captain cab wrote:
So lets recap and lets use some facts, which admittedly are a strange thing in the Scottish section;
Malta recently earned £1 million pounds through selling 20 licenses.
Southampton issued 4 and earned a grand total of £720.
A medallion type system would earn councils potentially millions of pounds, those millions of pounds are already allegedly spent on some alleged black market anyway.
The threesome want delimitation which would earn a local authority only the cost of issuing a license.
If Edinburgh were to delimit, based on evidence elsewhere there is a chance the fleet of taxis would increase by 1/3rd within 6 months, which is a conservative estimate to say the least.
Cardiff's taxi fleet doubled in a matter of 7 years.
Liverpool's fleet rose from 400 to 1200 within 2 years.
Carlisle's taxi fleet increased from 33 to 150 within 18 months.
I dont know the number of taxis in Edinburgh, at a guess I'd say 1200?
If 400 extra licenses were to be issued at £30K each this would earn the local authority some £12 million.
If this type of money is available to local authorities, it isn't beyond my imagination that any government, given the fact they have no money, would seriously look at this idea.
CC
Err, but if you issued the hypothetical derestriction number of licences then no one would pay anything for a licence and those currently in issue would become worthless.
And you propose using demand surveys, yet these rarely propose issuing more than a handful of licences, so hardly a huge windfall for council coffers.
So you don't understand even the basic dynamics of the system, Reggie can't even get the terminology right - medallion system = plate system - and he thinks Transport Scotland have some sort of remit regarding these matters.
](./images/smilies/eusa_wall.gif "Brick wall")
But it would be great to get the whole thing debated in an open fashion, so bring it on, I say
After all, our Parliament is so bereft of big issues to discuss that the transport minister had to resign over a few issues of snow, so it would be great to get the Scottish commentariat and chatterati discussing the whole background and history of taxi restriction in Scotland.
But even if they did consider allowing councils to sell plates on the open market, recall that current plates apparently have no intrinsic value, thus they could rescind and reissue the whole lot, therefore current plates become worthless, but at least with the new issues it would be transparent and fairer.
To be honest I would be careful what you wish for, but a couple of years from now we'll know who'll get the credit for this 'vision'
I cannae wait
Recalling already profited from licences would be extremley difficult and won't happen
The council would make a sufficent amount from a transfer tax and fee's from individuals and multi plate holders
The amount can be justified by investing most of the money gains in to taking the cab office to the next level, providing the whole trade and customers with a more efficent service all round
The trade has had plate value's for years, there shouldn't be a way back, we tried de-restriction in the 80s it didn't work, we need a fairer system reflecting the current system, the Medallion/Plate system meets the criteria
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