Taxi Driver Online

I won't bother getting tangled up with Google maps and hopefully Chris will clarify the trips here.

But it's presumably at least partly out-of-area. And to that extent the council's advice on how the fare should be quantified reads to me as clear as mud


Plymouth taxi driver tries to charge group of women £80 to get to Tavistock

https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/p ... ge-8183321

The woman has urged Plymouth City Council to extend the night bus route to Tavistock but a spokesperson has said this is not possible

A Tavistock resident says she feels 'disappointed' by the 'availability and quality of taxis in Plymouth after an evening out' - after one driver attempted to charge her £80 for a single trip.

The woman, who has asked to remain anonymous, says she and her friends regularly like to go for drinks in Plymouth and enjoy the city's nightlife. But on several occasions, their night has been soured by issues with taxi drivers not only refusing to drive them but also driving at 'excessive speeds', charging 'extortionate' fares and even littering on her drive.

She told PlymouthLive: "Even getting a taxi is a problem with drivers refusing to go that far when we state where we need to go. This leads us to sitting on the streets waiting for one to come along that will take us."

Recounting some of her bad experiences in a Plymouth taxi, she said: "The driver was driving at excessive speeds, nearly driving straight into a wall at one point as he wasn't aware of the roads. We got home fine. Paid for the taxi and got out.

"When I woke up the next morning, I drove up the track to find a blazer and multiple pieces of litter thrown onto the track - none of these were ours. So we can only assume the driver threw this out of the car on the way back up."

Another incident saw a taxi driver attempt to charge the woman and her friends an extra £30 just to drive two miles. "We were collected from Plymouth city centre again but this time needed to take a stop at North Prospect to drop off a friend to then continue to my home," she recalled.

Continuing she said: "We drove to North Prospect with the metre running and it got to £11.90. Once my friend was dropped off myself and my other friend, both females, were sat in the back and the driver said 'now onto that postcode will be £80'. This was extortionate! The week prior we paid £40. We were not in the financial position to pay that for the taxi so we said how much will it be to Tavistock. His response was £50.

"This means he wanted an extra £30 to drive 2.1 miles to my home. We agreed to £50 to Tavistock and walked the rest of the way. This meant two lone young females being dropped to walk 2.1 miles home in the pitch black at 3am."

A Plymouth City Council spokesperson confirmed that taxi drivers are under no obligation to accept fares for a location outside the area controlled by the council. But the spokesperson stipulated that if a journey is accepted then the driver must make it clear to the passenger how much they plan to charge before setting off.

In a statement sent to PlymouthLive, the council spokesperson said: "Drivers do not have to accept passengers who want to hire a taxi to an address outside the area controlled by Plymouth City Council. If they accept the journey, they must make it clear to the passenger the amount they plan to charge before starting the journey.

"They can calculate the fare using the meter but are not allowed to charge more than the permitted fare. While they can negotiate fares ending outside the city limits, demanding extortionate amounts is not encouraged as it is not good service and damages customer relations with the trade. The council sets the tariff for taxi drivers but not for private hire.

"We can investigate any complaints passengers have about taxi drivers – that includes excessive speeds - but cannot stress how important it is for passengers to take down or take a photograph of the licence plate. We have one recorded complaint from this customer and after contacting the driver, we responded to her complaint."

Last year Plymouth City Council introduced the Plymouth Night Bus which was made possible thanks to funding from the Home Office’s Safer Streets 4 initiative, which focuses on interventions aimed at tackling neighbourhood crime, anti-social behaviour and Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG), enhancing the safety of public spaces for all.

However, the Tavistock woman has also argued the bus should travel all the way to Tavistock so those in rural areas are supported as much as those living in Plymouth. However, the council spokesperson said if the bus was to travel to areas as far as Tavistock and Yelverton then it would mean it would not serve as many people.

The spokesperson said: "The Plymouth Nightbus is a separate issue and has been funded specifically for Plymouth under the Government’s Safer Streets initiative. The routes around Plymouth are circular and were designed to cater for as wide an area within the city as possible.

"The time taken for the night buses to get to Yelverton and Tavistock would mean that they would not serve many people. They would only be able to drop people off in the north of the city before driving out to Yelverton and then Tavistock, where there are limited numbers of people who would use the service.

"The bus would then have a long journey back with no passengers." The council spokesperson also added that the funding for this service will soon be ending.

Taxi customers are urged to follow the link here if they wish to make a complaint about a driver or a recent experience.

Sounds like a load of rubbish

I mean, you keep an old blazer in your cab and throw it out at this point?

This one literally goes that extra mile. Or two

For which he deserves praise, and I'm sure we've all done wee favours like the freebies and cheapo fares he's described. But, as per previous examples like this, he's advertising how to do it in the local press?


