Taxi Driver Online

Done a few hours York Royal Ascot, day 2, it's crap, really really crap

GNER and Council put on dozens of buses to ship out race goers straight from rail platform on bullet type tickets to race course and return that way as well while hacks sat on the station rank not getting a look in

buses ranked at the racecourse rank, hacks unable to get on the rank, police told some hacks to use the PH rank [am I missing something here]???????????????

Hacks at the race course were told to pick up at rank only, if caught/seen picking up elsewhere at the racecourse other than the rank, the council issued windscreen stickers enabling hacks and PH to use specialy opened up roads/routes to and from racecourse would be removed from the vehicle therefore not allowing them to gain access to the course, led to believe this was a police order but not sure. excuse me but a hack is a hack
The above have both had complaints made to the council and police.

one town hack rank had limos parked on it, hacks had to double bank along side for the rank. work been very poor, very poor indeed, the city streets are empty, the pubs empty, more police on the streets than people,
no queues for the night clubs, £17 entry fee, normaly about 2 or 3 quid mid week, pint of Guiness around 6 quid at the course, some hotels charging 2-3000 quid for 5 nights, no local people about, no evening traffic, plenty of spare hotel accomodation still available, very few hacks working.
can't wait to get back to normal.

This all reminds me of the millenium eve.

Pubs and clubs upped prices big time, cabs upped their prices big time, the world was going to end, and what happened, hardly anything.

_________________
IDFIMH

well I am missing the proper Ascot work this week.

Were are used to having 6-8 cars doing £100 quid in £100 quid out jobs.

_________________
A member of the Hire or Reward Industry

I wonder how many of those limousines are licensed, & if they are not are York licensing officials investigating ?

All the best

Just noticed on the York City wesite http://www.york.gov.uk/licensing/taxili ... /phapp.pdf that when applying for a Taxi/Private hire driver licence you need to supply references from two persons, is the common ?

All the best

i had to do that 20 years ago.
and they must be residents in the council area.
and no riff raff.

Sounds a bit like what happened in St Andrews at the millenium Open. Our nearest station is 5 miles from the town, so with 50 thousand people coming to a town of 15 thousand it should have been a good earner.

But the station rank was taken over for shuttle buses, and the taxis shoved to a temporary rank for about 7 cars, but there are normally up to 15 or say waiting, even without the open. Because the area was swarming with police the nearest parking space was nearly half a mile away, so regular drivers were often turned away from the station and had to sit half a mile away, with no way of knowing when space was available, so could well give it another try after half an hour and be turned away again.

And it was often cars from other parts of Fife taht were taking up the spaces, cars that Id never seen before and havent seen since, while drivers who sit there 12 hours a day were sitting half a mile away.

Because of the buses the work wasnt that much better than usual anyway. Overall it was a lot busier though, hope its like that this summer and not like York.

Dont remind me.

That was the longest ive ever sat on a rank at our local station during the evening.

Worst of it was I didnt even get a run at the end of it.

I went home before midnight in the huff