Limit taxi numbers or risk 'blood on streets'Competition between cabbies could boil over into violence if the number of taxis in Cambridge is not limited, it is claimed.
Councillors agreed to consider capping the number of hackney carriages allowed on the city’s ranks after drivers said having more taxis made it ever harder to earn a living.
Numbers are at an all-time high, with 293 hackney carriages, which can be flagged down on the street or hired at a taxi rank, licensed for the city.
They are vying for trade with 217 private hire vehicles – which cannot be regulated by the council – and another 701 registered in South Cambridgeshire.
This contributes to cabs sitting in long queues which snake out of ranks and drivers being forced to work ever longer hours.
A study commissioned by the city council estimated hackney carriage drivers now spend 51 per cent of their working time waiting, rather than on a job, and found the city had an “extremely healthy” provision of taxis compared with other areas.
Cllr Jeremy Benstead, vice-chairman of the licensing committee, said this should be an impetus for action to limit the number of taxis.
He said: “We know there has been blood on the streets within the taxi trade in other towns and cities, do we want to sit back and do nothing?”
Taxi driver Fazlollah Khoshmanesh presented a petition to councillors signed by 119 taxi drivers calling for a limit on the number of hackney carriages to be reapplied. It was last in force in 1995, when there were 120 hackney carriages.
Mr Khoshmanesh said: “The situation is getting very tight and it’s making it difficult for everybody to operate.”
However, other councillors cautioned that capping the number of hackney carriages would not be a magic bullet, because the number of private hire vehicles could not be limited, and because South Cambridgeshire vehicles could ply their trade in the city.
Other steps would be needed to tackle over-ranking and to stop private hire vehicles illegally taking jobs on the street, the meeting heard.
Councillors agreed to consult on whether there should be a cap on the number of hackney carriages they licence.
Cllr Colin Rosenstiel, who chairs the committee, said: “It’s a complex market and it is right we go to consultation, but don’t kid ourselves that we have the power to bring order to a market that might be chaotic.”
source:
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/
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