Kind Plymouth taxi driver will go the extra-mile to help

https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/p ... go-8185686

Breje Cosmin wanted to speak out after some negative stories being shared about his profession


Image: Plymouth Herald

A Plymouth taxi driver has spoken out about the "verbal and physical abuse" experienced by some in the profession - and what he's doing to make a difference. Breje Cosmin had defended the city's taxi drivers, saying there were a few "bad apples," but the majority of drivers were "amazing" and go the extra-mile.

Breje has defended his profession just days after one Plymouth taxi driver was fined £600 after refusing to take a passenger to Ernesettle. PlymouthLive recently reported a woman from Tavistock, who enjoys visiting Plymouth's nightlife, was asked to pay £80 by one driver to take her home.

He explained he loves his job and was privileged to have some "amazing experiences" on the job, but wants locals to know the "other side of the story" to their complaints. "It seems a bit like a clash between the customers and the drivers," Breje explained.

"Everybody's upset at each other. "We have to admit there's a few bad apples, that's true. Like any job, there's a few taxi driver who don't behave as they should."

Breje says there are kind things that happen all the time in his line of work. including when he was taking a mother and her children to school and overheard the children asking for lunch money, but the mum had none to give them. The kind-hearted driver then decided to decline the fare so she could give the cash to her children for food.

Breje added: "I took mothers to school with two or three kids and I heard the kids asking for a bit of change for lunch. I heard the mum said 'I'm sorry, we don't have that much money because I need to pay the taxi' so I said 'don't worry, you don't have to give me anything.'

"It was like £7. 'Just keep the money', that sort of thing. I'm not bragging myself. I am just giving an example of what some drivers do - we do a lot of good as well."

Breje recalled how, a few months ago, he picked up two girls who were walking to Saltash. "I picked them up from Wolseley Road, I said 'it's going to be around £30', because it's outside of town fare. They said 'we've only got £12' I said 'yeah, jump in, I'm not going to let you walk to Saltash'".

Other people have disclosed more serious, personal information to Breje while sat in his taxi. Twice, the driver recounted how passengers had told him they were suicidal.

"I had a guy who was chucked into my car by somebody, who wanted to jump from [a bridge]. I had an hour-long conversation with him in front of the house about how life is beautiful. And we started having laughs and they guy hugged me and said I was a 'god-send'.

"I had a girl tell me she wanted to kill herself and the same thing, I stayed for half an hour. It's so many amazing experiences. You get to meet people, and most people are nice. That's the beautiful part of it," he added.

It wasn't all beautiful, Breje admitted. On top of verbal abuse, Breje said he had been physically assaulted at work two years ago, and a co-worker had recently had his foot broken. "He was left in a puddle of blood," he exclaimed.

"I have been personally abused and harassed and my colleagues by customers very often and mostly for no reason," Breje said. The driver thinks it is because drivers and passengers "don't know much about each other's lives".

He added: "How hard it is to go to work and be told to f*** off back to your country because the meter shows £10 instead of £9.50, or people being disrespectful because they look down on your job or they had a bad day."

On whether he felt like it was expected to put up with the abuse, Breje said he did. "It's crazy. It's such a beautiful and amazing job, it's just weekends - it's a different world. It's why there's no drivers. I'm hoping, if people know both sides, they'll be a bit more understanding. We're humans as well, we get angry as well, we have bad tempers as well but we know how to keep it because we'll lose our jobs otherwise. But sometimes it's just too much."

While taxi drivers are paid more for working at night, not many want to, Breje said, because they don't want the abuse.

It is a "vicious cycle", he said, because "a driver that goes through this mentally is not going to be nice for the next few hours and it is a vicious cycle we pass each other off until nobody is happy". Breje stressed that it is not all customers who behave in this way, just like it is not all taxi drivers, and that "most people are nice and lovely".

Ultimately, Breje said he wants to "try to make peace between drivers and customers" because, in his own words, "life is so amazing when we all have a laugh".

I read this in the paper online and my first thought was.....

....how long until StuartW asks about it.

Well the account is a bit broken up but lets have a go.

City Centre to North Prospect she says was £11.90 so that's a bit rich - either it was a Hackney and the Driver went a rather long way or a PH setting his own rate. Without knowing the exact pick up point or where exactly in North Prospect he dropped off, a Hackney would be about £8.10 to £8.70 - it's actually about 1.5 miles, 3 miles is £11.40 all at Rate 2.

Having gone to North Prospect the distance to Tavistock has increased from the City Centre by about 2.5 miles because of the dog leg and then the Postcode address she gave apparently adds another 2.1 miles.

On the meter the City Centre to Tavistock is £40.20 (with no waiting time) but we need to add 4.6 miles, a total on the Meter of £51.90 but all this is without any waiting time. (I think we all know how long it can take for two Ladies to say "Goodnight" to a third getting out....)

Without knowing the full story (because we only have her side), I would think £60.00 to £65.00 perfectly reasonable, if she is telling the absolute truth, £80.00 is too much.

