DRIVE NOW May/June 2022
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Australia's only Magazine for the Commercial Passenger Transport Industry. News and views for Drivers, Owners and Operators of Taxi, Hire Car, Limousine, Ride Share, Booked Hire Vehicles, Rank and Hail Cars.
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POINT BY POINT<br />
Dumbing down a<br />
GOLD-STANDARD<br />
TAXI SERVICE<br />
IS NOT PROGRESSIVE<br />
by Perry Richardson | taxi-point.co.uk<br />
LONDON - A recent think tank report which called<br />
for the Knowledge of London (KOL) to be scrapped<br />
and minicabs to be allowed to pick up the public from<br />
the streets plying-for-hire caused a brief kerfuffle<br />
throughout the media and industry.<br />
The new report called ‘A Fare Shake: Reforming Taxis<br />
for the 21st Century’, was published by the Adam<br />
Smith Institute (ASI). It argued that the Government<br />
should move to overhaul current taxi legislation,<br />
creating a more ‘dynamic sector’ to better serve the<br />
requirements of the public.<br />
In short, the report recommended SIX key policies.<br />
These included:<br />
• Remove duplication and regressive licensing<br />
by creating a single, standard licensing regime,<br />
enforced by a national licensing authority.<br />
• Abolish the KOL tests which the report says have<br />
become unnecessary due to GPS and digital<br />
maps.<br />
• Permit minicabs to be hailed from the pavement<br />
and allow all licenced operators to use bus lanes.<br />
• Support more Paratransit Light Vehicles. These<br />
are higher capacity vehicles which run regular<br />
services along high-demand routes and which can<br />
be summoned by a customer.<br />
• Allow drivers to claim the cost of passengerfacing<br />
CCTV back against tax and encourage the<br />
use of online safety kits to improve standards of<br />
safety.<br />
• Offer incentives for taxi and PHV drivers to switch<br />
to greener vehicles.<br />
Maxwell Marlow, report author and Development and<br />
Research Officer at the Adam Smith Institute, said:<br />
“Britain operates critical services on last millennium’s<br />
laws. It’s time to put the brakes on special interests,<br />
who inflate costs and gate-keep with the antiquated<br />
and defunct ‘Knowledge’, and give consumers more<br />
choice.<br />
“We need to simplify our licensing system, making<br />
it more fair and transparent, whilst ensuring that<br />
our fleets are greener, safer, and more efficient than<br />
before. The report contains a myriad of policies to<br />
give Britons the freedom to travel that they deserve,<br />
turbocharge the economy and relieve the cost-ofliving<br />
crisis for many along the way.”<br />
14 <strong>May</strong>/<strong>June</strong> <strong>2022</strong>
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