Taxi Driver Online

I see they didn't ask customers if they believed less cabs was a good thing.

Clearly the DfT's letter hasn't arrived yet.

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IDFIMH

I think it's you that likes messing with people's lives Charlie, we prefer freedom as choice, whereas you like to play god and give some preferential treatement.

THAT'S messing with people's lives.

You're quite right Charlie, but £20k for a WAV is less restrictive than £60k for a WAV and a plate.

As I said, the WAV restriction can only be justified if the cost is outweighed by the accessibility benefit, but that's a different issue from plate premiums.

The premium is a no-brainer - even the Transport Comm agreed that they were irrelevant as regards future decisions.

In fact, if you've read the site's "Money on a plate" article you'll see that it's more sympathetic towards losses on plates that the OFT or the Transport Committee.

No one is stopping people from posting, as you well know.

You seem to be treating having to register for the site as akin to Guantanamo Bay or summat - haven't you got any sense of proportion?

You're just trying to split hairs, but all you're achieving is drawing attention to the paucity of your substantive arguments.

My council bless them insist that i have a wav already.
As for my plate. It cost me nothing and although its worthg money now i dont want to drive PH again. So i will only sell the plate if i can have another one foc. And that isnt going to happen.
Im happy not paying office dues although it would be nice to get a station pass.
Buts thats another story.

Anyone with any foresight in this trade, can surely fathom out that within the next 10 years all taxis will be WAVs, in most areas, and all councils will allow free access into the cab trade.

It's not rocket science.

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IDFIMH

I've finally got my finger out and looked at the deferment issue.

The Reading case (1987), as Wharfie stated, did show that a council couldn't defer an application until a survey was undertaken. If they didn't have suitable evidence before them when considering an application, then they should grant it. Providing the applicant was a fit and proper person.

However in the Middlesbrough case (1992), as John stated, the court took a different view. There the court said that a council could defer an application for a 'comparatively short period of time'. In this case the applications were dated January 1989, and determined in July 1989.

That decision was followed in the Leeds case (1993).

However, it would appear that the Wirral-v-Kelly and Smith case (1996) supports the view that a refusal to determine an application (other than for a few weeks) is withholding under Section 7(1)(b) of the Public Health Acts Amendment Act 1907.

In short, if a council refuses to determine an application, it stops any applicant from appealing against any refusal, because they haven't been refused.

And that Lord Justice Staughton, Lord Justice Auld and Lord Justice Aldous agreed was in contravention of the 1907 Act.

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IDFIMH

http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=133188&command=displayContent&sourceNode=133171&contentPK=11201032&moduleName=InternalSearch

TAXI SURVEY CONCERNS FLAGGED UP


12:00 - 29 October 2004
A consultation looking at whether the number of taxis on Plymouth's roads is sufficient to meet demand ends today.

But the survey, which has been organised by the city council, has been criticised by taxi drivers, who are concerned about the possibility of more hackney carriage licences being made available.

The city council licenses taxis but restricts the number of hackney carriage licences to 359.

Councils are able to limit licences if they are satisfied there is no significant unmet demand, but now the Office of Fair Trading is urging authorities to reconsider the policy.

The survey will help the council decide whether more licences should be made available.

Taxi drivers argue that there are already enough hackney carriage plates and that issuing more would lead to higher fares, drivers working longer hours and congestion around city centre taxi ranks.

They point to other countries, and other parts of the UK like the Wirral, where deregulation has caused problems.

Taxi driver and committee member of the Plymouth Licensed Taxi Association, Brian Shakespeare, said: "Instead of looking at deregulation and saying 'let's issue more plates', let's look at other ways of solving the problem."

Mr Shakespeare suggested using more buses to cover demand on a Saturday night.

Roy Hamilton, taxi driver and secretary of the Association, highlighted how other towns and cities have tackled the problem of not having enough taxis available at peak times coupled with insufficient demand to sustain more taxis during the rest of the week.

He said 'part time' plates had worked in towns like Newquay and Torquay, which issued additional licences during the summer. Portsmouth had taken a similar approach by issuing additional plates for use between 10pm and 6am on Thursday, Friday and Sunday.

Mr Hamilton said: "We fully accept that between 1am and 3am on a Sunday morning there are not sufficient taxis, but no one can earn their living in two hours in a week."

