RTD wrote:
How about not having any licensed drivers and vehicles and let the free market solve the problem.
Chances of that happening? Less than zero. Heathcote is right. Look at the rationale for regulating the trade in the first place.
You may just dismiss that, but that's simply why your blueprint won't happen, nor anything even resembling it, so you're just wasting your time even suggesting it
In fact, you don't even have to go back decades. Instead, just look at some of the cases on here. Here's one from my council area a couple of years ago:
Fake taxi driver jailed for abduction and rape of womanhttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland- ... e-48884373A teenage rapist who posed as a taxi driver to abduct and rape a woman on New Year's Day in Fife has been jailed for 10 years.So a boy racer type is hanging around outside a nightclub, 'intoxicated' woman gets in, thinking it's a taxi, she's abducted and raped.
What you're suggesting would increase the chances of that kind of thing occurring, so even a few years ago it wasn't going to happen, never mind now, what with Sarah Everard, Rotherham and Telford, etc, not to mention the kind of cases reported in the local press every few days.
And a £10 flagfall in the early hours or whatever isn't going to happen either. In fact I'm surprised there haven't been attempts to regulate Uber-style surge pricing, but I'd guess that's because only a very small minority of people are paying big multiples, so to that extent it's considered tolerable.
If 3x surging (say) in the trade become the norm at times, I suspect the regulators would step in. Particularly because while Uber's model may clear the market, it's predicated on the basis that the vast majority of punters are simply waiting their turn for a more normal fare level. I doubt the politicians would stand for it if every 'reveller' was paying huge surge prices, which of course is why HC fares are regulated in the first place, and why the vast majority of PH providers avoid getting anywhere near price-gouging territory.
And, from the other side of the coin, the drivers are in enough danger at that time of night as it is, often because of issues with fares, so a free-for-all would further endanger us drivers as well.
OK, drivers might earn bundles for a few hours a week if they want to work into the early hours at weekends picking up the worst of the passengers.
But funny thing is that the Uber model is predicated on cheap fares the vast majority of the time, therefore...
And dereguatling the market would just make matters a whole lot worse in terms of driver's earnings the vast majority of the time.
I wholeheartedly agree that some of the regulation is over the top, particularly some of the ULEZ/CAZ stuff, not to mention daft colour schemes and self-aggrandising council logos etc.
But that's going to happen, and it's just a matter of timing and degree. For example, I don't think Euro 6 diesel is a particularly onerous standard for saloons (2015 year or so), the problem is that it's coming on the back of the pandemic, and councils have allowed fleets of scrapyard-level cars when it's suited their purpose. But now it's a 'climate emergency', and wee Greta's childhood musn't be 'stolen' ever again, blah, blah, so it's all change almost overnight.
But the impetus is towards more regulation, not less (apart maybe from satnavs replacing knowledge tests), so I'm guessing any undersupply will get worse rather than better, for the next few years at least.
HMRC's tax compliance checks from this April will have quite an impact, I suspect, and I'm further guessing that it'll impact most on the late-night, weekend market.
The Supreme Court's Uber ruling on self-employment will I suspect also widen out to encompass more of the industry, but the big question is how far it will extend, and the jury's out on that at the moment. But extend it will, and it won't just stop at Uber, Addison Lee and Bound's in Northampton. In fact, if Bound's drivers aren't self-employed, which circuit's drivers are?
Not sure how the whole immigration thing will impact the trade either, but presumably the mass migration of East Europeans is over for a few year at least, and many of those who didn't go home for lockdown have moved on to other jobs like Amazon and Deliveroo.
So it would be uncharted territory even without the market shock of the pandemic, therefore even more difficult to predict the future. But certainly several obstacles on the horizon which could potentially worsen any undersupply issues, and impossible to tell precisely how that will pan out.
But deregulation ain't going to happen. And while all that's happened or about to happen will put upward pressure on fares, I can't see Uber-style surge-pricing becoming the norm either.
(By the way, no need for anyone to quote the
whole of a long post like this further down the thread. Press the 'post reply' button and it'll appear in the same thread anyway
Navigating these threads is like trying to read an interesting article in a newspaper you've brought your fish and chips home in
)
(I had another comparison lined up involving toilet paper, but that that might be too much, especially at this time of the morning
)