Taxi Driver Online

Why young women can't get a taxi home in Hereford at night

Concerns have been raised that young women aren’t able to get taxi rides home after nights out in Hereford, because drivers will only take cash.

Mani Mistry, who has driven a taxi in Hereford for over 20 years, said: “Drivers are refusing card and app-based payments from young women, even when they are begging.

“It’s a public safety issue that needs to be addressed.”

Hereford Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Association chairman John Jones agreed it is a problem in the city, “especially with younger people”.

“Often drivers use it as an excuse to refuse shorter fares – which genuine companies then get inundated with,” he added.

According to a Herefordshire Council spokesperson: “The council’s licensing team are aware of recent reports of this nature, and of the consequences of refusing short fares on vulnerable people. Therefore we will be considering how the taxi policy could be amended so that this issue can be better regulated.

“In the meantime the licensing authority will be increasing night-time enforcement work and has already written to the entire taxi trade to notify them of this.”

Mr Jones said he would welcome such a change in drivers’ licensing requirements.

But he remains unhappy with the way the council is attempting to change more widely how taxis are registered in the county.

He said this “is a simple fix which should have taken six months but has been dragging on for four years” – for which he blames “officers’ incompetence”.

This and other concerns about transport have prompted him to stand for the Conservatives in the Newton Farm county ward at next week’s local elections.

“There is an acute shortage of taxis in Hereford, partly because drivers don’t want to come out at peak times – they just get stuck in traffic,” he said.

He added he would favour bypasses on both sides of the city to improve its longer-term resilience, so “young people to feel able to stay in Herefordshire”.

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IDFIMH

hmmmm

so getting cash out of a hole in the wall and paying cash is too difficult for millennials then is it ?

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

Makes it all sound like card readers are already compulsory, while there's nothing concrete to suggest they are, and it looks like that's what the council is alluding to with regard to 'amending taxi policy to make things better regulated'. The article could be clearer on whether or not card readers are currently mandatory, because the average reader might think drivers are refusing simply because it's a card run, while they might genuinely not have a card reader.

Of course, no doubt some drivers with card readers are refusing short card runs, but that's a slightly different issue.

You are being very generous by saying some, I would say most if not all.

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IDFIMH