Freeze Taxi fares!?!?

I’ve been reading a lot about ‘Fare increases’ in the Taxi world lately. Some people think that the answer to Credit Crunch, recession or whatever you want to call it is to raise prices. I think this is a mistake. Any short term gains through increasing fares are quickly evened out by lost custom.

Looking around the Country we, Taxi drivers, are sitting about doing nothing. Longer waiting times between fares & less people going out and using Taxis coupled with the high price of fuel has had a devastating effect on the Taxi trade. Another factor is the Government obsession with de-limitation of Taxis, every city and town across the country is under pressure to issue more and more licences. As more licences are issued then the work gets even thinner, standards drop, vehicle repairs and maintenance do not get done and so then we have spot checks, the resulting policies from poor maintenance and spot checks is to put an age limit on vehicles used for Taxis.

It’s a bit of a mess and not entirely of our own making. The one place where the Taxi trade can have a positive effect is on ‘Fares Charged’ Many Private hire firms, as we know, are cheaper to use than a Hackney Carriage and as such normally would take a reasonable share of the market. At the moment they are taking a larger share due to the recession, of course people will change their budgets and cut back on spending during hard times, but Private Hire is suffering too. Drivers of Private Hire have also taken a drop in earnings this last year.

We had an increase last December 2008, of 10p per mile. We did this because there is a formula in place with our council which keeps us in pace with inflation. 10p was negligible to the customer and only slightly beneficial to us. Despite this very low increase we have still lost more customers to the lower priced Private Hire. This has been helped along by aggressive marketing by some Private Hire companies, weekly full page ads in local newspapers and strategically placed signs stating how much can be saved by using them as opposed to a black Taxi.

‘We do not Market ourselves’ actually we do but we don’t realise it. Every time we make an impression on a passenger that is marketing. The problem is because we are not aware of this, sometimes that impression can be a negative one and we should take care that we ‘impress’ our customers in a positive way, by not moaning because it is a short ride, by being helpful and courteous to our passengers, by not overcharging (it is well known that we are entitled to charge extras for hand luggage, each passenger in excess of two,dogs,buggies & bicycles etc) we should use extras wisely and not as an excuse to bump up the fare.

We should also think about the possibility of freezing our fares and any future fare increases should be well thought out. Private Hire companies have lower fares than us anyway and as such will have to do a lot more work in order to make the same money or more than us. Office owners are already under pressure to raise their fares and will want to anyway as time goes by because that’s the only way they can raise their own income, by having a fare increase and then raising rents.

If the Hackney Carriage trade can put a Freeze on its fares then this will have the following effects.

• New drivers coming in will be deterred due to the high cost of entry, expensive wheelchair accessible vehicles, high insurance, council fees etc.
• Private Hire will eventually raise rates getting closer to the Hack rate, thus evening out the market somewhat.
• As the fares between the two sectors grow closer to each other then people will not see such a difference and will inevitably use a Hack where at one time they would have waited in the rain to save a few pounds.

It’s a waiting game. We are being bitten from both ends. At one end we have Private Hire with no limits on numbers. Always increasing in size and taking more of the market share, which also increases the risk of Pirate drivers. At the other end we also have the risk of De-limitation of the Hackney Carriage trade which also decreases our market share; we have the constant risk of being fined for illegal parking due to the high numbers of Taxis and the low number of Rank spaces.

We now, more than ever before, have to think hard about the way we do business. Before we only had to jump in the Taxi and go to work where we made money. It’s not like that anymore but with a bit of togetherness and some sound thinking we can bring it back!

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