Answer to Alannah MacTiernan's lies.
As a long suffering taxi driver your interview with Alannah MacTiernan had me screaming at the radio.
Her actions as minister absolutely destroyed the industry.
She released 1000 lease plates that were not needed after saying she would release 200.
The result is a reduction of 30% in my income which was never great to start with (about $14.00 ph).
Her paranoia about greedy owners is unfounded. Many of these plate owners are retired drivers or driver widows living off their leased out plates. There are very few multiple plate owners.
Her buy back scheme involved Macquarie bank buying all the plates, not the government, and then they would lease them back to owners (8-10% return). This would have been one big greedy owner.
Her allowing ‘entrepreneurial’ Indians come from Melbourne was the beginning of a group that is now notorious not only for poor skills and ripping off the public but also having run ins with other drivers by not following basic etiquettes of the industry (eg queue jumping ranks). These drivers also have suspect driver’s license history and doubtful police checks.
I am sorry if you waited a long time in the Terrace at peak time. Our city has restricted trading which means everyone exits venues at the same time creating sudden demands on the taxi system. Other cities have more gradual moves from venues and late public transport to aid the movement.
Her one truth was that we have a low density city so we have more taxis per capita but less per square kilometre so we have further to travel to pick up.
Please check my blog at http://perthcabcrap.blogspot.com/ for a more thorough insight to this industry.
What I'd like to know is where are the extra drivers going to come from?. It seems to me that the general public needs to be told the truth as some think it will be Australian drivers that will be driving these cabs. That couldnt be futher from the truth, how can this fix the industry, what descent Australian is going to work for $9 or $10 an hour, what type of people will a wage like that attract?. Ill tell you low life riff raff with dodgy taxi meters that charge customers more $$ that dont speak english or know where they are going. This is not the answer, get rid of the low lifes, put the taxi fares on par with the rest of Australia (not more not less) and that alone will attract good Australian drivers. Im in the process of preparing a letter, as you said to the transport minister Troy Buswell and the local mp in joondalup, but still I think the only way forward is to go on general strike, only that way we would see extensive media involvement and with the right speaker telling the media the type of drivers this will attract eg non english speaking Arabs and Africans. Anyway Troy Buswell is about to speak on 6pr gonna have a listen to the idiot.
ReplyDeleteIve just heard Mr buswell on 6pr, while the news is not great it isnt as bad as it could be. After hearing him Ive come up with an idea. Instead of realising new plates why not use the peak period taxis to work longer hours. That way if it wasnt economically viable for the industry they can be taken off the road. Im not sure what the peak period taxis pay for leases but putting them on the road with a rotational roster so that theres only 30 of them at any one time that could work.
ReplyDeleteHere is another email I sent to minister. His stats are bogus. I did the math.
ReplyDelete"Dear Minister
If 220 is 1.09% of the days distribution of taxi jobs through a radio dispatch network that works out at 20 000 jobs per day on average. That translates to 833 per hour on average. There are 1500 full time taxis available to cover these 833 jobs which means one job through the dispatch system per 108 minutes. That means we are taking an average of 6.6 dispatch systems jobs per day. At an average of $20 per fare we cannot be making much of an income we costs of $120 - $130 a day. I really do believe that you have been lied to about this so called statistic. Also a $20 fare will take about 7 mins to locate and 15 minutes to complete. What are we doing the other 86 minutes between jobs.
On many an occasion I have try to find out from the DoT exactly what this statistic refers to but they have not been forthcoming. It is not right that people are not picked up but I again ask what are the real circumstances of these failures to pick up?"
I think the real circumstances of the failures to pick up might be bogus information from swan taxis. How many times on a saturday night are people phoning up wanting picking up from lets say Murray Street or outside a night club anywhere in Perth. Maybe instead of actually giving these jobs out as a formal job they should just send a general message to all drivers stating there are jobs available in a certain area, I realise that sometimes they do this but maybe not often enough.
ReplyDeleteYeah, maybe. I had arguments at Swan during retraining sessions about this. Their attitude was that everyone that calls up deserves to be serviced but that doesn't take into account waits out jobs at very public places. EG the PCEC during the Oil and Gas Convention.
ReplyDelete