greenbadgecabby wrote:
I notice you and sussex are trying to make lots of educated guess's using your knowledge of other areas and de-regulation, but me thinks, until we are in posession of the facts and figures either from Fife Council or a driver or two from that particular area we should avoid waffling on to the extent we loose track of the original quote.
As I alluded to above, I don't think we'd ever get the correct figures from either source.
For example, you may well have heard that following a de-limitation that the number of taxis has increased by 50%, say.
But do you ever hear that, for example, the numer of drivers has only increased by 10% and that the increase in taxis is just due to jockies taking the opportunity to run their own vehicle?
For example, taxis increase from 1,000 to 2,000, which you could well read about, but drivers increase from 2,000 to 2,200. Thus although the implication is the job count for each driver has halved, the truth is less dramatic.
By the same token, suppose the PCO organised a lottery of the 20,000 current plate holders in London - even numbers keep the plate, odd numbers are forfeited. So you end up with 10,000 cabs and 25,000 drivers.
But you could probably accomodate all London drivers in the smaller number of cabs, so as regards job counts and takings etc, nothing changes. But those who control the plates can have their pound of flesh from those who don't.
Which is effectively how restricted numbers often works. By the same token, if numbers were unrestricted again, the number of taxis would double
![Shock :shock:](./images/smilies/shock.gif)
but again the number of drivers, takings, jobs etc would remain unchanged.
A real life example is Dublin, where I've read dozens of academic papers, govt reports, court cases, newspaper articles etc, and what is clear is that the number of taxis have increased several fold since de-limitation.
But the same dozens of documents simply don't mention driver numbers, so the real truth about the increase in taxi supply isn't clear.
But I did once see a figure for driver numbers before de-limitation, which suggested that there were around SIX drivers per taxi.
So if each driver got his own car, and worked the same hours, then each driver would be equally busy etc, despite the number of taxis multiplying by six!
Of course, it's not as straightforward as that, but it's a lot more complex than many in the trade like the public and politicians to believe.