the first month of launch, RiLo is offering users 15 per cent off their fare when the promotion code RILO15 is inputted.

Black Top & Checker Cabs has been operating in Vancouver for over 80 years.

RiLo’s real world examples vs. Uber and Lyft

While trialing the RiLo app late Tuesday morning, a trip from Canada Place in Downtown Vancouver to Vancouver International Airport on the taxi-based, ride-hailing service had a fixed fare of $34.10 for five of the six vehicle options and $37.60 for the largest vehicle option, with an estimated wait time of four minutes.

Conversely, when checked at the same time, the same trip on Uber’s three conventional ride-hailing vehicle options — UberX, Uber XL, and Comfort — ranged between $41.57 and $67.43, with a wait time of two minutes. Lyft had fares ranging between $38.94 and $58.94 for its three conventional ride-hailing vehicle options — Standard, Extra Comfort, and XL — and a wait time of four to six minutes.

RiLo screenshot/Daily Hive

As another example, using RiLo to travel from the Stanley Park Pitch & Putt to the new Oakridge Park mall had a fixed fare of $21.30 for five vehicle options and $26.10 for the largest vehicle option, with a wait time of up to six minutes depending on the vehicle type booked. This same trip had a range of between $24.25 and $34.30 and a wait time of up to two minutes on Uber’s three conventional vehicle options, and between $23.95 and $39.95 and a wait time of seven to nine minutes for Lyft’s three conventional vehicle options.

However, at the moment, due to the limited fleet size outside of the city of Vancouver until more taxi companies join, RiLo currently has a much higher fare and longer wait times compared to Uber and Lyft for long-distance trips from Metro Vancouver’s suburban communities to Vancouver’s central areas.

For example, late Wednesday afternoon, a RiLo trip from the White Rock Pier to Granville Island Public Market would cost $106.15 for all six vehicle types and have a wait time of between 18 minutes and 30 minutes. That same trip on Uber is between $74.94 and $102.98 using the three conventional vehicle types, with a wait time of two to six minutes, while this journey on Lyft would cost between $49.91 and $77.91 using the three conventional vehicle types, with a wait time of seven to nine minutes.

RiLo screenshot/Daily Hive

According to a recent report by TransLink, ride-hailing usage in Metro Vancouver has experienced steady growth — rising gradually from just under one million trips per month in January 2021 to over 3.5 million per month in November 2025, based on the latest data collected by the PTB.

In the region, Uber and Lyft now overwhelmingly dominate on-demand, end-to-end transportation services, whereas this sector was previously dominated by taxi companies prior to the PTB’s approval of the ride-hailing services in early 2020.

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