Fair Taxi Charges

9 mile, rising from $4. 30 to $5. 25, an increment of 22 per cent.

This new tariff will be weighed to make longer journeys more costly, a scheme designed to encourage people to travel outside the centre of Manhattan. After all, the 50 cent overnight supplement, previously levied only by taxi from large fleet companies, will now be applied to all taxi companies. It was the first significant increment since 1980 allowed by the European Union Committee and was conditional on the City Council's agreement to a deal that could provide up to 1,800 new "medallion" taxes until a survey of the plan's effects on the environment was carried out.

Embroidered on taxi caps, the locket entitles the driver to receive a passenger who greets him on the road. Discussions about increasing fares were fuelled by disagreements over what taxi riders do - the numbers ranging from an annual mean of less than $10,000 to more than $30,000 - and rationales about what consumers get for their bucks.

Last Wednesday, Katherine Roberts, an editorial writer for The Week in Review, debated the taxi system with Gorman Gilbert, chair of the taxi and limousine commission, Edward Rogoff, an economics graduate of the New York taxi business, and George Douris, a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Taxi Board of Trade, which has 17 major fleet members.

In your opinion, how many more taxis does the town need? This has to do with the number of pedestrians who stand at places that can't get taxis in amber, and we really don't have any current information on that. A lot of folks get into other kinds of taxis, even downtown.

Even though we have guys who can't get yellows taxis, we have a taxi business that says it doesn't want a car anymore. A rethinking of the sector's philosophies and approaches is necessary. Q. Some detractors say that the tariff rise will help the cabin owner, not the driver who pays for it.

A. Fourty-two per cent of the cars are owned and operated by their respective owner. Insofar as the proprietor can raise the charge he makes to the rider for the use of the driving position, he can take the income from the rider. We have published the first leasing rate analyses. If in the years to come industries ask for a tariff rise, we will have indications of what they have done with the one before.

Q. Was the taxi system to be liberalised? Let us work towards a system where more money goes to the driver. That would speak in favour of a system such as that in London, where the amount of services is governed by the amount of driver rather than the number of cars.

But there are high access conditions for riders. Q. What is the impact of the tariff hike? It is necessary, but not enough, to improve the driver's performance. We have moved the focus of interest of the industries from service to the general public to concern for the value of these goods.

What was the origin of the locket system in the taxi world? Before the early 1940s there was a free taxi exchange in New York. Then in 1937, when there were about 15,000 Medaillon taxis in New York - the number had dropped from the 21,000 registered in the 1920s - the Haas Act was enacted, stating that since we could never predict a need for more taxis than today, we would just not spend any more taximedaillons.

Might in the business comes from the 11,787 medal holders - some fleet, some mini fleet, some Individual. However, they have a tendency to be uniform on certain matters, such as not wanting to award new medals and always wanting to increase fares. In New York, the second biggest costs for the operation of a cabin are the costs of the locket.

A. Its own figures show that a 4 per cent rise in the price of a taxi or limousine would offset any rise in expenditure since the last larger rise in 1980. Nobody takes into consideration that the New York economies were very powerful and that this generated a great deal of taxi revenue.

The Wall Street uses taxis. Q. How many more taxis does New York need? Alternatively, the Greens strip suggestion, a good scheme that would have enhanced the Gipsy taxis that run just off96th Street in Manhattan and the other counties. They can' t go away from it in a single day, mostly because there' $1 billion in indebtedness out there on these cabins, and the cashier would go berserker.

Note that taxis are the most effective way to transport private individuals in the downtown shopping area, as they make the most journeys per hour occupying road surface area. For example, a taxi makes 30 or 35 journeys in one shifts.

Q. To whom is the performance increased by the ticket price? The only way to raise the ticket price is to raise the medal holders' fortunes. So if you had a taxi with a locket and rented it - in the knowledge that you could find a chauffeur who paid him or her $60 a day - and you suddenly got a ticket price rise that doubled your income, you would simply raise your lease rate so that the chauffeur was still leaving $60 a night behind.

Assuming someone said they can only lease driver $50 per shifts. So when they told the driver if you wanted to take the taxi back, you better tip someone here $25 a layer, how would anyone ever know? What makes the taxi industy think that the new tariff rise is not enough?

The purchase of new cars has raised the cost by 20 per cent. We took seven years to achieve this small uplift. We will have to return in a hurry to an extra tariff raise just to keep up the services we now offer. Can' find any chauffeurs.

The only thing you have to do is look at the classifieds for taxi riders to see that we are at a crucial time. Our new agreement with our riders gives them more than 50 per cent of the boost. We also need more cash for our driver to offer a better level of services.

Q. Several taxi riders who rent taxis say that the tariff increases do not go to them, but to the individuals from whom they rent. Rider said his rental contract is going up from $60 to $75 a head this weekend. It could be a small rise in leases because of the cost of insurances, but never such numbers.

It would ruin our whole goal of getting more riders.