15 January 2007

Vicki Dunne's mad taxi plan

| johnboy
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*sigh* and she was doing so well…

The Liberals’ Vicki Dunne has unveiled her ideas for improving taxi services.

De-regulate the market and let the consumers decide what sort of taxi service they want and are willing to pay for?

No, not a bit of it. Instead she wants to keep the current rigid monopoly but throw more fiddly regulation on top in the form of peak hour taxi licences.

“Mrs Dunne said that the solution was simply not more taxis.

“If we had enough ordinary taxis to meet peak demand, they would be idle for most of the time and no-one would be able to earn a decent living from their investment.

“The Government needs to be much more flexible with the regulation of taxis and introduce a new class of taxi that can only operate at peak times.”

So, let me get this right. The operators of the peak demand taxis can somehow make a living with their cars idle most of the time but the owners of the Uber-Taxi licences cannot?

The problem at the moment is that keeping the cost of a regular taxi licence high (for revenue purposes) appears to be the driving factor of both Liberal and Labor policy.

Essentially crappy taxis are an unusual tax on the people of Canberra (and visitors).

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My knowledge is limited but the best solution is to get Taxis Combined to run things like they do in the rest of Australia. Lack of drivers and cars need to be suplemented from Sydney because as usual Canberra lacks sufficient resources to provide an adequate level of service. I have a cousin well versed in these matters who could act as a concultant if required.

Presumably the brilliant plan is to make the peak taxi licences cheaper than the full ones. Given that the majority of money is probably made in peak time, I wouldn’t be surprised if all of the current drivers were lining up to swap to the peak licences…

Yeah – I thought 132227 was “Dial a frustration-induced tic.”

What ??? We have a TAXI service here?

They got around that in Dublin by offering the refund of the licence value as a tax rebate.

This required the cabbies to declare their income to get the rebate, ended up not costing very much at all.

But we are nowhere near as clever as the irish.

keeping the cost of a regular taxi licence high (for revenue purposes)

Not just for revenue purposes – think of the compensation that would be payable if the Government suddenly devalued all of the existing taxi plates, which operators have probably financed with debt on the anticipation of them increasing in value.

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