Taxi Driver Online

Well that's the new tariffs in force, and my meter was reproggrammed yesterday, and passed the council test today.

Anway, this is the third email I sent the council about the fares stuff, and this one was after they'd agreed on the percentage increases. But at the time there seemed to be some dispute about how precisely to implement the percentage increases.

So absolutely no-one in the trade wanted it done this way, and the likes of Digitax thought it was just a mess as well.

So they delayed the whole thing for five months or so, and then simply endorsed the original messy figures

Didn't even get a reply to my email, nor any response to the previous two. One of which asked a specific question about rank space and just asked for one example of how that issue was considered.

So instead of the neat and tidy figures on the meter that my own flagfall and yardage suggestions would have produced (all T1 and T2 figures landing on whole £s and all increments of 20p), we've ended up with a total mess



Dear Sirs

From information in the public domain (press reports, the agenda paper for this week's committee meeting and a recording/transcript posted online by EFTA) I understand that the taxi fare increases proposed last year will go ahead, at least insofar as councillors have re-endorsed the principle of a 5 per cent increase on tariff 1 (T1) and 10 per cent on tariff 2 (T2).

However, from what I can work out a sticking point is how precisely this would be implemented, and in particular that absolutely no-one in the trade wanted the smaller price increments originally proposed, and also that there might be problems accommodating these increments via the taximeter reprogramming process.

To that extent I am contacting you to suggest price and yardage increments that, I suspect, the trade and drivers at the coalface in particular would find more attractive, and would also be more easily accommodated on the taximeters currently fitted in the Fife taxi (and PHCs, where fitted) fleet.

These do not equate exactly to the 5 per cent and 10 per cent on T1 and T2 respectively but, as you will be aware, precise rises in percentage terms do not always lend themselves easily to implementation via taximeter reprogramming.

On the other hand, these figures would ensure that, for the vast majority of the time (except for the relatively short periods when T3 and T4 are applicable), any fare shown on the taximeters would be divisible by 20p. In practical terms, therefore, taxi drivers would need no coin smaller than 20p to provide the correct change.

I'm also pretty sure that this would mean that any meter could be reprogrammed on all four tariffs without difficulty (assuming all meters can accommodate any yardage increment in whole yards, but without the smaller fractions of yards that would be necessary to precisely implement the 5 and 10 per cent increases required by the committee).

Moreover, I suspect this is consistent with the suggestion made in the email from Mr Buchanan of Digitax, who I think was saying that the increases would be better implemented by adjusting the yardage increments as opposed to the monetary increments (and, again, avoiding the need for small coinage).

Thus assuming the flagfall distance remains at 600 yards, my suggestions for the flagfall fares and subsequent increments are as follows:

T1
Flagfall fare - £3.80
Increments of 20p every 143 yards

T2
Flagfall fare - £5.00
Increments of 20p every 109 yards

These figures would also easily lend themselves to the T3 and T4 premiums of 50 per cent, simply by increasing the flagalls to £5.70 and £7.50 respectively, and increasing the increments to 30p on both tariffs.

(The Aberdeen and Glasgow tariff cards available online show flagall distances of 957 and 889 yards respectively, and subsequent increments covering 142 and 179 yards. Without looking into the precise methodology used to quantity these figures, at a rough guess it may be similar to my own methodology above, and that suggested by Mr Buchanan, thus implementing a posited percentage fare increase via fine adjustment to the yardages rather than by way of the monetary increments shown on the meter.

Moreover, the Aberdeen card also shows very 'rounded' flagfall figures of £3.00, £5.00, £6.00 and £6.00 on T1, T2, T3 and T4 respectively, and also precise increments of 20p or 30p depending on tariff [Aberdeen's T3 seems to be a premium tariff applicable at weekends], thus more consistent with my own methodology and the one suggested by Mr Buchanan.)

Assuming my figures are correct, the attached screenshot from the spreadsheet I use demonstrates that on shorter runs of a mile or two the distortions thrown up by the methodology employed mean that the percentage increases on sample distances can vary by a couple of percent from the rise as endorsed by the committee.

However, on longer trips, as those distortions are ironed out then the percentage increases gravitate towards the required 5 and 10 per cent. Also, my suggested flagfall figures of £3.80 and £5.00 on T1 and T2 respectively are only a few pence different to those initially proposed, but avoid the issue of small unrounded sums shown the meter.

And, of course, as has been stated, the whole thing cannot really be an 'exact science'. And, as you may be aware, because of the rounding issue the T2 rise proposed back in 2025 actually equated to around 11% on bread and butter runs of a mile or two, and gravitated towards 12% on longer runs.

As well as the coinage issue per se, another issue is perhaps one of confusion and transparency, with regard in particular to well-documented accusations in relation to overcharging in the St Andrews area in particular.

To that extent I think the previously proposed increases would have been a retrograde step, while the figures proposed above would aid transparency and help avoid confusion - as mentioned earlier, every fare would be divisible by 20p, thus, most obviously, would stop on whole pounds rather than the current 10p or 90p on some fares, and thereafter at 20p, 40p, 60p and 80p. Which I suspect would be preferred by drivers and passengers alike, and would aid transparency.

Although I would have preferred to keep fares are current levels (particularly assuming that Uber will start operations in Fife sometime soon, to which extent any fare increase implemented within a few weeks would only help their business case, and assuming that there are no rational legal grounds to reject their application [as opposed to the more rhetorical and emotional arguments being made by opponents in the trade]), short of an appeal to the traffic commissioner there is presumably no turning back now, particularly given the five or six months that will have elapsed since the original proposal, and in view of the recent hike in fuel prices etc.

Therefore, although I am not personally supportive of the rises, the figures proposed above would hopefully ease their introduction and avoid any meter reprogramming issues and alleviate any subsequent issues for drivers on the ground, and would also benefit passengers.

Yours faithfully


StuartW (East zone owner/driver)

The problem is quite simple here.

SW is just far too bright for those pen pushers, and they are too thick to listen to sensible people in the trade making clear and coherent arguments.

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IDFIMH