A change in the Town of Tecumseh.
At their regular meeting earlier this week, council voted in favour of deregulating taxicabs, drivers, and companies within the municipality.
That means all taxi drivers with a valid license in Windsor-Essex can now pick up Tecumseh residents.
Mayor Gary McNamara says it made sense after looking at the challenges faced by locals, and having discussions with other county municipalities.
"We've had some conversations with the Town of LaSalle who actually deregulated their cab services," he continued. "And with a limited amount of cabs, and a lot of them don't have access for disability clientele, we decided just to deregulate it and open it up to other services."
Only two taxi services currently operate in Tecumseh, with six cabs each.
Since 2003, McNamara says they've been providing taxicab licensing where only taxis with a town license could pick up passengers within Tecumseh.
He says they felt it was important to move on this now.
"Especially this time of the year where there's a lot of parties, reunions, and so forth where the demand for cabs augment quite a bit. With ride programs and everything else we want to make sure that residents have the ability to get a cab in a timely fashion to get them home safely."
McNamara says this decision opens up a lot of possibilities for residents to get around.
"They can Uber, they can use Vets Cab, Gerry's Cab, Tecumseh Cab, Lakeshore Cab. They can use whatever is available to get them their service as quickly as possible. We felt strongly that the availability and the choice was important," he said.
In the report presented to council on Tuesday, town administration explained that the emergence of ride-sharing platforms, along with the rising costs of operating a taxi company, were reasons to deregulate.
- with files from AM800's Rob Hindi