Article by Josephine Tovey from smh.com.au …
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/council-tackles-3am-taxi-drought-to-save-city-nightlife-20120629-2181w.html#ixzz1zc3XXVHy
THE state government is altering taxi licences to try to break the 3am changeover bottleneck in the city, a critical part of Sydney’s late-night transport headache.
The City of Sydney this week endorsed an ambitious strategy to invigorate the city’s nightlife, identifying more efficient transport as the key to the success of the late night economy.
Existing problems identified by the report were a lack of transport options once trains stopped running, particularly between 2am and 4am in popular night-time destinations such as Kings Cross, George Street and the Rocks.
The state government this month launched a tender for a new batch of taxi licences that require changeovers before 2am and 2pm to try to break the changeover bottlenecks that typically occur at 3am and 3pm. More than 200 such licences were issued by the state government in 2011, bringing the total number of taxis who can’t change at the regular time to 1201, or 21 per cent of the fleet.
“The NSW government will continue to release more time-restricted licences if required to address availability during changeover periods,” said the Transport Minister, Gladys Berejiklian.
Suzie Matthews, the city’s manager of late night economy and safe city, welcomed the government’s continuation of the program, and said the taxi supply was a key problem identified during public consultation. ”The trains are dropping out at a time when you’ve got big masses of people moving through the area,” she said.
”Everyone told us please increase the supply of taxis … it’s pretty hard to get home.”
Taxi drivers traditionally change over between their 12-hour shifts at 3am and 3pm, though schedules have become increasingly flexible over time, according to the NSW Taxi Drivers Association.
The association president, Anne Turner, said that she was ”very surprised” by the claim that people struggled to find taxis in Sydney late at night.
The draft strategy endorsed by the council cited a number of other changes to taxi operations to improve supply and address concerns about driver safety, including increasing the number of taxi ranks and introducing a pre-pay system for taxis after midnight. A state government trial is under way on the central coast for pre-payment, where the driver estimates the fare at the start of a journey, and the difference with the actual fare and the end of the journey is either paid by the passenger or refunded by the driver.
Implementing pre-payment statewide will be considered once the results have been assessed in the coming months.
Ms Matthews said that while further reforms of the taxi industry were needed, it was also important to look at alternative means of late night transport – such as private shuttle buses. “At the moment there’s an over-reliance on a transport source that isn’t always in supply.”
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/council-tackles-3am-taxi-drought-to-save-city-nightlife-20120629-2181w.html#ixzz1zc3XXVHy