One last point, the Meter, Day and Night, in Plymouth Hackney can only show multiples of 30p, so it could NEVER show £11.90 and before you clamour "Extras", they are separate until totalled at the end of the journey. Maybe the Lady had traces of blood in her alcohol system.

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Chris The Fish

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

Thanks for the insight, Chris.

Of course, you would need to be there to know all the ins and outs, but unfortunately that's rarely the case in examples like this.

But, as per the Burnley woman the other week who thought she could get a car to go almost 10 miles at 10.30pm for £8 (as dutifully reported by the local press), there are two sides to every story

A lot of this is rehash, but some interesting additional details.

Decided to have a look on Google and with the first drop detour the trip must be nearly 20 miles

Which would be £62 on our T2, even on a Tuesday night at 10pm

So £80 for the job here doesn't seem as off the scale as I'd first thought. And if what the complainant says about her normal fares is correct, she must be getting a bargain

And maybe the driver knew about the 'impassable' road she lives up, which is maybe why he added £30 for the last couple of miles

Allegedly


Tavistock friends left stranded by a Plymouth cab after dispute over £80 fare

https://www.tavistock-today.co.uk/news/ ... are-598317

A TAVISTOCK taxi driver has stepped in to offer a guaranteed ride home for a group of friends who were left stranded by a Plymouth ‘black cab’ who tried to charge £80 for the journey home after a night out.

One of the group, a single mother living in a remote location near Brentor, said the incident was just the latest in a series which have seen her ejected miles from home on returning from the city after a night out. On one occasion, she had to walk half a mile down the track to her cottage alone, after the taxi driver claimed her lane was impassable.

In the latest, a black cab picked them up in Union Street in Plymouth in the early hours of the morning with the meter running, then quoted £80 to take her home, part way into the journey. She ended up paying £50 to go as far as Tavistock, then walked the last two miles home in the early hours.

She said she found it impossible to book a taxi in advance that would agree to come out in the early hours to bring her and her Tavistock area friends back – and called for a ‘night bus’ like the one that exists in Plymouth to bring them home.

I’m 2.1 miles out of Tavistock,’ said the woman, who is in her early 20s and works in the Tavistock area. ‘This happens every time we go out. On one occasion, the driver got me to the top of my lane and then refused to drive me down; it was pitch black and I had to walk about half a mile down the track. The next morning there was a whole lot of litter on my track, including a blazer which wasn’t ours so must have been thrown out by the taxi driver on the way back.’

She said this had followed an earlier incident last September when she and her friends were ejected by a taxi driver half way along Harrowbeer Lane in Yelverton, after the driver refused to go any further.

And most, recently, she was forced to walk back from Tavistock town centre, after a black Hackney taxi from Plymouth’s Union Street told her it would cost her an extra £30 to drop her the 2.1 miles out of the town to her home between Mary Tavy and Brentor. ‘We weren’t going to pay the extra £30 just to take us 2.1 miles, it was ridiculous. I’m just a bit fed up with it. Living rurally, we have just as much right to get a safe and affordable trip home. It wasn’t like we were thinking the journey would be for nothing, we were more than happy to pay our way. It just wasn’t worth £80.

‘I’m a 24-year-old and I am self employed. We are all educated, reasonable people. We enjoy a good night out occasionally, we don’t go out all the time. We just want to be able to get home when we do.’

The publicity around her plight, though, has prompted Tavistock taxi driver Trevor Lashbrook of Grab-A-Cab, who she often uses to get home from Tavistock, to allow her to book him for taxis home from Plymouth from nights out over the next couple of months. ‘He is very reliable and always turns up to take me home from Tavistock,’ said the woman. ‘It is the Plymouth taxi drivers that let us down.’

Trevor said: ‘We do pick up from Plymouth on a Friday and Saturday only, but not past 2.30am as so many people let you down at the last minute. I do try an look after my customers, although it is a long day for me as I work all day on Friday and Saturday, so I don’t work past 3am.’

On complaining to Plymouth City Council about the way she had been treated by taxi drivers in the city, the woman was told that there was no legal obligation for Plymouth taxi drivers to take passengers to anywhere beyond the city boundaries and the taxi tariff set out by the city council only applied to journeys within the city boundaries. ‘With regards to the fares for journeys to Tavistock and surrounding areas, unfortunately the law concerning this is not fit for purpose in the 21st century, but it would be for Government, not the council, to instigate a change in the law,’ said the official. ‘The law, which incidentally originated in 1847, only compels drivers to perform journeys that are wholly within the Plymouth City Council jurisdictional area.’ These laws date back to the days of horse drawn carriages.

Seems to me Plymouth City Council simply trying to shift the blame at the end, there. I mean, what would they prefer the law to be? Drivers compelled to do any job at any time for any distance?

And regulated fares for all jobs, whatever the distance?

Of course, the council is right that it's up to the Government to change the law, but in all the investigations and consultations etc I've read over the years, can't really recall either of the above changes being seriously considered

Exactly, he didn't want to do it, and neither would I have.

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IDFIMH