Taxi Driver Online

Taxi drivers call for higher fares as cost of living rises

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/li ... s-17223915

Knowsley's taxis are currently the cheapest in the city region, but drivers say they need the increase to provide a living wage

Knowsley's taxi drivers have called for higher fares in the face of rising petrol prices and the cost of living.

Some 89 drivers across the borough have backed a proposal to increase fares for two-mile journeys from £4.50 to £5.20. Fares for late night journeys would rise from £5.30 to £6.70 for two miles.

Knowsley currently has the cheapest taxis in the Liverpool City Region and the increase would bring the borough in line with Halton and make it only slightly more expensive than Sefton and St Helens.

Since the last time Knowsley's taxi fares were increased, in September 2016, drivers' costs have increased, with petrol prices rising 16% and insurance premiums and licensing costs also increasing. In the same period, the cost of living has risen around 7%.

According to a report prepared ahead of a council licensing committee meeting next Thursday, vehicle maintenance has also become more expensive due to "uncertainty over the UK's future in the EU and the effect on the supply chain".

In a formal request for a fare increase submitted to the committee, representatives of the taxi trade said they had consulted drivers on another proposal that would have increased the two-mile fare by only 20p.

However, the report said, "it was considered that this proposal fell short of delivering a sustainable increase to enable drivers to sustain a living wage as it fell short of average taxi journey costs across the city region".

Knowsley's licensing committee will vote on the proposed fare increase at a meeting at Huyton municipal building on Thursday evening.

That's about 16% on T1, and 26% on T2

Irrespective of where Knowsley's fares lie in relation to the rest of Merseyside, that seems quite a hike in the current climate, but on their own heads be it


Usual crude assumption that all any business has to do is increase its prices to raise profitability.

If that was the case no business anywhere would ever go to the wall, and we'd all be millionaires

Which reminds me, it's about that time again to pour money down the drain with my Friday night Euromillions ticket

I wish them well.

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IDFIMH

To me it would seem that the drivers just want a living wage not to increase profitability. Don't you think that drivers should be able to earn a living wage?

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Grandad,
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Characterise it any way you want, but at the end of the day how you describe it won't make a blind bit of difference to the money they have in their pockets at the end of the day.

But my point wasn't to object to the drivers earning more money, it was essentially to say that fare rises can be self-defeating.

If a business of any kind is struggling, can they just increase prices and it automically feeds through to the bottom line? Of course not - and indeed it could end up making things worse - so why should the cab trade be any different?

If a cab firm doubled its prices for airport runs, for example, would the drivers automatically have twice the takings at the end of the week?

No, of course not.

Obviously local authority fares aren't going to double overnight, though, therefore the effects are more subtle.

But at the end of the day the Knowsley report simply assumes that any rise of any magnitiude will automaticallly end up in the drivers' takings bags, but I don't think it's that straightforward