Taxi Driver Online

Incidentally, intended posting some stuff about the Glasgow numbers etc, but just hadn't gotten round to it (or couldn't summon up the effort ).

But was looking for some up-to-date numbers, and usefully the 2024 Scottish Transport Statistics have just been published, and I think they're for 31 December 2024, so only a couple of months old...

Unfortunately it seems the only way to download the figures is to save the whole document (it's divided into parts, but unfortunately the data tables aren't included in the divided pdf files, and they're in separate and cumbersome Excel spreadsheets).

But this should be the link to the whole 358-page document, and the taxi/PH table is on page 47.

https://www.transport.gov.scot/media/jm ... s-2024.pdf

It's just basic summary stats for each local authority, and not quite as detailed as the DfT equivalents for England, but useful enough nevertheless.

But even after all these years they still seem to be misrepresenting the badge numbers where they're labelled 'unavailable'. That's because, in Fife, for example they don't bother issuing PH badges, because it's just the same criteria for each badge, so why bother issuing PH badges because a 'taxi' badge entitles the driver to drive either/or?

So where the tables say 'unavailable', I suspect the more accurate entry should be 0

Of course, it could be argued that 'unavailable' is accurate to the extent that you can't tell whether it's HC or PH being driven by the 'taxi' badge holders.

But you could say that about any of the local authorities. I mean, there could be a couple of hundred Glasgow HC badge holders driving PH for Uber or GlasGo cabs, for example (but the reverse can't be true - all the Glasgow PH badge holders can only be driving PH cars.) So although the tables show separate figures for 'taxi' and 'private hire' badges, the former could in fact be driving either/or, while the latter can only be driving private hire cars

We have to bear in mind the way Uber dispatches work, which is different from the way most other operators dispatch.

A customer presses the request button, in a milli second Uber works out which car is best able to fulfil that booking, that booking is then redirected to the server based in the area to which the vehicle is licensed and then passed onto the driver, only then does the customer get the confirmation of the booking, and the driver/vehcile details.

I suspect Uber knows they could at least try to circumvent Scottish cross-border provisions, but have decided they don't want to. At least up until now.

Almost certain under the original guns blazing owners, they would, but times have changed.

And of course, should Uber try it on nothing is stopping the Scottish Parliament from changing legislation.

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IDFIMH

Was having a wee look at the overprovision/unmet demand survey last night, and wish I hadn't

I mean where to start - and I've only looked at a couple of pages so far. Kind of reminds me of the TPTP survey (and I never got round to posting some stuff I'd done on that either...)

Anyway, for a start, I think they've got the terminology wrong, or at least it's inconsistent. Just having a quick look midway it gave the impression that they're using the word operator in the English sense, ie a booking office, while in Scotland an operator is a plateholder (maybe because the surveyors are based in Yorkshire/Humberside area). Then I noticed they also used the term booking office:


OK, so above 'operators' (plateholders in Scotland) are distinct from booking offices.

But compare that to this:


But there 'operator' must mean the same as 'booking office' because I'm an operator in the Scottish sense, and I've only got one car

Or there's the likes of this, which refers to the Scottish Government's guidance on applying the overprovision test to PHCs:


Is it just me, or have they spectacularly misinterpreted the meaning of multi-shifting? I would immediately think it would mean double/triple-shifted cars, or whatever, thus two or three different drivers, or whatever. And that seems consistent with the guidance that the quote above in the first paragraph.

But then in 8.3.35 they seem to think multi-shifting means individual drivers working a double-shift per day, or whatever. But I don't think what they say is consistent with the guidance

Anyway, I was looking back at some of the earlier numbers, and they don't make sense at all (more about that later...).

But latest figures in the survey seem to be for January 2023, and are:

PHCs - 3,176 PHDs - 3,312

Compare that to the figures in the Scottish Transport stats, at the end of 2024:

PHCs - 3,450 PHDs - 4,790

So, over the two year period, the number of PH cars has increased by 274, thus up to the cap number.

Yet the number of PH drivers has increased by 1,340

So hardly a surprise that 680 applications for plates have been received. 1,340 additional PH plates could be issued, and the number of PH drivers on the road would be the same as under the cap

In fact, 10,000 new PH plates could be issued, and the number of PH drivers on the road would be the same as under the 3,450 cap number

Of course, there's meaningless blather putting the opposite case:


Which is vacuous enough in itself. But, even taking that at face value, does that mean that the UK's c. 300 authorities that don't cap PH cars are enabling an unviable, unsafe service which isn't value for money

It would appear so.

Interesting that both multi-shifting examples they give say no change to the existing provision.

