Taxi Driver Online

Can anyone shed any light as to why Wirral changed to a policy of quantity control in 1974? Was it agitation from owners or was it the brainchild of the council?

Wirall capped numbers at 84 but Liverpool around 73/74, before they opened up the town had in the region of 300 cabs . When you compare the two licensed areas today Liverpool has 1417 and wirral around 215, thats a massive percentage difference in the space of thirty years. It is also worth considering that despite the large increase in numbers, restricted Liverpool enjoys a plate premium of around 45 grand while unrestriced Wirral has none.

If a cap was put on Wirral licenses tomorrow, would anyone care to guess what the plate value might be?

Regards

JD

Only a Wirral cabbie could hazard a guess, however I think Liverpool having de-reg once has made a mistake by restricting again.

Allowing the plates to attract a premium, will end in tears eventually. Once a LA has deristricted, with all the pain that goes with it, and the market has found a level, it should be left alone, as in London.

Tomorrow, very little, I would say, but who knows a few years down the line?

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Taxi Driver Online
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When Bolton put a cap on plates a few years ago they immediately attained a value of ten grand. They now stand at 12 grand. I would have thought Wirral might be around ten grand depending on what the rents are?

Regards

JD

Yes, and I think we discussed this a while ago, but if a plate is valued on the basis of excess profits then to that extent there would be no difference the day after restriction and it would take a while for the market to distort sufficiently for excess profits to arise.

But there may be a residual value in plates that isn't due to excess profits, but how exactly that's derived or described I don't know.

But I'm surprised it was as high 10k immediatley after restriction, but of course that's not to say that the value is based on anything rational - people new to the trade are often deluded into thinking the job is more profitable than it is.

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Taxi Driver Online
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