Taxi Driver Online

We are in a very rural borough. the borough is quite large being around 25 miles wide by 16 miles long. A major problem for both drivers and customers is a taxi from one village close to the borough boundary to another village a couple of miles apart.
Now if we use the meter from when the passenger gets in the vehicle to when the journey ends the fare can be around £4-5.00. However we could have traveled up to 30 miles in a round trip to do this job which is totally uneconomic for the driver. The result is that the people living in such village locations simply can't get a taxi. Our Councils answer to this is for drivers to get a private hire operators license and a private hire car but this is not practical because the majority of work is in the town and off the street which can't be done in a private hire vehicle.
The question is, can a council include on the table of fares a charge for picking up customers going from village to village?

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Grandad,

They can in the "Table of Fares" or "Tariff", include a "Booking Fee" which could sort this.

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Chris The Fish

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdlyi5mc ... re=related

Meter for Hackney work tariff chart for prebooked which has set out plus mileages for each area that's how it works here though you would not have any element of time charging in the prebooked fares.

isn't all work within the borough in a hackney carriage hackney work even if it is pre booked.

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Grandad,

Don't take the work in them locations unless you've got a car out there at that time.

That is the current situation. The problem is not ours but the customer who can't get a taxi. Many of them are willing to pay extra for us to come out but our council will not allow us to charge more than the fare on the meter.

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Grandad,

Many councils have booking fees, even the so called best in the world.

However I'm not sure anywhere has a booking fee that will cover a 30 mile run.

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IDFIMH

I suppose an extreme measure would be to do away with the council setting fares.

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IDFIMH

Nothing stopping them tipping you £10 or £20.

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IDFIMH

But how much would the booking fee have to be in order for it to be worthwhile for a driver to do a 30 mile round trip, £20,£30 +the cost of the fare ? Who's going to pay that to go a couple of miles ?

At the moment they don't have a choice.

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Grandad,

yes

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

Grandad,if you can access the fare table for the old Berwick upon Tweed Borough Council you will see that they allowed a booking fee of £15 for pre-booking a Hackney Carriage,I am fairly sure that this is still applied although they are now a unitary authority.

that's been a problem where I used to work on Romney Marsh, people outside the main towns of Hythe and New Romney found it almost impossible to get a taxi, even private hire outside the towns. some of the remote runs could involve up to 12 miles to pick up and 15 miles back empty, with little or no chance of a return booking. Disable people fare far worse, as there's no WAVs and only 1 hackney in the whole area, but 28 ph cars. I used to charge the full mileage for the round trip.

The most the DRIVER may request is the meter fare shown on the meter, however, if the base quotes more and the driver doesnt ASK for more than the meter fare i suspect no offence has been committed, our flag is £3.60, the local favourite fixed fare is £4, so long as i start the meter for the journey and dont ASK for £4 on a £3.60 fare am i wrong to just take the £4 given to me?

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most