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IDFIMH

OK, so there's a good wee summary table of PHD and PHC numbers on page 44 of the survey, which is useful in terms of getting to grips with the numbers dynamic over the years. Except that it's bollocks

In fact, not difficult to notice the obvious error...



So between 2018 and 2019, vehicle numbers were supposedly static (well before the cap) while driver numbers collapsed by well over 1,000 over the same period

In fact, the more comprehensive table on page 7 of the survey demonstrates that the 2019 figures above are actually incorrect.

Unfortunately, the table on page 7 also includes the HC numbers, so it's a bit cluttered in terms of trying to analyse the figures, so maybe a good idea to put the PH-only numbers in a wee table, but that'll have to wait till later

So these are the reworked figures on a wee spreadsheet. With hindsight, it would have been a whole lot easier to have just reworked the graphic on the left and stuck in the amended 2019 figures using a photo editing tool, but it might be a tad unprofessional to adjust someone else's work like that

Anyway, the figures in the right hand graphic are taken from the survey's table on page 7. Obviously the layout is similar between the two graphics above, and presumably the reason 2020 is missing is because of you-know-what

To be consistent, you'd have thought they'd have left a blank line for 2021 as well, though

And I've also used 'separators' in my table - ie 2,805 rather than 2805 - which makes them slightly easier to read, although it's normally much bigger numbers where the separators are a big help.

The survey generally does use separators like my table above, so not clear why they didn't use them on either the table on the left above, or the one on page 7 which also includes the HC numbers.

Anyway, the amended 2019 figures make the whole thing look a lot more coherent.

The one figure I can't get my head round, though, is the collapse in PHD numbers by about 850 from January to April 2022. Assuming the numbers are correct, it's presumably something to do with lockdown, but I can't work out why there would be such a collapse in numbers of that magnitude over three months at that particular time.

Then the PHD numbers go up slightly over the next three months, but then collapse significantly by around 500 over six weeks or so to 30 August

They then recover by almost 300 over three weeks or so

I feel a graph coming on

Maybe it was the lockdown effect, with drivers who hadn't worked since 2020 not renewing when they had already left the trade in previous years.

Or/and the council may have automatically renewed in 2020/21/22, and that process ended.

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IDFIMH

I’d also think the 2022 drop in PHDs might be lockdown + renewal anniversaries. 2019 PHDs were at the highest ever and most badges last 3 years. So any 2019 PHDs who didn’t renew would drop off during 2022.

The Glasgow public registers are here but I’m not that confident these versions are reliable or up to date.

It looks like the 2019 figures should be 3940 PHC and 5475 PHD. I’d agree that issuing more PHC plates won’t change the number of drivers overnight - will anything change after that?

From 2015-19, PHCs went from 2638 to 3940 (+40%), PHDs from 3299 to 5475 (+50%). The numbers are also from the page 7 table. Uber started in Glasgow in 2015 – may just be blind coincidence.

If the cap goes, I could see a similar pattern follow. Particularly since there’s an appetite for PHC plates and not HCs. It’s not that difficult to get a PHD licence (although you need the SVQ as well).

To be clear, I’m on the side of owner-drivers. But removing the cap isn’t the silver bullet it might appear.

That's kind of what I was thinking, Sussex. But almost 1 in 5 badges disappeared in the first three months of 2022

I think it's only three-year badges in Glasgow. So in a worst-case scenario, assume that early in 2020, all licensing activity ceased (the start of lockdown, obviously). And in future, neither renewals nor new applications were allowed.

So it would take three years until all extant badges expired. But that would happen fairly uniformly over the three years. To that extent, nearly 1 in 5 badges wouldn't disappear within a three month period

(Mr XH558 - I was drafting my post at same time as you, and think some of the points we've made are nearly identical )

Anyway, I didn't need to do a graph, because there's a useful PH driver/PH car ratio graph on page 46 of the survey



Thing to remember, though, is that the figures on the left relate to just one year each, while the figures on the right all cover a single year

So the wild fluctuations over a single year just don't ring true

And the accompanying narrative seems to pretend that the fluctuations don't exist...


So the first paragraph deals with the longer term trend. Maybe better to ignore whether what they say about Uber etc is correct.

But they say the ratio has collapsed from 1.3/1.4 or so in the decade before lockdown to 1.0 at the time of the survey (rounding the numbers). But totally ignore that it collapsed from around 1.3 to 1.0 in just one year

But they say the near 1.0 ratio is due to "more drivers owning and operating their own vehicles than in previous years". But I'd guess that in fact it's kind of the opposite - the drivers disappeared over lockdown, but because of the vehicle cap there was less propensity to hand back plates than badges, so the driver/car ratio collapsed.

There's some mention of lockdown in the narrative, but they've either completely brushed over drivers effectively giving up, or they just don't get it