A group of suburban taxi companies wants the right to send cabs to downtown Vancouver on weekends to relieve the crush on a taxi system overwhelmed by late-night partiers.

The group of 16, which includes Surdell, Bonny's, and Newton Whalley, wants to send 15 per cent of their fleet downtown on Friday and Saturday nights – a move that they say would shake up the Vancouver taxi industry.

"This problem has been there for a long time," BC Taxi Association President Mohan Kang told CTV News. "There will be extra cabs available to serve them. The waiting period would be much less and it would be safer and more convenient for the general public."

A CTV News investigation last year showed that Vancouver cabbies are completely overwhelmed overnight on Fridays and Saturdays, leaving responsible late-night partiers in a bind.

The city and the local taxi industry have tried to address the problem by introducing new taxi stands, and creating 65 new temporary Vancouver-based taxis whose licences only allow them to work on Friday and Saturday nights.

But Kang believes there's room for more cabs and he's asked the Passenger Transportation Board to allow more cabs from the suburbs.

Local cab companies say they don't want the suburban cabs muscling in on their turf.

"We know how to best serve our customers," said Yellow Cab's Kulwant Sahota. "They work here all the time and suburban cabs, they have they have the knowledge of their cities, they don't have the knowledge of Vancouver."

Sahota says the 65 temporary licences are working well, and he wants the PTB to wait until the industry has finished a study on how they work. The study is due out in November.

If this goes through this could result in a regional taxi system, which would be a big shift, said Vancouver city councillor Geoff Meggs.

"What's proposed is a complete upheaval in the allocation of licences in the Lower Mainland," Geoff Meggs said. "It's completely out of whack. I don't understand why they're doing this before we know if the pilot project in Vancouver is effective."

With a report from CTV British Columbia's Jon Woodward