Taxi Driver Online

Yeah because if anything needs barriers, and lots of them, it's level crossings

_________________
Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

http://lawcommission.justice.gov.uk/are ... ssings.htm, if you're really interested.

It appears that you get all the exciting stuff to read

_________________
Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

OK, a few comments from me:
level crossings- PLEASE people, DO NOT run the risk by going round barriers/jumping red flashing crossing lights. Ina previous life I was a train driver, and it is rather disconcerting when some t*** drives a car in front of the train, especially when the train is doing any sort of speed. a train at 125mph take just under a mile to stop. a 1200 tonne freight train at 60 takes about the same distance; a short local train at 30 takes about 250 yards to stop; chances are by the time the train driver sees you, your car will be a packet of razor blades fairly soon and your trip home will be in a black private ambulance. I've also lost 2 friends who were loco drivers on the local steam railway because drivers jumped red lights. It cannot be very pleasant being scalded to death for 20 minutes trapped in the cab of a steam loco.

Private hire cross-border hire-where I operate, in a semi-rural bit of Kent, we have 260-odd hacks and 38 private hire. there's only 1 hack in my town, the rest are p/h. Why? Because the local p/h don't really want to do the knowledge of Folkestone when they have little intention of working there. We're some 15 miles from Folkestone and Ashford, but Ashford is a different LA.Sometimes we get a call from Ashford for a pick-up which we can't do, but legally cannot sub the job out to an Ashford p/h or hack! A local hack CAN, and this is anti-competitive. Sometimes I get a call for a Heathrow pick-up. If I wanted to sub this to a ph or taxi company near Heathrow I couldn't legally do so. Why? I could do if it was a coach job! I can sub coach jobs out to anyone in the country and hire coaches in from anywhere to cover my work.

I don't want to see any lowering of standards for entry into either side of the industry, in fact I think standards ought to be higher to prevent what some call the "gutter element" starting up and starting up too cheap. Maybe there should be some sort of financial safety net involved like we have in the bus industry.There we have to have about £9000 in reserve for the first licence, and about £6000 reserve for every additional licence before licences are issued.

One of the ideas I put to the LC was that licencing and enforcement should be based on the VOSA boundaries of about 8 areas which would have simplified things considerably. there really does need to be a set of national standards for everything.

As for local enforcement, as I've posted elsewhere, in my area we have a licencing committee of 12; a licencing department of 3, and an enforcement team of 1, and he has to enforce restaurants, sex shops, tattoo parlours, taxis, pubs, amusement arcades..so how can he effectively enforce taxi regs?

You have always been able to pass the work on to a hackney licensed anywhere.

_________________
IDFIMH

I expect you may have wondered out of all the examples I could have picked - I cited that one

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

In our area the firm with the most drivers and work are the ones who get 95% of all complaints but people still keep using them why because they quote cheap

_________________
Taxis Are Public Transport too

Join the campaign to get April fools jokes banned for 364 days a year !

In my experience where there is no competition the quality of the service provided is usually higher but the drivers don't work 80 + hours a week

_________________
Taxis Are Public Transport too

Join the campaign to get April fools jokes banned for 364 days a year !

I was hoping to see something in the report along the lines of applicants having a 2 or 3 year clean license and CRB before being allowed to have a badge I think it is too easy for foreign criminals to walk into a job driving a taxi/ph in the UK

I am also deeply worried that we will still have neighbouring districts where one is restricted for Hackney and the other isn't which results in large numbers of PH from the restricted district pouring into the other as hackney drivers. I think even if allowing some councils to retain restrictions is kept then some sort of quota system such as a maximum limit of the number of hackney licenses in a district as say a ratio to population might help reduce the flooding effect which some areas suffer

I am also worried that there appears to be little mention of the WAV/Saloon situation where there is no mechanism or provision for getting a proper balance where mixed fleets are permitted

_________________
Taxis Are Public Transport too

Join the campaign to get April fools jokes banned for 364 days a year !

That's capitalism for you

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

Looks like the LC has done nothing so far to improve the lot for the poor serfs out there. As Mr T pointed out the PH BArons are the new mill owners.

They know if one man leaves, there will be twenty more to replace him...

where from?

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

Romania Hungary Bulgaria, Albania,Bangladesh,Pakistan,Afghanistan Africa south America basically anywhere in the world where the standard of living is lower than the UK and there is uncontrolled population growth

_________________
Taxis Are Public Transport too

Join the campaign to get April fools jokes banned for 364 days a year !

Provided they qualify - they can already drive minicabs here.

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

It's a whole lot easier to qualify when there are no or very little qualifications

_________________
Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!