Taxi Driver Online

A disabled person in Peterborough wants Taxi drivers to discount fares for the disabled, he also makes the observation that private hire drivers are more caring than Hackney drivers.
____________________

Peterborough Evening Telegraph

February 12, 2007

My name is Erik Vitins and I belong to an organisation recently featured in the ET called Disability Voices.

The difficulties surrounding or indeed surmounting the city's transport system for our disabled colleagues are many fold. Leaving aside the train system it was only up until the recent advent of the "disabled friendly bus" that taxis were the only practical method of getting around the city. Let's face it most taxi drivers would rather not go through the rigmarole of setting up their ramps and assisting the user into the vehicle if they could help it.

I do believe that some taxis have had so little use anyway of their ramps that they have actually rusted themselves in. Certainly those I have used always seemed to stick, and I personally preferred the use of the private sector, whose drivers have always seemed more courteous and helpful.

We will never swamp the taxi service anyway, so I do ask them out there to extend a warmer hand to those of us having this need, and also think about discounting our journeys for the hassle we invariably encounter in any case.

Buses and coaches were always a no go area for wheelchair users particularly in the past. I have personally travelled on a bus once only previously in my life, and that was a story in its own right.
______________________