BAH HUMBUG
OK, so let’s get the obvious over and done with. It’s Decem- ber, and I have always advocated Christmas should be once every five years, or even every two years, so by the time you read this you will only have a couple of weeks to fill your cupboards and add to the profits of Amazon.
I will probably be referred to as being a ‘Humbug’ as my family always jokes, but as a cab driver I have a very vivid memory from the 80’s of my 1983 Vauxhall Carlton 2.3d breaking down with a customer two days before Christmas because the automatic gearbox gave up. This car was bought from new and was trouble from day one - with the three speed auto-gearbox being the major issue - which ended up with four gearboxes in its lifetime and none under warranty. So, with all the garages closed for the period, it was a good four weeks before I got back on the road again. Mind you, I did make use of my time off to paint the outside of the house. But with this experience in mind, I am always apprehensive until the second week of January - the run up between now and then puts me in grumpy mode. Having said that I haven’t worked the Christmas/New year period for some time now, the newbies and diehards are welcome to it!
FARES
The last fare review here was in 2018. Well it started in late 2018 and was implemented in August 2019, such is the process required. If you miss a certain date to initiate a review then it could set things back several months. Currently we are running at £2.40 for all tariffs with £3 flag from 6am to 9pm for T1 and £4 from 9pm to 6am for T2. There are other tariffs in place for multi-seaters that can charge 1.5 of the standard saloon rates (all multi-seaters here have to be WAV compliant). The full tariff sheet can be seen at:
tinyurl.com/bhfares2019.
Our application will set all tariffs at £2.50 per mile. I recently discovered that Southampton is running at £1.65 a mile during the day and £2 at night and hasn’t had a fare review since 2014. Looking at the PHTM National Fares Table, I really pity those drivers working for what can only be regarded as a pittance - so sort yourselves out.
Over the (far too many) years of being in the trade I have dealt with the fare review on and off. I sorted out the 2019
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review, and the up and coming one for 2022, with the support of the various trade reps, which effectively meant that no one else wanted to do it, although this year I had input from Mark Durell of the BHPH Assoc which helped. At this point I would like to thank Dave Keen of Radio Relay, which is the main Cygnus meter agent down here, for working out the finer details for the data required for the meter changes.
The way it has worked here for many years is that fare reviews are presented by the local Taxi Trade Forum.
In strict terms any fare review only applies to hackney carriage fares, but the consultation also involves the three main ‘local’ companies in the city, as well as the various trade groups that make up the Taxi Trade Forum. This is because all of these companies have a mixed fleet of private hire vehicles as well as hackneys which also applies to the various trade rep groups. So it would not be practical to have different charges when operating both types of vehicles. PHVs here have meters installed with the local rates applied.
Now, before anyone makes any accusations of a cartel, I need to make the following very clear: Out of town charges, such as airports, are different between the companies and it is only the local rates which are the same, plus there is eager competition on service and account work.
This has ensured that anyone travelling in a local cab knows exactly what the local rates are and this has worked for many years. So whether you getchaina cab off a rank or hail it down, the same price is charged if you use a local app or phone number. We do not have a single cab company (of any significance) that exclusively runs PHVs other than Uber and small one-man-bands. So, if for example, you order two cabs from one of the main local companies and a hackney and PHV turn up, the metered rate for the journey is exactly the same.
To assess any fare review, we have historically used the ‘Fare Formula’, which is a calculation made up of various cost factors such as: fuel, insurance, purchase of vehicle along with figures from the AA for the for the cost of running a vehicle, and one crucial addition has been the average wage in the south east. This gave a reasonable result of what the running mile should be.
However, having had advice from the licensing department, we were advised that this formula itself should now be reviewed with the increase in hybrids being used. So this year we have based the 2022 fare review on a rate of inflation basis. This may actually be better because at least there is a chance to obtain a prediction of the rate of inflation rather than as before using the Fare Formula that would use historic information which could well be out of date by the time any fare review is implemented.
DECEMBER 2021
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