Sympathy for Taxi Langers

31st Mar 2009

TAXI PROTESTS
Danny Elbow

The queue for the tiny northbound Patrick Street rank regularly backs up to the Opera House.

Protests and work stoppages aren't being greeted too kindly by the general public at the moment. The economy is on its knees with its head bowed and private sector workers who have lost their jobs can rightly feel apathetic when their public sector counterparts kick up a fuss about pay cuts.

Caught in the middle of this malcontent are the city's taxi drivers. This group of indicator-phobic drivers might not be the first group who would receive your personal priority for sympathy.

In fact they mightn't even be in your top ten. Or twenty. But they're getting a fairly raw deal - despite our envy when they scoot past us in bus lanes or our irritation when they cut across us suddenly in traffic.

You don't have to trawl through the well-meaning texts of deregulation legislation to know this. You simply have to be in the city any day of the week.

Stand on Patrick Street or Drawbridge Street around midday and witness the huge line of humming taxis lined up waiting for a fare. Often so many taxis are backed up along the street that cabbies have to reverse onto the pedestrian area of Emmet Place and line up outside the Crawford Art Gallery.

No more coked up stellas threatening to scratch your eyes out if you dont let her take the next cab...

This wasn't what it was like a two or three years ago when, if anything there were a slight shortage of taxis. Now there are an extra 5,000 cabs on Ireland's roads since this time last year.

Don't think that as passengers we're complaining about their availability. When it's bucketing down or you've got a heap of heavy bags and you need a cab it's great to have so many at your disposal but when you hear that a driver has been waiting forty minutes for your eight euro fare and ten minute journey it brings home the reality of a liberalised deregulated market.

The most frustrating aspect for Cork drivers is that the regulator recently hiked prices so in effect they are operating in a market that has been saturated with supply but they can't drop their prices to compete. It's like ten chip vans selling burgers for twelve euro outside Pairc Úi Chaoimh or Turners Cross but no vendor is allowed to drop their prices to tempt hungry passers-by.

Taxi drivers are earning less than the average industrial wage and have to work longer than they ever did to make even that much. That's not a myth pedalled by drivers' long winded know-it-all anecdotes or their union representatives: it's written in black and white on page seven of the Goodbody report published on the taxi industry a few weeks ago which also showed the average taxi driver works fifty-two hours per week.

Public sector union leaders would swallow their tongues such would be the hysterics if their members were subjected to conditions like those experienced by cab drivers. Overworked and under-paid its little surprise tired drivers rarely bother with the indicator stalk.

Deregulation has its good points but at some stage either restricting the number of taxis or allowing drivers greater freedom to drop their prices must be compromised.

Even if you never take a taxi - we need to keep Cork's cabbies in good form to use those all important indicators to make the county's roads safer!