The results of the consultation will be published by March 31 and will also be sent to the Department of Transport.
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this was not very well publicised at all. they probably only had a few thousand replys. no doubt mostly from taxi drivers and their friends.

More from Saturdays Local Newspaper:

http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=133188&command=displayContent&sourceNode=133171&contentPK=11211098&moduleName=InternalSearch

JUST TRYING TO FIND MY WAY HOME...


12:00 - 30 October 2004
The council has just closed a controversial consultation on whether Plymouth has too many taxis. Herald reporter _HANNAH WOOD took to the city's streets to test the cab system and sound out the drivers

The sun's down, the neon has pinged on, it's 8pm on Friday night and I can't get a taxi into the city within half an hour. By 2am on Saturday morning, black cabs are queued at ranks outside clubs; on corners and side-streets mobiles are glued to ears and arms are flailing as taxis pass and drivers shake their heads.

It's a story repeated across the city, fuelling a debate raging between private hire and hackney carriage taxis about whether there are enough cabs in Plymouth to meet demand.

"People don't want to walk to a taxi. We need 40 more drivers on the road to deal with the excess Saturday night demand - we're turning away 1,300 jobs a week," John Preece, chairman of Taxifast, says when I meet him in his busy operations room at 11pm on a Saturday night. Two hundred taxis are out. Operators answer a call every 10 seconds and revellers are told there's a 35-minute wait.

Management at AA Taxis say the same, as one phone rings continually at 5pm on a dry Monday.

But in a 17-strong queue outside Derry's department store on a Monday afternoon, Hackney carriage driver Steve Burrows said: "If you flood the market to meet the Saturday night demand, drivers will have to work ridiculous hours to make a wage during the week. A lot of us would go to the wall."

Drivers of private hire firms say the same. Iris Sears - driving for 22 years - says she works a 70-hour week to make as much as a 'normal' person would in 40.

She said: "On Saturday I worked from 7pm to 3pm without stopping, but then at other times in the week I can be sat around doing nothing.

"Overheads are high and workers are tired after working so many hours. Private hire plates should be limited."

Watching the Plymouth roads, it does seem that every other car is a taxi, and while I caught five in the space of three days without trouble, it's clear others aren't so lucky.

If I'd been calling for a cab from a pub at 11.30pm on Saturday night I would face a 35-minute wait. I might consider an alleyway short cut on to Mutley Plain, where 13 shiny black cabs might be waiting for business - and put myself in danger. The private hire cars I could try to flag down aren't allowed to pick me up on the street.

Philip Deighton, who's been driving for AA Taxis for three months, said: "It's really frustrating not being able to pick up on the street. I may get four jobs on a Saturday where I turn up and the people aren't there, yet I'm driving past people.

"If I'm not working, then I'm not earning."

But hackney drivers complain private hire firms are 'pushing them on to the dole'.

At 1am on Saturday the Taxifast office on Union Street has 15 people queued as if at a deli, waiting for their number to be called before hopping in a car home.

Revellers are queued at ranks, waiting five minutes for a hackney cab.

Gordon Banks has had a hackney plate for a year and said: "I have to work mornings and nights - which I shouldn't have to - in order to make a wage. Taxis are only busy for about one-and-a-half hours on a Saturday night."

On a Monday morning, another hackney driver waits two hours for a £3.60 fare.

You would have thought he made enough as an England Goalkeeper to set a great pension deal! or maybe its a different G.Banks

i've said it before on here, people are lazy. Colder, wetter and darker evenings the punters want you to come to them, and not have to walk around trying to flag a HC. You can blame PH for the demise of HC, but it seems like the PH firms grow bigger every year and the HC lads find it more of a struggle to make ends meet.

That was an open goal Steveo

Never a dull moment in Plymouth though.

But how much does a 'normal' person earn, otherwise Ms PHs statement doesn't mean much.

I'll bet that was the same Ms PH who was bleating to Linda Gilroy MP about PH earnings.

What a c*** !!!

Just what we need, people within the HC/PH trade saying that customers should get a bus home.

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IDFIMH

More crap from the Plymouth cab trade.

There is no provision in law to issue such a license, and do you really think anyone is going to buy a WAV just to work 24 hours a week?

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IDFIMH

And posters on TDO.

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IDFIMH