Taxi Driver Online

Taxi drivers are left out in the cold


TAXI drivers are facing a harsh Christmas with snow and ice freezing their fares in what should be a business boom week.

Barrow’s 450 taxi drivers were left struggling to move on Black Eye Friday and are now facing a continued onslaught from bitter winter weather in the run up to Christmas Day.

Barrow Taxi Drivers’ Association spokesman Henry Fayyazi claims a lack of town centre gritting has hit business.

He said: “Some drivers were frightened on Black Eye Friday because of the ice and just went home because it is not worth risking a crash.

“For the ones that were brave enough to work, it was slow going, despite it been very busy.

“It is going to be a bad Christmas. It is going to be a hard time for a lot of taxi drivers.

“Normally you can do three to four jobs an hour, but at the moment you can only do two.”

In Barrow there are 154 Hackney carriages, monitored by the town hall, and 300 private hire cars.

Mr Fayyazi, a granddad-of-three, who drives a Hackney carriage, said: “This is usually a busy time of year, and it has been busy but we haven’t been able to get out and work.

“Being a taxi driver I would have expected to see more gritters than I have.”

Black Eye Friday saw queues of revellers crowd around taxi ranks across the town with some queues running up delays of three hours.

Emma Smith, 18, was lucky to get home to Askam from Barrow on Saturday morning.

She said: “We were waiting for an hour for a taxi. Even then we were lucky to get one at all.

“We were told that Askam hill was shut so we thought we were never going to get back, but the taxi driver said these girls need to get home.

“We got home just before 6am. I was planning to go out on Saturday night until I rang every taxi company in the phone book and they all said ‘we’re not going to Askam’.”

Cumbria Highways is responsible for gritting the roads.

A spokesman said: “We have a fleet of 30 gritters to grit priority routes.

“We do all we can to keep all routes passable.

“It’s simply not feasible to treat every route in the county without unlimited resources, so there will be certain routes, including some in the Barrow area, that remain untreated.”

http://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

BLACK EYE FRIDAY f uck working on that day

If folks are expecting to earn bundles it's not going to plan this Xmas.

Poxy weather, and a poxy economic outlook, have depressed many punters.

And in turn that's depressed the trade.

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IDFIMH

Agreed. Last January was more profitable ffs!

Been really busy here, but the traffic is awful

CC

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

Blackpool busy on days but nightmare traffic,nights are miserable ! Dreading january

I agree I earned more in January than what I'm earning now.

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Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

Believe me, don't get Mercury X2